Our Road Ahead - Microsoft Access Engineering Priorities Oct 2022

Karl_Donaubauer  Thank you for the information.  The excuse provided by MS makes no sense and was a clear attempt to deflect.  PowerQuery was added to PowerBI to address reporting/analytics use cases.  PowerQuery was added to Excel for data analysis use cases.  PowerQuery is a natural fit for Access for data integration use cases.  Seems very complementary to me and very short sighted by MS to make such comments as above.  It is no surprise to learn the Access community voted it so high as a requested feature.

Too bad.  A missed opportunity by MS for sure.  Hopefully they have had time to re-think their position and see how this type of functionality would be very complementary.

Hi,

> Have there been any discussions around the possibility of a built in integration between Access and Power Query?

Yes. In 2017, a German colleague wrote a request for the integration of PowerQuery into Access on UserVoice, Microsoft's wish page at the time. As we organised a little campaign in our German-speaking Access community, 😉 the topic got a lot of votes and reached number 1. Here is a screenshot:

Unfortunately, the response of the Microsoft Access team in early 2018 was negative, with the argument of not wanting to compete with Excel. Here is another screenshot from back then:

BTW The current plans of the Access team until March 2024 can be found here.

Servus
Karl
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Michael,

Have there been any discussions around the possibility of a built in integration between Access and Power Query?  I can imagine such functionality might scare some folks outside of the Access team, but seems like it would be a killer feature for Access.

Thanks Karl.

Sadly that's what I expected and somewhat depressing in terms of innovation and keeping Access relevant into the future.

EDIT

Answered using a different account as I can't access my Isladogs account for this forum on my Windows tablet for reasons I cannot understand

Hi Colin,

> Please can you explain what the current status is regarding three public priorities recently removed from the list: 

> 1.   Enabling Large Address Aware (LAA) for 32-bit Access
> 2.   SQL Monaco Editor
> 3.   New Microsoft Graph Data Connector

At my German conference AEK two weeks ago, I asked the Access team what the situation is with the here missing Monaco Editor and LAA. Michael Aldridge answered that they are still in the team's backlog, but not in the timeframe until March 2023.

(asking about the Graph Connector I gave up a few years ago 😉

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Karl
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Tom

I think one of several drawbacks to the new roadmap "90% confident" strategy is that we have no idea whether a feature has been dropped or just further postponed. That's why I asked for clarification

To take a specific example, the Monaco SQL editor was first announced in the old roadmap several years ago.

When that happened, development work was halted on the excellent Access SQL Editor add-in. How can the developer make an informed decision whether to restart work on that add-in?

I also know of other developers who are currently working on their own alternatives. For example, Chris Arnold's Access Studio.

It would be very useful for them to know what is the current status of the Monaco editor.

I think the only thing we can be certain of from the above article is that any items not on the list are definitely NOT being worked on at present. (Apologies for the double negative)

isladogs, I think the difference is that per the new roadmap "90% confident" strategy, linked to in the original post, items that are too far in the future have been removed. That does not mean they are no longer being worked on.

Thanks

For info, I wrote an article based on this information yesterday: Access Roadmap Update (isladogs.co.uk)

Please can you explain what the current status is regarding three public priorities recently removed from the list: 

1.   Enabling Large Address Aware (LAA) for 32-bit Access
2.   SQL Monaco Editor
3.   New Microsoft Graph Data Connector

Thanks Colin I fixed the link just now. Somehow got a typo in the URL. 

Hi Michael

Just to let you know the first link in your article is broken.

The correct link is https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/access-blog/changes-to-our-public-roadmap-and-how-we-communicate-access/ba-p/3329075