Microsoft Power Platform Updates | Microsoft Ignite 2021

A large portion of Microsoft’s Ignite 2021 premier conference was devoted to updates to the Microsoft Power Platform. But what exactly was covered? What updates were made? In this blog, we’ll go through what I think are the top key updates for Power Apps and Power Automate. We’ll go through each update one by one and talk about its advantages and implications to the Microsoft Power Platform. You can watch the full video of this tutorial at the bottom of this blog.

Table of Contents

New Features & Updates Within Microsoft Power Platform

Native Mobile Apps In Power Apps

One of the best developments that we heard about in the Microsoft Ignite 2021 was the ability to produce native mobile apps in Power Apps.

In order for your users to get a Power App that you had created in the past, you first had to download the Power App wrapper application from the App store. And only then you could launch the Power Apps that you yourself had created for your users. So, users had to take two steps. First, they had to download the Power Apps app, and then your app.

What this new feature allows you to do is to produce your Power Apps and directly deploy them right to the App Store. This means your user can skip step one and can get your app directly from the App Store.

Think about the power of this. You can basically create your own app in Power Apps and deploy one version to the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. You don’t need to make any modifications that you usually need to make with low code Power App platforms. Also, when users download your app, they have a notification or an identifier for your app directly on their home screen.

They don’t have to go into Power Apps and choose from a list of apps. It’s right on their home screen. It allows you to wrap your app in your branding. So, you don’t need to have that first step where your users need to log into Microsoft’s platform, and then open your app. They just open your app directly.

One caveat is that they still need to make sure that you’re registered with the tenants. So, you can’t make an app, for example, that all users use. The first step in your application must be the ability for your users to log into that tenant or to that Microsoft environment. But you can still put your branding and your application around it, as opposed to Microsoft’s. This is very powerful, especially for Power Apps user adoption.

Collaboration Features With The Microsoft Power Platform

Other big features that we learned about that Ignite 2021 showed us are more collaboration features with the Power Platform. This means that they’ve added certain features that improve collaboration in these tools.

They’ve added the ability for you to comment on things, similar to what you would have in an Excel file or Word file. You can have all those comments integrated right into the Power Apps or Power Automate platform.

Another feature they’re going to add is co-authoring, which means that two users can use or develop the same app simultaneously.

Right now, if I wanted to share my application with someone else and they were developing it at the same time, I couldn’t go back in and develop it for me. It would say that I’m locked out. And that is so annoying, especially when you’re developing something with the team, right? So, I’m really excited about this feature that Microsoft is allowing you to co-author the same app at the same time.

The final collaboration feature that we see is the ability to add your code to any Get platform that you want. Usually, with low code Power Apps, they’re drag and drop systems, right? So that makes it difficult. You would have code that you then check into a version control system. But Power Apps now has an extension that you can add to Get where you can track all of that. So, you get all the abilities and the benefits that you would get with the Get like version control, branches, and different things like that.

Microsoft really challenges this here and mixes in the combination of citizen developers with professional developers. So, you can have your citizen developers, for example, developing right on your Power Platform. And you can also have your professional developers working, perhaps on version control and branch management in the background.

Pricing & Licensing Fees

Another announcement that Microsoft made is an update to the Power Apps pricing and licensing fees. They’ve added a Pay-As-You-Go Plan to Power Apps. Before you had to pay $5 per user, per app, per month, or $20 per user per month.

Access Connector To The Microsoft Power Platform

One quick announcement that they’ve also made is they’ve added an Access Connect to the Power Platform. This means you can now create Power Apps using Access as your database. You can also use Power Automate to change things or update, or delete new records in Microsoft Access, for example. Microsoft has chosen to do this by allowing Access to connect to Dataverse and there’ll be a sync there. And then, with Dataverse, you have access to the entire Power Platform.

Azure API Management

The next feature is actually a feature that Microsoft had before, but they’ve carved out something, particularly for Power Platform. Azure is a management feature that allows you to create APIs and manage them as you’re creating endpoints.

This is so powerful because you will no longer need to rely on things like HTP requests and those kinds of effects to have Power Automate communicate with third-party websites. Your third-party website, API connects to Asia API management, which lets you create a custom connector. And then you can use that custom connector as you would with any connector like outlook, Excel, Twitter, Trello, and Asana, for example, right in the Power Automate and Power Apps.

When one person creates the connector, they can just share it with everyone. And now everyone has the ability to create automation and applications using that connector.

Power FX

The next feature they’ve announced is Power FX. It is a low-code programming language that they announced in March of 2021. That is really the bread and butter behind the Power Platform, particularly Power Apps.

You can use Power FX, for example, as code when you’re creating any functions in Power Apps. Now they’ve updated this language and the libraries that are associated with these languages to allow you to do very cool things. For example, they enable AI in your application.

The update now allows you to have that library access that can enable AI directly in your app. In the past, you had to go through a third-party endpoint system. But now, it’s right on your app, which makes this so much easier.

Process Advisor

Microsoft has also made some key updates to Process Advisor, specifically mining. Process mining here is the ability for Microsoft to compute and analyze the processes that you’ve put into Process Advisor, and using data, provide insights specifically on inefficiencies across your workflows.

Process mining, if you have your processes in Process Advisor, allows you to capture key insights on efficiencies, and how to improve the workflow. It’s consistent with Microsoft’s messaging to automate your workflow and provide you with more creative time in your day.

Power Automate Desktop

Last, but certainly not least, is the Power Automate Desktop, which will be included for free with every purchase of Windows 10 and 11. So even if you have an existing copy of Windows 10, you can download Power Automate Desktop today. It allows you to automate workflows within your desktop or the web using RPA.

This isn’t the same thing as Power Automate Cloud or just Power Automate in general. For that, you still need a license. And in order to connect Power Automate Desktop to Power Automate, you can do that as well. So for example, if you want to create a workflow that’s connected to a third party like Trello, Asana, or anything where there’s a Power Automate cloud connector for it, you can still do that. But you need an additional license for that. If you want to automate things on your desktop, Power Automate Desktop is great and it’s completely free.

Conclusion

I’d personally say it was a very exciting Microsoft Ignite 2021. They covered all the features that we were expecting, and I’m very excited about what comes next. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.

All the best!

Henry