At its Build developer conference, Microsoft launched new tools within the Power Platform ecosystem to simplify application and website development. The updates include Power Pages, a low-code platform for creating secure websites, and Power Apps Express Design, which converts visual inputs like PDFs or hand-drawn sketches into functional apps.
Power Pages allows users to build websites from scratch or use pre-designed templates, integrating with Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, and GitHub for advanced customization. The platform supports adding multimedia elements, forms, and interactive components without requiring deep programming expertise.
Power Apps Express Design enables users to input design files from Figma or handwritten diagrams, automatically generating apps with working controls and data storage. Additional screens can be added by incorporating more images, streamlining the development process.
Microsoft also updated Power Virtual Agents with a unified interface combining low-code capabilities and Azure Bot Framework Composer features. The Power BI Datamart tool simplifies dataset creation by aggregating data from multiple sources through Power Query.
The company announced a pay-as-you-go model for Power Automate, allowing independent software vendors to integrate automation capabilities into their applications. A technical embed SDK for Power Automate is now available for testing, with further details on the pricing model to be released in July.
New hosted robotic process automation (RPA) bots, powered by Azure virtual machines, offer cloud-based process automation with scalable deployment options for businesses.
