Microsoft Brings Natural Language App Building to Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio

Microsoft is expanding app development in Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio, allowing users to build full-stack business applications through natural language. The new capabilities bring app building closer to everyday conversations while connecting applications to enterprise data and business systems.

This update gives organisations another way to turn ideas into connected business applications, with app building now becoming a more integrated part of the Copilot experience.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Build Apps Through Conversation

  In Copilot Studio, choose App (Preview) from the home screen, or invoke the /app skill in Copilot Cowork to get started. You can iterate through conversation, preview the app, and even review the underlying code, giving both everyday users and experienced developers the flexibility they need.

• Connect Apps To Business Data

  Apps built with Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio can use connectors to work with business data and organisational context through Work IQ. This means apps can do more than surface information—they can help users take action and write results back to the systems where work happens.

• Build With Enterprise Governance In Mind

  Apps are full-stack solutions built using open standards, with support for Git-backed source control, deployment stages, and version isolation. Microsoft Entra identity, organisational data policies, connector controls, and centralised visibility through the Microsoft 365 admin centre help IT teams maintain oversight throughout the app lifecycle.

• Start Building With Copilot Studio

  App building is available today through the Frontier programme using the /app skill in Copilot Cowork, while native app building in Copilot Studio is rolling out in public preview. Once available in your environment, you’ll be able to describe an app in natural language, publish it, and make it discoverable through managed enterprise applications.

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Power BI Q&A Retirement Extended to February 2027

Microsoft has provided an updated timeline for the retirement of Power BI Q&A, extending the retirement date to February 2027. The extension gives organisations more time to assess their existing Q&A dependencies and prepare for newer, Copilot-powered alternatives.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Understanding the Q&A Retirement

  The retirement covers both the end-user Q&A experiences and the associated Q&A configuration tools in Power BI. Microsoft recommends Copilot-powered experiences as the alternative where available and appropriate.

• What to Expect in February 2027

  Starting in February 2027, Q&A will no longer work in Power BI, and the Q&A visual will be removed. Existing reports containing Q&A visuals will display an error where the visual previously appeared.

• Expanding Access to Copilot

  Copilot is now available across Fabric capacities starting at F2, giving organisations with smaller capacities more options for evaluating Copilot. Fabric Copilot Capacity (FCC) can also now be created on F2 and higher capacities, providing an optional way to centralise Copilot usage for assigned users, including Pro and PPU workspaces.

• Planning for Embedded Q&A

  There are currently no plans for a direct Copilot replacement for embedded Q&A PaaS scenarios. Organisations using embedded Q&A should begin evaluating alternatives, including supported SaaS experiences, Narrative visuals, smart narrative summaries, and Fabric IQ MCP Server.

• Copilot and Sovereign Cloud Considerations

  Copilot does not yet support sovereign cloud environments due to GPU availability. Organisations relying on Q&A in these environments should review their dependencies and discuss migration options with their Microsoft account representative or support team.

• Preparing for the Transition

  Start by identifying your existing Q&A dependencies across reports, dashboards, mobile experiences, embedded solutions, and Q&A configuration artefacts. Then evaluate migration paths, confirm Copilot availability and requirements, test alternative experiences, and communicate planned changes well before February 2027.

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Power Pages: Enhanced Data Model Migration Utility Is Now Generally Available

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the Standard Data Model (SDM) to Enhanced Data Model (EDM) migration utility in Power Platform CLI. The update also adds support for four key Dynamics 365 portal templates, making it easier for organisations to move existing Power Pages sites to the Enhanced Data Model.

Here’s what you need to know:

• A Simpler Path to Enhanced Data Model

  The migration utility is now generally available and can move supported site configurations and related records from SDM to EDM before switching the site to the new data model. It also provides an enhanced customisation report, migration status checks, and rollback capabilities to help you manage the process.

• Four Dynamics 365 Portal Templates Are Supported

  The migration utility now supports four key Dynamics 365 portal templates, making it possible to migrate these sites from SDM to EDM. Supported templates include Customer Self-Service Portal, Employee Self-Service Portal, Community Portal, and Partner Portal.

• What EDM Brings to Your Sites

  EDM provides more modern application lifecycle management by making site configuration solution-aware and allowing sites to move alongside their apps, flows, and tables through Dataverse solutions. EDM sites also provision faster, receive platform updates automatically, and provide access to new Power Pages features built on the Enhanced Data Model.

• Getting Ready for the Migration

  To begin, make sure you have Power Platform CLI 2.11.2 or later, the required Dataverse and Power Pages Core packages, and a supported site template with its corresponding EDM template installed. You’ll also need the appropriate administrator permissions and should follow Microsoft Learn’s step-by-step guidance to generate the customisation report, run the migration, verify its status, and switch your site to EDM.

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Copilot Studio Expands Agent Capabilities with GitHub Copilot Harness

Microsoft has announced a new wave of updates for Copilot Studio, introducing the generally available GitHub Copilot harness alongside new capabilities designed to help agents handle more complex, reasoning-heavy work. The updates also bring reusable agent skills, richer organisational context, memory, connected agents, workflows, and additional tools to help organisations build more capable and scalable AI agents. These updates mark a broader shift in Copilot Studio from building individual agents toward creating more intelligent, extensible agent solutions that can reason, collaborate, access context, and take action across complex business processes.

Here’s what you need to know:

• What is GitHub Copilot harness?

  The GitHub Copilot harness provides a foundation for building reasoning-heavy agents and workflows that can dynamically determine how to approach a goal. It orchestrates models, context, tools, MCP servers, connected agents, skills, and other capabilities so agents can adapt their execution instead of relying solely on predefined paths.

• Enhance Your Agents with Skills, Tools & Connected Agents

  Skills provide modular, reusable capabilities, while connected agents can delegate work to specialised agents for more complex scenarios. Workflows and MCP servers can also give agents access to deterministic automation and external services, helping teams build solutions that are more reusable, extensible, and scalable.

• Provide Richer Context with Knowledge, Memory & Files

  Copilot Studio now offers more ways for agents to understand the organisation, the task, and the individual user through capabilities such as Work IQ, Foundry IQ, memory, and file handling. These capabilities can help agents work with organisational information, remember relevant context, analyse substantial documents, and complete more complex tasks with less repeated input from users.

• Explore the Agents' Governance Capabilities

  New governance capabilities give administrators greater control through agent-level identity, MCP server certification, and environment-level telemetry. Together, these features provide clearer identity, trusted connections, and deeper operational visibility as organisations scale their use of agents.

• Reach Customers Across Voice & Digital Channels

• Real-time agents are expanding beyond voice with support for digital messaging channels, allowing organisations to create more consistent customer experiences across interactions. New voice capabilities, including GPT-5 Chat in preview and Application Insights monitoring, also provide more flexibility for custom voice experiences and performance management.

• Build Better Agents with More Tools

  Copilot Studio continues to expand its model and harness options, including the general availability of Claude Sonnet 5 and GPT-5.5 Chat as primary models. These choices give makers more flexibility to select the right combination of reasoning capabilities and predictable execution for each agent scenario.

• What's Next?

  These updates represent more than a collection of new features—they provide building blocks for agents that can reason, act, collaborate, use context, and work across complex business processes. The bigger question is no longer just “What can an agent do?” It’s becoming “What work is your organisation ready to give it?”

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Microsoft Benchmarks Power BI Architecture Choices for Azure Databricks

Microsoft has published a new performance benchmark exploring how different Power BI architecture and storage-mode choices perform when reporting on data stored in Azure Databricks.

The analysis compares multiple approaches to serving the same Delta tables, giving Power BI developers and data teams a clearer view of the performance trade-offs involved. In this article, we take a closer look at what was tested and what the results could mean for your reporting architecture.

• What’s Being Compared?

  Microsoft’s latest white paper compares four different approaches for serving the same Delta tables to Power BI reports when Azure Databricks is the data source. It looks at Direct Lake on OneLake, Direct Lake on mirrored Unity Catalog tables, DirectQuery on a Databricks SQL warehouse, and Composite Models with import-mode aggregations.

• What Do the Results Show?

  There’s no universal winner, but clear performance patterns emerge across the different scenarios. Direct Lake on OneLake performed well across the broadest range of situations, particularly for smaller and mid-sized volumes and frequently accessed Power BI reports.

• The Fastest Pattern at Scale

  When working with billions of rows, Composite Models with aggregations delivered the fastest and most consistent results in the benchmark. Queries resolved by the aggregation tables stayed below 100ms, although queries that fall through to the underlying DirectQuery source can lose that advantage.

• What Should You Take Away?

  Performance varies depending on data volume, cache state, filtering scenarios and query type, so the headline results don't tell the whole story. The white paper provides the detailed benchmark results and testing methodology to help you assess which approach makes sense for your environment.

• One Important Consideration

  The comparison reflects a point-in-time benchmark from June/July 2026, and both Power BI and Azure Databricks continue to evolve. Use the findings as a guide, then validate the results against your own data, workloads and user behaviour.

Read the full white paper to explore the benchmark results, test setup and performance breakdowns in detail.

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Power BI Refreshes Sample Reports with Modern Visual Defaults

Microsoft has refreshed its Power BI sample reports with modern visual defaults, bringing a cleaner and more consistent look to the examples users rely on for inspiration. The updated 2026 sample reports showcase the latest reporting experience while giving users a practical way to explore the changes in Power BI.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Experience Stronger Semantic Models

  What happens behind the visuals matters just as much as what you see on the report page. The refreshed samples demonstrate clearer naming, descriptions, measures, formatting, relationships, and reusable modelling patterns.

• A More Modern Report Experience

  The refreshed reports bring together a cleaner, more consistent design with updated visuals and improved navigation. They also introduce features such as larger canvases, mobile layouts, report page tooltips, the new card visual, date pickers, and button slicers.

• Refreshed Sample #1: Revenue Opportunities

  Explore a revenue-pipeline report that combines a Shape Map, report page tooltip, and combo chart. Hover over data points to uncover additional context without leaving the page.

• Refreshed Sample #2: Regional Sales

  This sales report now takes advantage of the larger canvas, new card visual, page navigation, Shape Map, and improved table and matrix layouts for a more structured analysis experience.

• Accelerate Your Own Refresh with AI

  You can apply similar ideas to your own reports with Skills for Fabric and Copilot for Power BI. Use AI to explore your data, shape report content, and identify opportunities to modernise your reports—then bring in your own business context and design judgment.

• Ready to Try the Refreshed Samples

  Explore the updated reports, review their semantic models and mobile layouts, and discover design patterns you can adapt to your organisation.

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Power Apps Canvas Authoring Agent Plugin Is Now Generally Available

Microsoft has announced the general availability of agentic coauthoring in Power Apps canvas apps, bringing AI-assisted development into production workflows. The Canvas Authoring Agent plugin allows makers to work alongside coding agents to build and modify canvas apps while maintaining control over the development process.

Here’s what you need to know:

• How Agentic Coauthoring Works

  With canvas apps agentic coauthoring, you can confidently integrate AI-assisted authoring into your production development workflow. Delegate large, complex, or repetitive tasks to an agent, then switch to direct editing whenever you need greater precision or want to manage your token usage.

• Your App. Your Workflow. Your Way.

  With the canvas apps authoring plugin, both makers and agents can contribute to the same app through a shared authoring model, allowing you to create screens, connect data, update Power Fx formulas, and review changes as you go. You can move between agent-assisted and direct editing whenever it makes sense, while choosing your preferred coding agents and managing how you use your token budget.

• Let Agents Handle the Heavy Lifting

  Through a dedicated toolset powered by an MCP server, agents can help create and modify canvas apps and screens, inspect controls and data sources, understand schemas, configure controls, and write or update Power Fx formulas. They can also validate changes and synchronise them with a live coauthoring session, giving you more time to focus on reviewing, refining, and directing the overall app experience.

• AI That Works With You, Not Without You

  Agentic coauthoring is designed to give makers more leverage—not take them out of the development process. You decide what to delegate, what to edit yourself, and where AI can add the most value, while keeping the governance, security, testing, accessibility, and deployment practices of traditional canvas apps.

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Visual Studio Adds Per-Solution Colour Themes

Microsoft has introduced a handy way to distinguish between multiple Visual Studio instances with per-solution colour themes. The feature lets developers assign different themes to individual solutions, making it easier to identify the right project at a glance when switching between windows.

Here's how:

• Give Each Visual Studio Solution Its Own Colour

  Open Tools > Options, then find the Applies to dropdown at the top of the window. Switch from your user profile to the current solution and choose a colour theme that will be associated with that solution.

• Changes Apply Instantly

  There's no need to restart, click an Apply button, or take any extra steps to see your changes. The updates take effect immediately. For best results, use contrasting colours for your solutions, such as Dark for the service, Blue for the client, and Light for the sandbox.

• Take Your Settings With the Solution

  Per-solution settings are stored in a settings.VisualStudio.json file in your solution's root folder, allowing your team to use the same colour settings when they clone the repository. Alternatively, you can add the file to .gitignore if you want to keep your settings personal.

• Keep Your Global Settings Separate

  Solution-level settings don't overwrite the preferences you use across every project. Simply switch the Applies to dropdown back to your user profile whenever you want to change your default Visual Studio settings.

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Visual Studio Makes GitHub PR Reviews Easier

Microsoft has shared a new guide showing developers how to review and manage GitHub pull requests directly within Visual Studio. The walkthrough highlights a more integrated PR review experience, helping developers inspect changes, leave feedback, approve and merge work, and bring Copilot into the review process without switching between tools.

Here’s how:

• Find Your Pull Requests

  Open the pull requests for your repository by selecting Git → GitHub → View Pull Requests, or search for the command using Ctrl+Shift+P. Visual Studio groups pull requests by those assigned to you, all PRs in the repository, and even PRs created by Copilot on your behalf.

• Review Code and Leave Feedback

  Open a pull request to view its description, existing comments, and changed files, or open it in a new tab for more screen space. You can explore code differences with syntax highlighting, switch between the full file and a condensed summary, and add inline comments directly alongside the relevant lines.

• Approve and Merge with Confidence

  When the changes are ready, select Approve to update the pull request status on GitHub. You can also merge the PR immediately or configure auto-merge while waiting for the required checks and repository policies to be completed.

• Bring GitHub Copilot into the Review

  Need a second opinion while reviewing? Add the pull request to a Copilot chat using Add to Chat or reference it with #pullrequest:<id> to give Copilot the context it needs to help you explore the proposed changes.

• Keep Your Pull Request Workflow in Visual Studio

  Reviewing and actioning pull requests is a regular part of development, and switching between multiple tools can interrupt your workflow. With Visual Studio, you can review code, collaborate with your team, work with Copilot, approve changes, and merge pull requests from one integrated experience.

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Visual Studio August Update Brings Smarter AI and Git Workflows

Microsoft has released its August 2026 update for Visual Studio, bringing new improvements designed to give developers greater control over their development workflows. The update focuses on smarter AI-assisted development and more flexible ways to manage Git branches and repositories.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Fine-tune AI thinking for every task

  Choose the level of AI reasoning that best suits your development task to balance speed, response depth and token usage. Set it to Low for straightforward questions and code suggestions, Medium for your daily development tasks, or High for complicated algorithm, architecture, and bugs.

• Share custom agents across your organisation

  Teams can now create and share custom agents across repositories for more consistent development workflows. Organisation-level agents help Copilot follow shared processes and expectations.

• Easily access your Copilot usage

  Keep track of your Copilot plan usage directly within Visual Studio. View your usage details by selecting View all Copilot usage and receive notifications when you’re approaching your limit.

• Work on multiple branches with worktrees

  Work on multiple Git branches simultaneously without having to stash your current changes. Each worktree provides a separate working directory, making it easier to switch between tasks.

• Manage Git submodules more easily

  Visual Studio now provides improved support for managing Git submodules within your repositories. A dedicated Submodules section makes it easier to add, update and delete submodules while keeping your repository organised.

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