10 highlights of 2022 Release Wave 2

How time flies! 2022 Release Wave 2 plans are already here. The Release Plans describe new functionality planned to be rolled out from October 2022 to March 2023. In this post I have picked 10 features that I want to highlight from the Power Platform release plan. Remember that the plans are living documentation, features can be added or removed and dates might change. It’s time to prepare for the wave and let the plans give you 💡 for future solutions!

The following highlights are brought up in this post. Do read the plans, since there are many more new features introduced.

End user collaboration

• Use Teams chat with others in app, track as activities (Power Apps)

Connect to data not in your Dataverse environment

• Connect to external data from Dataverse (Power Apps)
• Connector provider for non-tabular virtual tables (Dataverse)
• Virtual tables between Dataverse instances (Dataverse)

New configuration possibilities

• View form updates to command bar, BPF, header, tabs (Power Apps)
• Power Fx for Business Rules (Dataverse)

New dev possibilities

• Use optimized APIs for bulk data operations (Dataverse)
• Conditional execution, plug-ins (Dataverse)

Power Automate cloud flows helpers

• Improved experience for selecting dynamic values (Power Automate)
• Greater control over connection reference creation and reuse (Power Automate)

Use Teams chat with others in app, track as activities

We already have Microsoft Teams integration possibilities for Dynamics 365, Overview of Microsoft Teams integration. There is also a Microsoft Teams Connector which can be used e.g. to automatically create a Microsoft Teams team from a model-driven app, also for non Dynamics 365 based apps.

A new feature in this wave is to have Teams chats in model-driven apps, giving end users the possibility to start multiple Teams chats with colleagues who are working with the same record, without leaving your app. All chats are shown in a side-panel on the right side. Track chats as chat activities in the timeline and under activities.

Public Preview: October 2022, GA March 2023.

Connect to external data from Dataverse

We have had the possibility to work with external data in Dataverse even though the data is not located in Dataverse with the help of virtual tables. In this wave, it looks like we will get new possibilities to create tables from external data and data sources mentioned are SQL Server, Excel file or Microsoft List. It is mentioned that we will be able to interact with that external data as if it’s part of Dataverse and the examples Dataverse table with data from Excel in OneDrive or SQL Server in Azure are brought up.

Looking at the picture, it seams it is an example without using the concept of solutions, time will tell when this new feature will be ALM friendly.

Public Preview: October 2022, GA: January 2023

Connector provider for non-tabular virtual tables

More possibilities for connecting to external data. Users will be able to use a connector provider to build virtual tables that can use data from sources that do not use a standard tabular format. These data sources include Azure Data Lake, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, and other sources.

Public Preview: December 2022, GA: Mars 2023

Virtual tables between Dataverse instances

Here is yet another external data possibility. This one might be useful for larger organizations where there are several production environments and there is a need to share some of the data. Users will be able to use virtual tables between two different Microsoft Dataverse environments. A virtual table in one Dataverse environment can provide access to data in a different Dataverse environment.

Public Preview: January 2023, GA: To be announced.

View form updates to command bar, BPF, header, tabs

Form component which will support rendering model-driven app forms that can be used on another form or added to pages including dashboards and views in model-driven apps. Configure command bar, business process flows, show or hide tabs and form header. Looks like we will get new ways to work with data in our apps and a possibility to build apps with less clicks for the users hopefully.

Public Preview: August 2022, GA: October 2022

Enable Power Fx in Dataverse business rules

When Power Fx was introduced we knew that it would be expanded to other parts of Power Platform than just Canvas Apps. We then got Power Fx in model-driven commanding and Power Fx in Dataverse (for Teams) columns. At Build 2022 Power Fx for PVA was announced. In this wave, we will also get it for Business Rules.

Public Prevew: September 2022, GA: November 2022

Use optimized APIs for bulk data operations

New APIs to enable greater throughput for operations on multiple records. To optimize bulk data operation performance, three new messages will be introduced: CreateMultiple, UpdateMultiple, and UpsertMultiple.

These new messages will not replace existing API patterns using $batch or ExecuteMultiple, but for tables where bulk operations are common it will be recommended to use the CreateMultiple, UpdateMultiple, and UpsertMultiple messages.

Public Preview: October 2022, GA January 2023

Enable conditional execution for improved plug-in execution efficiency

Plug-in calls are presently unconditional, which requires Microsoft Dataverse to execute each plug-in call and return the execution results back to the caller as a response message. For improved system performance, conditional execution of plug-ins will be introduced, so that Dataverse can execute the plug-in only when the specified condition is met. The condition is provided during the plug-in registration process.

Public Preview: December 2022, GA: January 2023

Improved experience for selecting dynamic values

View datatype when selecting a dynamic value! This will be useful and make it easier to choose the correct column when adding dynamics values in our Power Automate cloud flows.

GA: Mars 2023

Greater control over connection reference creation and reuse

This feature was in my post 2022 Release Wave 1 – First impressions, which means it was moved to a later wave. As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, that is normal and can happen. Since it will improve our ALM experience, it makes the cut for this post as well. As one can read in the plan, this feature gives more control to cloud flow authors when creating and reusing connection references during flow creation.

GA: November 2022

As mentioned in the beginning of this post, do read the release plans. Also don’t forget to take a look at the Early Access features to plan what you can try out in a separate safe environment before the wave reaches us.

All pictures in this post, except for the cover photo, are from the release plans.

Cover Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash.