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Neon Smoke
Writer's pictureAngeliki Patsiavou

Top Features x Admins - MS Build

Updated: May 31

Last week was marked by one of the most exciting events of the year: the flagship Microsoft Build event. Thousands of tech enthusiasts, experts, MVPs, RDs and Microsoft employees flocked to Seattle. Even more caught up online with the announcements, so well summarized by the Book of News. You can read it in its full glory here.


By now, you must have been inundated on social media by the announcements, video presentations and community feedback. So why is this blog post even needed?


A CRM geek’s perspective on three personas

That’s right. I am not here to summarize all the announcements and give you tons of links. Instead, as a former Change Manager and a human evangelist obsessed with end user experiences, I will share something different.


This will be a three-part blog series. We will go on a brief exploration journey of what some of the announcements mean for three key personas:

  1. Admins

  2. Pro-devs

  3. Makers



Admin everything…but how?

Admins are the platform guardians undoubtedly. However, they are often mistaken for magical creatures in a high castle. In reality, they can end up with an impossible mission of governing the ungovernable. So, how do we empower them with the right tools, centralized observability, and flexibility in their governance approach? Similar to a Captain Marvel metaphor, we want the environments to be healthier, faster, and safer.


What will empower admins from the recent announcements:


Microsoft Power Platform Copilot Hub:

What is it: A centralized location to analyze business readiness, current usage (e.g. monthly or per product) and governance (per product, availability status etc.) for all Copilots in the business. Pretty sweet.


Why is it important? Considering the speed of Copilot feature rollouts and the excitement over usage, admins are faced with an unprecedented demand for governance and compliance. Whilst there are already plenty of admin centers as it is, until now there was no out-of-the-box view. This addresses not only that one-stop shop view for admins to manage and roll out capabilities, but also the much-needed observability peace of mind for functions like Compliance and Legal.


State of the nation: This feature is now in private preview, which you can sign up for! Learn more about it here and sign up for the preview here.

Automation Center and Templates:

What is it: A two-piece bundle of joy. The Automation Center provides a one-stop shop house kind of feature for in-depth monitoring and troubleshooting to monitor automation performance (Are SLAs met? What is the average processing time and work queue throughput? Etc.) On the other hand, templates have come into play to build copilots faster. There will be a variety of templates to speed things up for makers e.g. IT Helpdesk, Travel Assistance, etc.


Why is it important? Two areas admins struggle with is keeping on top of their flows when things go wrong and who the owners are/ should be. But also, there is a time pressure challenge to enable makers to get copilots started in the most productive way possible without too much admin involvement. Instead of creating laborious admin templates or spending hours of pair-programming on Copilot Studio basics, they can now let makers kickstart things more independently.


State of the nation: The Automation Center is in public preview. Learn more about it here.

Prompt Shields and Groundedness Detection:

What is it: These are content filters in Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and AI Studio to solidify further the safety of LLMs. It is another form of protection against prompt injection attacks, as well as more observability over hallucinations.


Why is it important? Peace of mind, proactive cybersecurity strategies, and a more direct shield against prompt injection attacks. This is one more tool for admins to be more efficient governance guardians. And another way to build the confidence of functions such as Legal and Compliance when launching GenAI features and having those tricky approval conversations. As a Change Manager or Business Leader, these are the features you want to pay attention to as part of your technical white paper.


State of the nation: This is now in preview. Learn more about groundedness detection here.

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