Powering Ahead – What to Expect from Microsoft Power Platform in 2023’s Release Wave 1
In today’s blog post, we’re pleased to present the latest developments within the Microsoft Power Platform environment.
Specifically, we’ll be detailing the anticipated plan for the 2023 release wave 1. This essential update outlines key changes, and prepares you for future implementations, all from a TopNotch perspective.
2023 Release Wave 1 Overview
Microsoft Power Platform has been busy at the drawing board, getting ready to turbo-charge digital transformation journeys across the globe.
As it continues its evolution of being a one-stop shop, featuring Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents, along with two add-ins: AI Builder and Power Pages. The upcoming release packs a punch, with hundreds of new features across the Power Platform spectrum. Let’s see what’s in store, exactly:
Power BI
Power BI is set to boost your data culture, empowering everyone, from individuals to teams and organizations.
There’s something in the pipeline for all of you. For solo data enthusiasts, the creation experience gets a revamp, featuring more web parity and a brand new Power Query diagram view.
For teams, expect enhancements in meetings and multitasking, making your data work for you, no matter where you are.
Power Apps
Power Apps is going all in on risk reduction, with advanced governance capabilities designed to make onboarding a breeze while leveraging low-code capabilities in a manageable, scalable manner.
Makers and developers, it’s your time to shine with modern experiences to build apps, manage data, and logic. Users, get ready for an upgrade with modernized web and mobile experiences across apps.
Power Pages
Power Pages continues its investment in out-of-the-box capabilities, catering to low, no-code development, and professional developers alike.
Look forward to additional capabilities and solution templates in the Design Studio. Professional developers can expect to jive with Power Platform CLI tools and Visual Studio Code, while administrators will have more tools at their disposal to manage and govern their Power Pages sites.
Power Automate
Power Automate is ready to shake things up with new features designed to simplify creating new flows in natural language.
With other experience improvements for creating and authoring flows, new users can jump right in. Plus, the introduction of work queues and simpler connectivity to a machine for desktop flows eliminates additional installs and password management hassles.
Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents unveils a new unified authoring canvas: Microsoft’s single conversational AI studio for all bot building needs.
With the ongoing integration with Bot Framework capabilities and Azure Cognitive Services, bot creators, from subject matter experts to developers, can start building today with the public preview. The advanced authoring canvas will be generally available this wave.
Microsoft Dataverse
Microsoft Dataverse keeps the ball rolling with investments in enhancing makers’ experiences, improving app-building productivity, seamless connectivity to external data sources, and easier data stewardship with low-code tools like Power Fx.
AI Builder
AI Builder is taking document processing up a notch with more pre-built model capabilities like contract processing, the ability to identify personal information, and the prospect to extract field types from documents.
Plus, there’s a focus on facilitating model governance and licensing, improving admin interfaces to govern AI Builder credits usage across environments, apps, and flows.
Governance & Administration, Pro Development, ISV Experiences
The governance and administration, pro development, and ISV experiences are all getting their fair share of attention.
The governance and administration sectors are getting more tools and insights for admins with features supporting pay-as-you-go metered billing and improved manageability of environments.
Pro development continues investments in Visual Studio Code extension, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps build tools, aiming for a deeper integration with Microsoft Azure. Both code-first developers and low-code makers can look forward to publishing to a central catalog for a more straightforward and scalable experience across environments.
ISV experiences speed up ISVs with pay-as-you-go licensing through Azure subscription and automated application updates, eliminating manual overhead of coordinating license procurement and software updates.
Data Integration
Data integration continues to enhance Power Query experiences with new capabilities across Get Data and the Data Transformation experiences in the Power Query Editor.
Also, expect enhancements to on-premises and VNet data gateways capabilities and a new generation of Dataflows to Microsoft Data Cloud. Expect high-scale improvements to connectivity scenarios from Azure Synapse, Dataverse, Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, and Amazon Redshift along with other Power Query connectors.
Conclusion
That’s quite a bit to look forward to, isn’t it? We can’t wait to see these services and capabilities in action, as the new features for Power Platform are continuously being released from April 2023 through September 2023.
Now, don’t you worry if this all seems like a lot to take in. That’s where TopNotch comes into the picture. With our deep expertise in all Power Platform products, we can help maximize the efficiency of these tools for you. Ready to dive in?
And of course, as always, we’re all ears for your feedback. We can’t wait to hear what you think about the upcoming release wave!
