The fifth Power Platform Community Conference wrapped in Las Vegas with more than 9,000 people at the MGM Grand over five days. Microsoft’s recap, Built by makers: Five years of Power Platform Community Conference by Bryan Goode, organizes the announcements into three themes: build the experience around the process, keep the work moving, and scale with control.
The recap reads as a celebration, and it should. It also compresses roughly a dozen product changes into a few sentences each, most without an availability status. This article expands each announcement using the primary Microsoft posts behind it, states where each one actually stands today, and names the governance decision it puts in front of Power Platform and Microsoft 365 admins.
The announcements at a glance
Status reflects what Microsoft’s own posts say as of November 1, 2026. Where a post gives no status, the table says so rather than guessing.
| Announcement | Status | The admin decision |
|---|---|---|
| Apps in Copilot Studio and Copilot Cowork | Public preview | Who may generate apps, and where they live |
| Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime | Public preview | Who owns the runtime inventory and its policies |
| Canvas authoring agent plugin | Generally available since September 1, 2026 | Which coding agents may edit production apps |
| App-builder skill for model-driven apps and developer handoff | Not stated in the recap | Source control and review for agent-written changes |
| Agent accounts | Rolling out through the Frontier program | Identity lifecycle and ownership for agents |
| Business process memory | Rolling out through the Frontier program | What an agent may remember, and for whom |
| Microsoft Copilot harness, triggers, and hooks | Harness available; hooks in preview | Which harness each agent runs on, and the cost that follows |
| Expanded evaluations | Not stated | Whether evaluation becomes a publishing gate |
| Review panel | Generally available | Which warnings block a release |
| Microsoft Agent 365 controls | Agent 365 is generally available; new controls not dated | Where connector and spending policy is set |
| Business applications in Work IQ | Public preview | Who curates the semantic model and business skills |
Theme one: build the experience around the process
Apps in Copilot Studio and Copilot Cowork
Makers describe an app in natural language, such as an employee onboarding app, and refine it alongside the agents and workflows that support the same process. The Copilot Studio October update, New and improved: Build apps, extend agents, and transform business processes, confirms the capability is in public preview and that makers can open the underlying code for deeper customization.
This site covered the governance side when the preview landed: Copilot Studio Can Now Build Apps. Admins Should Decide a Few Things First. The short version still holds. Decide who can generate apps, in which environments, and how a generated app moves to production before makers decide for you.
Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime
Managed Runtime is the hosting layer underneath those apps. Microsoft describes it in Build where you want, run with confidence as a platform for running code inside the Microsoft 365 tenant boundary, with Microsoft Entra for access, organizational policy over connectors, data, and approved endpoints, automatic Git-based versioning, and a central inventory of access, usage, health, and policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center. It is in public preview, and Copilot Cowork, Copilot Code, and Copilot Studio already run on it.
The governance point is where that inventory sits. Many organizations run Power Platform governance from the Power Platform admin center and Microsoft 365 governance from a different team. Code-first apps hosted by Microsoft land in the Microsoft 365 admin center, so agree on ownership now. The post does not cover billing, regional availability, or data loss prevention by name, so treat those as open questions until the documentation says otherwise.
Canvas authoring agent plugin, the app-builder skill, and developer handoff
The canvas authoring agent plugin reached general availability on September 1, 2026. It gives coding agents an MCP toolset that can inspect controls and data sources, add controls, write Power Fx, and validate changes in a live coauthoring session. The recap pairs it with an app-builder skill for model-driven apps and a handoff path that lets developers continue a solution in Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, or the Copilot CLI without rebuilding it.
Microsoft is explicit that the output is still a standard canvas app, so existing connector policies, testing, security, and deployment practices apply. That is the right framing, and it raises a practical question: if an external coding agent can edit an app through MCP, your ALM process needs to know which agents are approved and whether their changes go through source control and review before they reach a production environment.
Theme two: keep the work moving
Agent accounts
Agent accounts give a Copilot Studio agent its own credentials in Microsoft 365, so it acts as itself rather than borrowing a maker’s or user’s identity. According to Delegate shared business processes to agents that are more persistent and proactive, work is attributed to the agent, admins can scope access and manage lifecycle in the Power Platform admin center, and further policy, quality, cost, and lifecycle controls are planned for the coming months. The capability is rolling out through the Frontier program.
Attribution to the agent is a genuine improvement for audit. It also means every agent account is a non-human identity with an owner, a scope, and a retirement date to manage. If you have not reviewed agent identity yet, Copilot Studio Entra Agent ID Migration covers the groundwork. The post does not address licensing for agent accounts.
Business process memory
Business process memory lets an agent carry preferences and process context from one cycle to the next. Makers decide how retained context is used and can view or delete saved memories, and the recap stresses that people control what is remembered. The same Microsoft post notes that context one person raises can become shared with others who use the agent.
That sharing behavior is the governance question. An agent used by a whole finance team can surface something one person said to everyone else. Retention periods, storage location, and data residency are not described yet, so set expectations with makers before enabling memory on agents that handle sensitive processes.
The Microsoft Copilot harness, triggers, and hooks
The recap names the Microsoft Copilot harness as the way to run agents for complex, longer-running work. This is the harness previously called the GitHub Copilot harness in Copilot Studio; on October 28, GitHub announced that the GitHub Copilot SDK is becoming the Microsoft Copilot SDK as part of the same shift. Agents on this harness can now start from triggers such as an incoming email or a schedule.
Hooks, in preview, run your own logic at events such as session start, tool calls, and errors, including inspecting, modifying, or blocking a tool call. Hooks are available only on the harness; the standard orchestrator uses topic triggers instead. That makes harness choice an architecture decision with control and cost consequences, which The Harness Is the Price Tag works through in detail.
Theme three: scale with control
Expanded evaluations and the Review panel
Evaluations now cover individual AI nodes and broader automations, not only conversations, and add Task Completion, Tool Accuracy, Safety, and Latency metrics. Makers can reuse graders from a Custom Graders Library, have Copilot Studio generate tenant-specific graders, and grant an Evaluation Viewer role to reviewers who should see results without maker permissions.
The Review panel is generally available. It surfaces blockers and warnings before publishing, flags agents that have never been evaluated or whose results may be stale after a model change, and shows organizational policy restrictions with links to your own guidance. Together these give admins something they have lacked: a consistent point to say an agent is not ready. Decide which warnings your organization treats as blocking, and write that guidance so the panel can link to it.
Microsoft Agent 365
The recap says Agent 365 lets admins see every app and agent in the organization, set action-level connector policies, and apply spending controls by user and asset. Agent 365 itself is generally available, but its product page does not yet describe action-level connector policies or spending controls, and the recap gives no dates for them. Treat these as announced, not deployable, until documentation appears.
Two points are worth planning around. Action-level policy goes a step beyond allowing or blocking a whole connector, which is the direction Advanced Connector Policies already took inside Power Platform. Spending controls by user and asset overlap with the environment-group credit controls covered in Zero Credits Allocated Does Not Mean Zero Spend. Expect two places where policy can be set, and decide which one is authoritative before both are live.
Business applications in Work IQ
The week before the conference, Microsoft published AI that understands your business: Dataverse and Work IQ at PPCC 2026. Business applications in Work IQ are in public preview. They give Copilot and agents a shared semantic model of business data, relationships, and terms, let teams capture playbooks as reusable business skills, and let agents update systems of record within each user’s permissions. Related previews include Business Skills in the Power Apps maker portal, the Work IQ MCP Server in Copilot Studio, a Business Apps plugin in Copilot Cowork, and the Dataverse Ask API.
Because agents act within each user’s permissions, the quality of your Dataverse security roles now determines what agents can do on a user’s behalf. The semantic model and business skills also become shared assets that shape every agent’s understanding of the business, so they need an owner and change control like any other production artifact. For background on the layer itself, see Work IQ: Microsoft’s New Intelligence Layer Built for Agents.
The numbers Microsoft shared
Microsoft reports more than 2 million makers active each month and more than 4 million apps created and run. Power Apps daily active users grew 20 percent over the past year, AI usage in Power Apps more than doubled, flow runs grew 20 percent, and app usage in Copilot Studio more than tripled.
Three customer stories anchored the keynote. Asurion raised touchless invoice processing from under 20 percent to more than 70 percent with a Copilot Studio agent. NHS Scotland helped clinicians move 25 to 35 percent of patients out of the multidisciplinary meeting process into routine care pathways. The NFL saves 8 to 12 hours a week in data entry and reporting with a Game Ops Dashboard built on Copilot Studio and Power Platform.
A governance checklist for the next 30 days
- Decide who can create apps in Copilot Studio and Copilot Cowork during the preview, and in which environments.
- Name an owner for Managed Runtime inventory and policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and agree how that owner works with the Power Platform admin team.
- List the coding agents approved to edit Power Apps through MCP, and require source control and review for their changes.
- If you are in the Frontier program, define ownership, scope, and retirement rules for agent accounts before the first one goes live.
- Write a short policy on what agents may remember with business process memory, especially for shared agents.
- Choose which Review panel warnings block publishing, and publish the guidance the panel will link to.
- Map where connector and spending policy is set today, so the new Agent 365 controls have a defined place when they arrive.
- Review Dataverse security roles in environments you plan to expose through Work IQ.
What comes next
PPCC has a new name. The conference returns as Maker Con in Chicago, November 2 to 4, 2027, and Microsoft has launched a new Microsoft Maker Community. Before then, the Master Series session on conference insights runs November 10, 2026, and Microsoft Ignite 2026 follows November 17 to 20 in San Francisco and online. Ignite is the likely place for dates on the items above that Microsoft has announced but not yet scheduled.
The thread through all of it is the same one this community has followed for five years. Makers are getting more power faster than before, and the governance work is to decide, early and in writing, where that power runs and who answers for it.
Sources
- Built by makers: Five years of Power Platform Community Conference, Microsoft Power Platform Blog, October 29, 2026
- New and improved: Build apps, extend agents, and transform business processes in Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Copilot Blog, October 7, 2026
- Delegate shared business processes to agents that are more persistent and proactive, Microsoft Copilot Blog, October 15, 2026
- Build where you want, run with confidence, Microsoft Copilot Blog, September 25, 2026
- AI that understands your business: Dataverse and Work IQ at PPCC 2026, Microsoft Power Platform Blog, October 23, 2026
- Canvas authoring agent plugin now generally available, Microsoft Power Platform Blog, September 1, 2026
- GitHub Copilot SDK is becoming Microsoft Copilot SDK, GitHub Changelog, October 28, 2026
- Microsoft Agent 365, product page