How Power Platform Copilot Can Help You Build Apps Faster and Easier with Natural Language

How Power Platform Copilot can transform your app development

Have you ever wished you could build and use apps faster and easier with natural language? If so, you might be interested in Power Platform Copilot, a next-generation AI tool that can act as your virtual consultant across Power Apps.

In this blog post, I will share with you what Power Platform Copilot is, how it can help you create apps, data tables, and logic using natural language prompts, and what benefits it can bring to you and your end users.

What is Power Platform Copilot?

Power Platform Copilot is a cutting-edge AI tool that leverages large language models to help you build and interact with software applications. It works as a conversational assistant that can understand your natural language inputs and generate Power Fx code, data tables, app layouts, and insights for you.

Power Platform Copilot can help you in two ways: as a maker and as a user.

As a maker, you can start with a few words in natural language, such as “create a time and expense application” or “build an application to automate the manual process of creating and approving customer invoices”, and watch Copilot instantly generate your application, complete with a data table and back-end logic (pretty advanced logic at times, I might add). You can also use Copilot to edit and improve your app by asking questions or giving commands in natural language, such as “add a column for status” or “how do I filter the data by date?”. Copilot will provide suggestions, examples, and documentation to help you along the way.

As a user, you can use Copilot to get intelligent insights about the data in your apps through a conversational chat experience. You can ask questions in natural language, such as “what is the average time spent on each project?” or “who are the top performers this month?” and Copilot will provide answers, summaries, charts, and recommendations for you. You can also use Copilot to interact with external websites or content sources, such as news articles or social media posts, and get relevant information for your app context.

How to use Power Platform Copilot?

To use Power Platform Copilot as a maker, you need to have copilot features enabled at the tenant level. You can detect whether you have access by opening the Power Apps maker portal and whether you see the copilot natural language input box or not. You can type or speak your natural language to input your request and you can also use voice input by clicking on the microphone icon.

To use Power Platform Copilot as a user, you need to have access to an app that has the Copilot control enabled. The app maker can add the Copilot control from the Insert menu in the Studio. When you open the app, you will see the Copilot icon on the bottom right corner of the app screen. When you click on it, you will see a chat window where you can type or speak your natural language inputs. You can also use voice input by clicking on the microphone icon.

What are the benefits of Power Platform Copilot?

Power Platform Copilot can bring many benefits to both makers and users of apps. Here are some of them:

• Save time: You can build and use apps faster and easier with natural language instead of coding or clicking. You don’t need to spend time searching for documentation or tutorials, as Copilot will provide them for you.
• Learn new skills: You can learn Power Apps and Power Platform concepts from Copilot as you build and use apps. You can also learn from the Power Fx code that Copilot generates for you.
• Get proactive recommendations: You can get suggestions from Copilot on how to improve your app design, functionality, and performance. You can also get insights from Copilot on how to optimize your data analysis and decision making.
• Improve user experience: You can provide a conversational and personalized experience for your app users with Copilot. You can also enable them to access information from multiple sources without leaving your app.

A Game-Changer for App Development and Usage

Power Platform Copilot is a revolutionary AI tool that can transform how we build and use apps with natural language. It can help us save time, learn new skills, get proactive recommendations, and improve user experience. If you are interested in trying out Power Platform Copilot for yourself, you can check out this learning path by April Dunham or this video for more details. You can also join the Power Apps Community to share your feedback and ideas with other makers and users.

I hope this blog post helps you understand what Power Platform Copilot is and how it can help you create amazing apps with natural language.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. Thank you for reading! ??