AI transforming Low-Code Development?

I think we all can agree that AI will be or is all over the place. Asking ourselves: 'What role can AI Copilot play within Low-Code development?'

In my following blog post I guide you through the current AI Copilot functionalities within Power Apps.

Some time ago I read some nice new definition 'Code abstraction'. I think this says it all. We are moving away from custom coding towards more low-coding and evolving to more Natural Language Authoring.

Based on Large Language Models (LLM) we as Citizen Developers can build applications based on natural language & conversational machine learning.

Let's have a closer look!

All set? Ok let's dive into our Power Apps environment and have a look at what capabilities Copilot can offer. In following print screen you can see that AI Copilot for Power Apps appears as a banner on top.

As a Citizen Developer you get the option to have a first application build based on Natural Language.

Let's give it a try by entering following sentence: “Generate an employee onboarding application to capture new hire information and share training content and learning modules.”

And this is where the magic happens. After some few seconds AI Copilot opens on the right of your screen and a first custom table has been. Based on our initial phrase this was the onboarding one.

Next, AI Copilot also created some set of columns or data fields in it and populated the table with some example data. Pretty nice, no?

Building applications thanks to conversational AI and people & machine going hand in hand with each other. One of the important elements will be that machine & CitDev's learn to interpret the different natural languages.

Thinking about what the most efficient way is to provide sentences so that machine learning can do the rest. I think at some point in time machines will be that clever so that based on their data they can interpret sentences being provided by end users or makers.

So question is if we as makers need to adapt or languages or that machines will do it for us?

Going back to our onboarding example. Through the AI Conversation flow we can also ask to have extra fields created. In following example I asked AI Copilot to add some extra 'Primary Competences' column.

And yes the column was created and populated with some example values in it. In a first step the column was created as a text field but after passing the right sentence AI Copilot changed it to a choice field. Hmm nice nice.

Currently a bridge to far is asking for a 'Contact' column and referencing it to the existing contact entitiy within MS Dataverse. A new column was created but of type 'Single line of text'.

But still in preview let's hope for future enhancements on this ;). Once ok with it you can create an app based on the provided data table. Getting things ready...

After some seconds your Canvas App application is ready to go for futher low-code development. A great way to start you CitDev journey by using natural language within conversational AI.

Currently already impressed by the AI Copilot features within Power Apps. It will be no surprise to me that AI will be a game changer or play an even bigger role in the future.

Enhancing our personal productivity and helping us in our CitDev journey.

I also believe that our main focus should be on the people dimension so not only relying on the technology side of things. Guiding key and users through their change journey and having this supported by qualitative & quantitative data.

Kind regards,

Frank Vanhamel

People & Technology lover