Enterprise apps just got a whole lot smarter with Copilot and app skills in Power Apps
Enterprise apps are the backbone of any corporate operation. They house the business rules, access permissions, and all the process knowledge that keeps work moving day after day. Without them, entire teams would be lost trying to remember how to approve a request, where to log a sale, or which workflow to follow when escalating an issue. And now, Microsoft just announced a round of updates that significantly changes this landscape within Power Apps, bringing artificial intelligence, Copilot, and agents directly to where the work actually happens.
Microsoft 365 Copilot has arrived with general availability in Power Apps model-driven apps and is already in public preview for canvas apps. Alongside it came the new app skills — covering data entry, exploration, visualization, and summarization — all now generally available. Form-based and grid-based experiences within Copilot Chat will reach general availability in July 2026, with support for custom UX entering preview soon.
And there is more: Agent Feed, combined with the Power Apps MCP Server, will reach general availability on May 4, 2026, creating a dedicated area to oversee agent activity directly inside the app, without needing to rely on external monitoring tools.
The core idea behind all of this is straightforward: bring artificial intelligence to where work actually happens. No need to open another tool. No need to leave the context. What makes this batch of updates different from others is precisely the interoperability it creates — AI enters the app to speed up the user’s work, and app capabilities flow outward to feed agents with real data and already-established business rules. It is a two-way street that changes the dynamic between people and systems. 🤖
What actually changed in Power Apps with embedded Copilot
The arrival of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Power Apps model-driven apps is not just another button on the screen. It is a shift in how users interact with the system. Previously, to fill out a complex form, navigate between records, or understand the history of a sales opportunity, a person had to click through multiple menus, open tabs, check with coworkers, or even dig through internal documentation. Now, with Copilot embedded directly in the interface, much of that can happen through natural conversation, in plain language, without requiring any additional technical training.
Today, while a user fills out a form, the app can convert emails or documents into structured fields automatically, always with a review step before anything gets saved. Natural language search lets someone simply ask something like show me this week’s high-priority open tickets, and the view reorganizes instantly. AI-generated summaries condense long activity histories in seconds, saving time that used to be spent reading record by record.
But that is just the starting point. With Microsoft 365 Copilot now generally available in model-driven apps, users gain something broader: the ability to ask questions and get answers grounded not just in the records visible on screen, but across the full scope of business and productivity data available through Microsoft Work IQ. The Copilot experience respects the same security settings, permissions, and business logic that the app already enforces. Admins enable the feature at the tenant level. App makers configure it in just a few clicks. The same application becomes significantly more productive without rewriting any code.
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Canvas apps, which are the more customized and visually designed applications within Power Apps, are also joining in, though still in public preview. This means developers and app makers can already experiment with how Microsoft 365 Copilot behaves inside more tailored experiences, testing the potential before general availability. The distinction between the two app types matters because canvas apps are typically built for workflows very specific to each company, so having artificial intelligence conversing with those custom rules is a considerable leap in real-world usefulness.
Worth noting that this integration is not just cosmetic. Microsoft 365 Copilot inside Power Apps has access to the context of the open record, the user’s permissions, and the business rules configured in the system. That means it does not respond with generic information — it responds based on what that specific user can see and do, within that specific app, at that exact moment. This granularity of context is what sets this implementation apart from a simple chat window tacked onto the side of an application.
App skills: what each one does in practice
The new app skills are, in practice, the actions that Microsoft 365 Copilot can execute inside Power Apps. They have been organized into four main categories: data entry, exploration, visualization, and summarization. Each one solves a real problem that any professional using enterprise apps has faced at some point.
Data entry lets the user describe what they want to record in natural language, and Copilot fills in the correct fields automatically, respecting the validations and formats required by the system, which reduces errors and speeds up the process significantly.
The exploration skill lets users ask questions about the data available in the app without needing to know exactly which table or field that information lives in. Imagine a manager who wants to know how many contracts are expiring in the next 30 days without having to set up a manual filter or call someone from IT to run a query. With this skill active, they simply ask, and Copilot navigates through the available data and returns a contextualized answer. This democratizes access to information within the organization in a way that was previously only possible with pre-configured dashboards.
Visualization and summarization round out the cycle. Visualization turns datasets into charts and visual representations from a simple command, without needing to build reports in Power BI or export spreadsheets. Summarization condenses extensive information — like a complete customer history or a project activity log — into a clear and direct summary, saving time that used to be spent reading line by line. Together, these four app skills turn any Power Apps application into a much more conversational and productive interface. 💡
App skills go beyond the app itself
The value of these skills does not stop within the app itself. Using the app’s MCP Server, these capabilities — starting with structured forms and grid views — can now be exposed as reusable tools for agents in public preview, with custom UX skills arriving soon. This extends app productivity beyond the app itself, reaching AI surfaces like Copilot, custom agents, and automations.
This is where the two-way relationship between apps and agents comes to life. In the previous section, AI and Copilot entered the app to help users work faster. Now, app capabilities flow outward, feeding agents and Copilot. For example, a recruiting app that has accumulated years of hiring policy can now power an agent that accesses the same records, applies the same rules, and operates under the same controls. As organizations digitize more processes, their agents become more capable and trustworthy.
Agent Feed: overseeing agents without leaving the app
One of the most anticipated features in this package is the Agent Feed, arriving with general availability scheduled for May 4, 2026. The idea behind it is to solve a problem that starts to surface as companies adopt more artificial intelligence agents in their workflows: how do you keep track of what those agents are doing without opening separate systems or parallel reports?
The Agent Feed answers that question by bringing a supervision panel directly inside the Power Apps model-driven app, where users can see actions executed by agents, approve steps that require human review, and understand the reasoning behind each autonomously made decision. App makers control the approval threshold: low-risk actions run silently in the background, while higher-impact actions — like sending emails — show up as explicit approvals for the user.
Side-by-side comparisons, direct links to records, and performance indicators make oversight practical and integrated into daily routines, not an extra chore. An insurance claims team, for example, could use an agent that extracts data from incoming emails and pre-fills case forms. Adjusters review and approve directly in the Agent Feed before any information officially enters the system. Humans oversee. Agents execute. Work moves forward.
This visibility is essential for companies to trust their agents and scale their use safely. When an agent automatically executes a task — like updating an opportunity status, triggering a notification, or consolidating data from multiple sources — the responsible professional needs a quick way to audit those actions, especially in regulated industries where traceability is mandatory. The Agent Feed creates this communication channel between agent and human in an integrated way, without adding yet another tool to the stack of systems the team already has to manage.
Another important aspect of the Agent Feed is that it was designed to work cohesively with app skills and Microsoft 365 Copilot. This means the same app a user relies on to enter data, explore information, and visualize results will also be the place where they oversee the agents working in parallel, automating parts of the process. This unified experience is one of the pillars of Microsoft’s strategy for Power Apps: a single environment where humans and AI collaborate, each doing what they do best, within the context where work actually happens. 🚀
Why this integration matters for everyday users
When we talk about artificial intelligence integrated into corporate tools, it is easy to fall into the generic pitch that it will transform everything. But the real difference here comes down to something simpler: friction reduction. Every time a user has to leave the app to look up information, check with a coworker, or copy data from one system to another, they lose time, focus, and energy. By bringing Microsoft 365 Copilot inside Power Apps, Microsoft is betting that AI only delivers real value when it sits in the natural path of work, not when it requires users to change their behavior to access it.
For IT teams and low-code developers who build and maintain these apps, the implications are also significant. App skills and the Agent Feed do not require rewriting existing systems. They fit into the already-established Power Apps architecture, leveraging the security configurations, Dataverse tables, and business rules that are already in production. This means the path to bringing artificial intelligence into company processes runs through apps that already exist, not through digital transformation projects built from scratch.
From experimentation to real execution
From embedding intelligence directly into apps, to extending app capabilities to AI surfaces like Copilot and custom agents, to enabling seamless collaboration between humans and AI through the Agent Feed, all the components are connected. Together, they answer the question that business and IT leaders are asking: how do you bring AI into core business processes with real impact, without having to start from zero.
This combination of interface familiarity and artificial intelligence-amplified capability is probably the most efficient path for adoption to actually happen — not just on paper, but in the daily behavior of people who need to deliver results. What Microsoft is building with this integration between Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Apps, app skills, and agents is a layer of intelligence that amplifies what people already know how to do, using the systems they already know.
For anyone who wants to see all of this working in practice, Microsoft shared demos during the Business Applications Update event, showing how apps, agents, and Microsoft 365 Copilot work together to drive business transformation. ✅
