At last week’s Microsoft Ignite conference, there were some big announcements made for new features coming across Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, AI and more. In this post I’ll highlight some of the announcements across Power Platform and Microsoft Teams that were personal favourites of mine. To see the full list of announcements, you can check out the Ignite 2022 Book of News.
1. Power Pages generally available
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced Power Pages. With this tool, you can create your own no/low code websites and surface your data to an external audience. It’s the rebrand/ improved Power Apps Portals functionality. Power Pages is now generally available, and there’s a suite of new templates to choose from to help you get started.
You can try our Power Pages at https://make.powerpages.microsoft.com/
2. Power Automate: Automate using natural language and AI
This feature, “You describe it, AI builds it“, aims to make flow building even easier, by allowing you to simply type a description of a flow you want to build, and the flow will be automatically generated for you.
You can take a read more about it in my post here.
3. Power Automate: Format your data with examples
If you want to change how data is returned in your flow, typically you would need to write an expression- which can be complex and time consuming. With format your data with examples, you don’t need to be an expert on expressions. Now, as you provide examples of how you want the data returned, Power Automate will generate the expression for you.
4. Power Virtual Agents: Unified Canvas
Earlier this year, Microsoft revealed the new Power Virtual Agents experience: the unified canvas which brings together the pro-code Bot Framework Composer experience with the no-code PVA experience. This new experience will be available to use in preview starting November 10th 2022.
Read more about what’s coming here: What’s new: The evolution of Power Virtual Agents | Microsoft Power Virtual Agents
5. Power App Cards
Cards are embeddable, no/low code mini-apps you can create in Power Apps. The Cards you create can be connected to your Dataverse data, and can be shared with your colleagues to use/interact with via Microsoft Teams.
6. Presenting with Cameo in Microsoft Teams meetings
As someone who presents regularly, Cameo is a feature I’m excited to try. It allows you to insert your camera feed into a PowerPoint presentation, which in turn determines where your camera will appear while presenting the slides in a Microsoft Teams Meeting. You can make your camera different shapes, sizes, and change up where it appears on each of your slides.
Unfortunately it is not available for everyone yet (including myself), it is currently being rolled out to users.
7. Mesh avatars in Microsoft Teams
We first heard about Mesh avatars back in 2021, but now it seems we are finally closer to seeing this as a reality for Teams meetings. You can customise an animated version of yourself, and attend a Teams Meeting as your avatar rather than having your camera on or just off. While many of us would still prefer to see real faces instead of avatars, it’s better that the alternative of being in a meeting with no visual cues if everyone’s camera is turned off.
I’m keen to check out the avatar customisation options (I’m liking the cowboy hat used in the promo pictures!). Microsoft have stated that they have tried to make the options as inclusive as possible.
Rishona Elijah 