Microsoft Power Platform: 2020 release wave 1 plan

09/15/2020

4 minutes to read





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Download the 2020 release wave 1 PDF (last updated August 13, 2020).

The Microsoft Power Platform release plan (formerly release notes) for the 2020 release wave 1 describes all new features releasing from April 2020 through September 2020 for Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, AI Builder, Power Virtual Agents, and Common Data Model and data integration.

2020 release wave 1 overview

The Microsoft Power Platform enables users and organizations to analyze, act, and automate on the data to digitally transform their businesses. The Microsoft Power Platform today is comprised of four products – Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. It also has two add-ons: AI Builder and Power Apps Portals.

Power BI simplifies how organizations derive insights from transactional and observational data. It helps organizations create a data culture where employees can make decisions based on facts, not opinions. For the upcoming release, Power BI is investing in four key areas that drive a data culture: Self-service analytics for everyone, Unified platform for enterprise BI, big data analytics with Azure data services, and pervasive artificial intelligence (AI).

Power Apps is the industry-leading low-code application development platform that underpins Dynamics 365 extensibility, Office 365 customization, and standalone custom line of business applications for customers around the world. For the upcoming release, Power Apps provides significant improvements for Power Apps developers of all skill levels, improving the sophistication and usability of apps that are created across the web and mobile devices. Power Apps Portals are enabling low-code makers to roll out experiences to broad external audiences. We're continuing to advance Portals capabilities as usage grows. AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform capability for teams with the business expertise to easily automate processes and predict outcomes to improve business performance. AI Builder is a turnkey solution that brings the power of Microsoft AI through a point-and-click experience.

Power Automate makes it possible to grow your business productivity by automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Power Automate provides a better way to get things done across your organization through digital and robotic process automation. For the upcoming release, Power Automate is investing in three key areas: Empowering citizen developers to build powerful automation across the 300+ connectors, UI flows automate mundane, rules-based tasks with point-and-click simplicity whether the app is old or new, on-premises or in the cloud, and enables modelling and running human-driven business process with the modern approval and business process flow features. Microsoft Power Platform offers a range of governance and administration capabilities that span Power Apps, Power Automate, and Common Data Service. These capabilities are designed to help the administrators and IT Professionals in the organization to help set up, secure, manage, govern, and monitor the use and adoption of the platform and its components across the enterprise.

Data integration provides built-in connectivity to Microsoft Power Platform and more, with data across hundreds of business systems, enabling rich and intelligent experiences. Common Data Model provides semantic consistency for canonical business entities across Dynamics 365 and Common Data Service, increasing value and saving time for application developers, ISV partners, and integrators.

Important The Dynamics 365 features coming in the 2020 release wave 1 have been summarized in a separate release plan.

This release plan describes functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).

Here are the key dates for the 2020 release wave 1.

Milestone Date Description Release plans available Jan 27, 2020 Learn about the new capabilities coming in the 2020 release wave 1 (April 2020 – September 2020) across Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Early access available Feb 3, 2020 Test and validate new features and capabilities that will be a part of the 2020 release wave 1, coming in April, before they get enabled automatically for your end-users. You can view Microsoft Power Platform 2020 release wave 1 early access features now. Release plans available in additional 11 languages Feb 12, 2020 The Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans are published in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Swedish. General availability April 1, 2020 Production deployment for the 2020 release wave 1 begins. Regional deployments will start on May 1, 2020.

Continuing from the 2019 release wave 2, we are continuing to call out how each feature will be enabled in your environment:

Users, automatically – These features include change(s) to the user experience for users and are enabled automatically.

– These features include change(s) to the user experience for users and are enabled automatically. Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically – These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.

– These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically. Users by admins, makers, or analysts – These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.

You can get ready with confidence knowing which features will be enabled automatically.

We’ve done this work to help you — our partners, customers, and users — drive the digital transformation of your business on your terms. We’re looking forward to engaging with you as you put these new services and capabilities to work, and we’re eager to hear your feedback as you dig into the 2020 release wave 1.

Let us know your thoughts. Share your feedback on the Microsoft Power Platform community forum. We will use your feedback to make improvements.