The 2024 Power Platform Community Conference is happening this week, and in this video, you will learn the most important announcements about Power Automate and Power Apps that Microsoft shared during the keynote!
Video Summary
- Power Platform Growth: The platform now has over 48 million monthly active users, an increase of 8 million. Microsoft humorously compared this to six Taylor Swift-era tours!
- Power Automate Enhancements:
- Pinning Details: You can now pin up to two details for actions or triggers, making it easier to copy-paste information without constantly opening and closing windows.
- Multimodal Recording: Power Automate Desktop now supports multimodal recording in public preview, allowing you to demonstrate tasks while explaining them to Copilot, which then builds the flow for you.
- Generative Actions: These new actions simplify complex flows by allowing Copilot to generate logic and actions based on your instructions.
- Power Apps Updates:
- Co-Authoring: General availability of co-authoring in Power Apps Canvas apps lets multiple users work on the same app simultaneously, enhancing collaboration.
- Model-Driven Apps: New Copilot features help find and enter information more efficiently, even extracting data from free text like emails.
- Power Apps Plan Designer: This new tool helps you plan your entire solution by uploading documents and letting the designer create the necessary components, making the planning process more streamlined and efficient.
- Next Year’s Conference: The next Power Platform Community Conference is scheduled for October 28-30, 2025, in Las Vegas. Use code VLAD100 to save 100$ on your registration!
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! We are live from Las Vegas, and day one of the Power Platform Conference 2024 just finished. Since I get to attend in person, I know how important it is to keep up to date even if you are at home and can’t make it. I wanted to do this quick video for you where I share the top announcements for Power Automate and Power Apps, and I’ll try to cover both in under 10 minutes. So, let’s get started!
First of all, let’s start with some numbers. The Power Platform now has over 48 million monthly active users, which is 8 million more than the last time we shared numbers. This is quite amazing! To tell you a funny thing from the keynote, Microsoft somehow invented a new unit of measurement: a Taylor Swift Eras Tour, which is equivalent to 8 million people. So, the Power Platform is now used by six Taylor Swift-era tours. Microsoft Teams has 320 million monthly active users, so I’ll let you do the calculation on how many concerts that is. And yes, I am a Swifty; I did go to a concert this year.
There were three keynotes, but since this is the Power Platform Conference, let me focus on that one. The keynote was delivered by Charles Lamanna, Business Applications and Platform CVP at Microsoft. As usual, Charles opened the keynote by thanking the community. Did you know there are currently over 5.8 million people in the Power Platform community, and a question gets answered every 6 minutes? It’s amazing to see the power of the community in the Power Platform. If you’re not a member of that community, make sure you join it.
Now, let’s talk about features, starting with my favorite one: Power Automate. The top announcements are: first, you can now pin up to two different details for an action or a trigger. Has it ever happened to you that you had to copy-paste between actions or copy-paste information from the trigger, and it’s just annoying because you have to open and close it? Now, you can just pin two of them side by side and become more productive quickly. You might be wondering why I’m not talking about Copilot. Of course, most of the other announcements were about Copilot, so I just had to throw that one in there.
Talking about Copilot for the Power Platform, the first big announcement is Power Automate Desktop. The multimodal recording for Power Automate Desktop is now in public preview. This means that when you open Power Automate Desktop, you’ll be able to not only tell Copilot what you want but also demonstrate it. You click on record, perform the action, and explain it to Copilot. Then, Copilot will build that desktop flow for you. I cannot wait to try that in action; I’m sure it will be amazing.
Another AI feature for Power Automate is generative actions. If you watched my European Power Platform Conference keynote highlights from June of this year, you might remember AI flows. Microsoft is taking a different direction with them based on feedback from the private preview. These will now be rolled into generative actions. Imagine you’re building a flow with many conditions and switching statements, making it quite messy. With generative actions, you add the logic, tell Copilot what it should do, and at runtime, it will build the logic and actions for you. This should make flows a lot easier, but we won’t know how good it is until we try it.
Now, let’s talk about Power Apps. The first announcement I’m super excited about is the general availability of co-authoring in Power Apps Canvas apps. If you want to work with a colleague or consultant simultaneously, you can now do it. You can see where different people are in the app and the exact component they’re working on, making collaboration much easier.
For model-driven apps, the keynote showcased some amazing new Copilot functionality that helps you find information in your app. If you need to enter data from a long email, you can copy the text from Outlook, and paste it into your app as free text, and Copilot will understand the text, extract entities, and fill in the data for you.
The final announcement, which I’m most excited about, is the Power Apps Plan Designer. Often, we plan a solution before we start working on it, including database models, personas, and the number of apps needed. Now, you can upload all those documents as part of a prompt, and the Power Apps Plan Designer will understand them and help you create all the different parts of your solution. This includes multiple apps as part of your solution, not just one.
This is it for this quick video on the top announcements for Power Apps and Power Automate at the Power Platform Community Conference 2024. If you’re not here, make sure you join us next year. It has been announced for October 28-30, 2025, still in Las Vegas. Use code VLAD100 to save when you register. I hope to see you there. Thank you, everyone!
