Build 2024: Copilots for Developers, Power Platform Updates

Microsoft’s “Book of News” for Build 2024 mentions the term “copilot” exactly 100 times across its 35 pages, second only to “AI,” which clocks in at over 130 references.

Many of these capabilities target businesses and end users, of course. But as a platform maker, Microsoft also creates copilots for developers, like GitHub Copilot, and it provides tools so that these developers can create their own copilots and extend the capabilities of existing copilots.

And Microsoft made several announcements today that address those latter needs. Plus, some related Power Platform updates.

The biggest news in this space is that Microsoft is unifying all its Microsoft Copilot extensibility methods, including plugins and connectors, into a single, unified construct called Copilot extensions. Developers can create Copilot extensions using Copilot Studio or the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. And Microsoft will use these extensions to enhance Microsoft Copilot across its many endpoints—the web, Windows, Microsoft 365, and so on—by enabling new actions and custom GPTs with grounded knowledge bases.

As for Copilot Studio, Microsoft’s graphical copilot creation tool is gaining a new set of capabilities, now in early access, that help developers create copilots that act like agents, orchestrate business processes, integrate line of business (LOB) data, and publish Copilot extensions. Copilot extensions will be published through Partner Center to app stores in Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Outlook.

To better align Copilot Studio and the Power Platform, Microsoft is bringing Copilot connectors to Copilot Studio in preview that can ground copilots using Microsoft Graph and Power Platform connectors, AI skills in Microsoft Fabric (in private preview), and Microsoft Dataverse.

Microsoft is also updating Power Automate with new capabilities, including an AI flows feature that uses generative AI to autonomously build flows. The user just describes what they wish to achieve using natural language, and the AI determines which steps and actions are required to achieve that outcome. Power Automate is also getting a generative AI-based AI recorder that lets users describe the actions rather than going through the exact keyboard and mouse actions. A similar tool will help Power Automate users on the desktop create rules-based flows more easily using natural language.

Related to this, Microsoft Power Apps is getting native Git integration so that developers can sync their Power Apps environment and Git repositories.

“By connecting the two, development teams will be able to see and track all changes, quickly and seamlessly integrate their development processes, quality tools and best practices directly into their Power Apps environment and reduce the time it takes to build an app,” Microsoft explains. “Unlike previous application lifecycle management (ALM) tools that were complex to set up and required makers to jump between toolsets, Git integration and pipelines in Power Platform will be available for all makers, will be on by default, and will drive consistency of ALM processes and governance across projects.”

Finally, GitHub Copilot is gaining Azure Migrate skills to help developers get answers and recommendations for Azure Migrate.