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2023 Release Wave 1 - The 5 best new features planned for Power Apps 2023
January 29. 2023
The 2023 Release Wave 1 plan describes Power Platform features that are scheduled for release between April 2023 and September 2023. What features have been planned for Power Apps? In this post, I summarise the notable enhancements that are planned for Power Apps.
Last week, Microsoft published the Release Wave 1 plan for
2023 - the plan that outlines the upcoming Power Platform features for
the year.
To provide some background, there are two release 'waves' each year. Wave 1 defines the features that are scheduled for release from April to September, whilst Wave 2 defines the upcoming features that are scheduled for release from October to March of the following year.
To provide some background, there are two release 'waves' each year. Wave 1 defines the features that are scheduled for release from April to September, whilst Wave 2 defines the upcoming features that are scheduled for release from October to March of the following year.
The release plan is contained in a 167 page PDF document, which we can download from the following page:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2221557
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2221557
This
plan covers the upcoming enhancements across all products in the Power
Platform and the more exciting feature that are planned for Power
Apps include the following.
1 - User-defined functions (create reusable formulas)
By far the most exciting announcement is the introduction of user-defined functions. At the moment, there's no way to define a function in a central location that can be called from multiple places. This means that to reuse a formula, we need to make multiple copies. This makes it difficult to maintain an app because we need to update multiple copies if we subsequently need to make a modification to the formula.
The user-defined function feature will provide a great way to build reusable formula.
2 - Build responsive apps using a drag-and-drop designer
It's currently possible to build responsive apps - that is, apps that can work on multiple form factor devices by resizing dynamically based on the available screen size.The difficulty is that working with responsive layout containers isn't easy.
This enhancement will make it easier to build responsive screens by adding the ability to use drag-and-drop, and to use the mouse to adjust the space between the elements in the canvas.
3 - Modern Fluent UI look and feel for Model-driven Power Apps
It will soon be possible to apply Fluent UI to model-driven apps. Fluent UI offers a modern look and feel, which is best described using the following image from Wikipedia.
There will be the ability to apply Fluent UI on a per-app opt-in basis.
There are more details on Fluent Design system in the following link
https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/#/
4 - Improved delegation support for the UpdateIf/RemoveIf functions in Dataverse
At present, updating and deleting multiple rows from a data source can be problematic because the UpdateIf and RemoveIf functions are not delegable. This means that these functions may not update or delete all expected rows with data sources that exceed the upper limit of 2,000 rows.
5 - Create Virtual Tables more easily with a Wizard UI
Virtual tables make it possible to build model-driven and Power Pages apps against non-Dataverse data sources, such as SharePoint or SQL Server.
The problem is that the process to create a virtual table isn't straightforward. My post here documents the steps.
As the screenshot from the Release Wave document highlights, this enhancement will offer a much simpler 3-step wizard process to carry out this task.
Conclusion
Many exciting new features have been announced in the 2023 Wave 1 Release Plan. This post summarises the more interesting announcements for Power App Makers, and there are many more that I haven't mentioned, including enhancements to the test engine, advanced search in model-driven apps, and enhancements to the app designer.
These enhancements will provide a great improvement to Power Apps and I look forward to seeing these features in the very near future.
