Power Platform | Known Issues

Have you heard about the „Low Code Approach“ podcast hosted by the trio Sean Fiene, Ken Auguillard, and Wendy Haddad? I recently listened to their latest episode featuring Mansi Malik, who discussed Known issues. Indeed, you read that correctly – it’s a feature within the Power Platform Admin Center that has just entered public preview.

Have you ever encountered a situation where Creators face an issue within Power Apps Maker Studio, preventing them from performing a specific task? An internal operational model may exist where initially, a Power Apps champion assists the creator with the problem. However, there are instances where the complexity of the issue exceeds the employee’s knowledge, necessitating the exploration of external resources for a solution or the need to open a support ticket with Microsoft.

Screenshot of the Power Platform Admin Center with the Help + support section and Known issues tab

The Known issues (Preview) feature is particularly useful for verifying whether an issue is already recognized by Microsoft support teams. It may be an issue that is currently being addressed or one that has already been resolved. For further details about this feature, including access permissions and the types of information available, refer to the technical documentation.

The visual above indicates an active issue in Microsoft Dataverse concerning record creation within a virtual table via OData. This is an area you can certainly explore further for more details.

Screenshot of a drill-in to a specific Known issue

The excellent news is that every URL linked to a Known issue can be bookmarked for easy access. This is particularly useful for tracking the progress on an issue. The screenshot provided above also displays the potential impacts on the products you use. Occasionally, you may find that the Microsoft support team has offered a potential workaround.

Screenshot of a resolved ssue with a workaround provided

Whether or not a workaround is available often depends on its potential to be disruptive. Microsoft’s overarching mission when releasing fixes or new features is to avoid interrupting any production operations. This means that providing a workaround isn’t always the optimal choice, and in some cases, none may be offered. Instead, one may need to await a fix that will be released at a later time.

It’s rare to see a team being so open about discussing their known issues almost publicly. As a long-term customer of Power Platform, you may have noticed the openness to receiving both positive and negative product feedback, which helps elevate the product through continuous improvements. The new section in the Power Platform admin center is further testament to the enhancements made based on feedback from the remarkable community and, of course, the customers.

Let me wrap up by introducing another screenshot.

Screenshot of the product categories you can select of

This screenshot shows the range of product categories available for selection. It encompasses more than just Power Platform-related offerings. You can find Dynamics 365 and associated products, including Microsoft Copilot for Sales, in this selection, and it would not be surprising if this list continues to expand.

Explore the new capabilities and feel free to integrate them into your issue/support mitigation process. Let’s enhance this feature by providing feedback, either through a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a known issue or by using the general Feedback button. Until then,…

Power Platform | ColorCloud or what´s your AI ambition?

Last Thursday and Friday, I had the honor of attending the inaugural edition of ColorCloud Hamburg, a conference dedicated to Microsoft Business Applications, held on April 18 and 19 in Hamburg, Germany. The event is compared to artists wielding a vast array of colors, intended to ignite creativity, inspiration, and learning. Participants were treated to two days of diverse content spanning six tracks, featuring a day of workshops followed by a day brimming with sessions. The conference was crafted for everyone, from novices to seasoned professionals, to learn, exchange ideas, and devise solutions. And I have to say: The organisation team put together an incredible inclusive and outstanding program for speakers, volunteers, Hackathon- and conference attendees as you might get from the following image collection.

Some impressions from the very first edition of ColorCloud, Hamburg 2024

Not only did I (also known as Will) had the chance to demonstrate the remarkable RAG (retrieval augmented generation) blackbox – a component of Copilot, with my friend Chris Huntingford (also known as Do-It), and steal the show as Will & Do-It, but I was also chosen to be part of the jury for the Hack the prism: The AI hackathon, a pre-day event hosted by William Dorrington, Chris Huntingford, Scott Durow, and Carl Cookson.

I had the privilege of observing the convergence of humans and artificial intelligence. Attendees were reminded that the crux of the work lies in representing the ‚why‘ and ‚how‘ — convincing a group of C-level (the wonderful judges: Sara Lagerquist, Scott Durow, Christiane Stieler and myself) that AI can play a crucial role in addressing the greatest challenge for company leaders: demonstrating and proving the business impact of their use-case, which is basically proving out ROI and getting support of such initiatives internally afterwards.

While the competition among the various use-cases presented was close, it served as a reminder that every company leader should be able to articulate their AI ambitions. Following analysts like Forrester, their research indicates that only 15% of companies report being very effective at demonstrating the business impact of an AI solution. Conversely, 58% acknowledge that they are not effective in this regard.

Gartner´s Analyst Mary Mesaglio, recently sharing at their ThinkCast Podcast series insights about how we both trust and distrust digital technology through what she calls digital disinhibition and algorithmic aversion. Interestingly enough, the example she brought up for digital disinhibition relates to the winning team use case of the Hack the Prism AI challenge – a human feels more comfortable telling their deepest, sometimes darkest truths to a machine, rather than to a human. The use of AI in mental health is a trending topic. Although it may not have been the original intention of the innovators, it’s clear that with the aid of generative AI, we are on the brink of something significant, tasked to transform our personal lifestyles.

As we conclude this fantastic conference, I would like to present the components of Retrieval Augmented Generation that Chris (also known as Do-It) and I (also known as Will) have showcased in a non-technical manner.

Visual of the ingredients

When playing around with those ingredients, it is also important to understand the workflow behind this, or what would be practically known as a good recipe to mix those ingredients for best results.

The RAG workflow and some typical comments we see

The best method to discover great recipes is to either experiment independently or learn from the community, similar to how we prepared for this unique explanation of RAG. If you’ve been part of this, I hope you appreciated the alternative approach by Will and Do-It. For those who missed it, our session deck is available for download.

Hope to see yours soon at one of the upcoming community events. Until then,…

Power Platform | UPD: Copilot Governance

As the imminent Release Wave 1, 2024 approaches rollout to customer regions in the EU, it’s time to provide an update on Power Platform Copilot Governance options. I have previously discussed conducting a risk assessment without the prolonged commitment of a long-term project, and beginning to utilize the latest generative AI capabilities to allow employees to reap the benefits.

Microsoft equips Power Platform admin teams with two key areas within the Power Platform Admin Center to monitor and control the usage and behavior of Copilot in Power Platform. These two areas are the tenant settings and the individual environment feature settings.

Tenant settings

Let´s start on the tenant side first and take a look at this updated visual on options for controlling the behavior of Copilot.

Visual outlining tenant level Copilot governance options

There are three significant updates at the tenant level. The first is the announcement MC724165 on March 5th, 2024, where Microsoft declared that setting #1 mentioned in the above visual is no longer applicable to Copilot in Power Apps broadly. Instead, this setting will now only pertain to preview features. Consequently, the control level for generally available Copilot features in Power Apps has shifted to the environment level.

Secondly, there is a new tenant-wide opt-in switch that allows users to provide feedback on their product experience, specifically related to Copilot. Additionally, you will find a general product feedback switch at the tenant level. Thirdly, a new Copilot data collection switch has been introduced, which governs the permission for users to share their prompts, questions, and requests with Microsoft. When we talk about these sharing experiences keep in mind that data could leave the EU data boundary.

Environment level

Next, let’s examine the environmental level to see which control capabilities have recently emerged.

Visual outlining environmental level Copilot governance options

You may notice new settings in your environment for controlling the Copilot experience within the editor, as well as for data analysis using a chat interface in canvas and model-driven applications. Additionally, a new feature setting should appear to control the recently announced AI form fill assistance.

Wrap up

The recently introduced controls should make an administrator’s life easier by allowing them to grant just-enough-access to Copilot experiences within the Power Platform. User-driven innovation can now be enhanced with generative AI features within the Power Platform, and there’s more on the horizon. For those still skeptical about the overall use of Copilot, I strongly advise reading my suggested approach for conducting a risk assessment and documenting current capabilities to obtain approval from the entities that should be part of a comprehensive company AI companion strategy. I´ve recently talked about this during the Power Platform 24 hours community event. Please find the deck here. Until then,…

Power Platform | Boost developer productivity

Low-code platforms like Power Platform are a revolutionary approach to software development that reduce the need for extensive coding knowledge and enable users to build applications using drag-and-drop components and data model-driven logic. These platforms offer several advantages for developers and businesses, such as

• faster development speed,
• simpler creation process,
• and wider accessibility.

However, low-code platforms also face some challenges or reservation in the developer community, such as limited customization, scalability issues, and vendor lock-in.

What AI does for Power Platform

In this episode, we will discover how Power Platform can solve these problems using AI technologies, and why CIOs should encourage their developers to adopt Power Platform low-code tools in their development process.

Why CIOs should motivate developers to use Power Platform

Low-code platforms like Power Platform can boost developer productivity and innovation by offering the following benefits:

• Speed and Simplicity: Power Platform enable developers to create applications faster and easier than traditional coding methods, reducing the time-to-market and the backlog of IT departments. Developers can focus on the core functionality and value proposition of their applications, rather than spending time on tedious and repetitive coding tasks.
• Flexibility and Customization: Power Platform is enhanced with AI technologies that offer intelligent code generation, code assistance, and integration capabilities. These AI tools can help developers to customize their applications to meet specific business or user needs, and to optimize their performance and scalability. Developers can also access and manipulate the underlying code when needed, giving them more Control and flexibility over their applications.
• Collaboration and Democratization: Power Platform enable non-technical users, or „citizen developers,“ to participate in ALM development process, fostering cross-functional collaboration and innovation within organizations. Developers can work with business analysts, domain experts, and end-users to gather feedback, iterate on ideas, and refine their solutions. Power Platform also democratize development, allowing more people to create and use applications without depending on IT departments. See the raise of Business Technologists, I was talking about previously.
• Quality and Maintainability: Power Platform can reduce the risk of technical debt, which can slow down innovation and hinder long-term success. By using visual development tools, automated testing, and built-in best practices, Power Platform can help developers to deliver high-quality software solutions with fewer defects and lower maintenance costs. Power Platform can also leverage AI to detect and correct errors, suggest improvements, and learn from developers‘ coding styles.
• Competitiveness and Future-Proofing: Power Platform can help developers and businesses to stay ahead of the competition and adapt to changing market conditions. By using Power Platform, developers can deliver sophisticated, scalable, and highly customized solutions more efficiently than ever before, creating a competitive edge and driving growth. Power Platform can also help developers and businesses to future-proof their solutions, by enabling them to integrate with new external systems, scale dynamically, and leverage the latest AI technologies.

How developers would benefit from democratized experience

By using the best of two tools, developers can leverage their experience, capabilities, and speed to create a conversational user experience with their data. Microsoft provides an implementation guide with best practices that can be downloaded and followed by each development team.

Couldn´t it be done with a single tool instead?

Azure OpenAI On Your Data is a powerful capability that transforms the way you connect, interact, and ground your data. When combined with Microsoft Copilot Studio, it offers several benefits:

1. Enhanced User Comprehension: By leveraging Azure OpenAI On Your Data, you can create personalized copilots that provide a user-friendly conversational experience. These copilots help users better understand information and context.
2. Faster Task Completion: The integration of Azure OpenAI On Your Data with Copilot Studio expedites task completion. Users can quickly obtain relevant insights, answers, and recommendations from their own enterprise data.
3. Operational Efficiency: Copilot Studio, powered by Azure OpenAI Service, streamlines workflows. It automates tasks that require natural language understanding or code generation, saving time and reducing costs.
4. Improved Decision-Making: With access to advanced AI models such as GPT-35-Turbo and GPT-4, you can make informed decisions based on accurate analyses of your data. Azure OpenAI On Your Data enables you to chat on top of and analyze your data with precision.
5. Customization: Fine-tune AI models using your own data and hyperparameters. This customization ensures that the copilots align with your specific needs and domain expertise.
6. Security and Privacy: Copilot Studio inherits your organization’s security, compliance, and privacy policies for Microsoft 365.

To get started, connect your data source using Azure OpenAI Studio and begin asking questions and chatting on your data. Now it´s your turn to explore these capabilities and decide on making a significant difference on reducing the time-to-market. Still need more information than just this?

Take a look at this nice prep´d and orchestrated video by Lisa Crosbie and another one by Scott Durow who narrows down on Dynamic Chaining and Plugin actions. Happy watching. Until then,…

Power Platform | Securing copilot development

In my previous article, I proposed the idea of creating a copilot developer experience that allows developers to work together on designing and building copilots, specifically when using generative AI and using company data sources for grounding. I also mentioned the documentation that I found, which had this statement: To share a bot with others in the environment, users must have the Environment maker security role.

Share copilot dialog

I wanted to test it in one of my development environments where my Power Admin (who has the Environment Maker and System Administrator roles) created a copilot. To collaborate with user Carl (who only has the Basic User role), I shared the copilot with him. However, since he doesn’t have enough environment permissions, the dialog above shows that the Environment maker role is automatically selected when sharing.

I wonder if there are other options besides assigning the Environment maker security role to all developers in an environment. This might be suitable for some developer collaboration scenarios, but it seems to violate the principle of least privilege. The Environment maker role grants access to 164 tables and 8 miscellaneous privileges. Are these all necessary for copilot development?

Design a Custom Copilot Author security role

I created a custom security role and set the table permissions that a user would need to use this role. The visual above shows that my role only contains 65 tables and 5 miscellaneous privileges, which are not visible in the image. I assigned this role to one of my developers, Sanjay, in this environment. Here is the outcome.

Share copilot dialog – showing a difference in Environment security roles section

As you can see, the Environment maker security role is no longer pre-selected. So, I completed the sharing process and logged in as Sanjay to examine the outcome of sharing the copilot.

A shared copilot in edit mode experience

My user can interact and collaborate with the original copilot author seamlessly and enhance the copilot experience. This was a successful outcome of creating a custom security role and assigning this role to my developer before starting the sharing process. For daily use, I can now make sure that my copilot developers get the new security role automatically – for example, by creating a security group that assigns this role to every member.

Share copilot dialog – sharing a shared copilot with a user with insufficient permissions

The final step was to test what happens when Sanjay shares the copilot with other users. The image above shows the outcome of his attempt to share it with Carl, who is not a developer in this environment and only has the Basic user role. This is an excellent result, because Sanjay does not have the permission to „promote“ Carl to an Environment maker. This way, I can ensure that I have control over the access level for my developer environment(s).

Share copilot dialog – sharing a shared copilot with a user assigned the custom copilot security role

Suppose this project requires another developer and Julian needs to work on this copilot. The share dialog visual above shows the result of Sanjay sharing the copilot with Julian. Copilot permissions are already set, and there is no Environment security section to avoid unnecessary access. Julian can then interact and collaborate with the other copilot developers on this project.

This brief exercise demonstrates that it is sometimes valuable to understand the underlying mechanisms and explore the custom options to enhance the security of your Power Platform environments and to monitor the developers who are granted privileges. I hope this exercise encourages you to invest your time in a Power Platform environment strategy that includes the security role assignment process. I am confident that there is more to discover when we discuss using „Managed environment“ and features such as Environment groups. Until then,…

Update: As I received a lot of requests around how such custom security role could look like, please find my composed security role here.

Power Platform | Copilot Risk Assessment Pt. 8

This is the final part of our mini-series on Copilots in Power Platform for creators. Before we get into it, I want to show you another visual that I use in customer briefings. This one is talking about the principles of Zero Trust. You might have heard of them in different context already.

Visual of eight building blocks for applying principles of Zero Trust to Power Platform Copilots

Let me share with you all the links from above visual. Those are:

• Zero Trust principles
• protect the data
• gaining access
• device management and protection
• protecting your Teams
• monitoring
• FAQ for Copilot data security and privacy for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

To work effectively with copilots in your company, you should be familiar with these principles. Keep in mind that there are usually two kinds of copilots. A Copilot in experience is a companion for someone who uses one of the Power Platform tools to create, edit or update something. A Copilot for experience is a companion for someone who operates within the context of a Power Apps application, for example. And because of this, we do find the architectural diagram shared in my last post be a good candidate as a template, but it needs to be modified in terms of which Copilot we´re talking about.

Your Microsoft 365 team may have already inspected some of these aspects before implementing the Copilot for Microsoft 365 experience. To avoid duplication of work, you should coordinate with them and use any relevant findings for your Power Platform documentation.

So what has been uncovered in our mini series beside additional links and content to study? Let´s take a look again. First we´ve explored the following Copilots in Power Apps and Power Automate:

Summary of Copilots for creators – Power Apps and Power Automate

The visual above may help you to memorize the capabilities better. Even though we did not test all of them, we did assess that the risk of using them in correlation with oversharing any company data is something you could include in your risk assessment documentation now.

Summary of Copilots for creators – Power Pages and Copilot Studio

Moreover, we have examined the Copilot experience in Power Pages. Although we have not discussed how to create new copilots or customize Copilot for Microsoft 365, the above visual provides some information that may assist you in preparing your risk assessment documentation.

This is the last post in our mini-series on risk assessment documentation. I hope you found it useful and informative, and that it will help you when you need to create such a document. Maybe in the future, we can explore other topics related to Copilots, such as how they can assist admins or end users. Copilots are still evolving and improving, and we can expect to see many new features and enhancements. The key thing is to get familiar with AI, as it is here to stay. Until then,…

Power Platform | Copilot Risk Assessment Pt. 7

After us taking a look into almost all of the Copilot experiences in Power Platform for creators, shared some initial insights and useful resources for further learning, today I want to talk about a possible format of a risk assessment documentation.

A good way to start this initiative is to identify who should be part of it. Since we have multiple experiences to consider and we don’t want to hinder the productive use of Copilot for too long, we should avoid being the bottleneck. Therefore, we should form a project team for this task. We should also consult with key stakeholders from both business and IT to understand their requirements. In some cases, it might be wise to involve the workers council at an early stage. We should ask our CISO to be the project sponsor for this initiative.

A copilot for every Microsoft Cloud experience

A possible improvement is to verify whether a similar initiative is already in progress or concurrent. As mentioned earlier, some of the architectural design aspects are quite similar and we could eliminate redundant steps and leverage key insights from other projects, such as the risk assessment content that our Microsoft 365 colleagues may have created for their evaluation of Copilot.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 architecture as picked up from learn.microsoft.com.

For instance, suppose your colleagues have gone through this learning material and encountered the diagram of an architecture shown above. Your team may want to adapt this diagram for the Copilot in Power Platform experiences and make some changes to it. A common misconception that we have hopefully addressed throughout this mini series is that pre- and post-processing services are the same for Power Platform. Nevertheless, the diagram is a good layout template for further documentation.

Depending on whether the environment is in the US- or the EU region, we have observed different responses. Therefore, our risk assessment documentation should address these differences, especially if our organization operates in multiple regions and uses different environment regions in our tenant. To clarify this in my customer briefings, I am sharing with yours this visual:

Visual – Does my Data leave EU boundary?

The links included are:

• Microsoft Cloud enables customers to keep all personal data within European Data Boundary – EU Policy Blog
• Microsoft EU Data Boundary Overview | Microsoft Trust Center
• Legal Docs | Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Enable copilots and generative AI features – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Privacy Statement – Microsoft privacy
• Introducing the Microsoft Copilot Copyright Commitment
• Microsoft Services Agreement

This visual helps to provide more context on the services and sources being involved. Often times, I am adding the following visuals to outline, where you could get all these links from.

Power Platform Copilot Governance – Tenant level

Power Platform Copilot Governance – Environment level

Not many people would have done this task so far – honestly, who reads the terms and conditions so carefully in case of following the links provided in addition? Back to our documentation, what should it look like?

Our first chapter should be about describing the purpose of this risk assessment and documentation. It should be outlined where readers might be able to follow-up with their questions or feedback. As this document would receive updates over the course of time, it´s a good idea to add a versioning and summarize changes made to the document in an appendix.

And what about the rest of it? That´s something for the next time. Until then,…

Power Platform | Copilot Risk Assessment Pt. 6

Let’s move on to the next step in our mini adventure. We are exploring how to create a risk assessment document for Copilot experience in Power Platform. We have already checked out the creator companion in Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Automate Desktop. Now, we will dive into Power Pages Design Studio.

Copilot in Power Pages Design Studio

We asked for assistance with a summary of the last 10 emails we received, but instead of getting a summary, we encountered a wizard experience that guided us to create a Power Pages site. We quickly created a site and assumed that the Copilot experience from the Homepage was only for creating or designing a site.

After creating a site, our Copilot companion is just a click away and, as shown in the image above, the greeting is much shorter this time.

Copilot in Power Pages Design Studio – after site created

Our next step is clear: we are going to prompt with a challenge. This time, the challenge is to receive a summary of the last email received. However, the response we get is a kind of an error message. Is there a technical glitch going on? We prompt again, but the response does not change, as you can see from the visual above.

We continue to check if Bing Search and the content of learn.microsoft.com are involved in any way. So we inquire about the Power Pages licensing. But Copilot doesn’t seem to have any idea on how it can assist us with this. Is it the prompt that’s causing the problem?

Copilot in Power Pages Design Studio – after site created

Here is another way to ask the same question, but the answer or reply does not change. This Copilot does not use Bing Search or any content from learn.microsoft.com. However, we can use it for other tasks in creating our site, as shown in the following prompt where we add a new section. This task is completed without any problems.

Therefore, there´s one last check which is about availability of Copilot in Power Pages. Microsoft informed us that our environment must be located in the United States or Europe regions as a prerequisite. However, when I selected a different environment, I received this:

Copilot in Power Pages Design Studio – this time selected an environment in EU region

The visual above shows the Copilot icon as available, but clicking on it does not open Copilot. Hovering over the icon reveals an issue with either the admin settings or the global region. I am confident about my admin settings (you can see that my region is enabled for data movement on generative AI features), so I assume it is simply not yet ready and more work is needed to make it usable in other regions.

Nevertheless, what remains is sharing with yours where to find more details on new AI features in Power Pages, so please have a look at:

• Create an AI-generated site using Copilot (preview)
• Create an AI-generated webpage using Copilot (preview)
• Add an AI-generated form using Copilot (preview)
• Add an AI-generated multistep form using Copilot (preview)
• Add AI-generated text using Copilot (preview)
• Add an AI-powered chatbot (preview)
• Force Bing webmaster to index your site (preview)
• Add AI-generated code using Copilot (preview)

As you can see, there are many ongoing developments in preview at the moment and we can expect more enhancements to appear before this feature becomes generally available. Therefore, when creating a risk assessment document, we should plan to review this chapter in our document accordingly.

We have reached the end of our mini adventure exploring Copilot experiences in Power Platform for creators, but there is more to come. However, let’s take a break for now as we have covered a lot of content so far. Don’t miss the next episode. Until then,…

Power Platform | Copilot Risk Assessment Pt. 5

I appreciate your interest and comments on my short series. In the previous article, we explored Copilot in Power Automate experience. Today, we will examine Power Automate Desktop.

As this Copilot experience is currently only available in environments located in the United States, it might be less relevant depending on your tenant setup, but we can be sure this experience shortly becoming available in additional regions as well.

Copilot in Power Automate Desktop

A message appears when we launch Copilot from the header bar in Power Automate Desktop. It says „Get all your questions answered about Desktop Flows in Power Automate by asking Copilot.„. Let’s ask for help with summarizing my last 10 emails received. As I mentioned before, Copilot for Microsoft 365 can assist me with this task. However, the response is different this time. It shows me a step-by-step guide on how to accomplish this task using Power Automate Desktop.

Next, I will test Copilot´s knowledge of the Connectors Framework by asking if Copilot can help me connect to my internal SAP system. As you can see from the response shown in the image above, we are given again a step-by-step guide here.

Copilot in Power Automate Desktop – when editing a flow

Next, we will open an existing flow in Power Automate Desktop and use the Copilot experience to help us with some common tasks. As shown in the image above, my first prompt is to create a flow that starts Excel. Unlike the Copilot experience in Power Automate cloud flow, I expect it to add an action to my flow instead of just giving me a suggestion.

However, I get another step-by-step guide on how to do this. So far, Copilot in Power Automate Desktop has not been very helpful in creating a flow for me. This is a significant contrast to the Power Automate cloud flows experience. Let’s see how we can use some advanced features that involve Bing Search. I repeat my question about licensing here and I get a detailed answer that explains the different licensing options.

Copilot in Power Automate Desktop – edit a flow

Let’s review some actions after this check. Can Copilot help me add a new action to the current flow definition? The visual above shows that it cannot. There is one more thing I want to test. What happens if I try to add a file by dragging and dropping it?

Okay, this is not available at the moment. To wrap-up what I see Copilot in Power Automate Desktop experience being capable of, is:

• Get me information on possible solutions to solve a specific problem
• Help me with an understanding on licensing implication

This is a combination of Azure OpenAI and Bing Search features. I find it impressive that Copilot provides us with references for the answers – a major difference to other experiences. I suggest you look at the following material from Microsoft on better understanding this Copilot and creating content for our risk assessment documentation:

• FAQ for Generative Answers in Power Automate for desktop
• Responsible AI FAQs for Power Automate
• FAQ for Copilot data security and privacy in Microsoft Power Platform

That’s all for today, but we’re not done with the series yet. Can you guess what’s coming up next? Don’t miss the next episode where we’ll explore Power Pages Design Studio. Until then,…

Power Platform | Copilot Risk Assessment Pt. 4

Welcome back to my small series, I hope you enjoyed previous article. Today, let´s switch gears and tool and check out on environments in the EU using the same prompts in Copilot experience for Power Automate cloud flows and analyze the results and where they might offer valuable insights when writing an internal risk assessment documentation. Are you ready?

Copilot in EU Power Automate Studio – after flow being created

As you can see in the image above, I have enabled both Generative AI features in the EU environments that I am using. This allows you to replicate the same tests. I tried to challenge Copilot again, like I did before, but instead of using my prompt to access information from Microsoft Graph – as Copilot for Microsoft 365 would do – Copilot only helped me with creating and editing a flow.

After creating the flow, I asked Copilot again to help me with some Power Automate licensing information. As you can see from the image above, it was able to assist me with that. However, since the Copilot experience does not provide any information on the sources, I cannot tell if this information comes from Power Automate docs or Bing Search, which is using content from learn.microsoft.com.

One more challenge to see if context outside of Power Automate can be used where Bing Search could be involved. But again, a negative response for that.

Copilot in EU Power Automate Studio – performing an action

I performed another cross-check on the action that my prompt instructed Copilot to insert a SharePoint action. I got the same result as the tests that ran in the US environment. So it seems that there is no difference in that.

Copilot in EU Power Automate Studio – one more challenge

I had to try one more time to challenge Copilot. It had previously answered that it could only respond to questions about Power Automate in English. What would happen if I asked for information on Power Apps instead? There is some connection between Cloud flows and Power Apps apps, such as the ability to run them within an app context.

As you can see from the visual shared above, it does help with this. So there must be some knowledge given by either Power Apps docs in terms of licensing or is it using Bing Search and learn.microsoft.com content? If you follow this table shared in the admin section of Microsoft Copilot Studio it might be critical to see it using Bing Search.

As I said in my first article, this journey began when some CISOs asked me to help them create a risk assessment document and give them advice on how to best evaluate and compare Copilot experiences. And a good summary of it so far would be, there´s no one-size fits all.

A copilot for almost every Power Platform experience

So far, we have explored Copilot in Power Apps Studio and Copilot in Power Automate experiences. We have noticed some similarities (such as their contextual awareness), but also some differences in how they provide responses. As the visual above shows, there are many more Copilot experiences that we could examine.

To create a risk assessment documentation, we need to understand some more of the architectural concepts of a Copilot. How does a LLM (Large Language Model) process my user prompt? Is it directly send to the LLM? Or is there any pre- or post-processing involved? If so, what services or data sources are used for this?

Something to look for in my next part. Until then,…