microsoft-power-platform-april2020-release-1

What’s Coming to Microsoft’s Power Platform this April

February 11, 2020

Microsoft has unveiled its latest product release plans for Power Platform on January 27, and as expected it includes some exciting updates and enhancements. We’ve reviewed the latest release notes, to help you understand what’s coming and how your business can benefit.  

As a part of this release, Microsoft has highlighted capabilities that enables your business with automated business processimproved user experience, better customer engagement and collaboration

We have split the updates in a series of blog posts, meanwhile, we have highlighted 6 best picks for the Power Platform Wave 1 Release:  

1. Take Your Customer Engagement to the Next Level with “Power Virtual Agents”

Your customer service department can have rich conversations with customers with Microsoft’s powerful conversational AI capabilities. You can now connect your virtual agent to phone line or integrate it with call centers through voice-based interactions. For instance, when calling a phone number, your virtual agent can now pass along what it has learned from the conversation, so that, your human agent will not have to repeat the questions previously asked. It’s like Google’s new “Duplex” technology but serves YOUR business! 

You can improve consumer interactions as now your virtual agents can handle complex scenarios by adding images and videos in the conversation rather than long texts, hence, keeping the message concise.  Additionally, your Power Virtual Agents will also be able to support languages other than English: FrenchGermanSpanishItalianPortuguese, and Chinese.  

Furthermore, to make customer engagement better, your customer service agents can also create topics from customer service insights where they can automate topics as shown below:  

Customer Service Insights Power Platform Wave 1 Release
Automate topics from the topics page (Source: Microsoft)

2. Get Visual Personalisation for Your End Users on Power BI Desktop

Currently it’s difficult to make a visual in PowerBI that will satisfy everyone’s needs. But, with visual personalisation, you can share reports with a broad audience and give better insights to your department members. Whether it be changing the visual type, or, swapping what’s on the axis, with this feature, your team members will be able to tweak visuals even if they do not have editing access.  With this new functionality your audience can now adjust the report as per their need, save it as a bookmark and come back to it later! 

Visual Personalisation on Power Platform Wave 1 Release
Visual Personalisation for end users in Power BI Desktop (Source: Microsoft)

3. Create Apps Directly from Microsoft Teams using SharePoint Data 

Is your business using Microsoft Teams? If yes, then now you can create apps within one of your channels in Microsoft teams. With this new feature, your team members will always have the information they need and can collaborate better. Moreover, when you create a new app, the first few screens of the app will generate automatically with data that already exists in your SharePoint hence increasing productivity. 

 Create Apps Directly from Microsoft Teams  on Power Platform Wave 1 Release
Create the Teams app from data  (Source: Microsoft)

4. Better User Experience with Updated Office Ribbon & Dark Mode in PowerBI

Take advantage of the new “office ribbon” and updated file menu in Power BI whereby, you can pin more reports and format visuals as per your need. You might be familiar with this modern ribbon from Microsoft Office. 

Here you will have access to all the existing features that you know and love, and over time, more features will be added. This will be the new default experience starting in March 2020

New Office Ribbon in Microsoft's Power Platform Wave 1 Release
New Office Ribbon in Power BI (Source: Microsoft)

You can also switch the app interface to Dark Mode in Power BI Mobile which will comfort eye fatiguesave battery life and might also help you focus better and improve productivity.  

5. Enjoy More Control and Visibility Over Your Sensitive Data  

Get more control over your sensitive data with Microsoft’s new data protection capability. You can monitor user activity and enjoy information protectionthreat protection, and cloud app security. For instance, you can apply a ‘Confidential label’ to a sensitive report and when you have to export the data to an Excel file, Power BI will apply the confidential label to the file. This label can encrypt the content and apply a Confidential watermark thus, providing security to your sensitive data.  

6. No need to switch applications anymore– Single Mobile Application

Another great feature is that you will be able to access all your favorite apps in a single mobile application –Power Apps Mobile- without the need to switch! Currently, you cannot access different apps (canvas or model-driven) using a single application. But, with this functionality, your app makers can now deliver targeted experience to your customers on a single mobile app, hence enhancing usability.

  

 Single Mobile Application in Power Platform Wave 1 Release
Single Mobile Application (Source: Microsoft)

Release Dates 

Your admins will have a two-month testing period to try and validate the features of Microsoft Dynamics Power Platform Wave 1 Release rolling out from April 2020 until September 2020

What’s Next

Many exciting features were announced in the Microsoft Power Platform Wave 1 Release and we will write more on other application areas in the coming days.  

Meanwhile, if you would like to find out how you can benefit from the latest updates within your organisation, Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation on 01296 328 689. Or email us at info@dogmagroup.co.uk. 

Author: Barsha Shrestha (Senior Marketing Executive at Seelogic Ltd.