Last week, at the Microsoft Build developer conference, an array of new tools and capabilities to help fusion development teams build automations, bots, and low-code apps quicker, including new developer plans for Power Apps and Microsoft Power Platform and a new Fusion development learning path and an e-book were released.
Here are some of the exciting announcements:
Power Apps Developer Plan
Included in the Power Apps Developer Plan is a free developer environment to test and create apps, as well as help for premium and custom connectors, Dataverse, and additional developer environments. These allow professional developers to build, test and try out experiences on Power Apps or the Microsoft 365 Developer plan whilst learning new skills to help quicken their development through a new learning path and certification.
Image: Microsoft
A new class of apps designed for hybrid work: collaborative apps 
Microsoft Teams has quickly established itself as a digital platform for learning and work. It was developed with the very purpose of supporting cooperation and partnership. Apps that enable existing and non-existing modes of collaboration with ad hoc messaging, document cooperation, real-time meetings, and the business procedures automation—all in a single uniting layer.
With collective apps, end users can work simply with others to complete their projects at any time, from anywhere, and stay in the stream of work without the need to shift across various apps and data.
Microsoft Teams: New collaborative apps that plug into meetings
Last year, Microsoft allowed developers to develop third-party apps into Teams. However, the company went a step further at Build 2021. In a push to get more app developers building for Teams, Microsoft is expanding its key APIs, tools, and Teams Store to what it calls ‘collaborative app’s.
Now that there are 145 million daily active users using Microsoft Teams, there is certainly the desire for more apps that align with and exist inside of Teams meetings.
Personal features in Microsoft Teams
From online calls that make you feel like you could be in the same room as your family and friends to larger group chats that will make organising plans so much easier, Microsoft have designed the personal features in Teams to bring you closer to the people you care about so you can chat and organize activities both big and small— all together in one place.
However, Microsoft Teams wasn’t the only platform that announced some thrilling new releases:
Power Platform
The general availability of Microsoft Power Virtual Agents integration with Microsoft Bot Framework Composer.
From subject matter specialists to expert developers— all are now able to collectively create intelligent, effective bots by using Bot Framework Composer to generate custom content whilst adding it to Power Virtual Agents to host and run.
Using this new feature, Power Virtual Agents and Bot Framework Composer can also work effortlessly together. Bot makers can use insightful SaaS bot building experience in Power Virtual Agents and improve their bots with Bot Framework Composer custom content when needed.
Process advisor: Understand and improve your processes
Process Advisor improves the process mining experience in Power Automate. Process advisor instantly captures detailed steps for each process in your company to help you to better understand places to simplify the workflows. This can be done on your own or you can invite partners or collaborators to work together and contribute.
Process advisor is licensed as part of Power Automate user licenses. If you do not have a license, you can start a Power Automate trial to try process advisor.
Microsoft Power Fx is the low-code open-source software design language used in PowerApps. The incorporation of GPT-3 permits developers to create apps using pure language — no coding required.
Power Fx is built on Microsoft Excel, meaning it’s much simpler to use than traditional coding languages, but creating complicated data requests may still mean you will need to put in a lot of effort.
If any of these announcements have whet your appetite, then click the link below to see more exciting releases from the Microsoft Build Conference 2021: https://bit.ly/3ch5Jxl
If you are interested in learning more about the Power Platform or your company could benefit from Microsoft Teams and its latest features/up-to-date technology, then get in touch and see how we can help you and your business on your digital journey.
