The release of new features and feature improvements continues to speed up, and yet we still have a major bundle of updates for the Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps each Spring and Fall. 

In North America, this means that July is a giant month. July is about that the time that many North American businesses can catch their breath and consider all that is new. The release update train starts in the spring and works its way around the world with the ending station in North America. The train station dates can be found here. 

Big shifts include Power BI and Data leaning heavily into their marriage with the incredible Microsoft Fabric landscape. Microsoft Fabric is a short name that encompasses a HUGE amount of technology options. Similarly to the Power Platform it is hard to contain all of what it can do in six letters (Fabric), but the name also is appropriate given that stitching together all of the different data needs is the accomplishment. This includes transformation, integration, analysis, access, and so much more. 

We also can't talk about this release without mentioning Copilot and Agents and not only Agents that you can use and that you can build, but also agents for the Power App makers. The plan designer supports the maker in creating and building using business language. Diving into this so expect to see more posts on this topic. Most of the Microsoft MVPs for Business Applications are deep in the weeds with Agents right now so if you follow any of their blogs or posts on LinkedIn, I am sure you are overwhelmed with the art of the possible. (or just overwhelmed) The space is moving quickly with weekly changes and awesome releases.

Power Pages has also had Agent injection "Recent updates include AI-powered features like Web Agents for multi-platform engagement (email, Teams, WhatsApp), AI-assisted form filling for improved productivity, dynamic list visualizations for better insights" _{retrieved from Microsoft Power Platform 2025 release wave 1 plan overview | Microsoft Learn}   They said it so well. Power Pages puts the sexy in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE apps while also providing external authenticated access. They are also data driven which is an interesting twist and has always been a variable for deployments. Microsoft has also added additional deployment support for Power Pages.

Power Automate has taken business process automation to the next level in this release. Transforming the more complex business processes through new human "in loop experiences" and more management through the new automation center.  You would think that AI would "replace" Power Automate, but instead Copilot and Agents become a marriage with Power Automate. 

Not much needs to be said about Copilot Studio it has its own messaging and everyone is talking about it - Copilot Studio is flying faster than a multi-million-dollar military jet. Chatbots, Agents, autonomous agents.

The Microsoft built, Model Driven Power Apps, falling under the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement umbrella have also all been updated. Check out the details on the release pages here 

It was a beautiful Saturday on May 31st in Redmond, Washington when over 600 people descended on the Microsoft Reactor Building to hear great speakers talking about Microsoft Fabric.

The speakers and attendees were great. The speakers made time for questions and the questions were asked and answered with heartfelt passion and conviction. The organizers were also treated to some extra hustle requirements when the total number of attends was more than twice than was expected a week before kickoff.

As a person who doesn't always spend most of their time in the world of "Data" I learned a lot more about one of the most exciting platforms that is not discussed enough. Everyone can rave about AI, but data is the blood that drives the beating hearts and data is often found everywhere.

This is why it was with great to learn about the expansion of data mirroring and the reach for Microsoft OneLake. Sources that many clients already own such as Microsoft Dataverse, Snowflake, Azure SQL and SQL Server on-premises (accessed using the Azure Data Gateway).

Other key technology advances were also shared.

Security continues to be a focus and enhanced security features have been added including the ability for more rich administration. This includes defining access permissions once and having them consistently applied in numerous places. 

There was also a significant amount of time spent on near Real-Time processing and productivity of queries. It was great to hear people taking performance seriously. In the past performance often becomes the forgotten stepchild that only gets considered when there is a problem or gets overlooked because of the advancement in hardware, but bottlenecks are not just hardware! 

Microsoft Fabric also includes Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and when I first started learning about and watching the use of Azure Synapse Analytics, I watched the deep, deep technical gurus climb the steep learning curve, so it was nice to hear that this learning curve is also being addressed. As some would say, the path to simplicity must first deep dive into the complexity. "Simple" is by far not the correct term, but as technology matures, grace and usefulness does get impacted by complexity, so leaning towards use and usability continues to be seen from the Microsoft development teams.

As an application focused resource, I continue to watch the new features that are related to business rules and as such the announcement that Microsoft Fabric now supports user data functions was an interesting one. To get "User Data Functions" summarized I asked for a little help (thank you ChatGPT) and here is what I found out "User Data Functions are reusable, parameterized functions that you define using T-SQL or Spark (PySpark/Scala) and then call from various components in Fabric. They encapsulate business rules, data transformations, or logic that you want to apply consistently across your data environment." so these have some very interesting potential.

and down the rabbit hole when I asked how UDFs related to or could be used with the Power Platform

"User Data Functions (UDFs) are a Microsoft Fabric feature and not native to the Power Platform, you can bridge them into Power Platform solutions—particularly when working with Power BI, Power Apps, or Power Automate that consume or manipulate data from Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, or Synapse Lakehouse."

One of the coolest benefits for companies working with the Microsoft Stack is that it is always pushing the bleeding edge and always offering mind bending options and notice that I have not even mentioned Microsoft Fabric and AI Foundry! 

"Fabric's data agents can now integrate with Azure AI Foundry via the Azure AI Agent Service"

Although a direct API would be preferred, you also have the following power 

Microsoft Outlook

• An e-mail is received
• The e-mail has an attachment of an Excel Spreadsheet
• The spreadsheet is received every week and contains key data that validates information
• An Outlook rule moves this e-mail to a folder 

Welcome Microsoft Power Automate (flow)

• Pick-up the e-mail
• Save the Attachment
• Process the Attachment data and injected the data into Dataverse (Model Driven Power App)

Microsoft Power App

• Dashboards
• Comparisons
• Calculations
• Reporting errors 

There are many choices when it comes to business processes and eliminating manual steps. 

One of the reasons I persist with the Microsoft Technology stack is that having a huge box of legos to build business applications with is just hard to beat. 

Microsoft tends to change names, debate branding and overall try to communicate what a consultant can bring to the table, but in most of my projects now we tap into numerous different offerings.

Take for instance my last project. In my last project we delivered an integrated model that included 

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Model Driven Power App + Microsoft Canvas App)
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (Supply Chain Management focused)
• Power Automate (Flow) (Approvals and Standard)
• Power Portal (now called Power Pages)
• Microsoft Dual Write (connecting DYN365FO + DYN365CE)
• Microsoft Azure Synapse
• Microsoft Azure Function Apps
• Microsoft Azure Logic Apps
• Microsoft Azure Service Bus 
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
• and Microsoft Office 365 

We also coordinated the team and the application lifecycle management using Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Azure CLI, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft RSAT (Regression Suite Automation Tool) and Microsoft Teams. 

Now you would think that you would need a HUGE team to deliver the above, but we actually delivered using a very reasonably sized team with a mix of resources. 

One of the beauties of the Microsoft stack of applications and offerings is that there is so much that you can do! The ability to use a platform that grows organically (SaaS) and through phased projects aligned to key business needs, keeps companies current with the latest and greatest technology offerings. 

The world moves so fast. It is great to have structures in place that allow teams to move at the same speed. 

I am working with some incredible technologies, and I am working with the Power Platform and so many cool things that can be done with this incredible engine of growth. 

Consider this: You have an incredible repository of many different data sources. You have an entire team of people who work on "DATA" (and AI and all the cool new in the data space), but you also use one or many of the Power Platform, Model Driven, Dynamics PowerApps (Sales, Field Service, Customer Service, Connected Field Service, Marketing, Talent, Custom and so many more)

Did you know that you can work with a Power BI team to create incredible reports off of your data "repositories" (pulling data from many different places) AND you can then embed these Power BI reports in a Power Platform, Power Portal. Why use a Power Portal over a custom web page or some other option? well there is that little gem of application and/or data access security. Yes, the templates are also incredibly nice, but where Microsoft shines is in the layers of awesome. 

One of the reasons that I continue to focus and grow within the Power Platform is the huge flexibility and pivoting of new technologies to meet the demanding business needs. These needs are met leveraging the same platform and the platform continues to grow and be supported. 

Become Microsoft Certified

As we role into the sometimes slower holiday days I thought a share of the Microsoft Certification Poster might be helpful for those interested in the following: 

One of my favorite ways to learn is to share knowledge. I find that all of the other perspectives I get from this exercise really help me shift and refine what I have learned. 

In the last two years I have been under the fire house learning. It is both exciting, amazing and daunting when we consider how much more there is always to learn. It is also a twist for those of us who have years of experience. The experience makes a huge difference, but it also always has to be continually refined.

One of the first major learning tips is to get your head around the vocabulary quickly. It has served me well to think about the following.

The Power Platform, this is really an evolution to getting closer and closer to using the entire Microsoft Stack of awesome. The long loved deep integration to Office is now 100 times better AND there is also the deep integration to Azure and many of the new Azure functions. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 "Apps" are all Model Driven Power Apps on the Power Platform. 

Power Automate (Flow) The ability to automate, respond and receive responses and an alignment/replacement or stepping stone to both work flows and logic apps and you can learn more here.

Power BI Much loved and amazing reporting and business intelligence and analytics and you can learn more here

Power Virtual Bots, Not only bots, but Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and you can learn more here and here.

The Microsoft DOCS team has been incredibly busy over the last numerous months. You will find that many (if not all) documentation found at Docs.Microsoft.com has been updated and has a 2020 associated date. If you are not sure where to get started take a look at this incredibly helpful LINKS list. 

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-powerapps-learning-resources/