Software development is a constantly evolving field, with new technologies and techniques emerging all the time. Most notably, low-code and no-code platforms constitute a growing percentage of new software development. These tools, like the suite of apps in Microsoft Power Platform – especially Power Apps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents – offer several benefits over traditional development methods, including accelerated development timelines, lower costs associated with citizen development and greater collaboration between tech experts and end users.

According to Gartner, the global market for low-code development technologies is projected to total $26.9B in 2023, up by 20% from 2022.

Microsoft has begun to roll out test versions of a next-generation low/no-code solution – Power Platform Copilot, a new AI-powered tool that makes it even easier to build apps.

With Power Platform Copilot, you simply describe in natural language what you want your app to do and the AI-powered copilot generates the code for you. For example, if you need help tracking inventory, you could type something like, “I want an app to track the inventory of my store.” Copilot will then generate the code for an app with a table to store your inventory items, as well as all forms and reports you’ll need for inventory management.

We are truly entering a new era. With the help of large language models (LLMs), we are moving to the next stage in the evolution of code abstraction, from custom code to low code to natural language authoring, where humans and machines work together to create applications. And in lockstep with partners like Microsoft, HCLTech is at the forefront of this AI revolution.

How it works

Using the Copilot control, users can interact with applications in a more intuitive way, using natural language queries and refinements as well as the help of an AI assistant embedded directly in the app. Users ask questions – like “What is our average monthly sales number?” or “What are the top five products we sold last year?” – and the AI assistant finds the answers.

It can also help refine queries. For example, in response to the “What is our average monthly sales number?” query, the AI assistant might suggest narrowing it down by specifying a particular product or region, making it easier for users to get the insights they need from their data.

Quite simply, Copilot will greatly improve the usability and efficiency of Power Platform – a set of tools that was already remarkably intuitive and efficient. The Microsoft Business Applications experts at HCLTech are now leveraging Copilot to help our clients build apps faster with less code and fewer errors. Critically, our strategy in this area is to ensure secure and ethical implementations wrapped in the cloak of data confidentiality and privacy.

Let’s look at Copilot through the lens of each tool within Power Platform.

Power Apps Copilot features:

Improve insights

The AI-powered assistant helps you gain insights about the data in your apps through conversation in natural language. Makers can add this control to any app and choose what data it can answer questions about.

Build apps through conversations

Describe the app you want to build, and AI will design it. You can also get in-app guidance using natural language processing to help build your app. For example, you can say, “I want an app to track office attendance” and the Copilot will create the app with the required back end in mere seconds.

Microsoft Power Virtual Agents chatbots can now be embedded directly into Power Apps

Native integration of AI-powered Power Virtual Agents chatbots in Power Apps is a powerful new feature that can help you create more effective and engaging apps. With native integration, you can:

• Embed chatbots in your apps with just a few clicks
• Use chatbots to provide customer support, answer questions, and automate tasks
• Create more natural and conversational user experiences

Power Virtual Agent Copilot facilitates you to instantly create a conversational dialog for your bot by simply describing what you want it to do in natural language, making it accessible for everyone to create bot-driven conversations for customers. By utilizing Copilot, you can reduce the development cycle of bot building, turning what used to consume months or years into weeks or days.

Below are some of the key capabilities:

• Topic creation
  Creating topics is now as simple as typing a description; in seconds, trigger phrases, questions, variables and more are generated.
• Seamless updates
  Make changes to topics like asking for updates to nodes or asking for additional questions.
• Summarization
  Quickly summarize user-provided information in an adaptive card without the need to create JSON schema – because it is created for you.
• Conversation booster
  Quickly and easily create a chatbot that can answer questions from your company’s website or internal knowledge base. Simply point Copilot to your resources, and it will start to answer questions in minutes, right out of the box. There is no need to write any code or train the chatbot.
• Advanced bot building
  This has been enhanced with a more intuitive conversation authoring studio, end-to-end software as a service (SaaS), and thousands of prebuilt connectors. These enhancements make it easier for professional and citizen developers to create, collaborate, deploy and manage intelligent bots.
• Generative Answers
  Deliver rich, multi-turn conversations by pulling knowledge from multiple sources, such as external sites, documents, internal SharePoint sites or a combination of these.

Power Automate Copilot

Describe the workflow you need in a conversational way, and Copilot will create your automated flow. It’s not limited to building new flows only; it can help you understand existing, potentially complex flows and recommend changes and optimizations to improve your automation.

Copilot for Power BI and Power Pages are both in the works, as well.

As the future unfolds and we see new technology challenges and the continued expansion of the developer community, HCLTech will be at the forefront along with partners like Microsoft, bringing down the total cost of ownership and technical debt that remains from the old ways of app development. In the meantime, let us continue learning and exploring as much as we can.