Introduction
Welcome to the September 2024 edition of our Dynamics 365 and Power Platform update! This month, we have a plethora of exciting updates and enhancements across the Power Platform and Dynamics 365. In this blog post, we’ll dive into the key highlights and what they mean for you and your organization.
Service Updates
The 2024 Release Wave 2 for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 is packed with new features and enhancements. This release wave covers updates from October 2024 through March 2025. Key highlights include enhancements in Power Apps, Power Pages, Power Automate, Power BI, and Copilot Studio. The general availability deployment for the 2024 release wave 2 is based on the regions where environments are created. Deployment begins as early as September 23, 2024, for the first release and continues through October 28, 2024, for various regions including Canada, South America, India, France, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Asia Pacific, Great Britain, Australia, GCC High, Europe, North America, GCC, DoD, and China[1].
Events
This month, we have several exciting events lined up for the Power Platform community. The third annual Power Platform Community Conference (PPCC) is taking place at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, from September 18 through September 20, 2024. 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. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from Microsoft senior thought leaders, product experts, engineers, and Microsoft MVPs who are dedicated to bridging the gap between humanity and technology.
Additionally, Microsoft Ignite is back in Chicago and online from November 18–22, 2024. This event will focus on achieving more with the power of AI and Microsoft Cloud. Attendees will discover solutions that will help them modernize and manage their intelligent apps, safeguard their business and data, accelerate productivity, and connect with partners while growing their community.
Product Upates
The September 2024 briefing brings a host of new features and enhancements across the Power Platform. Here are some of the key product updates:
- Power Apps:
- Announcing public preview of Power Platform Managed Identity support for Dataverse plug-ins. This feature allows customers and partners to connect Dataverse plug-ins to Azure resources supporting managed identities, eliminating the need to manage credentials and reducing the risk of unauthorized data access.
- Use Copilot to filter to quickly filter, sort, and search canvas app galleries with SharePoint lists
- Copilot page in Power Platform Admin Center (Preview)
- What’s new in Power Apps
- Delete stub, unlicensed, and removed Microsoft Entra group users
- Exploring new Copilot features and first episode of Power Apps Pulse!
- Power Automate:
- The August 2024 update includes new features such as the ability to dynamically invoke subflows, increased log size for some actions, and a new troubleshooting category around installation issues.
- How Microsoft Customer Experience & Success streamlines operations with process mining in Power Automate
- Copilot Studio: New features include the ability to add copilots to Teams meetings, use Azure OpenAI on your data for generative answers, deploy copilots to WhatsApp, Azure Communication Services Chat, and SMS channels, and create Microsoft Copilot extensions with Copilot Studio.
- Dataverse
- Automatic solution segmentation for tables – This feature will allow makers to add Microsoft Dataverse tables to solutions easily with minimal effort. Proper table segmentation makes managing customizations easier in production environments.
- Mask sensitive data and fields using column-level security (Preview)
- Create virtual table to native table relationships (Preview)
Deprecations or Retirements
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the Power Platform, we are announcing several deprecations and retirements. These changes are essential for maintaining system integrity and security. Key deprecations include:
Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Pages
- Chatbot Control (Preview): Deprecated effective September 5, 2024.
- Portals Lucene.NET Search: Migrate to Dataverse search by October 1, 2024
- DLP Resource Exemption: Deprecated for tenants that have never used it before, effective March 2024. Deprecated for all customers by October 2024
- Hierarchy Control in Model-Driven Apps: Deprecated effective October 2024. Removed from the product by April 2025.
- Dataverse (legacy) and Dynamics 365 connectors retirement (future)
Dynamics 365
- Assistant card templates removed – Sales – August 2024
- Dynamics 365 Field Service reports and Features: – Sept 2024
- Predictive work duration reports (Preview)
- Incident type AI suggestions
- IoT alert suggestions
- Snapshots in sales forecasting removed – Oct 2024
- Legacy schedule board hardcoded URL removed – Oct 2024
- Diagnostics in unified routing will be removed – Oct 2024
- Custom messaging channels will be deprecated and removed – Oct 2024
- Omnichannel for Customer Service on Unified Service Desk end of support – removed Oct 2025
- Current rich text editor taken out of service – April 2025
Always check these sources for the latest deprecation and retirement information:
Important changes in Power Apps and Power Automate
Important changes in Canvas Apps
Important changes in Power Pages
Learning Corner
In this section, we highlight some valuable learning resources and opportunities for the Power Platform community:
Microsoft AI Tour: Join experts, industry leaders, and peers to explore the ways AI can drive growth and create lasting value at this free, one-day event. Attendees will learn how to turn their vision into impact via an AI thought leadership keynote, in-depth skilling sessions, and expert conversations
Code Sample: Choices (multi select option set) Power Apps component framework sample: This sample component demonstrates how to leverage the multi select option set type on properties of field components.
Leverage AI tools and resources for your business – learning module: This module provides a high-level overview of the primary concepts of AI and the technologies behind it.
How to build a basic copilot: Learn how you can use Microsoft Copilot Studio to quickly and easily create powerful copilots using a guided, no-code graphical experience.
Video Roundup
Conclusion
The September 2024 update shares a host of new features, enhancements, and updates designed to improve your experience with the Power Platform. We encourage you to explore these updates and take advantage of the new capabilities to drive innovation and efficiency in your organization. Stay tuned for more updates and happy building!
Leave a comment