Microsoft Power Platform Conference 2023: More AI-focused development, management tools on the way

Additional reporting and photo in this article are from Asif Rehmani. 

More than 126,000 organizations have been exposed to Power Platform Copilot, Microsoft reports. The company touted the strength of that low code customer base and the growing online community, which now has more than 5.2 million monthly active users, as they kicked off Microsoft Power Platform Conference 2023. The event coincides with new updates and plans for copilot experiences, Power Automate authoring, Managed Environments, and more. 

Authoring of Power Platform solutions via natural language now extends to Power Pages, as well as Power Apps and Power Automate. Power Automate now has 10 million monthly users and the newest designer ("version three") is now generally available and enables Copilot by default, according to Microsoft CVP Charles Lamanna.

"Based on user feedback, we’ve further refined Copilot in Power Automate by expanding its ability to populate more parameters in the flows and actions it generates," he wrote in a new blog post. 

Biggest audience clap so far is about the new Power Automate designer! #MPPC23 pic.twitter.com/9jlkN8SRbW

— Vlad Catrinescu (@vladcatrinescu) October 3, 2023

The new flow designer has new usability updates like the ability for an author to ask it questions about itself. Asking "What do you do?", for example, should generate a simple response in English. 

The updated Copilot control in Power Apps now enables makers to customize their AI-assistants by extending their information sources to less-structured or unstructured data thanks to support from Power Virtual Agents, Lamanna stated.

For example, makers can now directly add websites and unstructured content to their Copilot control, in addition to structured data sources, exponentially boosting the capabilities of the embedded copilot. Every app can now have a powerful Copilot! This is possible due to the seamless integration of Copilot control with Power Virtual Agents’ generative actions.

“Ever since we added #Copilot to the #PowerPlatform we’ve seen a big acceleration in people building things.”

Get ready for 4 MAJOR #AI announcements today only at #MPPC23 👀 pic.twitter.com/NYgFeKQDtI

— Dona Sarkar @ #MPPC (@donasarkar) October 3, 2023

In model-driven apps, updates to the Copilot summarized action capability will generate summaries of records when users navigate a form. Summarized actions is built on Power Virtual Agents, according to Ryan Cunningham, VP of Power Apps.

"Now built on Power Virtual Agents for powerful, multi-data-source generative answers and limitless extensibility, the Copilot control makes app experiences possible that were unimaginable just 12 months ago," Cunningham wrote.