EPPC 2026: Microsoft aims to balance new Copilot Studio vision with Power Platform strengths

As Microsoft pushes ahead with its latest plans for Copilot Studio and Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Platform makers will have a bridge to the future, the company assured customers and partners at the launch of European Power Platform Conference 2026. Product leaders offered new guidance that they believe will improve opportunities that mix automation and AI while getting more use out of existing Power Apps and Dataverse solutions. 

Microsoft CVP Ryan Cunningham told the EPPC audience in today’s keynote that two high profile AI tools, M365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, will add value to existing Power Platform solutions. His team’s three goals for business customers focus on personal productivity, process efficiency, and the ability to “make entirely new systems of working”. He told the audience:

How do we start to imagine and create and advance things that we never could have done before? Question the systems themselves and start to reinvent them? And these are not mutually exclusive. We have to go think about how to do all of these things and do them in parallel in order to create a better organization, a better way of working.

Cunningham and other Microsoft representatives emphasized that the introduction of new AI capabilities or new generations of Power Platform services will not disrupt customers with existing apps, flows, and other technical assets built up over the years. Microsoft itself now has over 800,000 Power Apps, over 1 million Power Automate flows, and over 700,000 agents running internally. 

That guidance also applies the emergence of other high profile Microsoft products like Copilot Cowork and Work IQ, which are likely to play a more prominent role in apps, agents, and processes from now on. He explained: 

We don't have to abandon anything we've built in Power Platform because these tools are coming directly into the platform and directly enhancing what we've already created and are improving the skills we already have to do it. And so this is what's really exciting for a community like this. Everything we've invested, whether you're brand new to Power Platform or you've been working with it for years, is directly evolving and becoming more effective in this new world.

Creating a more holistic Copilot story for Power Apps

Microsoft 365 Copilot will work more intimately with Power Apps, which will lead to more blended use cases. In some cases, Copilot capabilities can do more work within apps. In other situations, apps will be able to “decompose” to serve the needs of users working primarily in a Copilot interface.