Power BI February 2025 updates

The Power BI February 2025 update is here, bringing new enhancements to improve performance, usability, and collaboration. This release continues Microsoft's commitment to empowering users with smarter analytics and seamless data experiences. Whether you're an analyst, developer, or business leader, these updates are designed to help you get more value from your data.

Here are some updates you don’t want to miss:

• Copilot & AI: Copilot is now available in Power BI Mobile apps for iPads and Android tablets, bringing AI-powered insights to more mobile users.

• Reporting: Visual calculations now support conditional formatting for columns and measures, giving you greater control over how your data is presented.

• Modeling: Meet Donut Pro, a new tool for creating sleek, customizable donut charts to enhance your reports.

• OneLake Integration: The OneLake catalog is now embedded in the Power BI app experience within Microsoft Teams, streamlining data discovery.

View the full list here.

Tool Calling is now available in GitHub Copilot

Microsoft has just rolled out a powerful update to enhance how developers interact with AI inside Visual Studio. This latest improvement is set to streamline workflows and make coding more efficient than ever.

Here’s how to use Tool Calling in GitHub Copilot:

• Describe your need in natural language, and Copilot will determine what information is relevant.

• Get insights from multiple sources, including your current file, open files, related files in your solution, your entire codebase, the debugger, or Visual Studio itself.

• Coming soon: Web integration will enable you to search across both your local code and external data sources.

• Stay in control: Use the Retry button to refine Copilot’s response whenever needed.

How to use GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio and Azure DevOps

Microsoft continues to enhance the developer experience with AI-driven innovations. In its latest move, the company is bringing advanced coding assistance to streamline workflows and boost productivity for Azure DevOps users. This development marks another step toward making software development more efficient and intelligent.

Here’s how to use GitHub Copilot:

• Visual Studio: The latest version comes with GitHub Copilot built-in—no extra installations or extensions needed.

• Enhanced Coding in Visual Studio: Install the Copilot extension or select it as a separate component to unlock powerful AI-driven coding assistance.

• Copilot in Action: Explore how Copilot streamlines development in Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio, making coding faster, easier, and more enjoyable.

• Azure Repos Integration: Copilot seamlessly works with Azure Repos, using your existing repositories as context to provide smarter code suggestions, autocompletions, and inline comments.

• Azure DevOps Wiki Support: Simplify documentation by using Copilot to draft best practices, guidelines, and technical references effortlessly.

Microsoft transforms businesses with AI Agents

Microsoft is pioneering a new era in business automation with AI-powered agents designed to enhance productivity and collaboration. These agents, integrated into platforms like Microsoft 365 Copilot, are transforming how businesses operate by automating tasks and streamlining workflows.

What are AI Agents? AI agents use generative AI to understand, learn, and execute tasks, from project management to financial reconciliation.

How do AI agents work? AI agents automate tasks, integrate with systems, collaborate, and can be built or extended using Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Azure AI Foundry.

Benefits of using AI agents. Companies use AI agents to handle routine inquiries, improving response times and service quality.

How to build AI Agents: A secure, flexible platform for building and deploying autonomous AI agents, enabling seamless integration, automation, and streamlined development with minimal code.

Tools to build AI Agents: Microsoft ensures secure, private, and responsible AI, combining industry best practices with Azure AI Foundry and Copilot to drive growth and innovation.

Microsoft releases first preview of Visual Studio v17.14

Microsoft has just unveiled the first preview of Visual Studio 2022 v17.14, bringing fresh enhancements and improvements for developers. As the latest iteration in the v17 series, this release continues to refine the development experience, ensuring greater efficiency and performance.

Key Highlights:

• Update Priority: Experience a more reliable and secure development environment with AI-driven improvements.

• View Outgoing/Incoming Commits: A new toolbar filter makes it easier to spot unsynced commits at a glance.

• Git Repository Window Restoration: Visual Studio now automatically restores your Git repository window after a restart, saving you time.

• Set Default Branch Name: Customize your workflow by setting the default branch name for new Git repositories directly within Visual Studio.

• Quick Info for CMake Modules: Get IntelliSense-powered completions and quick info for CMake modules, making it easier to explore and understand available options right from the editor.

Power Automate releases new security features for Desktop flows

Microsoft has introduced new security features for Power Automate desktop flows, enhancing identity protection, secret management, and infrastructure security. These updates strengthen compliance and safeguard automation processes, ensuring a more secure and resilient desktop automation experience.

Here are the new security features:

• Secure desktop flow credentials with Azure Key Vault and CyberArk secrets: Encrypt and manage passwords securely to reduce unauthorized access risks.

• Certificate-Based Authentication (CBA) with MFA: Strengthen security with this passwordless solution, ensuring compliance for both attended and unattended scenarios.

• Credentials for Desktop flow actions: Protect sensitive information by keeping credentials out of scripts and logs, ensuring only authorized access.

• VNet support for Hosted machine groups: Easily scale RPA workloads on Microsoft-managed virtual machines hosted on Azure infrastructure.

• Network Level Authentication (NLA) for Microsoft Entra joined & hybrid devices: Enforce user authentication before remote desktop connections.

Visual Studio introduces new features for enhanced Razor productivity

Microsoft continues to refine the developer experience with the latest update to Visual Studio. Version 17.12 brings improvements aimed at boosting Razor productivity, making it easier and more efficient for developers to build and maintain applications. These enhancements further streamline workflows and reinforce Visual Studio’s commitment to delivering a seamless coding experience.

Here’s what you need to know about the new features:

• Extract to Component, available in Visual Studio 17.12, is a new refactoring tool that automates the process of creating a Razor/Blazor component.

• You can quickly generate a new file and extract code by selecting the refactoring (Ctrl + .) after highlighting the code (or tag) you want to extract.

• The new Roslyn C# tokenizer/lexer enables support for raw string literals and verbatim interpolated strings in Razor files.

• The lexer also adds support for binary literals and improves the handling of C# preprocessor directives, ensuring they follow C# rules.

Microsoft releases generative AI lessons for beginners for .NET developers

Microsoft has just unveiled a new resource designed to make generative AI more accessible to developers. Whether you're new to AI or looking to expand your skills, this latest offering provides a solid foundation to get started.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Core Concepts & Setup: Understand generative AI fundamentals and configure your environment to access AI models in the cloud or locally via Ollama.

• Beyond Text Processing: Build practical solutions with AI-powered chatbots, integrating video and real-time audio.

• AI Agents in Action: Explore autonomous intelligent agents that can act on the user's behalf.

• Responsible AI: Ensure ethical and secure AI implementation in your applications.

• Bite-Sized Learning: Short, engaging 5–10 minute videos explain each concept step by step.

SQL Server environment variables are now available for Power Apps

Microsoft Power Apps continues to enhance flexibility and security for developers working with SQL Server. With the latest updates, managing connections and configurations has become even more seamless, enabling teams to build more scalable and maintainable applications. Learn how these improvements can streamline your Power Apps development.

Here’s what you can do:

• Easier environment transitions: Move solutions seamlessly between environments with pre-configured variables.

• Manual or automatic setup: Create variables manually or enable auto-creation when adding a data source.

• Define your SQL Server: Set up an environment variable for your SQL Server.

• Link your database: Create a database variable that attaches to the server variable.

• Use it in your app: Select the environment variable from the Advanced tab when creating a data source.

Copilot Studio January 2025 Updates

Microsoft kicks off 2025 with exciting updates to Copilot Studio, reinforcing its commitment to AI-powered business solutions. The latest enhancements focus on making AI more adaptable and efficient for organizations of all sizes. As businesses continue to embrace AI-driven workflows, these updates aim to streamline operations and improve user experiences.

Here are some of the updates:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat – Build a free, secure AI chat experience powered by GPT-4, accessible to all employees in a unified UI.

• Shared Consumption Meter for Copilot Studio – The new PAYGO meter lets you pay only for the messages you use, offering a flexible, cost-effective alternative to prepaid packs.

• Smarter SharePoint Search – Leverage semantic indexing to deliver more relevant search results from your SharePoint data.

• Knowledge Tuning (Public Preview) – Fine-tune your knowledge with data-driven insights, optimizing your AI’s responses.

• Image Analysis in Chat – Upload images to let agents analyze both text and visuals for a more intuitive conversation experience.

See the full list of new features here.