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6 min read

Microsoft Power Pages is bringing the new standard in secure, AI-powered capabilities

As we gather at Microsoft Build 2024, it is a moment to reflect on an extraordinary year for Microsoft Power Pages and its customers. We’re excited to announce that Power Pages monthly active website users has grown to more than 250 million!¹ We now have customers from the public sector, financial services, healthcare, automotive, and beyond rapidly deploying business website experiences. Thank you for an incredible year.
The advent of generative AI has revolutionized our approach, and we are excited to pivot towards harnessing this technology to further assist our customers. This year, we’re thrilled to unveil a suite of new features and capabilities for Power Pages at Microsoft Build. Let’s dive into how these transformative updates are poised to redefine the landscape of low-code solutions, empowering developers and businesses alike.

Microsoft Copilot transforms user experiences as they build websites with Power Pages

Microsoft Copilot supports user learning in Power Pages and stands ready to support you throughout your website building journey. It answers your questions and interacts with the Power Pages design studio, offering suggested prompts to enhance your experience. 
One of the new features it enables is the introduction of multistep forms. These are instrumental in gathering detailed data in support of complex business processes. With Copilot in Power Pages, just a few words are all it takes to design and build these forms, streamlining the process into a few simple steps and boosting productivity for makers. 

In addition to the form enhancement, the Power Pages design studio introduces modes with Copilot, designed to assist makers in understanding and leveraging copilot’s skills when building sites. This innovative experience guides makers through the capabilities of Power Pages, helping them discover and utilize the full range of copilot’s functionalities to create more dynamic and capable websites.
Copilot in Power Pages also helps professional developers receive coding assistance through Microsoft Visual Studio Code for web or desktop. Business users can also benefit from this by selecting the “explain” feature to comprehend code better and gain the confidence to modify code to meet their advanced use cases.
As your website companion, copilot is transforming the interaction of users with sites built on Power Pages. The capability of adding a copilot, built with Copilot Studio, to Power Pages sites is now generally available. This further elevates user’s interaction with your site, allowing them to ask natural language questions and receive concise responses, complete with relevant links, to enhance their website engagement experiences.
In the latest release, this feature has also evolved to understand the authentication context deeply, automatically applying table permissions to unstructured data such as knowledge-base articles and FAQs. This level of AI innovation extends to its integration with Omnichannel Customer Service capabilities, enabling a smooth transition to escalate user interactions to a live agent when needed. 

We are also revamping site search functionality in Power Pages which empowers users to efficiently locate records across Dataverse tables. The integration of generative AI is a significant leap forward as it enhances the search experience, enabling users to find the information they need more quickly and effortlessly.
With these advancements, Power Pages continues to redefine the boundaries of user experience, offering tools that are not only intuitive but also powered by the latest AI technology to ensure that users can navigate and utilize their websites with unparalleled ease.

Power Pages is bringing website security to the forefront 

For Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), and IT Administrators, ensuring the security of external business websites is a critical priority. Recognizing this, Power Pages has gone to great lengths to ensure that business websites remain secure. The introduction of the new Security workspace in the Power Pages design studio is a testament to this commitment as it enhances user experience by centralizing robust controls for authentication, authorization, and advanced security settings. This allows makers to configure web roles and pages permissions from a single, intuitive workspace. This consolidation of controls was previously fragmented, requiring navigation across multiple locations. Now, all necessary controls are accessible in one place, streamlining the configuration process and improving efficiency. This centralized Security workspace will empower makers to monitor, protect, and manage their sites with a high level of confidence.

With this release, we are also launching built-in security scanning capabilities which will allow users to identify and mitigate potential security vulnerabilities through simulated attacks, such as SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and the use of vulnerable libraries. It also provides strategies for effective remediation of these risks.

Additionally, the Web Application Firewall (WAF) is now generally available and has been enhanced to allow the implementation of custom rules. These rules, including rate limiting and bot protection, provide users with the flexibility to proactively secure their sites according to their specific needs. Moreover, we are also adding support to download WAF logs—offering users valuable insights to inform decisions and strengthen their web applications’ security. This feature exemplifies Power Pages’ commitment to safeguarding digital assets while empowering users with control and transparency. 
In line with the need for scalable governance, Power Platform Advisor has also been enhanced to include Power Pages recommendations. This will equip administrators with actionable insights and increased visibility, particularly in managing unused sites, which promotes streamlined management and optimal resource utilization.

Enhancing data connectivity with Power Pages

We are excited to announce that we are adding new virtual tables for Salesforce, Oracle, Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Fabric, enabling seamless connectivity of these data sources in your Power Pages websites. This advancement allows organizations to effortlessly connect their Power Pages websites to their line-of-business systems running on these platforms while being able to use all of the Power Pages capabilities, including role-based access control (RBAC) and table permissions.
Additionally, Power Pages is introducing a supplier self-service template built using SAP as a data source. This template empowers suppliers to manage profile updates, order lookups, and invoice creation with data stored in SAP, enhancing operational efficiency and streamlining processes. This template is customizable, enabling organizations to extend its functionality to meet their specific business needs.

These features highlight Power Pages’ commitment to providing intuitive, low-code solutions that empower organizations to create interconnected, data-rich websites with ease. 

Building dynamic websites is easier than ever for Power Pages makers

For enterprise websites, dynamic content is not just about engagement—it’s about creating interactive experiences that drive business outcomes. In this update, we are announcing native support for Microsoft Power Fx, a powerful formula language, to elevate the creation and management of dynamic content to a level that meets the sophisticated needs of enterprise sites. 
With Power Fx integrated directly into the Power Pages design studio, makers can effortlessly add dynamic content to webpages, enabling the crafting of custom user experiences that align with specific business objectives.

In addition to Power Fx, we are also launching a new set of UX Components namely Card Gallery, Breadcrumb, and Flex Containers.
Card Gallery component enables the creation of visually appealing and intuitive card layouts that are bound to data, simplifying the display of data and content, and making it more accessible and engaging for users. The Flex Container component empowers users to build custom page layouts, enhancing the design capabilities within Power Pages.

Power Pages has also enhanced the file upload experience in response to customer feedback. The file size limit for uploads has been significantly increased, with Power Pages now supporting file sizes up to 10 GB for Microsoft Azure Blob Storage-based file integrations. 
Additionally, this user experience has been improved with the introduction of a file upload progress bar, and options for downloading or deleting uploaded files, ensuring a smooth and efficient process for users.
Makers now also have the flexibility to configure storage options between Dataverse or Azure line-of-businesses, according to their needs. For pro-developers, API support for Azure Blob Storage as a file upload option will be provided, further enhancing the capabilities of Power Pages.
Power Pages is excited to be the go-to tool for creating secure, AI-enabled, data connected websites. By providing tools that are both innovative and intuitive, Power Pages empowers users to build the future of digital web experiences.

Power Pages is consistently enabling organizations globally to develop and expand their web presence effectively

Check out some of our latest customer story highlights:

How to get started

Power Pages is dedicated to providing top-tier tools that prioritize security for both developers and users. Join us as we reshape the website building experience, ensuring that every step forward leads to secure, data-driven, generative-AI enabled websites that help you scale. 

¹ Microsoft internal data.

Justin Graham