Microsoft Power Platform: 2020 release wave 2 plan
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Power Platform product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.
Download the 2020 release wave 2 PDF (last updated April 26, 2021).
The Microsoft Power Platform release plan for the 2020 release wave 2 describes all new features releasing from October 2020 through March 2021 for Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, AI Builder, Power Virtual Agents, Microsoft Dataverse, and Common Data Model and data integration.
2020 release wave 2 overview
Microsoft Power Platform enables users and organizations to analyze, act, and automate on the data to digitally transform their businesses. Microsoft Power Platform today comprises four products: Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. It also has two add-ons: AI Builder and Power Apps portals.
Power BI is investing in three key areas that drive a data culture: amazing data experiences, modern enterprise BI, and insights where decisions are made. Power BI Desktop includes many new capabilities for users to create content quickly and easily, enabling authors to empower their users, enterprise-grade content creation, and AI-infused authoring experiences. Power BI Mobile adds split-view support for iPad. Power BI Service integrates with Azure Synapse to automatically create and manage materialized views on larger Power BI models as well as enhanced integration with SharePoint lists to build additional custom reports. We continue to enhance our data protection capabilities enabling customers to classify and label sensitive data.
Power Apps includes significant improvements for Power Apps developers of all skill levels, improving the sophistication and usability of apps that are created across the web and mobile devices. Makers will be able to create Power Apps directly within Microsoft Teams in order to easily customize the Teams experience. Makers will be able to add custom pages to model-driven apps using the app designer, bringing together the best of canvas and model capabilities including custom layouts and components.
- AI Builder introduces new AI scenarios for receipt scanning and translation, and improvements to connect to remote training data. The AI builder home page and model details page are updated to improve discoverability and integration with Power Apps and Power Automate.
- Power Apps portals adds Power Virtual Agents as a component in the Power Apps portals Studio, as well as support for code components created using Power Apps component framework.
Power Automate will update the offering to combine the best of WinAutomation with the cloud-based AI Builder and connector-based capabilities in automated flows. This new version will offer customers a way to automate everything from Office apps to legacy terminal applications that haven't been updated in decades. In addition, there are further enhancements coming to automated flows running in the cloud, including richer automation and approval experiences.
Power Virtual Agents includes expanded capabilities in the authoring experience, deeper Microsoft Teams integration, tools to create richer content, authentication improvements, and improved Power Automate integration.
Microsoft Power Platform offers a range of governance and administration capabilities that span Power Apps, Power Automate, and Microsoft Dataverse. These capabilities are designed to help the administrators and IT pros in the organization to help set up, secure, manage, govern, and monitor the use and adoption of the platform and its components across the enterprise.
Note
Effective November 2020, Common Data Service has been renamed to Microsoft Dataverse. Learn more.
- Data integration provides built-in connectivity to the Microsoft Power Platform and more, with data across hundreds of business systems, enabling rich and intelligent experiences. There are many new capabilities in this release wave in areas such as dual-write, export to Data Lake, Microsoft Power Platform connectors, Microsoft Power Platform dataflows, Microsoft Power Platform gateway, and Power Query Online.
Important
The Dynamics 365 features coming in the 2020 release wave 2 have been summarized in a separate release plan.
Key dates for the 2020 release wave 2
This release plan describes functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).
Here are the key dates for the 2020 release wave 2.
| Milestone | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Release plans available | July 8, 2020 | Learn about the new capabilities coming in the 2020 release wave 2 (October 2020 – March 2021) across Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform. |
| Release plans available in 11 additional languages | July 23, 2020 | The Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans published in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Swedish. |
| Early access available | August 3, 2020 | Test and validate new features and capabilities that will be a part of the 2020 release wave 2, coming in October, before they get enabled automatically for your end users. You can view the Microsoft Power Platform 2020 release wave 2 early access features now. |
| General availability | October 1, 2020 | Production deployment for the 2020 release wave 2 begins. Regional deployments will start on October 2, 2020. |
Just like the previous release waves, we continue to call out how each feature will be enabled in your environment:
- Users, automatically – These features include changes to the user experience for users and are enabled automatically.
- Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically – These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
- Users by admins, makers, or analysts – These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.
You can get ready with confidence knowing which features will be enabled automatically.
We’ve done this work to help you—our partners, customers, and users—drive the digital transformation of your business on your terms. We’re looking forward to engaging with you as you put these new services and capabilities to work, and we’re eager to hear your feedback as you dig into the 2020 release wave 2.
Let us know your thoughts. Share your feedback on the Microsoft Power Platform community forum. We will use your feedback to make improvements.