If there’s something spectacular about Microsoft, it is that you can see how relentless they are with innovation. Continuously innovating their products, keeps us ready to see what is coming next down the pipeline. The Wave Release Plans (also referred to as Release Notes) are issued twice a year and it details all the new features and capabilities. Our previous blog featured the Dynamics 365 Wave 2 2022 Release notes, but we have new updates for you, the spotlight goes to the Power Platform Release Wave 2 2022.
Microsoft Power Platform: 2022 Release Wave 2 Highlights
Power Apps will expand its governance capabilities to manage, enable, and support citizen development throughout the organization. Through Microsoft Dataverse, developers and makers, despite their skill level, will gain more productivity with modern experience to create and manage data and logic, enrich data, infuse intelligence to support development, and optimize user experiences.
1. Grid control support:
Public preview – October 2022
During the last wave’s release, Microsoft introduced editable grids, and it featured infinite scrolling, inline editing within sub grids and views, and customizable cells. The Power Platform Release Wave 2 2022 takes this feature a notch higher. Microsoft rolls out features that help users be more productive in the grid by accessing related records without switching windows. The Power Apps Grid Control capabilities extend to these:
o Aggregation: See your data clearly by enabling aggregation on single or multiple columns in a grid. Users can select to see the sum, minimum or maximum value, or average value for each column. If grouping has been applied, each group’s aggregate value will be shown
o Grouping: Make your data more organized by grouping the data based on one column. Each group of rows can be collapsed and expanded depending on your preference
o Nested grids: See a grid of related records by expanding a row. Several rows in the grid can be simultaneously expanded
2. Modern Advanced Find:
Early access – July 23, 2022; General availability – October 2022
Through the new view management feature, users are provided tools to be more productive and collaborative. The detail of the modern advanced find is listed below:
o Access any table in a model-driven way and explore data quickly using the search and advanced features
o Apply the right lens to your data by editing columns, filtering data, and building views.
o The enhanced view selector enables users to search for a view and quickly find what they’re looking for
o Through the personalization option, managing views become much more straightforward. Users can hide and order them based on their liking. This customized view goes with you across all devices and apps, both online and offline
o Share views and manage the opinions shared with you.
3. Custom Pages are responsive automatically with Rich layouts: Public preview – October 2022
Accelerate development by including responsive custom pages in converged apps and maintaining granular control over design.
· Easy layout templates: Maintain the control and precision of canvas app development and quickly move controls from a responsive section to another
· Responsive layout templates: Enjoy the selection of rich responsive layouts for fast, responsive custom page development
· Multiple form factor support: Automatically support mobile, desktop, and other form factors with a single custom page
Power BI
Microsoft continues to invest in helping every team, user, and organization to build data-driven and informed decisions.
4. Mobile visual formatting
General availability – October 2022
As we are on our phones most of the time, this capability lets us design great Power BI reports that look fantastic on mobile devices.
5. Replace Get Data experience in the Power BI service
Public Preview – November 2022
The existing Power BI Get Data feature updates usability and discoverability. It benefits experts and self-service users to build content more easily within Power BI. The improvements include:
· Streamlining how users select data for new reports
· Simplifying report creation
· Convert the entry point for Get Data to fit the overall Power BI experience creation
6. Data protection enhancements
Public preview – April 30, 2022; General availability – December 2022
This Power Platform capability enables organizations to protect and control sensitive data through Microsoft’s robust security solutions for cloud app security and information and threat protection.
Power Automate
Formerly known as Microsoft Flow, Power Automate delivers valuable tools for improving business productivity by automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks. In the Power Platform 2022 Release Wave 2, Power Automate revolves around these four themes:
· Hyperscale Cloud RPA
· Automation for everyone
· Automation that lets you set it and then forget it
· Automation for anyone
7. Improved experience in editing expressions
General availability – March 2023
Enable makers to develop richer expressions quickly through the updated expression editor. With that update, you can add dynamic views and build multiline expressions without switching tabs.
8. Improved Power Automate mobile app for iOS
General availability – March 2023
With this improvement, users can expect a more usable and modern experience. iPhone users can create widgets, receive notifications, and trigger instant flows on the go. The new design lets you quickly view your list of approvals.
Power Pages
As the newest pillar of the Power Platform, Power Pages functions as enterprise-grade, low-code solutions to host, create and administer portals. While there’s no confirmed general availability date yet, the release wave 2 2022 focuses on the new capabilities of the design studio, templates, administration, and professional development experiences.
9. New Power Pages Site Templates
Public preview – October 2022
Though Power Pages are meant to cater to newbie and expert web developers, a blank starter canvas and two new prebuilt solution templates will be featured in the wave 2 release. It follows the following scenarios:
· Blank starter canvas – Contains one section component, header, and footer. It aims to provide developers with a blank slate to seamlessly customize sites without needing to delete sections and modify the template
· Permit Application submission template – Displays an application submission pattern and exhibits the process of creating a more complex multi-step form within a website
· New Employee Onboarding template – Highlights a checklist tracker pattern and demonstrates how to create a sequence of steps as forms that can be completed regardless of the order
10. Select Dynamics 365 website templates in the template hub
Public preview – October 2022
This capability enables developers to build Dynamics 365 website templates from the template hub. The Dynamics 365 templates, to allow user-facing functionality, will extend several Dynamics 365 apps, including:
· Community
· Customer self-service
· Employee self-service
· Partner
Additionally, environments with Dynamics 365 customer service and omnichannel are enabled to build community, customer self-service, and employee self-service sites. And settings with Dynamics 365 Sales can install the partner management template.
If you want to read the full release notes of the Power Platform Wave 2 2022, click this link. However, we should also note that the capabilities and timelines are still subject to change or cancellation. It coincides with Microsoft’s policy, which is detailed on this link.
If you’d like to directly talk to one of our experts regarding questions or more information about the release, please fill out the contact form below or email us at info@ecfdata.com.
What you should know
The Microsoft Power Platform 2022 Release Wave 2 will be rolled out between October 2022 and March 2023. However, it’s helpful to take note of these dates:
EARLY ACCESS – August 1, 2022
Beginning August 1, 2022, certain features will be available for Wave 2. This purpose is to let administrators try out some of the capabilities in a sandbox instance before its default enablement in October.
GENERAL AVAILABILITY –October 1, 2022
Between October 1, 2022, and March 2023, the deployment of the second half of the release wave will commence.
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