Power Platform Updates: Chatbot; Deployment pipelines; Model driven apps

Microsoft is continuously updating and enhancing the tools and services in the Power Platform family. Let’s take a look at some of the most important recent developments in Power Platform products.

Power Pages

Mirroring recent generative developments in Azure and Dynamics 365, senior program manager Nagesh Bhat announced the introduction of a next-gen AI chatbot for Power Pages websites, in preview. Microsoft previously issued an AI chatbot experience for public sites capable of supporting natural conversations with unauthenticated content. The new experience is intended to support customer experimentation with both anonymous and authenticated experiences. At the end of September and October, Microsoft bolstered development options with the introduction of Power Pages ALM with Solutions, Pipelines and Enhanced data model—now generally available—and a Power Pages Bootstrap version 5.2.2 preview, with additional UX functionalities.

Power BI

Senior program manager Lee Benjamin shared the option to use deployment pipelines. Users will be able to run deployment pipelines in two to 10 stages, choosing how many stages to run shortly before beginning the run. Users are able to name each stage, but cannot change the number of stages after it begins running. The team highlighted Power BI integrations with OneDrive and SharePoint, a new Model explorer for the model view in Power BI Desktop, a new on-prem data gateway release, and troubleshooting options to optimize DirectQuery performance.