Microsoft AI-first Development Weekly: Power Pages adds multi-page website tools
Microsoft AI-first Development Weekly covers Power Apps Code Apps, Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime and Power Platform skills and plugins for AI-first development. It follows tools that help people use AI assistants to build and manage business apps.
Power Pages can create and edit traditional websites
The Power Pages plugin now helps an AI coding assistant create and edit traditional websites, where visitors move between separate pages. For example, it can help build an event website with a home page, registration form and navigation. Previously, its main creation workflow focused on sites built as a single web application.
The new workflow can start from a Microsoft template or edit a downloaded site. It coordinates page content, layouts, images, navigation and styling. New sites use the Enhanced data model, the newer way Power Pages stores website settings, and Bootstrap 5, a toolkit for layouts that fit different screen sizes.
This creation and customisation experience is in preview, and Microsoft recommends a non-production environment for evaluation. Edits to a downloaded site stay on the developer's computer until deployment is explicitly requested. The workflow asks for a plan to be approved and warns where a design may not remain fully editable in Power Pages Design Studio.
Power Automate protects flows during editing and deletion
The Power Automate plugin has stronger checks before an AI assistant changes or deletes a cloud flow, an automation such as sending an email when a form is submitted. It protects managed flows even when they appear in an unmanaged solution, a package used to organise changes. It also checks confirmation when deletion requests overlap.
The Power Automate plugin keeps working connections when copying flows and requires supplied connections to be checked before use. If starting a flow returns an uncertain result, it preserves that uncertainty rather than assuming it is safe to run it again.
Model Apps and PCF collect completion information
The Model Apps plugin for Power Apps model-driven apps, and the preview PCF plugin for custom Power Apps controls, now record whether certain operations finished successfully and how long they took. Model-driven apps organise business records into forms and views; custom controls add specialised parts to an app's screen.
The new events cover app builds, page uploads and control uploads. They can include counts of completed steps and the target organisation and tenant identifiers. Transmission remains enabled by default without a first-run prompt. The documented fields exclude prompts, table names, credentials and the signed-in user's object identifier. Transmission can be turned off, but local diagnostic records remain.
Dataverse plugin connects Copilot Cowork to business app building
The Microsoft Dataverse plugin is now available in Copilot Cowork. Dataverse stores business records, such as customers and event registrations. The plugin lets Cowork plan tables, relationships, sample records and access rules from an everyday description, before using Cowork's app-building tools to make the screens.
Microsoft demonstrates an event-registration app that reuses existing contacts and puts extra registrations on a waiting list. Changes require approval and run under the signed-in person's Dataverse permissions. The resulting app runs in Copilot Managed Runtime, which remains in preview. Building apps in Cowork currently requires enrolment in the Frontier early-access programme.
Power Apps canvas studio gains an authoring agent
Power Apps now offers an AI authoring agent inside canvas studio in preview. Canvas studio is the visual editor used to arrange screens and controls in canvas apps. Instead of moving to a separate coding tool, a maker can ask the agent to plan and carry out changes beside the app, such as updating an image across several screens.
An administrator must enable the tenant setting, and the maker signs in with a GitHub.com account. It works with new and existing canvas apps. This new in-studio experience is preview; the separate canvas authoring agent plugin was already generally available.
Dataverse MCP server can run custom business operations
The Dataverse Model Context Protocol (MCP) server now lets AI agents discover and call Custom APIs. MCP is the connection method that gives an AI assistant tools to work with another service. A Custom API is a named business operation a developer creates in Dataverse.
An agent can now find an operation, read the inputs it needs and ask Dataverse to run it. For example, a developer can combine creating a support case and its follow-up task into one operation that either succeeds together or is rolled back together if it fails. The developer must implement that behaviour; the server does not invent it. Older Dataverse Custom Actions are not supported by this change.
Copilot Managed Runtime fixes SQL Server requests
Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime, Microsoft's preview service for hosting business apps, has published fixes for apps that work with SQL Server data. The app code library version 0.6.1 corrects how requests address SQL Server actions and select the request method. It also fixes a missing request label that tells SQL Server an insert or update contains JSON, a common format for exchanging data.
These changes address reported failures when reading tables, running queries and saving records. Microsoft checked request construction in the published package, but was still waiting for the reporters to confirm recovery in their own environments. The app template now uses the newer library.
Copilot Managed Runtime adds restricted database setup
The Copilot Managed Runtime coding-assistant plugin has a new skill for setting up an app's database and the screens that use it. For example, it guides an assistant through defining task records, controlling who can access them, and creating forms to save and retrieve tasks. The developer tool and app libraries also gained related support.
This is an experimental path called Rayfin. The skill requires both an explicit database request and the Rayfin feature to be enabled. The latest command-line tool also checks whether the selected environment allows it before creating setup files. Public plugin code does not mean every organisation has access. The checked public sources do not establish a general database availability announcement or identify the underlying database engine.
Copilot Managed Runtime can assign project access
The Copilot Managed Runtime command-line tool now lets an authorised developer assign or remove owner, contributor and reader roles for a managed project. A managed project groups apps and their deployment work. The change provides a direct way to manage who can view or work on that project, using an email address or account identifier.
These project commands remain a preview capability and require the projects feature. Adding a command does not grant the person running it extra permissions.
Copilot Managed Runtime separates data connections by target
The Copilot Managed Runtime command-line tool has a dedicated way to give an existing app data source a different connection for a deployment target. This lets a developer configure test and production to use different data without changing the app's main connection settings.
The tool checks that the target configuration and original data source exist before writing the override. This remains part of the preview deployment-configuration workflow, with its required feature access. It replaces the earlier approach of passing target options while adding a data source.
Power Automate improves local recovery copies
The Power Automate plugin improves how it keeps local copies of flow definitions before changes. Copies now have a shared location on the computer, compression and storage limits, with important starting copies retained separately. This makes recovery less dependent on finding the original project folder.
Deletion and restoration normally stop if the current state cannot be backed up, although deletion has an explicit bypass option. Restoring a deleted flow creates a new identifier, and a recreated solution flow is outside its original solution. This is not the same as restoring the original flow through Power Automate's own recovery tools.
Model Apps handles relationships with several record types
The Model Apps plugin now plans and handles Power Apps fields that can point to more than one kind of record. For example, a Customer field may refer to either a company or a person. The plugin records those possible targets and teaches generated pages to keep the record type alongside its identifier.
This helps pages open, filter and save the intended record rather than treating every customer as the same kind of data. Later checks also reject malformed relationship descriptions instead of inventing table or column names.
Model Apps makes planning assumptions visible
The Model Apps plugin now separates a user's requirements from assumptions made by the AI assistant when planning Power Apps pages. It shows those assumptions first when asking for approval and asks when a relationship or filter is unclear.
For example, an instruction to show customers should not silently become a decision to show only companies. The change gives the maker a clearer chance to correct that interpretation before the page is built.
Model Apps restores values missing from page lists
The Model Apps plugin fixes Power Apps pages whose code loops over certain collections of values. Previously, the conversion into code the page player runs could silently lose those values, leaving something such as a customer dropdown empty.
New guidance and an updated bundled code library address this. An existing page gets the library fix when it is next uploaded with a change to its source or data sources. Installing the plugin alone does not repair every deployed page.
Model Apps checks rebuilds and deletion more carefully
The Model Apps plugin adds checks around rebuilding Power Apps apps and deleting their tables. Eligible rebuilds check the app version before adding components, helping detect competing changes. Cleanup refuses to delete a table after receiving an incomplete list of tables.
The Model Apps plugin also verifies whether deployed supporting files match what it owns and reports differences without overwriting them during a rebuild. These checks have specific limits: they do not make every page save immune to simultaneous edits or guarantee that an app works.
Power Pages plans can read current environment settings
The Power Pages plugin can now refresh its deployment plan with settings read from each target environment, including values entered in Power Platform Admin Center. An environment is a separate place for apps and data, such as a test area or a production area.
For example, the plan can show a service address already configured in production instead of displaying only values saved in local files. Local settings still take priority, secret settings are skipped, and failed reads leave the affected column unchanged with a warning that it may be stale.
Model Apps removes the Custom API opt-out
The Model Apps plugin no longer has a switch for turning off supported public Dataverse Custom API discovery. A Custom API is an operation a developer adds to Dataverse, the service that stores Power Platform business data, so an app can request a particular business task.
The old environment setting is now ignored, including when it previously disabled discovery. Availability still depends on the page player, organisation rules and the user's permissions. This change does not make private or unsupported operations available.
Model Apps can continue when business rules are refused
The Model Apps plugin can now continue building a Power Apps app when an environment refuses all business rules with the recognised platform error. Business rules apply checks or actions to records, such as making a field required.
The plugin warns once, skips those rules and builds the rest. A completed build in this case does not mean the requested business rules were installed. The change avoids stopping the entire build, while making the missing behaviour explicit.
Model Apps keeps Windows working files in its cleanup area
The Model Apps plugin fixes a Windows problem that could leave temporary Power Apps page source and environment addresses outside the folder its cleanup process checks. It happened when several scripts started and finished at the same time.
The updated workflow keeps the shared folder in place while a script prepares its working files. Related fixes improve retries when the folder's access restrictions are still being set. These are local file-handling fixes, not a claim of a confirmed data breach.
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