Enhancing Microsoft Copilot with the flexibility of Power Apps

As we covered last month, Microsoft have been bridging the gap between Copilot and Power Apps. As this functionality has reached Preview, we can now detail how this works.

There are three main areas of improvement:

Enhanced Copilot intelligence in model-driven apps

We’d already seen last year how Copilot can bring intelligence to a model-driven app with Smart Paste, making form-filling a breeze, but now with Copilot functionality reaching general availability within model-driven apps, users can now query using natural language their business data from within apps such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service or even Custom Apps.

Without even being on a specific screen within the app, queries such as ‘show me today’s cases’ or ‘how many new leads have we had today?’ will return accurate results and let you navigate to those records in a single click.

Bring your Model-Driven Apps into Copilot

Currently in Preview, it’s now possible to not only query your App data, but to also create and update that data, all without leaving Copilot. This is achieved by asking questions of the specific App agent, whether it be Sales, Service or a custom app. A couple of examples of this functionality can be seen below.

1. Asking Copilot for a list and being presented with a clear and attractive data view:
   
2. Asking Copilot to create a new record and being presented with a data entry form:
   

This functionality is not just available from within the main Copilot chat window – it can be called upon within Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. providing a context-aware link between your on-screen information and your business apps.

Custom tools in Copilot

What if you need to go beyond views and forms of data within Copilot? With custom tools, currently in Preview, it’s now possible to generate custom visualisations that appear in Copilot but are grounded in your Model-Driven App’s data. While this is an advanced technique that involves configuring your App’s MCP Server and generating custom JSON widget code, it does provide the ability to generate almost any kind of visualisation. For some examples of the type of thing that can be achieved, click here. For advanced users who want to experiment with their own custom tool, these are the steps that need to be followed:

1. Enable your App’s MCP server – Open your Model-Driven App in Power Apps, select the App MCP icon in the left nav, and choose Set up MCP.
2. Add custom tools – In the Tools section of the App MCP tab, select Create custom tool. Give your tool a clear name and description (Copilot uses these to decide when to invoke it), write the Dataverse query instructions, or prompt using input parameter, and finally test the JSON output.
3. Attach a widget (optional) – Generate a widget for your tool using the /generate-mcp-app-ui skill and JSON tool output above. Test locally and then paste it into the tool’s UI field on step 2 of the tool editor.
4. Deploy – Download the updated app package and upload it to Microsoft Teams or publish it through the Microsoft 365 admin center for your organisation.

Summary

Although Microsoft have obviously been busy expanding Copilot’s capabilities, it’s good to see them bringing them together, with a goal of creating a seamless experience for the end user. By bringing business apps and Copilot closer together, users will become more efficient and achieve more with their data. If you are an existing Strategy 365 client and want to discuss using this new functionality in your own environments, get in touch with one of our experts to discuss your requirements.

References:

• Public Preview: Your business apps, now part of every conversation
• Making business apps smarter with AI, Copilot, and agents in Power Apps
• Custom tools and rich UI for app-based conversations are now in Public Preview