Top Announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2022

Microsoft Power Pages now generally available

At Ignite 2022, Microsoft announced that Power Pages has now reached general availability. Power Pages is an evolution of Power Apps Portals, enabling users to create and customise secure websites in a simple way, including editing pages, layouts and content.

For the full details around Power Pages, you can check out our webpage here, however, we have summarised these below:

• Easy-to-use Design Studio
• Developers can use best-in-class VS Code Web to edit source code for page-content (HTML and Liquid), pages-styles (CSS) and page-scripts (Javascript)
• Templates Hub with 16 new template options
• Learn Hub now includes a tutorials section with videos, documents and resources to guide users
• Pro-developer tools have been updated
• Security and governance updates
• Simplified licensing model; Pages will be available through pre-paid, capacity-based subscriptions and pay-as-you-go options

Co-Authoring in Power Apps

Makers in Power Apps can now work simultaneously on an app and page in the modern app designer, at the same time. Users will be able to see:

• Who else is present in the app
• What parts of the app other makers are working on
• View changes made to the app in real-time
• Add new pages and work on them without disturbing others’ work
• Tag people in comments for asynchronous communication

Co-authoring is rolling out now for makers using the modern app designer.

Use natural language and AI in Power Automate

Power Automate users will be able to accelerate automation using natural language; users can describe what they want to automate, and AI will build the flow in seconds without searching or guesswork.

Once a user selects a suggested flow, they will set up the appropriate connectors and then finalize it within the flow designer. In the create page for Power Automate, a new option will allow users to create a cloud flow by simply describing the flow, selecting the connectors and finalising the automation. This feature is now in preview.

Intelligent document processing with AI Builder

Document processing in AI Builder has been available for some time. However, at Ignite 2022, Microsoft announced that support for unsupported documents is now generally available. This means users can extract data from free-form documents, such as contracts, statements of work, and letters.

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise + Microsoft Viva Sales

The recently announced Microsoft Viva Sales (available from October 4^th 2022), is a seller experience application that brings together CRM, Microsoft 365 and Teams to transform the sales experience.

Viva Sales captures customer insights and deal insights from Microsoft 365 (including Outlook emails and Teams chats) and then populates it within any CRM system, aiming to eliminate manual data entry and give salespeople more time to focus on selling.

Additionally, while meeting with customers in a Teams call, salespeople can record and transcribe the meeting to get an in-depth summary using conversation intelligence. The meeting summary helps salespeople to better understand the overall sentiment of the call and tracks helpful conversation key performance indicators.

Viva Sales is free for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium customers and costs £37.15 per user per license for others. Conversation intelligence is available to users of both Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Viva Sales, at no extra charge.

Automated conversation summary in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Users will now have the ability to automate a conversation summary in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, when an agent uses the embedded Teams capabilities. For those who are not part of the original chat, it is easy to get up to speed by simply opting into the customer’s chat history to get full conversation visibility and context. This feature is particularly useful when agents have a customer service case transferred to them.

The feature is in preview as part of Dynamics 365 Customer Service and is expected to be generally available in October 2022.