Back at IT University of Copenhagen on March 11, 2024 for my second guest lecture in the Process Innovation course. This year I focused on where Power Platform meets Copilot, and how low-code makers can ship AI features without writing a model from scratch.
Slides below, followed by the three building blocks I walked the students through: Copilot in Power Apps, Copilot Studio, and AI Builder.
If the students want to keep exploring after class, the Microsoft PowerApps Learning Resources blog post collects training courses, documentation, and walkthroughs in one place.
Copilot in Power Apps
With Copilot in Power Apps, you describe the app you want in plain English and the maker studio builds a starting point. Makers can also drop a Copilot control into a canvas app so end users can ask questions about the app’s data in natural language.
AI Builder
AI Builder lets makers add AI to apps and flows without coding. You pick a pre-built model (prediction, form processing, object detection, text classification) or train a custom one on your own data, then call it from Power Apps with AI Builder components or Power Fx, or from Power Automate as an action.
Thanks to the ITU Process Innovation team for inviting me back. The student questions kept the second half of the lecture going past the slot.
Let's explore
Power Platform Copilot in one paragraph
Power Platform Copilot is the umbrella name for the GPT-based maker and end-user experiences across Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Copilot Studio. It does two things. For makers, it turns natural-language descriptions into starting points (tables, flows, app screens, agents). For end users, it adds a chat surface on top of the apps and agents the makers ship. Both halves matter, and Power Platform Copilot is what ties them together.
Copilot Studio inside Power Platform Copilot
Copilot Studio (formerly Power Virtual Agents) is where low-code makers build conversational agents that ground on enterprise data and call into Power Platform actions. It is the most concrete example of Power Platform Copilot for non-developers: pick a knowledge source, write a few topics in plain English, publish to Teams or a website, done. Microsoft\’s Copilot Studio documentation walks through the maker flow end to end.
7 best Power Platform Copilot examples I demoed at ITU 2024
- “Build me an app to track student project deadlines” — Copilot in Power Apps generates tables and screens.
- Copilot control inside a canvas app — end users ask questions of the app\’s own data in natural language.
- Cloud flow generation from a one-line description in Power Automate.
- Copilot Studio agent answering ITU course FAQs, grounded on the syllabus PDF.
- AI Builder GPT action extracting structured data from a free-text email.
- AI Builder form processing reading scanned invoices.
- AI Builder prediction model scoring student-project risk from historical project data.
Related Power Platform Copilot talks on this blog
- ITU Copenhagen 2023 lecture: the first ITU lecture, before Power Platform Copilot landed.
- Microsoft Dynamics Partner Day April 2023: where the Power Platform Copilot story first surfaced for the partner channel.
- Heading to Seattle for Microsoft Build 2023: the developer event where the Copilot stack was unpacked.
