Let’s take a closer look at Copilot in Power Platform: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents. Copilot is a powerful AI assistant created by Microsoft that automates and improves how you accomplish day-to-day work tasks. Now in Power Platform, you can create applications, generate reports, build flows, and create chatbots with the help of Copilot through conversational language. We’ll also explain the value that Copilot can bring to your work, the current level of access to the public, and limitations of the current versions.
What is Copilot in Power Apps?
Power Apps Copilot streamlines the process of creating applications. Creation with Microsoft Copilot begins when you type out your app idea in everyday language.
For example, you can instruct Copilot to: “Create a time and expense application to enable my employees to submit their time and expense reports.”
Then, Copilot transforms your prompt into a Dataverse table. Here’s a glimpse of more tables that can be generated for you
- A mailing list for customer orders
- An invoice automation app that streamlines the creation and approval of customer invoices
- A survey app designed to gather feedback from customers and employees
- A task management app to organize your projects and tasks
With Copilot at your side, you can review and edit your table using provided suggestions, such as “Add a column for …” and “Refresh the data”. Ask any questions about the data in your app,
such as “How many expenses are there in total?” and “What category has the highest amount of…”. Adjust the content and elements of the table, including forms, buttons, and data types.
Once you edit the Dataverse table to your satisfaction, Copilot will turn the Dataverse table into a fully-functional application, complete with backend logic!
Copilot for Power Apps is available in the United States region. You can opt-in to receive early access updates if you want to try out new features, which are offered two months before mandatory updates. Be sure to also check out the Power Apps demo video created by one of our own developers a month ago attached to this article!
What are some limitations of Copilot in Power Apps?
The sample data generated by Copilot in Power Apps is for illustration, so there are no meaningful connections between the columns. As a result, errors may show up in the table contents.
Some limitations discovered during the demo include:
- Inability to undo mistakes
- Unsupported columns for certain file types
With Copilot, you can quickly craft visual mockups or lay the groundwork for your Power App. However, in Copilot’s current form, a skilled professional is still needed to ensure accurate representation of data or address more complex business requirements.
What is Copilot in Power Automate?
Next is Power Automate! Copilot effortlessly produces flows based on your description of the tasks you want to streamline. It sets up your workspace with pre-filled flow parameters while offering insightful suggestions for improvements. If you want to further develop your flow and need more information about the capabilities of Power Automate, Copilot can answer any questions based on Power Automate’s general documentation.
Note: According to investigation done by our developer a month ago, success occurs most frequently when using prompts with highly specific variable names and technical commands. Microsoft has provided guidance on how to write a good prompt here. Some other shortcomings include inability to troubleshoot flow errors and lack of support for some connectors.
However, since then, Microsoft has released enhancements that support more actions and connectors. To explore more new incoming features, check out this release plan: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/release-plan/2023wave1/power-automate/planned-features?source=recommendations
What is Copilot in Power BI?
Using requests in conversational language, your AI assistant in Power BI can:
- Generate data reports as interactive dashboards that include narrative summaries, key takeaways and trends
- Respond to any questions about the data
- Propose enhancements to the data models
- Craft data analysis expressions (DAX), a programming language in Power BI
An example command could be, “Create a sales report summarizing essential metrics and trends.“
Note: Professionals can now create initial reports faster, but Copilot can struggle in understanding more advanced projects, so less-experienced users may face difficulties with where the software currently stands.
Copilot is in private preview, meaning many announced features are not yet accessible to everyone. To use preview features, you must enable Copilot in Power BI.
What is Copilot in Power Pages?
In Microsoft Power Pages, Copilot can produce HTML, text, and images for your pages. You can revise and refine the content until it perfectly meets your needs. Beyond that, you can also add forms with Dataverse tables and apply your brand’s colors.
The preview version of Copilot in Power Pages is currently available in US-based environments with private site visibility.
What is Copilot in Power Virtual Agents?
Lastly are Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, which are AI-driven chatbots that interact with customers and employees across any platform supported by the Azure Bot framework.
With Copilot, you can swiftly create a chatbot with conversational dialogue, as well as trigger phrases, questions, and variables. The bot can gather and organize the information from the user through multi-step interactions.
Copilot in Power Virtual Agents currently exists as a standalone web app and in Microsoft Teams.
Reach out today!
Microsoft 365 Copilot will shift how we approach software development, automation, and problem-solving in all areas of work. Just in the Power Platform space alone, the preview versions of Copilot enable you to achieve more with less effort.
Level up the productivity and workflow of your business today with Copilot through Power Apps! Contact Total Solutions and let us guide you through setting up and understanding how to maximize Copilot’s capabilities for your business.
