Microsoft announced the 2023 release wave 1 on the 25th January, I have always hated the way that Dynamics and Power Platform releases were announced and found the documentation lacking, having a M365 background I always felt they communicated the releases way better. Well it seems like I wasn’t the only one and MS have finally got the Microsoft Release planner (dynamics.com) site, and its glorious. Easy to navigate and find out what’s coming.
In this post we will look at our top 5 features coming (disclaimer: this is on first glance)
Number 1
and top of the excitement list is under Modern user experiences is the ‘Build canvas apps by using new and refreshed controls’ feature and will be in public preview Feb 1st.
The controls really haven’t been refreshed since Power Apps was released, yes the so called modern controls introduced for DV4T were supposedly the new modern controls, but MS never really released these into the Premium versions, for a while there was a button on the menu to allow you to choose which type of controls to use but quickly disappeared. You can copy the modern controls into Power Apps outside of DV4T and this has led to some messy apps which needed refactoring.
Hopefully all the Fluent UI REACT controls will finally be available as first party controls, the creator kit has shown this is possible and Power Apps is significantly behind in the low-code space for its controls.
Excitement Factor 10
Number 2
Anyone who builds canvas apps will know the effort it takes to create truly responsive apps, containers are great, but its one of those features you wish was pre-configured, all our templates include multiple layouts. Well the next feature on the list is going to make this a whole lot easier. A new feature coming in July ‘Drag and drop to build responsive pages more easily’, drag and drop features have been sorely lacking in Studio and this is a good step forward, building single canvas apps for all form factors can take a lot of time and effort currently.
Excitement Factor 8
Number 3
I am a big fan of virtual tables, being able to do CRUD functions on data sources outside of Dataverse but using the Dataverse connector is an amazing feature but it is a Premium feature as it’s Dataverse! So a new wizard to create them is going to make the feature even easier to use, ‘Create virtual tables easily in the Maker Portal’ feature is already out in Preview and loving it so far!
Excitement Factor 8
Number 4
Building on Named Formulas the feature ‘Reuse Power Fx formulas with user defined functions’ is next on the list, in moving from AppOnStart to ‘Loading Screen’ and Named Formulas app loading has become a lot more efficient since these functions are non-blocking.
Currently we implement logic, like many others, using hidden buttons on a screen and calling the OnSelect to execute the Power Fx code. This will mean fewer controls needed on screens simplifying the screen complexity. This I feel is a more pro than lo code feature as I think the syntax will take a bit of learning and very welcome but you starting to need a more enhanced knowledge of coding to appreciate this.
Excitement factor 7
Number 5
on the list is ‘Enhance delegation for UpdateIf and RemoveIf’, the feature states,
This feature will allow Power Fx to delegate the UpdateIf and RemoveIf functions to be executed on Dataverse. They won’t be subject to delegable limits. It will allow the delegation of greater than 2,000 records
Enhance delegation for UpdateIf and RemoveIf | Microsoft Learn
and for me any feature that enhances delegation is a step forward, especially when building scalable apps working with large datasets.
Excitement factor 5
That’s it for this article we will look at more of the new features soon!
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