Our Top Picks from the Microsoft Power Platform 2022 Release Wave 2 Plans

Twice a year, Microsoft publishes the Wave Release Plans that detail new features and capabilities coming to Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. For this wave (2022 Release Wave 2), features will roll out between October 2022 and March 2023.

As there are so many new features, we cover the Dynamics 365 applications in a separate blog post, which you can find here.

Key dates:

August 1st 2022: Early Access Available

From August 1st 2022, Wave 2 Early Access will be available for particular features. This will allow administrators to test certain capabilities in a sandbox instance, before they are enabled by default from October.

October 1st 2022: General Availability

Deployment of the 2022 Release Wave 2 will commence on October 1st 2022 and continue until March 2023. A more detailed schedule of the rollout and regional deployment dates will be published nearer the time, which we will continue to monitor and update you on.

Below, we detail our top pics across Power BI, Power Pages, Power Apps and Power Automate. Click one of the below headings to skip to that section:

• Power BI
• Power Pages
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Full Release Notes

Replace Get data experience in the Power BI service

Enhancements are being made to the current Get data experience, to provide a better user experience. This will help both self-service and pro users of Power BI create content more easily and successfully in the Power BI service.

Improvements include:

• Changing the entry point for Get data to better fit within the overall Power BI creates experiences
• Streamlining how users create new reports in Power BI
• Simplifying how users select data for new reports

This feature will be available for public preview in November 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2022wave2/sales/dynamics365-sales/try-enhanced-sequence-creation-experience-new-designer

Mobile visual formatting

Creators will now have more flexibility and design options for creating reports that are optimised for Power BI mobile apps. The visuals will be formatted specifically for mobile layout and the format pane will be available in mobile layout view for all reports.

This feature will be generally available in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-bi/ga-mobile-visual-formatting

Power Pages was recently announced as a new application within the Power Platform. It is essentially an evolution of Power Apps Portals, and is a solution for creating, hosting, and administering modern external-facing business websites.

We have previously published a blog post that provides more information about the launch Power Pages and its initial capabilities, which can be found here.

Although Microsoft has not yet confirmed when Power Pages will reach general availability, they have released several new capabilities across the application within this release.

Configure basic forms in design studio

Users can build and configure basic forms from the Power Pages design studio, with capabilities including:

• A simplified experience for adding file upload support to a form
• Form column configurations, including updating a label and adding a tooltip to a column
• No-code styling user interfaces for basic forms

This feature will be generally available in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-pages/configure-basic-forms-design-studio

Template hub

The template hub provides a set of predefined industry-specific and cross-industry website patterns available to users when creating new sites.

This feature enables users to create websites using various Dynamics 365 website templates from the template hub to extend their Dynamics 365 applications, such as:

• Customer self-service
• Partner
• Community
• Employee self-service

This feature will be available for public preview in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-pages/select-dynamics-365-website-templates-template-hub

New Power Pages templates

Two new prebuilt website templates and a blank starter canvas will be available within this release. These templates will be focused on the following scenarios:

• Blank starter canvas: Used mainly by professional developer makers. It has a header, footer, and one section component. Developers can easily create customised sites without having to delete or modify pre-built templates
• Permit Application submission template: Highlights an application submission pattern and showcases how to create a complex multi-step form inside a website
• New Employee Onboarding template: Features a checklist tracker pattern and showcases how to create a series of steps as forms that can be completed in any order

This feature will be available for public preview in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-pages/select-new-power-pages-site-templates

Grid control enhancements

In the previous wave release, we saw editable grids come into play, and this wave brings further enhancements to grid controls. Microsoft is rolling out more features that enable us to do more, like nested grids and grouping, so users will be able to expand and show additional data where necessary.

• Nested grids: Expand a row to see a grid of related records. Multiple rows in the grid can be expanded simultaneously
• Grouping: Organise tabular data in interesting ways by grouping the data based on one column. Each group of rows can then be expanded and collapsed as required
• Aggregation: Enable aggregation on one or more numeric columns in a grid. For each column, users can choose to see the total, minimum value, maximum value, or average of values from that column. If grouping has been applied to the group, then this aggregate value will also be displayed for each group

This feature will be available for public preview in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/grid-control-support-grouping-aggregation-nested-grids

Modern advanced find turned on by default

With Modern Advanced Find, you can access any table in a model-driven app through search and use advanced filters to explore the data easily. The legacy advanced find experience is being replaced with the Modern Advanced find, allowing users to:

• Explore any table in a model-driven app through structured search and filters
• Edit columns and filter data and construct views that will help you filter your data
• Search for a view and easily find the view that you’re looking for with the enhanced view selector
• Personalisation options allow you to build your own set of views. You can also hide views and order them differently. Your personalised view list travels with you across all apps and devices both in online mode and in offline mode
• Collaborate with your team by sharing views easily and managing the views shared with you

Find out how to work with the Modern Advanced Find in our recent blog post.

This feature will be available for early access in August 2022 and generally available in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/modern-advanced-find-turned-default

Power BI quick reports in Power Apps

Users can create reports in the Power BI service starting with a view in a model-driven app. Power BI automatically generates the visuals for you, so you can quickly start exploring the data.

The capability to enable Power BI quick report visualisation on a table on an existing app is generally available. All new apps have this capability enabled by default, with the app setting still available for makers to disable.

Users can also easily save their Power BI report to their desired workspace, so it can be accessed anytime.

This feature will be available for public preview in August 2022 and generally available in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/power-bi-quick-reports-power-apps

Use Teams chat with others in app

Users can start multiple Teams chats with colleagues without leaving your model-driven app. Easily find existing chats related to a record or start a new chat with anyone else who is working on the same record.

All chats are shown in a side-panel on the right, and are also tracked as chat activities in the timeline and activities views.

This feature will be available for public preview in October 2022 and generally available in March 2023. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/use-teams-chat-others-app

Connect to external data from Dataverse

Microsoft Dataverse has supported virtual tables for a long time, and although they are incredibly useful, they can be difficult to set up.

As part of this release, users will soon be able to connect to existing data sources, such as SQL Server, Excel file, or Microsoft List with Microsoft Dataverse and interact with that external data as if it’s part of Dataverse.

This feature will be available for public preview in October 2022 and generally available in January 2023. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/connect-external-data-dataverse

Fully responsive custom pages

Custom pages combine the power and control of canvas apps with the model-driven world. Within this release, Custom Pages are being extended to introduce more tools to support users creating responsive layouts, whilst maintaining the precision of canvas apps.

feature highlights include:

• Responsive layout templates: Choose from a selection of rich responsive layouts for quick, responsive custom page development
• Easy layout configuration: Easily move controls from one responsive section to another in layouts
• Multiple form factor support: Support desktop, mobile and other form factors automatically with a single custom page

This feature will be available for public preview in October 2022 and generally available in January 2023. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/custom-pages-are-responsive-default-rich-layouts

Create and join Teams meetings in-app or from appointments

Users can add Microsoft Teams meetings from an appointment in a model-driven app. You can also join a Teams meeting with a single button-click from the appointment or the timeline control.

Previously, this feature was an opt-in through the environment settings earlier, it’s now enabled by default for all appointments in tenants that use Teams.

This feature will be available for early access in August 2022 and generally available in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-apps/create-join-teams-meetings-in-app-or-create-join-meetings-appointments

Improved Power Automate mobile app for iOS

Improvements to the Power Automate mobile app for iOS provides an updated, modern experience for iPhone users. This brings the mobile experience more aligned to the Power Automate website experience.

Users can receive notifications, trigger instant flows on the go, create widgets and easily view your list of approvals.

This feature will be generally available in March 2023. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-automate/improved-power-automate-mobile-app-ios

Sequential approvals

This new feature allows users to create more complex approval workflows within Microsoft Teams and using Power Automate flows.  Users can define multiple levels/stages and who needs to approve a flow at each level.

The approval request only proceeds to the next stage after all the approvers in a previous stage have approved. If someone rejects at any time, the flow is considered rejected and will not be passed on to subsequent stages. All approvers can see the history of the approvals at each stage and the outcome.

For an introduction to Microsoft Approvals using Power Automate, check out our blog post.

This feature will be generally available in October 2022. Find out more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2022wave2/power-automate/support-sequential-approvals-power-automate

Hopefully this article has provided you with an insight into some of the features that will be included in the Power Platform 2022 Wave 2 Release. At Pragmatiq, we are excited about what these new features will mean for businesses, enabling businesses to achieve more with their technology.

You can access a full breakdown of the features on the Microsoft website here:

• Power Platform
• Dynamics 365

If you have any questions about the release, or would like to learn more about the Microsoft Power Platform, please contact us. Fill out the contact form below and a member of our team will be in touch shortly, or if you’d prefer, email us at info@pragmatiq.co.uk or call us on 01908 038110.