Category: Power Platform

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 15th of the new functionality in the Cloud flows section is updated Browse connectors pane in cloud flows.

Makers can search for and select from connectors action in cloud flows quickly and more efficiently.

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

Feature Details

When you select the plus sign (+) for an action in the designer, the action pane opens. The action pane lets you search and browse for connectors and actions. Today, it’s difficult to find the connector makers want, as there’s no way to access favorite or highly frequently used connectors, or most common built-in tools of a flow. With this change, makers can favorite any connector or action so they show up in the Add an action pane by default under the Favorites section. They can quickly access AI capabilities in the product under the AI capabilities section, and they can quickly leverage building blocks or built-in tools like Control, Data operation, JSON, and more, under the Builtin tools section.

This improvement to the Browse connectors action pane in cloud flows makes it more accessible and efficient to makers while adding artifacts to their flow.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2: Updated Browse Connectors Pane In Cloud Flows”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 14th 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 the use of concepts like environment variables, connection references, and solutions. These also help deliver delightful maker experiences like drafting, publishing, and versioning.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview:  Mar 21, 2023
General Availability: Nov 2024

Feature Details

Many benefits are available when cloud flows are added to Dataverse solutions, including the ability to use features like environment variables and solutions. This simplifies the deployment process between environments. 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 such as 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

This always seemed to be an odd omission, so good to see the hole now being plugged.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 13th of the new functionality in the Cloud flows section is create generative actions in cloud flows.

Instead of building out complex rules-based processes from beginning to end, you work with AI to inject intelligent activity orchestration from your cloud flow. You create intent-based generative actions where the large language model (LLM) considers all the resources available to it and dynamically selects the most appropriate actions and sequence of these actions to achieve the desired outcome. This allows for more dynamic automation and saves you time.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Dec 2024
General Availability: Apr 2025

Feature Details

Generative actions use generative AI reason over unstructured content and determine what steps and sequences it needs to achieve a process outcome based on instructions and parameters provided by you in natural language.

Building a generative action within cloud flows involves the following steps:

• Describe the objective of your process in natural language, and let AI develop an automation plan to achieve it.
• Refine the automation plan generated by the large language model (LLM) and adjust inputs, outputs, and variables as needed.
• Add reference sources and guidelines in natural language that influence the LLM as it executes the flow.
• Validate the intelligent action by reviewing how it is achieving the business objective prior to moving the flow into production.
• Review production run history, analytics, and individual flow run details to ensure your process is performing to expectations.

The ability of generative actions to easily incorporate both structured and unstructured data makes it flexible as information resources are updated. Its reasoning abilities make generative actions uniquely beneficial in the building and maintenance of complex process flows to handle conditions, exception management, and process loops.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 12th of the new functionality in the Cloud flows section is use your own key to encrypt data at-rest for environments.

This capability allows customers in regulated industries and regions to meet their data protection, privacy, compliance, and security requirements and policies.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Nov 2024

Feature Details

Use your own encryption key from your Azure Key Vault to protect an environment’s data at-rest including existing Power Automate flows in the environment.

When the admin applies the CMK (customer-managed keys) Enterprise Policy to protect an environment from the Power Platform admin center, Power Automate protects existing flows in the environment. Also, new flows created in the environment are automatically protected for CMK.

With this feature, Power Automate fully supports CMK, enabling customers to leverage low-code assets that utilize Power Automate while meeting their policy requirements.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 11th of the new functionality in the Cloud flows section is recommendations to reassign orphaned cloud flows.

Today, admins have difficulty finding and reassigning orphaned flows, and changing flows is done individually. This feature gives admins more visibility and lower risk through active management of their automation estate.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Jan 2025
General Availability: –

Feature Details

With this feature, admins can more easily manage their automation estate with recommendations to show a list of orphaned flows that are owned by a user who is no longer with the company. Admins can view information like the name of the last owner and the number of days since the flow last ran within the recommendation list in Power Platform admin center. They can then quickly perform simple actions like reassignment to another owner or turning off the flow.

My Opinion

This sounds like a good enhancement for sites with a lot of flows.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 10th of the new functionality in the Cloud flows section is receive intelligent license recommendations for admins.

This feature simplifies the license assignment process for admins and enables a governed self-serve mechanism for premium feature access. Admins don’t always know who needs a license and why. They need to understand which users are using Power Automate and require a premium license. They can rely on Power Automate intelligent license recommendations to provide them with a list of users who will benefit from having a premium license.

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

Feature Details

Admins can:

• Receive intelligent license recommendations with a list of users based on:
  • License requested by users
  • Trial users
  • Seeded users without premium license
  • Active users without premium license
• Automatically assign licenses to the selected users directly or through a security group.

My Opinion

I am to be convinced that Microsoft can teach the system to understand the licencing well enough to make good recommendations.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 9th of the new functionality in the Cloud flows section is use undo and redo while you build cloud flows in the designer.

You can confidently build flows with Copilot, or experiment knowing that you can undo any of your actions.

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

Feature Details

You can undo a change you make to your flow manually or through Copilot. If you change your mind and want to return it to your flow, you can use redo to bring back the change you removed with undo.

My Opinion

All of my attempts to use Copilot to create or amend flows have been… “catastrophic”, is probably the right word. I’ve always relied on closing without saving, but it is good to see the ability to undo a change when it goes wrong.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 10th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is connect your own virtual network with hosted machine group.

Users can run desktop flows using a hosted machine group connected to their own virtual network (VNet) in order to execute RPA jobs that require access to on-premises networks.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability: Nov 2024

Feature Details

Users can now seamlessly integrate a hosted machine group (HMG) with their own VNet. This integration enables users to run desktop flows and execute RPA jobs that require access to on-premises networks. By leveraging their own VNet, users can ensure secure and reliable connectivity between the hosted machines and the on-premises networks.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 9th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is use machine to credential mapping in desktop flow connections.

In many organizations, each machine must have a unique user session. This implies that they cannot use machine group. A list of credentials will allow them to use unique credential for each of their machines. For organizations that want to use automations executed on agent machines, there’s no option to define mapping between machine(s) and agent(s). The list of credentials will allow an attended automation to the machine of the right agent.

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

Feature Details

Allow customers to define lists of credentials and use them in the desktop flow connections. These lists will also allow customers to define which machine(s) can use these credentials. These lists can be used as login credentials in the desktop flow connections and will benefit from the same credential management feature, such as:

• Encryption and data protection
• Password rotation with Azure Key Vault or CyberArk
• Application lifecycle management

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 2.

The 8th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is power Fx integration with Power Automate for desktop.

You can now create automation flows through scripting using Power Fx. Power Fx enables the full spectrum of development from no-code makers without any programming knowledge to pro-code for the professional developers. It enables diverse teams to collaborate and save time and effort.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview:  Dec 18, 2023
General Availability: Nov 2024

Feature Details

Power Fx is the low-code language for expressing logic across Microsoft Power Platform. It’s a general-purpose, strong-typed, declarative, and functional programming language. Power Fx is expressed in human-friendly text. It’s a low-code language that makers can work with directly in an Excel-like formula bar or Visual Studio Code text window. The “low” in low-code is due to the concise and simple nature of the language, making common programming tasks easy for both makers and developers.