Automate together
Collaboration has now become much easier in Power Automate. The new co-presence feature will allow multiple users to edit a flow simultaneously. If you have ever used Excel or Word online collaboration, you will recognize the new user icons next to the save button that indicate all of the users editing the flow with you.
There are also new warning messages in case two editors implement conflicting changes to avoid deletion or duplication of changes.
Desktop flows
Desktop flows have been drastically overhauled this month, and there are quite a few exciting changes for both beginners and veterans of desktop flows. If you thought desktop flows were too complicated for your business solutions, hopefully these new changes will help you ease into this incredibly powerful and useful arm of the power platform.
Power Automate Desktop will now be available as standard on all desktops with Windows Home or above. Advanced analytics will now be available to users of desktop flows and it will allow you to analyze app usage within them.
On a slightly more advanced note, no longer do you need to configure an on-premise data gateway to spin a desktop flow up. And for those who are already knees deep in desktop flows, maybe this update and this update will make more sense to you than they do to me.
New connectors
15 new connectors were added to Power Automate by independent publishers. Do you need to update an Etsy listing? Do you want to access your Spotify library? Would you like to integrate a list of highest rated restaurants in your area from Yelp into your Power App? All of this can be done through Power Automate now with these new connectors and more!
Power BI Changes
Square buttons are a thing of the past in Power BI. If you have ever used any type of buttons in Power Apps, you know the customizability is endless. Well now, buttons in Power BI are now far more customizable and can utilize pre-defined shapes or custom images/icons.
Power BI can now generate insights for you to analyze your reports in greater detail. These are available in Premium and Premium Per User workspaces, or if you have a Premium Per User license.
Release wave 2 is here
If you have been keeping up with these posts the past few months, you will have seen all of the features being added to the Power Platform with the 2021 release wave 2. If you have not noticed these changes in your own environment, the wait is over.
The general availability for these features is being rolled out October 1st, so be on the lookout for changes in your environments.
Dataverse
Exciting changes are here (or soon to be here) for Dataverse. Plan on better integration between Dataverse and other data sources, such as Azure Data Lake Storage and SQL.
New security permissions will allow you to decouple a user’s security permissions from their business unit to allow access to data across business units. You can also now create virtual tables with custom connectors to access data.