Microsoft Copilot Studio

Explore new opportunities for applying AI to your unique business needs.

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An agent is an AI assistant designed to automate and execute business processes, working with you or for you. They can build capacity for every individual, team, and organization—from sales to marketing to customer service, and more—enabling you to scale impact like never before.

Agents come in all shapes and sizes. They help you retrieve information from grounding data and reason over it to summarize or answer questions. More capable agents take actions when asked, replacing repetitive tasks, and the most advanced agents will be autonomous, operating independently to create plans, orchestrate other agents, and learn to know when to escalate to an employee.

With Copilot Studio, you can create and publish agents to all kinds of channels, including Microsoft Teams, your website, or your customer engagement hubs, and we’ve seen great customer momentum with more than 50,000 organizations having used Copilot Studio to date. 

We’re announcing two new capabilities for Copilot Studio:

• First, agents built in Copilot Studio can now be published directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot, surfacing right in the user’s flow of work.
• Second, we’re unveiling a new Copilot Studio experience that empowers users of any skill level to create agents right from within Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat and SharePoint.

These new features will be rolling out in general availability to all Microsoft 365 Copilot customers over the coming weeks. 

Publish Copilot agents to Microsoft 365 Copilot

Copilot agents enable you to enhance Copilot’s capabilities by connecting to your organization’s knowledge and data sources. When Copilot can draw from valuable data in SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or your line of business systems, it becomes significantly smarter about your business and its processes. You can also expand Copilot’s capabilities by equipping it with new skills, such as sending emails, updating records, or creating support tickets. And Copilot agents are capable of integrating with your existing line of business systems, enabling them to take action wherever it’s needed.

Users can find agents in a new Copilot agent store in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat, Teams, and the Microsoft 365 app, and they can use these agents by mentioning them (@mention) or by interacting directly with them. IT admins can curate the catalog of agents available in the store from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Empower users of any skill level to create agents

When it comes to agent creation, we’re excited to introduce a new, lightweight Copilot Studio experience that makes it simple for users of any skill level to build an agent directly within Business Chat and SharePoint. This new experience will roll out in general availability to all customers through October.

With it, you can tell Copilot Studio what you want your agent to do using natural language, and easily choose which knowledge sources you’d like to integrate from across your organization’s data, whether it’s specific documents or entire databases. When you’re ready, the agent can be used by you, shared with a select group, or deployed to an entire organization. Building an agent in SharePoint is even easier and you can create agents in SharePoint with a few clicks, no coding skills required.

You can continue to customize these or any agents in the full Copilot Studio editor, adding more advanced capabilities including autonomy. As we announced at Build 2024, we believe autonomous agents will fundamentally change business processes. We’re actively working with enterprise customers who are building autonomous agents in Copilot Studio as part of our private preview, and we look forward to sharing more later this calendar year about how users can build and use autonomous agents.

Manage agents with centralized controls

We believe organizations that embrace AI will create and use many agents. Copilot Studio provides a trusted environment that delivers confidence through comprehensive policies, access controls, and agent management, all easily managed within the admin center. This includes the ability to control agent creation, sharing, and use, which allows organizations to meet their security, compliance, and governance goals.

Furthermore, the data used to ground agents remains securely within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary, adhering to your organization’s labeling and policy guidelines. When extending your agents through Copilot Studio, your data remains in the Microsoft Azure tenant boundary with security layers to prevent invalid authentication and authorization and data loss prevention (DLP) policies for additional control. And all of this is built on Microsoft’s Responsible AI and Enterprise Data Protection standards.

Ultimately, in a world where AI is rapidly transforming how we work, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio offer new opportunities for applying AI to your unique business needs. By empowering users to create, tailor, and deploy agents of all types, Microsoft is making advanced AI accessible and valuable to everyone.

• Learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• Learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio governance. 
• Read the Microsoft 365 blog post about Copilot Wave 2.
• Join us at the Power Platform Community Conference to see how Microsoft is transforming the developer experience. 
• Get in touch with a Microsoft representative today.

The post Unveiling agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio to supercharge your business appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Catalog in Power Platform

Share and install reusable assets, such as apps, flows, connectors, and prompts, customized for your organization.

Learn more

The catalog in Power Apps and Power Automate is now generally available to the public. The catalog enables makers to share and install reusable assets, such as apps, flows, connectors, prompts, and more, that are customized for your organization, by your organization. This provides much more useful starting points than simple and generic templates. In addition, because the catalog is built on top of our solutions framework, you can also easily install catalog items from any environment in a tenant, and have catalog assets accessible from authoring experiences, like Canvas Studio and flow designer.

You can publish assets as a template or as a managed item. Templates are pure copies that any makers can utilize as they wish. Managed items are more tightly controlled and can be republished with updates over time so that your organization uses the most recent, authoritative version across environments.

Please note that you will need a managed environment to publish assets in the catalog as part of general availability. However, all assets can be installed from any environment, even ones that are not managed.

Using the catalog in Power Apps and Power Automate

Customers are using the catalog for a variety of scenarios, including:

• Saving templates for reuse across environments.
• Bundling components into a collection for specific departments to utilize.
• Spinning up multiple catalogs and seed with sample data and apps for demo purposes.
• Using the assets of a managed item as is and making no changes.
• Building custom functionality on top of the assets in the managed item without changing the original components.
• Using the assets to assist with building their own solutions. For example, Power Apps component framework components, custom connectors, and so on.
• Partners are also using the catalog to streamline the process of building solutions and curating components for multiple customers at the same time across environments.

The catalog is highly flexible to handle a broad range of use cases, while backed by enterprise level governance and security, which is critical when managing a centralized and shared repository across many makers in a tenant. The catalog comes with comprehensive cross-environment roles and permissions, additional publishing groups to control who can make updates, administration and approval capabilities, installation tracking, and application lifestyle management (ALM). Organizations where makers can share and reuse artifacts in a controlled and secure environment will get the most out of Microsoft Power Platform.

What our customers are saying about the catalog:

“Through Accenture’s participation in the private preview of Microsoft power catalog, we’ve provided feedback to Microsoft to help them shape a ready-to-use, centrally governed repository that can supercharge application and workflow development. In support of Accenture’s strategy to reuse and scale solution components, we will explore power catalog [during public preview] to help streamline and speed application development cycles, and to drive brand consistency across Accenture applications.”

— Uday Adhikari, [Microsoft] Power Platform lead for North America at Accenture

“5/5. The catalog closes the gap in distributing updates between (product) development, Sales, and Operations departments. For demos, we often require certain versions or special releases. With catalogs we enable everyone to set up the tailored demo by themselves while the product group can maintain pre-release builds at the same time.”

— Sebastain Sieber, Most Valuable Professional, proMX.

The catalog feature will be generally available with the following features:

• Enterprise level roles and permissions to restrict who can publish and install catalog items across environments
• Approval of catalog items by admins before they’re officially published for your organization to use
• A suite of Microsoft-provided components out-of-the-box, such as Enterprise templates
• Low-code and easy-to-use wizards to publish and install items
• A My Activity page to track status and see any error codes for published and installed items
• An administrative workspace to manage catalogs, users, and settings
• And several other features, such as environment variable support, connection checks, a gallery page with comprehensive filters to browse catalog items, and more

Learn more about the catalog in Microsoft Power Platform

To learn more about the catalog, you can read an overview, the usage guide, and administration and setup instructions.

Some features planned on the horizon include:

• Integration with Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• Providing the option to choose the solution you’d like to install catalog items into.
• Allowing makers to choose which solutions should be updated with new versions.
• More post-installation options for different components (such as opening up a specific editor).
• Submitting apps and flows directly into catalog with solution creation/selection as part of the wizard.
• Improved error detection and handling.

You can find the catalog feature in your left navigation in both Power Apps and Power Automate. Contact your admin to help set up the catalog and you can get started right away.

The post Enable reusability and maintain best practices with the catalog in Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

In this new era, the true visionaries are those taking advantage of low-code and AI tools to build the solutions that directly affect people’s jobs and lives. The Microsoft Power Platform community keeps showing us the next frontiers of innovation and creativity. These stories from our community below showcase some of the most innovative and inspiring work we’ve seen.

• Minding mining trucks’ massive tires: Donia innovates with low-code at Kal Tire.
• A chatbot for business travel: Daniel builds an AI chatbot for his travel agency.
• From the mailroom to Microsoft MVP: Dian transforms her career with low-code.
• Supporting parents and children with autism: Raghav builds an app with low-code and AI for his son with autism.
• Modeling fashion and new technologies: Yumu goes from the runway to building with low-code.

At the third annual Power Platform Community Conference, we are excited to showcase some of the groundbreaking work emerging from our global community.

Minding mining trucks’ massive tires

Donia Strand is a Senior Business Systems Analyst at Kal Tire in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada. As the company’s Microsoft Power Platform manager, her work spans the experience of building her own solutions as a non-technical maker, to working with professional developers to build solutions.

To assess the viability of entry roads at mine sites around the world, the company’s Mining Tire Group performs “site severity” surveys. These surveys helped understand the mine site conditions and extend the lifespan of the costly mining haul truck tires. Donia explains that previously, “Supervisors used to spend up to an hour and a half entering data into Excel, taking photos, and then building out reports.”

Kal Tire operations managers in Canada brought this business issue to Donia and together they saw the opportunity to use Microsoft Power Apps to build an app that manages the surveys. Now, Kal Tire’s Site Severity App, developed in conjunction with MNP Digital, runs on mobile devices and automates the mining site data collection process. The app safely caches data while offline—a common necessity in remote mining sites. Microsoft Power Automate then generates polished PDF reports complete with visual graphs, ready to be shared with stakeholders.

“By integrating the app’s data into Power BI, the Mining Tire Group gained a comprehensive view of mine conditions across all regions,” Donia says. “This leads to better decision-making and reduces wear and tear on mining truck tires.” It also saved substantial time and resources, allowing supervisors to concentrate on their most critical tasks.

Looking forward, Donia is particularly excited about using Microsoft Copilot Studio to create new types of custom copilots for Kal Tire. Her advice to others who are just beginning with Microsoft Power Platform is: “Start simple, experiment, and you’ll be amazed at what can be created. The [Microsoft] Power Platform and AI are game changers: Saving time and opening new possibilities.”

A chatbot for business travel

Daniel Schaurich de Oliveira is the founder and owner of A1, a business travel agency based in Florianopolis, Brazil. For nearly 30 years, Daniel has focused on providing international and domestic travel services for corporate clients.

The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic presented an unexpected opportunity for Daniel to explore new ways to improve his company. With travel restrictions severely impacting the industry, Daniel used the downtime to explore how Microsoft Power Platform and AI could transform his daily operations. He started by automating alerts and generating reports, but soon embarked on more ambitious projects to reimagine daily business.

“I have no IT background and never studied coding,” he says. “But I used Copilot Studio to develop a chatbot to assist my team with various company and industry inquiries.” Daniel was concerned that employees would be slow to adopt a new AI-powered chatbot, so he named it “Fifi” (whose name is akin to “a gossiper” in Brazilian Portuguese) and gave it a personality to make her a humorous, yet knowledgeable, addition to A1.  

Fifi has streamlined internal operations, reducing the time Daniel and his team spend on routine inquiries and allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks. “Nowadays, Fifi is not just a chatbot or digital tool. She is a teammate,” Daniel says. “She’s our essential colleague. And whenever Fifi’s offline, we joke that ‘Fifi’s out sick today’.”

Daniel concludes, “The [Microsoft] Power Platform is amazing. It allows me to build my ideas and improve my business in ways that I never imagined were possible.”

From the mailroom to Microsoft MVP

As a young woman moving from the Netherlands to the US, Dian Taylor worked in a clothing store and the mailroom of a large American office supplies retailer. Later, she transferred to human resources at a bank. Eventually, she learned about Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

Now, working in presales at RSM US LLP in Boca Raton, Florida, Dian is tasked with creating a large volume of engaging and effective demonstrations. Even without a formal technical background, Dian uses Microsoft Power Platform to build copilots and apps that can be seamlessly integrated into her demo presentations.

“I use Copilot Studio a lot; not just to create custom chatbots to utilize on websites and Power Pages but also to connect to Dynamics 365 Customer Service,” she says. “It’s great for demos and helps take the pressure off our live agents.”

Dian also credits Microsoft Power Platform with making her job more fulfilling. “The advice that I would give somebody starting out in tech is to keep going and don’t feel overwhelmed,” she explains. “It’s okay not to know everything all the time. Take a step back, learn to use the right tools, and you’ll get there.”

Dian should know as she is now a four-time Microsoft Business Applications most valuable professional (MVP).

Supporting parents and children with autism

Raghav Mishra is a Product Architect at the Sprint365 consultancy in Copenhagen, Denmark. He discovered Microsoft Power Platform’s potential while developing new business solutions for a hackathon and realized that the same tools could be applied to address personal challenges at home. He was inspired by his wife who dedicated several hours each week creating visual instruction sheets for their son with autism. Raghav explains, “She made one-page instruction sheets with hand-drawn images and written directions to guide our son through daily activities like brushing his teeth or removing his shoes.”

Raghav developed the Make Life Easy app using Microsoft Power Platform to automate the creation of these daily instructions. Raghav leveraged Power Apps, AI services, and the DALL-E API to generate both text and images, which are then saved in Microsoft Dataverse and compiled into a one-page, colorful PDF. This document serves as an engaging visual guide for their son.

“I’d never worked with canvas apps,” he said. “The platform’s predefined structure allowed me, as a citizen developer, to build the app from scratch within just five days.”

The app streamlined their family’s routines, cutting down the time spent on creating instructions and making the process clearer and more enjoyable for their son. What once took hours now only requires a few minutes, allowing the family to spend more quality time together. “This app has improved our daily lives,” Raghav says. “I really hope it can also help other families with similar needs.”

Modeling fashion and new technologies

Yumu Hatakeyama, a Microsoft Power Platform Evangelist at Akkodis in Tokyo, Japan, began his career as a fashion model. However, over time, it became increasingly difficult to make a living in the modeling industry. Yumu went back to school to study hardware engineering.

When COVID-19 struck, he was working in automotive parts manufacturing, creating circuit boards. As his company started to push for digital transformation, Yumu took the initiative to learn about Microsoft Power Platform and play a pivotal role in the transition. 

He had never created an app before. Drawing on his experience in the fast-paced fashion industry, he understood the importance of managing schedules. He learned how to use Power Apps and quickly put it to use by creating an attendance management app for remote workers during the pandemic. It visualized attendance data in an accessible dashboard format.

The app had an immediate impact, streamlining attendance across their team of 50 employees. Building on this success, he began incorporating Microsoft AI Builder into his work. Instead of manually inputting data from PDF invoices and receipts, the team trained custom AI models to automate this process, significantly reducing errors and saving time.

Now, he works full-time as a Microsoft Power Platform Evangelist. Yumu says, “Originally, I was in the business of promoting and selling fashion. I transitioned from evangelizing fashion to evangelizing technology. It seems like quite a shift, but the goal remains the same: to deliver better products to everyone.”

When speaking to new Microsoft Power Platform users, Yumu jokes, “If a former fashion model can achieve digital transformation with the Power Platform, you can definitely do it too.” His dream is to spread the use of Microsoft Power Platform across Japan, from large corporations to small and medium-sized businesses, helping everyone to imagine and build their own solutions.

The Future of Microsoft Power Platform is innovation and empowerment

It’s clear that the future of innovation is in the hands of those who do the work and turn their ideas into reality. The incredible advances created by the global Microsoft Power Platform community exemplify the power of low-code and AI tools to transform businesses and careers.

We can’t wait to see many of you at the Power Platform Community Conference in Las Vegas and to witness what we’ll achieve together in the coming years. With the recent advances in Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Power Platform development will only get easier and more powerful.

Join the Power Platform Community

Connect with peers and experts

Learn more

The post How the Microsoft Power Platform community is using low-code and AI to transform work and lives appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

To support investment decisions, Microsoft commissioned a 2024 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study that quantified Power Platform’s impact. The study highlights a 224% ROI, USD82 million in net-present value (NPV), and a payback period of under six months. These benefits stem from reduced development timelines and IT costs, time savings for users, and faster revenue growth from quicker solution deployment. 

The even better news: these figures don’t account yet for the transformational capabilities of generative AI. Currently, Microsoft is seeing organizations create workflow automations two times faster and developers successfully build low-code applications at a 60% higher success rate. 

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Power Platform

Explore the cost savings, efficiency gains, and revenue growth that organizations experienced using Microsoft Power Platform.

Read the report

Over time, we expect time savings for users and developers, IT costs savings, and topline revenue growth to dramatically increase as generative AI matures.  

For now, we encourage you to learn how customers are maximizing their current low-code investments below—and learn how you can do the same. 

Accelerate development timelines by 35% with low-code 

Microsoft Power Platform has enabled organizations to significantly reduce development and IT costs by significantly streamlining the creation of solutions and automations.  

By combining traditional development environments with Microsoft Power Platform’s low-code tools, companies have accelerated their development processes by 35%, allowing them to bring new solutions to market faster and with fewer resources.  

This efficiency gain, combined with the ability to replace costly legacy tech stacks, has resulted in substantial savings. For example, the Forrester study found that the composite organization was able to reduce their tech stack expenses by up to 80% within three years and cut support staff by up to nine full-time employees.

Time isn’t the only thing enterprises are saving by investing in low code tools for developers. Companies like G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, who was not interviewed for the Forrester study, used Microsoft Power Platform to achieve over USD1.5 million in savings by streamlining development and reducing costs. Their IT team quickly built apps like a Store Audit app that saved USD100,000 in external development costs and a Parking Lot app developed in one day, saving drivers time and reducing delivery costs.

The Forrester study found that the composite organization achieved a risk-adjusted total of USD43.6 million in direct development and IT cost savings over three years, demonstrating Microsoft Power Platform’s powerful impact on operational efficiency and cost reduction. 

Complete tasks 25% faster with Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform has proven to be a transformative tool for organizations, enabling significant time savings and increased productivity across various departments. By building solutions with low-code products such as Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft Power Pages, organizations have streamlined processes that took weeks, now completing them in hours or minutes.

For instance, one energy customer Forrester spoke to reported savings of USD1 million, with a third of that coming directly from employee time savings. In another case, a financial services firm reduced an up-to-six-week manual HR process to just one hour, freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives.  

Additionally, while they were not interviewed for this particular TEI study, EY separately reported that they used Microsoft Power Platform to create PowerMatch, an app that increased automatic payment clearing rates in their SAP system from 30% to 80% and improved matched payments to 95%. PowerMatch is set to save EY 230,000 hours annually, illustrating the time saving capabilities of low-code solutions. 

On average, organizations have seen a 25% reduction for users in the time required to complete key processes improved using Microsoft Power Platform, translating into a risk-adjusted total of USD44.4 million in time savings over three years. This efficiency not only drives operational improvements, but also empowers teams to focus on innovation and value creation. 

Revenue increased by 7% by empowering employees 

Microsoft Power Platform has proven to be a catalyst for topline revenue growth by notably improving the time to market for new solutions, enabling organizations to better meet customer needs and capitalize on market opportunities.  

By rapidly building and iterating on prototypes, businesses have swiftly adapted to client feedback, enhancing user experience and maintaining competitive market share. For example, companies using Microsoft Power Platform have seen up to 7% of their revenue growth directly attributable to these accelerated processes, resulting in a risk-adjusted total of USD15.4 million in additional revenue over three years.  

This capacity to quickly deliver tailored solutions not only strengthens customer loyalty but also drives net new business, contributing to substantial revenue increases across impacted areas.  

For example, one head of new product at a manufacturing organization said, “By being able to deliver the right product to the customer, we’re getting additional orders from repeat customers. We avoid churn because customers are not going to competitors. We’re getting net new customers. For certain parts of our organization, our revenue increased by 18% to 20%, split between net new customers and repeat customers.”

Customers such as Lerøy Seafood Group, who was not interviewed for this TEI study, separately shared they used Microsoft Power Platform to streamline operations and drive millions in savings annually—contributing to topline revenue. Key innovations that drove savings and revenue increases included apps that optimized production schedules and improved fish weight estimation accuracy, to the tune of USD8 million annually. 

Get a custom business value assessment today

And the implementation of Microsoft Power Platform goes beyond quantifiable benefits, offering organizations a robust foundation for future growth, improved governance, and enhanced employee satisfaction.  

Organizations are reporting reduced risks of shadow IT by empowering employees to solve problems with low-code tools and governance via embedded tools such as Managed Environments. This not only strengthens compliance and security, but also leads to a more engaged and satisfied workforce. 

As businesses continue to explore new opportunities, the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Power Platform position it as a key enabler of digital transformation, driving long-term success and sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive market. 

We invite you to read the Forrester Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Power Platform report and sign up for a custom business value assessment with your Microsoft Power Platform specialist. 

The post Reduce development times and increase ROI with Microsoft Power Platform  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your journey, this event is designed to inspire, educate, and connect developers, IT professionals, business users, and like-minded tech enthusiasts who share enthusiasm for digital transformation. Microsoft is the proud lead sponsor of the third annual Power Platform Community Conference: a three-day, in-person, action-packed community event taking place at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, from September 18 through September 20, 2024. At PPCC, get ready to:

• Take advantage of the latest cutting-edge advancements in technology with generative AI and Microsoft Copilot.
• Gain skills and learn best practices to help your team stay ahead of the newest developments.
• Connect with like-minded individuals who share your interest.
• Have direct access to experts who can answer your questions for your business scenarios.

The event kicks off with pre-conference workshops on September 16 and September 17, followed by the main event from September 18 through September 20. Additionally, there will be a day of post-conference workshops on September 21.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to be part of the Microsoft Power Platform revolution. Register now and join us for an event that will inspire, educate, and empower you to achieve more.

Thriving together: The Microsoft Power Platform community experience

Prepare to immerse yourself in the dynamic world of low-code/no-code. This group of problem-solvers, developers, and analysts is united by a common goal: to unlock the full potential of Microsoft Power Platform. By exchanging ideas, best practices, and building on each other’s work, this vibrant community breaks down barriers and elevates the platform to new heights. The Microsoft Power Platform community paves the way for a future of seamless integration, automation, and data-driven decision-making, enriching the lives of businesses and individuals alike.

This year, PPCC will continue to feature the latest and greatest in generative AI and Copilot with several sessions showcasing how these cutting-edge technologies are transforming Microsoft Power Platform and the business landscape. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from Microsoft’s senior thought leaders, product experts, and engineers who are driving these innovations.

Building on the success of previous events such as the European Power Platform Conference, DynamicsCon, TechCon365, and Global Power Platform Bootcamp, this year’s conference may be our best yet.

Networking is a key component of the PPCC experience. The conference provides numerous opportunities for attendees to connect with their peers, share ideas, and learn from each other. Whether it’s during sessions, workshops, or social events, there are plenty of chances to build relationships and expand your professional network.

In addition to the educational and networking opportunities, the conference also offers a chance to hear real-world customer stories and shared insights from industry leaders. These stories provide valuable perspectives on how Microsoft Power Platform is being used to drive digital transformation and achieve business success.

Be sure to follow the Microsoft Power Platform Community LinkedIn for more announcements, exciting executive speaker lineup updates, and continued Microsoft Power Platform Product Weeks coverage.

What’s new and next for Microsoft Business Apps

This year, we’re thrilled to present an exceptional lineup of keynote speakers who are leading the industry. Dive into 150 interactive sessions covering a diverse range of topics, many of which are led by Microsoft’s senior thought leaders and product experts.

On day one of the conference, you’ll gain valuable insights from Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business and Industry Copilot, as he discusses how generative AI and Copilot are transforming software engineering. Jeff Teper, President of Microsoft Collaborative Apps and Platforms, will explore the future of collaboration and productivity. Kim Manis, Vice President of Product for Microsoft Fabric and Power BI, will highlight the latest advancements in data analytics and visualization.

Participate in 20 hands-on technical workshops designed to provide practical knowledge that’s immediately applicable to your work. These workshops cater to all skill levels, from beginner to advanced.

Learn about the newest features and capabilities of Microsoft Power Automate from Sangya Singh, Vice President, Power Platform Intelligent Automations. Discover how Microsoft Dataverse drives data-driven decision-making with insights from Nirav Shah, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dataverse. Ryan Cunningham, Vice President, Power Platform Intelligent Applications, will showcase the transformative potential of Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Pages. Kim Manis will provide comprehensive coverage of Microsoft Power BI. Ilya Grebnov, Vice President and Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Business and Industry Copilot, will discuss the architectural innovations behind Microsoft Power Platform, and Omar Aftab, Vice President, Conversational AI, will introduce the latest in Microsoft Copilot Studio. These sessions are crafted to equip you with the knowledge and skills to stay ahead of the curve, whether you’re looking to deepen your expertise or explore new areas.

PPCC 2024 will also feature an array of breakout sessions and other engaging activities hosted by Microsoft product teams, the Microsoft Power Customer Advisory Team (CAT), Power BI CAT, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), super users, and experts from around the globe.

Join the fun at the Power Platform Community Conference

The Power Platform Community Conference is not just an event; it’s an experience that brings together a diverse group of individuals who are passionate about digital transformation. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the industry, network with like-minded individuals, and gain practical knowledge that can be applied to their work.

This conference is a must-attend event for anyone who is passionate about digital transformation and wants to stay ahead of the curve. With a packed agenda, a stellar lineup of speakers, and a vibrant community of attendees, this year’s conference promises to be an unforgettable experience. So, don’t miss out—register now and join us in Las Vegas for the 2024 Power Platform Community Conference.

Register for the event and make your MGM Grand Hotel reservation today.

Power Platform conference

Join like-minded tech peers who share enthusiasm for digital transformation.

Register for the event

The post Showcasing AI innovation at the third annual Power Platform Community Conference appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, because technology has a talent problem. There’s just not enough high-tech talent in the pipeline to help organizations develop and maintain the complex software solutions they need to stay competitive.¹

Microsoft Power Platform

Embrace the benefits of AI and low-code with Microsoft Power Platform.

Learn how

And the work is indeed complex. Developers need to solve challenges around user interface design, storage requirements, security, compliance, and scalability in their work, and finding the right talent to meet challenges is difficult.

The problem is compounded with the amount of work that needs to get done. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) have to manage growing app backlogs and pushed-back schedules for the development of the apps they know they need, and a general lack of resources for talent and software makes the outlook for new custom apps unclear. 

With more development work to be done than there are developers to do it, many CIOs and CTOs are looking to AI and low-code solutions to transform their application development approach and strategy.

AI and low-code are helping in three ways:

1. Increasing developer productivity
2. Automating repetitive tasks
3. Boosting the skills and abilities of non-developers who can now make meaningful contributions to development

Let’s look at those benefits in detail. 

Increasing developer productivity while remaining compliant and secure

The first thing that low-code can do for a team of developers is enable it to work more quickly with no tradeoff in attention to compliance and security.

As described in a recent white paper on generative AI disruption in software from McKinsey, putting AI and low-code into the hands of developers can improve productivity by as much as 45%, something which can lower code development costs considerably.

At Microsoft, we’ve observed the effectiveness ourselves. In a review of the first 126,000 organizations using Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps, developers say using Copilot makes them faster (80%) and more satisfied with their work (65%). What’s more, the developers using Copilot have a 60% higher success rate than the developers who don’t.

But it’s not all about speed. Low-code solutions don’t just accelerate development—they ensure support of standards for security and compliance, so all the newfound speed doesn’t compromise safety. And low-code makes developers into better developers, too. It amplifies existing talent and experience to help developers identify roadblocks, find solutions, and dream up new innovations.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform website to learn more.

Automating repetitive coding tasks   

AI-powered development tools excel at automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks that drain the fun out of development work. A routine chore like debugging code can make a developer do the same find-and-fix tasks repeatedly. And development work is filled with necessary but repetitive tasks.

With AI and low-code, writing boilerplate code, debugging, conducting routine software maintenance, performing code reviews, and managing deployments can be done by an AI assistant, allowing the developer to work on the interesting, creative challenges that drive business impact.

We’ve seen this ourselves at Microsoft. In a recent survey—quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness—96% of respondents say AI increases their speed with repetitive tasks. They also say using AI makes them happier. Between 60% and75% of surveyed users said using the tool makes them feel less frustrated when coding and free to focus on more satisfying work.

Boosting the skills and abilities of non-developers

With AI and low-code, organizations can bring non-developers into the development process so they can help create apps and innovate alongside their developer colleagues. Democratizing development enhances an organization’s agility and flexibility.

Business users won’t need extensive coding expertise because AI and low-code let them contribute through natural language inputs, like “create a sales report dashboard” or “automate customer follow-up emails”. Additionally, business users can learn to build their applications faster than ever with the ability to query in-product assistants that can help them build in real time.

By equipping citizen developers with intuitive, low-code tools, they can autonomously create applications that address immediate business needs, such as a mobile app for onsite invoice submissions. This not only reduces the burden of manual tasks but also ensures more accurate data collection and enhances the efficiency of frontline workers. Meanwhile, professional developers can dedicate their expertise to more complex, strategic projects that propel the organization forward. This symbiotic relationship between low-code and traditional development practices fosters an environment where technical agility and innovation thrive, ultimately propelling the organization’s technical velocity to new heights.

When the AI and low-code development tools that an organization uses allow for simplified cross-platform integration as Microsoft Power Platform does, they can break down barriers and ensure business users receive the right oversight and collaborative inputs from colleagues’ developer and IT teams.

Next steps for CIOs and CTOs

If you want to fully embrace the benefits of AI and low-code by incorporating a solution into your tech stack at scale, consider a strategic plan that addresses the following:

• Identify high-impact use cases to begin testing. Determine what type of solutions would benefit your organization most: Do you need web or mobile apps for employees or customers? A website with customizable content management, styling, and data access requirements? Or perhaps custom AI agents that handle specific tasks? Once you’ve identified the best pilot project, implement the solution to deliver quick wins and demonstrate the value of AI and low-code. Document successes and share them to build momentum within your organization.

• Manage risks by ensuring data security and regulatory compliance. It’s important to choose an enterprise solution like Microsoft Power Platform that includes governance, management, and monitoring capabilities. With your solution in place, you can then establish a governance framework to maintain control, such as setting up regular review meetings to ensure compliance and having your IT department or risk management team conduct periodic risk assessments.

• Build a low-code center of excellence. With governance in place and some development wins under your belt, think about upskilling your workforce. Offer tailored programs to upskill both developers and non-developers, promoting continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration, such as hosting workshops and interactive training sessions, where your low-code users and developers can work together. The Microsoft Power Platform Adoption website has workbooks, best practices, and training materials to support organizations with this endeavor.

By following these steps, you can effectively integrate AI and low-code solutions like Microsoft Power Platform, bridging the development gap and driving innovation in your organization.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform website to learn more.

Source:

¹ Forbes, Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness, March 6, 2023

The post Fast track development with AI and low-code appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Microsoft partners are helping organizations achieve greater efficiency by using our growing ecosystem of Microsoft Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio to build these types of solutions. We’re excited to announce that Litera, a global leader in legal technology solutions, enabled its first innovative Copilot connector designed to transform legal workflows. The connector extends Litera’s core workflows beyond their proprietary user interfaces, offering unparalleled accessibility to a firm’s intellectual property. 

Accenture extends its portfolio of Intelligent Supply Chain Platform solutions built on Microsoft technologies by unveiling a groundbreaking copilot extension in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 for its Supply Risk Control Tower solution. 

Copilot Studio makes it easy to extend the capabilities of copilots with actions, connectors, and sources of data. Copilot connectors include data sources within the productivity cloud in Microsoft 365, business data in Microsoft Dataverse, data from Microsoft Dynamics 365, and analytical data in Microsoft Fabric, as well as non-Microsoft enterprise data sources. Through Copilot connectors, you can now ground your copilot responses with multiple enterprise data sources for more relevant and reliable responses from copilots and copilot extensions. 

Litera’s Copilot connector provides unparalleled accessibility to a firm’s intellectual knowledge 

The Litera Search Copilot connector enables legal professionals to execute complex natural language searches for both legal matter experience and precedent content from any Copilot-enabled application, allowing users to get matter and precedent detail without learning how to navigate a complex search screen. Best-fit insights are delivered instantly, eliminating the need for endless clicks to drill down into legal matter context or iterations to refine search context and outcomes. Imagine that you are a junior associate in charge of creating a first draft for a real estate credit litigation in a New York state agreement: you can gain instant insight into how your top firm experts have structured and written indemnification clauses for credit agreements saving valuable time and leveraging the firm’s collective knowledge. Whether drafting new contracts, looking to assign the most experienced attorney to a specific case, compiling a pitch for new business, or understanding market conditions during negotiations, the Litera Search Copilot connector brings the ease of natural language matter and content search to a vastly expanded domain of user interfaces. 

 “Collaborating with Microsoft has allowed us to advance our use of new AI techniques to create revolutionary tools for the legal industry. By integrating with Microsoft Copilot, we’re delivering intelligent, AI-driven experiences that significantly enhance productivity and efficiency for legal professionals. This partnership not only highlights our commitment to innovation but also sets the stage for a transformative future in legal technology.”

Greg Ingino, Chief Technology Officer at Litera 

First, the user asks in natural language for litigation that meets certain criteria. 

Once they see the list of matching litigation, the user then makes the request for details on a specific legal matter from the first set of results. 

For end-users, these solutions offer significant value by streamlining workflows and enhancing productivity, as legal professionals can now reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on more critical aspects of their work. The integration of AI and natural language capabilities means users can interact with the software more intuitively, ultimately transforming the way they manage and utilize legal documents.  

Accenture brings supply chain management to Copilot 

Extending its portfolio of Intelligent Supply Chain Platform solutions built on Microsoft technologies, Accenture has unveiled a groundbreaking extension in Copilot for Microsoft 365 for its Supply Risk Control Tower. This innovation streamlines the daily workflows of supply chain teams, particularly material planners. Supply chain professionals can now receive daily updates from Copilot detailing incoming orders and providing real-time insights into potential risks. More than just a tracking tool, Copilot proactively recommends optimal course of action, streamlining decision-making processes and empowering teams to respond swiftly and strategically to dynamic supply chain scenarios.  

To create this advanced functionality, Accenture used the capabilities of Copilot Studio, incorporating knowledge, topics, and actions. This was combined with the power of Dataverse and its vast connector ecosystem, integrating Accenture’s deep supply chain data domain expertise with Copilot generative AI capabilities. The outcome is the transformative Supply Chain Insights App. With Microsoft Power Platform native integration into Copilot Studio, Accenture automated critical order management tasks in enterprise resource planning systems such as Dynamics 365 and SAP, saving valuable time and reducing manual data entry errors. 

Activate Dataverse data as knowledge using Copilot connectors 

Using Copilot connectors, you can bridge the gap between Dataverse data and Copilot. The ‘Add knowledge sources’ option allows developers to integrate deeply with Dataverse and Microsoft Power Platform. Once configured, a semantic search allows the connector to understand and interpret the text data, enabling more relevant and context-aware responses. Data synchronization and caching ensure your data is available for quick access and reduce potential latency issues. 

Using Dataverse is just one of the capabilities of Copilot connectors. For example, with a few clicks, you can access the ecosystem of more than 1,400 connectors, which includes extensive third-party service integration with your copilot. Using these connectors, you can add actions to your copilot to allow it to complete new tasks related to your solution. The following diagram illustrates the full breadth of capabilities of Copilot connectors. 

Adding actions using a Microsoft Power Platform connector is just one of the options available for adding new actions to a copilot.  

Prompt actions allow you to generate content or extract insights with AI Builder prompts. The prompts include prebuilt prompts that can be customized by parameters or from Dataverse data. For example, passing a customer name, a prompt action could summarize related data for the customer name using Copilot. 

Conversational actions receive a user query and process it by completing one or more operations, and then sends one or more responses back to the copilot that it is being used from. The conversational action could use the generative answer node to respond to the query. The answer could be based on knowledge configured that was unique to the scenario. For example, you could have a billing code lookup that produced answers about specific billing codes to the requesting user. 

Flow actions allow you to build a Microsoft Power Automate flow that runs to process the request from a user. These actions can be used to add the ability for the copilot to complete a task. For example, adding a billing code could be implemented as a flow action. The cloud flow would use other connectors to check if the billing code existed, follow company standards, and then finally add the billing code, responding to the user that the code was added.  

Copilot connectors allow you to build complete solutions 

Copilot connectors provide you with multiple ways to extend copilots with your unique solution. By combining several of these capabilities to form your full solution, you’ll be able to provide your users with access to the right knowledge and actions to make them more productive. These features are just the beginning of what’s to come, and we can’t wait to see how organizations will use them to innovate using Dataverse and Microsoft Power Platform. 

Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio

 Extend the capabilities of copilots with actions, copilot connectors, and sources of data.

Learn more

The post Litera and Accenture transform business processes with Microsoft Copilot connectors appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

The upcoming wave is centered around utilizing advanced AI and Microsoft Copilot technologies to enhance user productivity and streamline operations across diverse business applications. These enhancements include intelligent automation, AI-powered insights, and immersive user experiences that are designed to break down barriers between data, insights, and individuals. Watch a summary of the release highlights. 

Discover the latest features that empower organizations to operate more efficiently and adaptively. From AI-driven sales insights and customer service enhancements to predictive analytics in supply chain management and autonomous financial processes, the new capabilities enable businesses to proactively address challenges and capitalize on opportunities. 

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales continues to enhance customer understanding and boost sales through data, intelligence, and user-friendly experiences. In this release, we are focused on including natural language copilot for summarizing information, creating a new full-screen Copilot Home with curated insights and role-specific actions, and using AI-powered insights to find leads. Watch this video to discover the new and enhanced features included in this release wave. 

Microsoft Copilot for Sales continues to deliver and enhance cutting-edge generative AI capabilities for sellers by enriching Copilot in Microsoft 365 capabilities with sales-specific workflows, data, and actions. We will focus on using AI-powered insights to create leads, deepen the integration into Copilot in Microsoft 365, and use natural language capabilities to allow sellers to ask data-related questions of their CRM. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through new copilot capabilities such as proactive prompting, ability to access data from external systems securely with plugins, email enhancements, and AI-infused routing. Watch this video to discover how the latest enhancements to Customer Service can benefit your business. 

Microsoft Copilot for Service is now generally available, bringing new capabilities to enhance user experiences. These features will be integrated across Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365 Chat, and Copilot embedded in third-party CRMs. View this video about the features launching in this wave for Copilot for Service. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center will add new features for voice, messaging, Copilot, AI-infused routing, and contact center operations including out of box support for additional CRMs. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in Dynamics 365 Contact Center this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enables a shift from reactive to proactive and predictive service, empowering digital transformation and innovative business models. Using Copilot, frontline workers will be able to retrieve critical information and initiate mixed-reality remote assist calls within Teams through Copilot. Managers will be able to create, update, and manage work orders effortlessly across web, Outlook, and Teams interfaces. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance continues its journey of leading in autonomous finance, using AI to transform common end-to-end financial processes. This release focuses on in-app copilot capabilities, immersive persona-based user experiences, expanding country coverage, electronic invoicing enhancements, business performance analytics and planning enhancements, and autonomous reconciliation capabilities. Discover how the latest enhancements to Finance can benefit your business in this video. 

Microsoft Copilot for Finance is expanding data reconciliation capabilities in Excel with assisted data sanitization and preparation routines. Extending variance analysis capabilities with support from additional data sources and enabling collaboration on findings with stakeholders will also be a focus in the upcoming wave. Additionally, the Teams integration will facilitate collections calls with suggested scripts and automated recording of action items in the financial system. Check out this video to see the exciting new features releasing in Microsoft Copilot for Finance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is advancing along the path of an autonomous supply chain by integrating intelligence, automation, and analytics into every facet of business procedures, thereby improving user productivity and enhancing organizational adaptability. In this update, the spotlight is on improving order-promising capabilities for manufacturers. Demand planning is upgraded to incorporate forecasting with external signals, and the inclusion of Copilot weaves insights and analyses directly into workflows, identifying trends and irregularities, while also allowing for specific data inquiries at the cell level. Additionally, Traceability Copilot keeps track of actual products in production and compiles a comprehensive historical record of related activities. Watch this video to discover the exciting features launching in this release wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations is focused on enhancing usability, performance, and scalability in key areas such as project planning, invoicing, time entry, and core transaction processing. The spotlight is on AI-assisted core functionality improvements in estimation, proposal generation, journals, approvals, and contract management, with added mobile capabilities and scale improvements to handle larger projects and invoices at an increased scale. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in Project Operations this wave. 

Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities will continue to invest in capabilities applying to Finance, Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Project Operations. We are infusing copilot experiences across applications, including natural language chat, embedded AI, and intelligent process automation, and enabling extensibility for copilot scenarios. We will also bring more value and insights to finance and operations apps data and enhancements to ensure continued enterprise-grade security and compliance at scale. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources continues to build intelligence, develop automation and analytics around the hire-to-separate process, increase user productivity, and empower business agility. We are enhancing recruiting with AI-driven assessments and offer management, improving experiences for employees and HR business partners in benefits and performance management, and advancing analytics, insights, and planning through business performance planning and analytics capabilities. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce is using the power of AI to empower retailers to streamline their operations and drive increased customer loyalty and conversions. With Copilot, retail managers, sales associates, and merchandisers will gain new AI-powered insights into customer buying patterns and preferences, recommendations for positioning and selling products, and business intelligence on store performance. Improvements to the self-checkout POS make customer checkouts more efficient, and user experience updates to Store Commerce app streamline daily tasks for faster, more efficient sales and service. Watch this video to see the new features releasing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is focused on maintaining service reliability performance and security standards. We’ll continue enhancing productivity by optimizing core processes with Copilot, expanding to cover more than 170 countries, and offering enhanced reporting with more than 80 Microsoft Power BI reports. Additionally, integration with Field Service will be expanded, along with new financial management features. We will also enhance development tools and governance, along with improved data privacy and compliance management. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist will bring significant improvements to the quality of Mixed Reality (MR) annotations in Teams mobile for both iOS and Android users. The update will enhance the accuracy of MR ink on irregular and complex surfaces, making it easier for remote experts and technicians to collaborate seamlessly. Mixed Reality annotations in Teams mobile will be generally available in the next wave, along with ongoing investments in stability, performance optimization, and usability improvements across HoloLens 2 and iOS and Android applications. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Data empowers every organization to unify and enhance customer data, leveraging it for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. This release enables you to streamline data integration by using Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Fabric, attach your data in OneLake to Customer Insights, accelerate time to insights with data in Data Lake format, increase control when attaching to data in Dataverse, and seamlessly generate insights from marketing. Discover how these latest enhancements can benefit your business in this video. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Journeys brings the power of AI to redefine the workflow for marketers, enabling them to be more productive than ever before. Businesses can optimize every interaction with their customers with end-to-end journeys across departments and channels. With this release, you will have more flexibility and control when it comes to journeys, managing your web forms and tailoring Copilot to your business. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in this wave. 

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Watch this video to explore the exciting new features releasing across Microsoft Power Platform. 

Microsoft Power Apps will continue to transform app experiences with infused intelligence, enabling users to be more productive by using Copilot to work with data, get insights, and improve their apps. Makers will continue to benefit from AI-assisted development, enabling rich and complex applications to be built with monitoring, control, and unmatched governance for admins, ensuring organizations can adopt low-code and AI transformation at scale. 

Microsoft Power Pages will expedite site building for a low-code maker or pro developer to build intelligent sites that reimagine the way you interact with your employees, customers, and partners. 

Microsoft Power Automate will continue to make it easier to build flows by using natural language and multi-modal generative AI capabilities across cloud flows and desktop flows, troubleshooting runs, and managing your automation estate with an end-to-end view. This, along with improvements in process mining to jumpstart creation of automation through Microsoft 365 integration and ongoing improvements to scaling, means it’ll be easier than ever for new users to get started and scale. 

Microsoft Copilot Studio is advancing copilot capabilities and IVR support with Customer Service and will expand geographically to the United Arab Emirates and Germany. Additionally, the team is improving software lifecycle management capabilities with topic-level import/export and role-based access control (RBAC), as well as enhancing governance and administration functionalities. 

AI Builder is investing in Prompt Builder for creating and deploying GPT prompts with enterprise data to enhance flows, apps, data tables, and copilots. We are also enhancing Intelligent Document Processing with a new validation station in Power Automate, application lifestyle management (ALM) support, and pre-built AI models for translation, classification, and personally identifiable information (PII) detection. Lastly, we’ll improve AI governance through capacity management, data policies, and including AI Builder capacity in the Power Apps developer plan. 

Microsoft Dataverse is enhancing the maker experience by boosting app building productivity with Copilot, ensuring seamless connectivity to external data and knowledge sources, and integrating AI-powered Enterprise Copilot in Microsoft 365. These investments aim to streamline development and use AI for more efficient and intelligent solutions. 

Governance and administration continues to advance via tools and insights that empower Microsoft Power Platform admin to easily get their job done. This wave focuses on governing Copilot adoption and easily securing low-code assets, helping enterprises boost adoption of Microsoft Power Platform solutions in their organization while keeping their digital environment safe. 

Early access period 

Starting July 29, 2024, customers and partners can validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These updates include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled in production environments by October 2024. Take advantage of the early access period to test these updates and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Explore the 2024 release wave 2 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform or visit the early access FAQ page for more information. 

For a complete list of new capabilities, please refer to the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 2 plan and the Microsoft Power Platform 2024 release wave 2 plan. We also encourage you to share your feedback in the community forums for Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform. 

The post 2024 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform now available  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

With AI and low-code development tools, IT teams can tackle the problems they know best on their own, without additional assistance from outsider developers. Putting AI-powered low-code development tools in the hands of pro developers is like handing over the keys to a solution machine. With vast, built-in app-building knowledge and conversational language prompts that guide beginners and turbo-boost pros, AI can speed the time to build solutions for the unique needs of your IT department.

By using AI and low-code development, IT teams can build smart, fast solutions to their own problems—problems exacerbated by growing demands on data. CIOs who can bring AI-powered low-code and no-code solutions to their employees are putting their organizations in prime position to drive innovation.

Use cases for an AI-powered, low-code development platform abound, especially in an organization’s IT department, but we’ll focus on the five things we’d imagine IT teams would want to start doing if they were empowered with those tools today.

1. Offloading boring, repetitive, and mundane tasks to custom AI assistants

Imagine getting your team to use a low-code development platform to build a self-service assistant capable of handling the most common IT support requests in real time.

Instead of writing code, beginner and pro developers on the team can use simple, everyday English to guide the development process, speeding things along. And if your platform can connect with knowledge base systems like Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio do, then they can build a tool that automates the retrieval of documentation, FAQs, and previous support tickets so employees who need help can get accurate support without the need for human intervention.

Even if your organization still relies on legacy IT systems, AI and low-code can build bridges to older tools with UI, API, DPA, and RPA automation capabilities that can help automate tasks like data entry, report generation, and system monitoring that would otherwise dominate time and tie up people.

To find out how Copilot Studio can help your organization’s IT department, try a demo today.

2. Providing a secure, streamlined process for resetting employee passwords

To dig deeper into AI and low-code development to build tools that automate mundane tasks, consider the process for resetting employee passwords—something that comes with considerable security implications.

With AI-powered low-code development tools, an IT team can create a secure, streamlined process for resetting employee passwords that gets employees back online while enhancing overall identity management.

For instance, a system could be built that verifies user identity through multi-factor authentication (MFA) and biometric checks. Once the requester has been reviewed and approved as authorized, reset instructions could be passed along automatically, minimizing downtime for the employee requesting the reset while allowing IT support staff to focus on other tasks.

The system could also analyze user patterns to detect and flag suspicious activity, like too many reset attempts or reset requests originating from an unusual location, adding an extra layer of protection. With low-code platforms, these complex identity verification processes can be implemented quickly and efficiently, reducing the burden on IT staff while maintaining high security standards.

3. Empowering employees to troubleshoot technical issues through self-service

Some technical issues require human intervention, but many don’t. To free your human experts for your organization’s most challenging problems, help them design the self-service solution that could handle the most common requests that dominate their time.

For example, consider a complaint about a slow computer.

A generative AI-enabled self-service tool developed with AI on a low-code platform hears the user’s “slow computer” complaint, and then runs a series of diagnostic tests to determine the issue. Once the issue has been identified, the tool can generate instructions on what to do next.

This allows your IT experts to focus on more complex and critical problems, improving overall productivity and support quality within the organization.

To see how your IT department can use AI-powered low-code development to build a self-service help desk assistant with Copilot Studio, try a demo today

4. Making sure the right human beings get assigned the right tasks

About those complex and critical problems requiring human intervention—AI can actually help with making sure incoming helpdesk requests get to the right human agents.

Take the self-service tool we described above. Through the process of scanning incoming helpdesk requests, it can identify details that could help with prioritization and delegation. Once an issue’s urgency, complexity, and possible impact on the organization has been considered, the tool can direct tasks requiring human assistance to the teams or individuals best suited to help.

That way, team members can focus on what they do best, swiftly resolving critical issues and timely handling of less urgent tasks. This not only optimizes resource allocation, but also enhances overall service quality and response times within the IT department.

5. Logging service tickets and providing automatic status updates

Finally, instead of having to field status questions from waiting users, the IT team can build itself a tool for handling the task automatically.

On low-code platforms like Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio, for example, the process would be easy. Without extensive coding knowledge, an IT team member could build an AI assistant that connects to whatever IT service management (ITSM) platform the company uses, and runs through the steps of creating, assigning, and updating tickets automatically, providing update notifications to employees via email, Teams, or other communication platforms.

If the team integrates its assistant with a network monitoring tool, it could even detect some likely issues before they have a chance to impact users. For example, if a connected monitoring tool detects an issue, the helpdesk assistant can create a ticket in the ITSM system that includes details from the monitoring tool alert, assigns an accurate priority level, and enables swift resolution of the issue.

Integrating AI and low-code can transform your IT strategy

We’ve walked through just a few examples of how IT departments can begin with AI-powered low-code development right away, but many more use cases, workflows, and connections are possible.

Integrating AI and low-code development tools revolutionizes IT departments by streamlining processes, enhancing productivity, and enabling rapid innovation. From automating repetitive tasks to improving ticket resolution times and empowering self-service troubleshooting, AI-powered low-code solutions unlock immense potential for IT teams.

By adopting these tools, organizations can optimize resource allocation, facilitate timely responses, and drive continuous improvement.

Start using AI-powered low-code development today to transform your IT strategy and stay ahead in the digital landscape. To find out how Copilot Studio can help your organization’s IT department, try a demo today.

The post 5 ways IT departments can get started with low-code and AI  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

If your organization is already using Microsoft Power Platform and you’re interested in sharing your insights and experiences, we’d love to hear your story.

Cineplex benefits from Microsoft Power Platform automated solutions

Customer  

Cineplex  

Country  

Canada  

Industry  

Media 

Cineplex is one of Canada’s leading media and entertainment companies. To streamline business processes, over 100 employees are using Microsoft Power Platform to develop innovative automation solutions for finance, guest services, and other departments. Watch the video to learn how Cineplex saves over 30,000 hours a year in manual processing time.

See full story.

Leroy Seafood Group drives digitization with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer

Leroy Seafood Group

Country

Norway

Industry

Forestry and Fishing

The Leroy Seafood Group, a leading global producer of salmon and trout, has leveraged Microsoft Power Platform products to drive its digitization strategy, significantly enhancing data sharing and operational efficiency. By purchasing more than 4,000 Premium Microsoft Power Apps licenses and implementing an automated Center of Excellence, Leroy has empowered its employees to develop innovative enterprise applications. One such mobile app, for example, has standardized and centralized data reporting from offshore crews, improving reporting accuracy by 11.6%, equating to an USD 8 million saving. Leroy’s structured development approach, supported by the Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit, ensures robust governance and quality. Managed Environments have further strengthened development controls, enabling seamless innovation and the potential for additional applications, such as health and safety training tools. Overall, Microsoft Power Platform has been pivotal in enhancing Leroy’s data-driven decision-making and operational excellence, aligning with its vision of becoming a leader in sustainable seafood.

“When we started with [Microsoft] Power Platform, we made the decision to jump directly into [Microsoft] Dataverse as was saw it as the most secure and reliable way to store and manage our data—especially our mission critical data. It was a natural choice for us and it has worked amazingly well.”

Andreas Fauske: Team Lead Power Platform, Leroy

See full story.

Peppermint Technology boosts law firm efficiency with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer 

Peppermint 

Country 

United States  

Industry 

Professional Services 

Peppermint Technology redefines legal business processes with their innovative Copilot, integrating seamlessly with Microsoft Power Platform to boost law firm efficiency. By using enterprise data in Dataverse and SharePoint, Peppermint’s solutions empower lawyers to streamline client services, enhancing productivity and client engagement with minimal effort. Learn more by watching the video. 

See full blog.  

Majesco expands it’s copilot capabilities with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Customer

Majesco

Country

United States

Industry

Professional Services

Majesco, an insurance industry leader, used Copilot Studio, to build a comprehensive copilot that is embedded in all twelve of its insurance software products, a task that previously took nine months for a basic version. This shift reduced reliance on a small data science team, allowing 400 developers to handle 95% of the copilot’s functionalities independently. Integrated with Microsoft Power Automate, the copilot can perform diverse actions like data summarization and task management, significantly improving efficiency. The new copilot processes inquiries and actions in less than 30 seconds, saving substantial time and costs. This advancement addresses industry challenges such as underwriter shortages and easing the learning curve for new hires, providing real-time support and reducing administrative burdens. Copilot Studio has accelerated Majesco’s market delivery, giving it a strong first-mover advantage and progressing toward a fully AI-driven user interface.

“Using Microsoft Copilot Studio has accelerated our speed to market and given us a strong, first-mover advantage.”

Manish Shah: Chief Product Officer, Majesco

See full story.

Call2Recycle optimizes its operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform

Customer

Call2Recycle

Country

United States

Industry

Other

Call2Recycle, operator of the largest battery recycling program in the U.S. and Canada, streamlined its operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, saving approximately USD 25,000 annually. By integrating Dynamics 365 for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), the nonprofit automates processes across operations, finance, services, and sales, reducing manual work and increasing efficiency. This setup saves hours on tasks like invoicing and vendor payments, allowing the organization to focus on its sustainability mission. Additionally, Call2Recycle launched an e-bike battery recycling program using Microsoft Power Pages, seamlessly integrated with Dynamics 365. This system supports more than 2,000 retailers, enabling efficient enrollment, training, and management of battery collection. Automation through Power Automate and real-time monitoring with Microsoft Power BI ensure streamlined operations. The flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Power Platform are crucial for adapting to the rapidly changing battery market, driving growth, and enhancing environmental impact.

“By automating processes in Business Central, we save 10 hours per month on invoicing, 8 hours on banking activities like vendor payment uploads, and 12 hours on processing vendor invoice approvals.”

David Ainsley: Director of IT, Call2Recycle

See full story.

Laris Hotels Group improves booking data access using Microsoft Power Platform

Customer

Laris Hotels Group

Country

Poland

Industry

Other

Laris Hotels Group, one of the largest hotel chains in Krakow, Poland, improved its access to booking data using Microsoft Power Platform products. Previously reliant on a cumbersome weekly manual process, Laris implemented desktop robotic process automation (RPA) in Power Automate to pull daily data from a legacy property management system (PMS). This data is now seamlessly integrated into Power BI for customized reporting. With faster, daily updates, Laris enjoys a clearer view of booking data, increasing average hotel occupancy by approximately 15%. The new system allows for detailed analysis, including commission and tax breakdowns, and aligns booking data with budget targets. Reports are automatically distributed via Microsoft Teams, ensuring timely information for decision-making. Developed by Atteli, a Microsoft partner, the low-code solution was created in just two weeks, offering cost-efficiency and easy maintenance. Beyond improving internal operations, Laris plans to extend this system to support other hotels through its Hotel Sales Link initiative. The scalable solution, ready to handle various PMS systems, positions Laris for further innovation and enhanced data-driven decision-making, with potential expansions into Microsoft Fabric for deeper insights.

“Our [Microsoft] Power Platform system provides us with greater availability of booking data, with average hotel occupancy increasing by approximately 15% as a result.”

Chris Barker: International Sales Director, Laris Hotels Group

See full story.

Nsure streamlines customer processes with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer 

Nsure 

Country 

United States 

Industry 

Insurance 

Nsure.com enables consumers to compare quotes from over 50 home and auto insurers and to buy online in minutes. For over five years, the company has been using Microsoft Power Platform to automate business processes. Watch the video to see how Nsure used the generative AI capabilities in Microsoft Power Automate, including text recognition and sentiment analysis, to reduce manual processing time by 60% while also reducing associated costs by 50%. 

See full story. 

Zurich empowers developers with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer  

Zurich 

Country  

Switzerland

Industry  

Insurance 

To help enable fusion development, drive innovation, and streamline operations across the global enterprise, citizen and pro developers at Zurich Insurance Group are using Microsoft Power Platform for low-code and pro-code business app development, process automation, and more. Check out the video to learn more.  

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The post How Microsoft Power Platform is driving real-world impact—April and May customer success stories appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.