Power BI Evolves Again in July 2025 Release

Power BI continues its steady evolution with the July 2025 update, signaling Microsoft’s commitment to delivering a more intelligent, intuitive, and deeply integrated analytics experience. This month’s release reinforces Power BI’s role not just as a reporting tool, but as a collaborative, AI-driven platform for decision-making across organizations. With a focus on user experience, governance, and smarter workflows, this update lays the groundwork for a more connected data future.

Here are some of its latest updates:

• Copilot and AI
  Tenant admins can now control Copilot’s default search behavior—limiting it to content explicitly marked Prepped for use with AI. Smarter access, safer insights.

• Reporting
  A new left-hand navigation menu in the Power BI app for Teams makes it easier to discover and access your reports without losing momentum.

• Modeling
  You can now build Direct Lake semantic models in Power BI Desktop directly from SQL and Mirrored databases in Microsoft Fabric—unlocking real-time insights at scale.

• Data Connectivity
  The Snowflake connector 2.0 is now generally available, enabling faster retrieval of large datasets without unnecessary overhead.

• Mobile
  Power BI Mobile’s Home screen is now reorganized to prioritize your most-used content—bringing insights to your fingertips even faster.

View the full list here.

Microsoft Extends “Least Active Routing” to Messaging Channels in Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Microsoft has rolled out a key enhancement to Dynamics 365 Customer Service, expanding its intelligent routing capabilities. The update brings a more refined approach to handling messaging channels, building on existing innovations in service distribution. This marks another step in Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to improving agent efficiency and customer experience.

• What is Least Active Routing?

  It’s a smart way to fairly distribute tasks by assigning conversations based on the last capacity release time of service reps — ensuring balanced workloads and better service delivery.

• Why use least active routing?

  It ensures adequate rest between tasks, better utilization, improved customer satisfaction, as well as better customer service representation.

• What’s new?

  It now factors in concurrent workloads and considers voice and messaging activity when assigning new tasks.

• Use Case 1:

  An agent with fewer ongoing chats will be assigned the next one to balance workloads.

• Use Case 2:

  If agents have equal workloads, the one who’s been idle longest and has the least capacity will receive the next chat or call.

New API feature in Dynamics 365 Contact Center enhances agent availability tracking

Microsoft has introduced a new capability in Dynamics 365 Contact Center that allows developers to subscribe to presence status changes. This update provides real-time notifications when an agent's availability changes, enabling smoother coordination across systems.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Access and update presence status: Programmatically manage service representatives' availability across systems.

• Avoid overbooking: Ensure agents aren’t assigned multiple tasks at once by keeping presence data in sync.

• Cross-platform synchronization: Maintain consistent status updates across all connected platforms.

• How it works: Retrieve or update a representative’s presence status with simple API calls.

• Subscribe to presence changes: Get real-time updates when an agent’s status changes.

New desktop companion app enhances Dynamics 365 Contact Center reliability

Microsoft has introduced a new Desktop Companion Application for Dynamics 365 Contact Center, designed to improve call reliability and reduce disruptions caused by browser crashes or refreshes. This latest enhancement empowers agents to stay connected and deliver seamless service—even when web apps fail.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Why it matters:

  DCA ensures seamless communication between service reps and customers by maintaining call connectivity when the web app freezes, refreshes, or fails.

• What it does:

  Once installed, the DCA displays key call details — including active and on-hold calls — and provides easy access to mute, end call, and connectivity status. A browser extension mirrors this for extra visibility.

• Customizable settings:

  Customer service reps can configure their preferred language, device settings, and check for updates directly within the DCA.

Power Apps June 2025 update brings greater flexibility for makers

Microsoft has released the June 2025 Power Apps update, introducing a series of improvements designed to streamline app development and enhance reusability. These updates mark another step forward in empowering makers with more flexible, efficient, and collaborative tools.

Here’s what’s new:

• Enhanced Component Properties (ECPs) – Now Generally Available

  ECPs make it easier than ever to modularize and reuse logic within your app. Even better, these components can now be shared across apps using a component library—boosting consistency and productivity.

• UntypedObject Renamed to Dynamic

  The UntypedObject data type is now called Dynamic—a name that better reflects its purpose and aligns with C# connectors. No changes in functionality, just a clearer name.

• Audit Logs: Original Choice Label Preview

  You can now audit the original user-selected label for Choice data types. This means more accurate auditing, even when labels have been updated over time.

• Reduced Downtime with Improved Encryption Processing

  Dataverse environments using customer-managed encryption keys will now come back online sooner. Environments transition to an “Encrypting-online” state once critical storage services have applied the key—minimizing disruption.

• User Defined Functions (UDFs) – Public Preview

  Write once, use everywhere. With UDFs, you can define reusable formulas to streamline logic, simplify complex apps, and improve maintenance. From calculations to database updates—UDFs are a game changer.

AI in sales gets a boost from centuries of technology shifts

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 team draws parallels between past tech revolutions—like cloud, mobile, and social—to outline strategic guidance for integrating Copilot and AI agents into modern sales practices. The piece highlights lessons in security, integration, and change management to help sellers realistically leverage AI without losing the human touch.

We've seen it before—major technology shifts that transformed the way sellers work:

• Cloud over on-prem

  The transition from on-premises to the cloud taught us the importance of scalability, seamless integration, and proactive change management—lessons that are just as critical when adopting AI.

• Mobile-first sales

  The rise of mobile apps empowered sellers to work from anywhere, at any time, showing that flexibility must go hand-in-hand with standardized tools and strong data security—principles that also apply to AI.

• LinkedIn and social selling

  The LinkedIn revolution proved that digital relationships can be just as powerful, teaching us to prioritize authenticity, deliver value through content, and measure what really matters—insights we should carry forward with AI.

Power Automate and Copilot Studio receive major DLP upgrades

Microsoft has unveiled a major set of enhancements to Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies in Power Automate and Copilot Studio. These updates mark a significant leap forward in governance, scalability, and control for organizations automating processes across cloud and desktop environments.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s new:

• What is DLP?
  Data Loss Prevention lets admins govern data access across Power Automate flows (cloud & desktop) and Copilot Studio agent flows.

• Flow-Level Enforcement
  DLP policies—managed in the Power Platform Admin Center—now automatically evaluate flows during editing and saving. If policies change, non-compliant flows can be suspended, and blocked connectors disabled.

• Trigger Blocking
  Admins can now block specific triggers, just like actions, offering more granular control over automation behavior.

• Endpoint Filtering (Public Preview)
  A powerful new preview feature lets you restrict browser automation in desktop flows to approved websites only—ideal for securing high-risk scenarios.

• Environment Variables for Endpoints
  Now you can define endpoints dynamically using environment variables in your policies:
  @environmentVariable("variableName") — simplifying solution migration.

Power Apps unlocks new customization potential with AI integration

Microsoft continues to push the boundaries of low-code innovation within the Power Platform. A new update empowers app makers to create more intelligent and tailored experiences in model-driven apps. This move builds on Microsoft's broader strategy to deepen AI integration across its business solutions.

Here’s what’s new:

• Agent APIs

Programmatically interact with Copilot Studio topics using two key methods:

- executeEvent: Trigger a topic based on a registered event and get a structured response

- executePrompt: Send a natural language prompt and receive a dynamic Copilot response

Both methods are available via Xrm.Copilot and PcfContext.Copilot.

• Agent Response Component

Easily add Copilot-powered responses into model-driven forms with a drag-and-drop component. It supports markdown, adaptive cards, images, and video—enabling rich, dynamic UI content.

Bringing vision to apps: .NET MAUI introduces multimodal intelligence

Microsoft is making it easier for developers to integrate vision intelligence into their apps with the latest advancements in .NET MAUI. By combining AI and multimodal input, developers can now create richer, image-aware experiences beyond traditional text-based interactions.

Here’s how you can let users capture or select images—and have AI extract actionable data to create projects and tasks in your app:

• Step 1: Launch the Camera

  From the floating action button on the MainPage, users can tap the camera icon, instantly navigating to the PhotoPage. Here, the MediaPicker API handles photo capture and selection.

• Step 2: Handle Media Input

  The PhotoPageModel manages image input using the EventToCommandBehavior triggered by the PageAppearing lifecycle event.

• Step 3: Capture or Select Based on Device

  Decorated with [RelayCommand], the PageAppearing method dynamically decides whether to launch the camera or file picker—using .NET MAUI’s cross-platform APIs like DeviceInfo and MediaPicker to abstract away platform differences.

• Step 4: Display and Interact

  Once the image is received, it’s displayed alongside an optional Editor for user instructions. The prompt is built using StringBuilder, and an instance of IChatClient (from Microsoft.Extensions.AI) handles both text and image data using ChatMessage, which combines TextContent and DataContent.

New .NET 10 sample shows how to create image descriptions using local AI

Microsoft has released a new .NET 10 sample that demonstrates how to generate alternative text for images using C# and local AI models. This new capability allows developers to create accessible and SEO-friendly applications without relying on cloud services. By combining local inference with simple code, it’s now easier than ever to enhance user experience in a privacy-first way.

Here’s what you need to know:

• What is Alt Text?

  Alt (alternative) text helps screen readers describe images to visually impaired users. It also boosts SEO and improves overall user experience.

• Use Local AI Models with Ollama

  Ollama supports vision-capable models like gemma:3, llama3.2-vision, and mistral-small3.2 ideal for analyzing image content and generating rich, natural-language descriptions.

• Run C# Like a Script

  With .NET 10, you can now run C# files directly using dotnet run. This makes it easy to script tasks like image processing and automation.

• See It in Action

  Save your code as alttext.cs, then run it with dotnet run alttext.cs followed by your image path. Ensure Ollama is running and that the image path is valid.

• Pro Tip:

  If your image is large, resize it before encoding. It’ll reduce request size and speed up model inference.