AI is continuing to dominate the headlines.
Copilot for End-users
Marra believes that adding conversational UIs (Copilot Power Apps controls) to Power Platform solutions can be powerful, but it must match the use case to provide value for the end-users. Top level exploration of application data is a good match, such as being able to ask a leave planner application for when your next holiday is, rather than fine-grained information/control on a job management system where deep drill-down into data is required.
Copilot for M365 does not directly impact Power Platform but has been shown to generally improve productivity of M365 users. When considering Power Platform connectors, it enables the leverage of this increased productivity and therefore should be considered as part of an organisations’ overall Microsoft technology adoption strategy.
Copilot for Developers
Marra’s App Makers do not currently use Copilot to help in the building of their apps at a production scale. We believe building apps via Copilot may be a great starting point for quickly standing up a new application or for Citizen Developers that want to get a simple idea off the ground quickly. However, for professional, production-grade solutions this requires a level of fine-grained App Maker control that Copilot does not yet currently enable.
The iterative improvement of AI in general and Copilot has been swift and so this is likely to change in the future. Marra will continue to watch this space for the moment when Copilot becomes advanced enough to make App Makers that are involved in low level development of solutions more productive.
Looking to future
Although Copilot is not quite ready for professional App Makers/Developers yet, it can be highly effective for use in End-User solutions where the use cases align with conversation AI strengths, and the productivity gains that can be leveraged from an interconnected, AI-infused ecosystem of M365 and Power Platform is indisputable.
Written by Ryan Grey, Head of Technology
