Month: May 2024

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 4th of the new functionality in the Copilot for Power Automate section is Enter into a conversation-first Copilot experience to build flows.

This feature allows you to create flows with a conversation-first Copilot experience from the Power Automate home page.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: May 2024

Feature Details

Prior to this feature, you were limited to creating specifically phrased prompts in Copilot to generate a flow. This feature now enables you to enter less specific prompts. You can simply start by stating a business scenario, your business roles and responsibility, or pain points that you encountered in your work process. In any case, you can easily enter into a conversation-first experience to build flows.

The conversational experience extends the ability to ask Copilot using natural language to create a workflow into the ideation process. For example, Copilot might ask further probing questions to help you form a clear automation plan. This allows you to not only create, but refine, edit, and adjust through follow-up prompts. In addition, if you get errors with your workflow, you can use Copilot to fix them for you.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 3rd of the new functionality in the Copilot for Power Automate section is Automate with ease using the AI Recorder.

The AI Recorder in Power Automate for desktop revolutionizes task automation by allowing users to simply record and explain their tasks using their voice and showing a task. This intuitive feature not only saves time but also leads to improved productivity and streamlined operations for businesses.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Jun 2024
Early Access: –
General Availability: –

Feature Details

The AI Recorder leverages cutting-edge Generative AI to interpret voice, mouse movements, and screen sharing to create a desktop flow. It’s like having a digital assistant that understands your process and automates it for you, making it an invaluable tool for any user looking to build automations.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 2nd of the new functionality in the Copilot for Power Automate section is Troubleshoot with Copilot for cloud flows execution.

With this feature, makers will be able to fix runtime flow failures quickly with guidance from Copilot.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: Apr 2024

Feature Details

You will be able to look at a failed cloud flow execution run and let Copilot guide you to quickly understand the error and provide recommendations for addressing these errors. These recommendations will be supported for a range of error scenarios including common connection action failures, flow design issues, and more.

Geographic areas

This feature will be released into the following Microsoft Azure geographic areas:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• India

My Opinion

Copilot is flavour of the month, but I’m still to use any AI tool which lives up to its billing. I’ll take a look at this one, and try to give it a fair chance.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 16th of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is Cloud flows are automatically defined in Dataverse solutions.

Cloud flows defined in Dataverse solutions simplify administration and application lifecycle for customers by allowing use of concepts like environment variables, connection references, solutions, and more. These also help deliver delightful maker experiences like drafts and publishing, versioning, and more.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview:  Mar 21, 2023
Early Access: –
General Availability: Jun 2024

Feature Details

Many benefits are available when cloud flows are added to Dataverse solutions, including the ability to use features like environment variable and solutions. This simplifies the deployment process between environments, for example for development, test, and production. Solutions also make it easier to organize and manage a large number of flows by providing a natural grouping. Having flows defined in Dataverse also unlocks new functionality like support for drafts and versioning.

Currently, makers create non-solution cloud flows by default that aren’t stored in Dataverse. With this change, cloud flows are stored in Dataverse by default. We’ll provide an ability to migrate flows outside solutions to solutions, to simplify the administration process, and unlock new maker experiences.

My Opinion

I want to see this one in practice, but it sounds like it could add some good functionality, such as versioning, which is currently lacking.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 13th of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is Manage unpublished solution-aware cloud flows using admin APIs.

Power Automate admin APIs now have full support for solution cloud flows. This allows admins to see unpublished solution cloud flows, share solution cloud flows, and view the ownership of solution cloud flows.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: Apr 2024

Feature Details

Currently, Power Automate admin APIs don’t fully support the management of solution-aware cloud flows because flows that have never been published (turned on) aren’t visible. With this feature, Power Automate admin APIs can now fully support the management of solution-aware cloud flows using Power Automate Management connector, the Power Automate for Admins connector, PowerShell for Power Platform Administrators, and the Power Platform admin center. Admins can see unpublished solution cloud flows, share solution cloud flows, and view the ownership of solution cloud flows.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 14th of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is Cancel all flow runs for a version of a flow.

This feature helps to reduce incidents and feedback for the limited number of flows that users can resubmit and cancel on the My flows page in Power Automate.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: May 2024

Feature Details

Prior to this update, you were limited to canceling 20 runs per flow at a time. This was too restrictive as some users may need to be able to cancel more at a time. This feature now enables you to cancel as many flow runs that you’d like.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 15th of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is Create a flow on a file in Teams.

This feature allows you to create a flow on a file in Teams using one of the templates that are available to be done to a file. You can also use AI to create your flow from scratch.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: May 2024

Feature Details

This feature allows you to set up and use workflows in Teams on files. You can create a flow on a file in the overflow menu of the Workflows app. Improve your productivity by using one of the templates that are available to be done to a file, or by using AI to create your flow from scratch.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 12th of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is use a simplified OData editor in actions like Get items and Get files.

You can avoid writing complex OData queries with a simplified condition action-like editor to filter items.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: Jun 2024

Feature Details

Prior to this feature enhancement, if you as a maker needed to filter out data that your ‘Get items’, ‘Get files’, or ‘List rows’ SharePoint and Excel actions by a certain rule (column name, and others), you needed to write an OData query yourself. With this enhancement, you can use a simplified OData editor, which doesn’t require you to write complex OData queries yourself. You can use the visual editor to build your OData query.

My Opinion

This could be useful as the syntax of OData is not something I know very well.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 11th of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is Use copy-paste for container actions like Scope, Condition, and Apply to each.

You can use copy-paste for any action between flows in the same or different solution or environment.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: May 2024

Feature Details

Prior to this feature enhancement, you could copy and paste an action only with single actions like Get items, Compose, and more, but not with container actions like Scope, Apply to each, or Condition. With this feature enhancement, you can use copy-paste for any action to copy and paste actions between flows. For example, you can copy-paste actions like Scope, Condition, and Apply to each, which weren’t supported previously.

My Opinion

In theory this should be a good enhancement, but copy/paste of actions generally doesn’t work very well at the moment. Hopefully this has been improved as part of this enhancement to make this actually useful.