Power Platform Tech Corner – February

Here in Bouvet Rogaland, we have an internal Teams meeting called Tech-hjørna about once a month.

There we present technical news from Power Platform. It can be things that have been announced and that are in preview, direction for the platform, small features or larger functionality that is coming. The idea is that our Power Platform consultants have an arena where they are updated on things that are coming so that everyone does not have to find this information on their own.

So I thought that a lot of this might as well be shared externally as well, so that’s why this blog series sees the light of day.

This months content

Functions in Dataverse (preview)

Functions in Dataverse are new functionality that’s in preview. They use Power Fx, the programming language in Power Apps to build business logic in the Dataverse database. Use this to build reusable business logic that you can leverage from Power Apps and Power Automate.

The benefits of building business logic directly in the database are many, including:

• Performance, since the code is run on the server side, processing data will normally be faster
• Maintenance and changes, since the feature is in a central location independent of Power Apps and Power Automate, changes can be made in one place only.
• Security, since the business logic is executed on the server side, can help better protect data

Create Functions in a Solution in Power Platform.

Functions in Dataverse take over from what were previously Instant low-code plug-ins that have been in preview for a long time. Hopefully, the preview period for such a useful feature will not be as long.

Functions in Microsoft Dataverse – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Use existing tables in data workspace

Finally, it is possible to use existing tables in the new data workspace when working with tables in Dataverse. You can work both with your own existing tables or tables from the Common Data Model in Dataverse such as Account and Contact.
The user interface also allows you to filter on only tables in your Solution or tables also from outside the Solution.

There are still some limitations, especially for existing tables. Existing tables are only added in read-only, which means that you may have to open the table in a new tab to edit it, and you cannot set up one-to-many relationships in the new user interface yet.

Work with existing tables in data workspace – Microsoft Power Platform Blog

Access management on views in a model-driven Power App (preview)

Previously, we were able to associate Dataverse security roles with schemas in a model-driven Power App, now we can also associate security roles with specific views in such a Power App.

So, the security role the user belongs to can determine which views are available to the user in the application.

The feature is still in preview, so it’s not suitable for production solutions yet.

Manage access to public system views – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Control which applications are allowed in your Power Platform environment (preview)

Microsoft has in preview released functionality where you can allow and block specific applications in your Power Platform environment. This can protect against users running unauthorized applications to, for example, export data they are not supposed to export, etc.

The functionality requires that the Power Platform environments are so-called Managed Environments, which in turn requires that the users are licensed Power Apps users.

Control which apps are allowed in your environment (preview) – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

Visualize with Copilot for Model Driven Power Apps (preview)

Microsoft has introduced a feature in Model Driven Power Apps to quickly visualize data using Copilot and AI. One click is all it takes to create a graph of data from the Model driven app. The graph can be changed to different types such as bar chart, pie chart, etc. The charts are interactive, which means you can click on the chart to filter data in the app.

Introducing Visualize with Copilot (preview) – Microsoft Power Platform Blog

Copilot Studio agent – get better answers from SharePoint

If you have tried to build agents in Copilot Studio that use SharePoint as a source of knowledge and are not completely satisfied with the answers, then there is now good news for you. If you have at least 1 Microsoft 365 Copilot license in your tenant, you can take advantage of the same semantic index that Microsoft 365 Copilot uses.

Check under Generative AI in Settings that “Enhanced search results” is turned on and as mentioned, you need at least 1 Microsoft 365 Copilot license, which means that you do not need Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for all your users to be able to take advantage of the semantic index.

Semantic index for Copilot | Microsoft Learn

Knowledge sources overview – Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn