CoPilot & AI Assisted Power Platform Development for building Digital Solutions
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https://github.com/aicitizendev?tab=repositories - Prototype / Architecture: https://citizendev.ai/
Copilot:
Copilot experiences across product lines to assist business users and developers achieve more with less in an era where AI is fundamentally changing the way we work and create. Copilot can help developers of all skill levels build digital solutions more efficiently. Copilots help users navigate and act in those solutions. AI capabilities in the Power Platform leverage large language models and artificial intelligence models that automate, simplify, and accelerate the development of digital solutions that are more intelligent and easier for development teams to build. It also brings increased intelligence to end-users so they can benefit from more robust solutions that are built with the same AI technology.
Low code platforms such as Power Platform already enable tech savvy business users to participate in the creation of digital business solutions. Copilot in Power Platform further democratizes this and at the same time it accelerates development in your IT department. Copilot in Power Platform is also available to users of Power Apps to assist them in getting the best use of the data in the apps that they use.
Copilot Architecture Reference:
Microsoft has integrated Copilot experiences into the Power Platform ecosystem. This means that anyone that uses a Power Platform application will be able to include Copilot assistive technology. Also, anyone in the organization building low-code solutions can be assisted by a Copilot to make them more productive. The following are the four key pillars of Copilot capabilities in the Power Platform:
Copilot for maker assist –
Copilot for Power Platform enables AI-assisted low-code development that uses natural language to create a first draft of the application solutions you need. It does not replace the critical thinking of the professionals we use today, but it makes them much more efficient.
Power Apps Copilot for users – Power Apps offers Copilot controls to include in custom Power Apps for the end-users in organizations interacting with the apps you build. Users can use natural language to explore data and navigate apps, significantly improving the user experience and generating new sources of business intelligence.
Power Platform connectors as Copilot plug-ins – Power Platform connectors can be used as plug-ins for Copilots enabling them to infuse just-in-time information from the connectors for use by the Copilot. This can empower the Copilot to provide information and perform tasks beyond its basic capabilities.
Access Dataverse data in Microsoft 365 Copilot – Make Dataverse data available for use without the user leaving the Microsoft 365 application. This capability integrates data where the user needs it without requiring difficult data integration development efforts.
Copilot for Power Apps
Power Apps provides a rapid development environment for building custom apps. Apps built using Power Apps can use data and services from more than a thousand connectors. The apps can run in a browser, desktop, or on mobile devices. Copilot for Power Apps is all about helping to build apps. This starts with being able to use natural language to describe the application you want. For example, you need to track internal support tickets. You can describe what you are trying to achieve in building this particular app to Copilot and then Copilot takes your description and presents you with a table that includes AI generated sample data. You then review, edit, and approve before it makes a first version of your canvas application. You can make edits to this table definition, using the same natural language descriptions to have a multi-step interaction to refine the way your apps work. Once confirmed, the canvas app is created. The app maker can then revise this app to make it exactly what they need.
Copilot for Power Automate
Power Automate is a powerful workflow automation that, with over a thousand published connectors, allows you to integrate and automate with not only Power Platform, but with tools and platforms that you are currently using as well. Power Automate has no code, low code and pro code options to allow users and makers of all skill levels to automate tasks.
You can also use Copilot to automate your tasks in cloud flows. For example, you have requirements to send notifications of internal support ticket escalations to managers. Using Power Automate you can use Copilot to build a cloud flow that automatically connects with Dataverse to gather details of the ticket, identifies the assigned user, identifies their manager and crafts the notification to send. Whoever is developing the flow then reviews and adjusts the cloud flow steps to ensure that it meets the stated requirements given to the Copilot.
Copilot for Power Pages
Power Pages enables quick creation of secure, low-code business websites. These sites can be built by business teams, not just developers, with the end result being a professional website that gets to market faster and at a lower cost.
Copilot for Power Pages helps site creators accelerate their efforts to build and maintain their websites. From common tasks like adding a page to more content-related tasks like changing the content tone. For example, a creator might ask Copilot to make the content pasted from the old site more modern. Copilot would update the content and ask the creator to review and adjust if necessary.
Most websites capture some information from their visitors, and it is common with Power Pages to store that in Microsoft Dataverse. Creators can just specify the type of form they want, and Copilot will autogenerate tables in Microsoft Dataverse and build the corresponding forms.
Copilot for Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents provide a low-code experience to build intelligent bots that can rapidly respond to customer and employee needs. Using the bot designer, bots can be configured without knowing the details of the different channels and infrastructure the bot will be hosted in. By configuring the different topics, the bot can respond to inbound interactions.
Copilot for Power Virtual Agents facilitates creation of a bot by describing what you would like your bot to do in natural language. Then the bot can be adjusted to fine-tuned from testing and feedback. For example, an author can simply state: “allow a user to start planning a trip, collect user’s email address and phone number, and let them choose the trip type from business, personal, or both,” and a dialog to do so will be instantly created including all the various components of the bot design. The author can then select part of what was generated and ask Copilot to refine it or just like before use the designer to manually adjust it just like they did before Copilot.
Power Apps Copilot for users
The Copilot Stack AI framework allows code developers to add in-app custom Copilot experiences to their applications built with traditional code. Similarly, anyone that can build a low-code application with Power Apps can include a pre-built Copilot control for a low-code experience to add a Copilot to their application. By configuring a view of a data source and some basic prompt information, the application can provide an in-app Copilot experience that will allow users to interact with the data using natural language queries.
Users of the application can use Copilot to answer questions about the data in the application. The user would formulate their questions using natural language questions just like they might ask a co-worker if they were asking them to gather data for their question. For example, in an auto insurance application the user might ask “What the earliest date is the car had insurance with the company?”.
In the example below you see a Power App for banking, specifically the user screen for working with support tickets. The user is able to ask the Copilot about the data. The user asks for information about high priority tickets and follows up with an inquiry about the tickets from the last month. This helps the user quickly identify trends and prioritize resolving high priority tickets. The Copilot control is included with the Power App and supports users within the application using the application’s data with natural language queries. By including this Copilot control the development team can accelerate the development time without compromising the user needs of additional views, details, and interaction with the data.
Adding Copilot to low-code apps can make the applications more flexible to meet users evolving needs. Instead of asking the maker to change the application, in many cases users will be able to simply ask the Copilot in the app the question about the data.
Power Platform connectors as Copilot plug-ins
Power Platform connectors are also important to the Copilot experience. Connectors will be able to connect as Copilot plugins, also extending the capabilities of the Copilot. For example, Microsoft 365 Copilot with the Power Platform connector for Jira Software can enable a project manager to request the status of a Jira support ticket and act based on the response, such as route it for additional approval or start a purchase order for new hardware. Using plugins, you can integrate your business processes and data with Copilot to empower users to interact from whatever app they use.
Access Dataverse data in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Traditionally, users waste a fair amount of time jumping from one application to another to obtain the answers they need to complete a task. Imagine a user in Microsoft Outlook that just received an email from a client urgently asking for the status of their equipment being serviced. Currently they leave their email client, open the internal application, lookup the customer, open and copy the status of each piece of equipment, and then return to the email and type a summary of the equipment being serviced. Instead in the future the Microsoft 365 Copilot will be able to incorporate your Power Platform data stored in Microsoft Dataverse. Users can use application data without having to switch back and forth between applications. For example, from within the email client, a user could ask the Copilot to generate a status update for all the equipment being serviced for the client. Microsoft 365 Copilot automatically inherits the native security and governance framework of Dataverse and applies user security and permissions at runtime.
Copilot is the next wave of AI Innovation
AI is changing how we all do business, and the timeline for these changes to occur is accelerating with each advance in AI capability. Microsoft is leading the way by putting in place a solid framework for how organizations can approach AI. This effort includes a robust approach to incorporating AI responsibly into our organization’s daily life. Copilots harness this power of AI and make it approachable to normal business users in the applications they use every day.
Power Platform’s low code capabilities are a natural fit for helping organizations build AI solutions, with Copilot assisting. Using Power Platform Copilot capabilities, organizations can build solutions at a faster pace because users no longer need to spend time doing tasks that Copilot could do. With the change in capabilities of AI happening at an increasing pace, organizations need assistive technology that also evolves with the pace AI is changing. Copilots, by design, are able to incorporate emerging AI capabilities as they are released. The combination of Power Platform and Copilot offers organizations a chance to evolve with the rapid AI innovation happening across all industries and organizations.
Reference:
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/canvas-apps/ai-overview
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/educator-developer-blog/leveraging-ai-and-copilot-in-microsoft-s-power-platform/ba-p/3830975
- https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/build-better-apps-faster-copilot-in-power-apps-is-now-generally-available/