Microsoft Build 2023 Hero Announcements

I thought you might be interested to learn about the key announcements shared at Microsoft Build, our global digital event that brings together developers and decision makers to explore the latest innovations from Microsoft and its partners. Join us today to learn from the community of experts who build and support the latest tools and technologies, network and connect with others in the industry, and explore deep technical opportunities to gain the skills necessary to drive the full value from Microsoft technology.

This year’s key Build announcements include the latest Microsoft developer innovations, with a focus on building in the new era of AI.

Over the past few months Microsoft has announced a range of first-party Copilot applications for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and more. Today, we're sharing the app development pattern we used to create these solutions—and showing how any developer can use this Copilot stack to develop their own copilots. What’s more, we're excited to announce a joint commitment with OpenAI to support and grow the AI plugins ecosystem, embracing an open standard that will enable plugins interoperability across ChatGPT and the breadth of Microsoft’s Copilot offerings.

Developers can build plugins that work across both consumer and business surfaces, including ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and other Microsoft first-party Copilot apps. This means developers can build experiences that enable people to interact with their apps using the most natural user interface: human language.

Keep reading to learn about these exciting announcements and more, and to discover more ways to connect, learn, and share.

Build next-gen, AI powered applications

We believe AI is the next massive shift in computing. That’s why at Microsoft we’re investing heavily in AI and the tools to deploy AI, so developers and organizations can do more. With the latest innovation announced at Build, developers can create unique experiences using comprehensive developer tools and new AI and machine learning capabilities. To learn more, read the blog post by Jessica Hawk, CVP of Data, AI, and Digital Applications Marketing.

Our latest Azure AI and Machine Learning innovations include the following:
• Today, we’re proud to announce Azure AI Studio and new capabilities to harness generative AI, including the capability to easily ground OpenAI models on your data, coming to preview. With just a few clicks, developers can now ground OpenAI models, such as ChatGPT and GPT-4, on their data to quickly and easily to build organization specific conversational AI experiences.
• Azure AI prompt flow coming to preview, will provide a streamlined experience for prompting, evaluating, tuning, and operationalizing large language models. Developers and data scientists can quickly create prompt workflows that connect to hundreds of popular open source and proprietary models and data sources for building intelligent applications and assessing the quality of their workflows to choose the best prompt for their use case.
• Azure OpenAI Plugins, coming to private preview, will streamline the process of building and consuming APIs that extend the capabilities of GPT-4. The following plugins will be available during private preview: Azure Cognitive Search, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft Translator, and Bing Search.
• To make working with open-source models easier, we’re also introducing foundation models in Azure Machine Learning, which starts with the model catalog to select from collections of foundation models including both Azure OpenAI Service models, and open-source models curated by Azure Machine Learning and Hugging Face, and provides the ability to fine-tune and deploy those foundation models using Azure Machine Learning components and pipelines.
• New Vector search capability in Azure Cognitive Search, in private preview, allows users to now store, index, and search within their datasets based on vector representations of their data, also known as embeddings, to find information that is semantically similar to their search query. Vector search can be used in combination with retrieval plugins for ChatGPT through Azure OpenAI service.
• We are now enabling a Provisioned Throughput Model for Azure OpenAI Service, to offer dedicated capacity.
• New Azure AI Content Safety service will make it easier for developers to test and evaluate AI deployments for safety by detecting and assigning severity scores to unsafe content across languages in both images and text. We’re integrating Azure AI Content Safety across products, including Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio, and Azure Machine Learning, to help practitioners assess models prior to deployment and as a content moderation tool.

Today we also announced exciting updates to our comprehensive developer tools and app platform portfolio, including:

• Microsoft Dev Box, generally available in July, is an Azure service that gives developers access to ready-to-code, project-specific dev boxes that are secure and centrally managed. Microsoft Dev Box helps support hybrid dev teams of any size, helping developers focus on writing code by streamlining access to all the resources and tools they need for the project at hand.
• GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps in preview soon, is a solution that provides the three core features of GitHub Advanced Security into the Azure DevOps platform, so customers can integrate automated security checks into their workflow. It includes code scanning powered by CodeQL to detect vulnerabilities, secret scanning to prevent the inclusion of sensitive information in code repositories, and dependency scanning to identify vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies and provide update alerts.
• Azure Deployment Environments (ADE), now generally available, enables developer teams to quickly spin up app infrastructure with project-based templates, minimizing setup time while maximizing security, compliance, and cost efficiency. ADE provides self-service templates that deploy directly from dev tools, code repos, or custom developer portals, and maximize security with centralized permissions and policy governance, access controls, and full management of cloud resource configurations.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): To give enterprises more control over their environment, we are announcing long-term Support for Kubernetes that will enable customers to stay on the same release for two years—twice as long as what’s possible today. We are also announcing confidential containers in AKS, coming soon in preview, as a first party offer that allows teams to run standard unmodified containers, aligned with Kata Confidential Containers opensource project.

Bring your data into the era of AI with Microsoft Fabric

We're excited to unveil Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end analytics solution that empowers organizations to manage their data in one place with a suite of analytics experiences that work together seamlessly, helping teams create intelligence faster than ever. Join the Fabric launch virtual event and read the blog post by Arun Ulagaratchagan, CVP of Azure Data, to learn more.

 

• Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end unified analytics solution that brings together data and analytics tools in one place to help data engineers, data scientists, and data analysts uncover and serve intelligence to business users.
o Fabric integrates proven technologies like Data Factory, Power BI, and the next generation of Synapse into a single solution, empowering everyone to unlock the potential of their data. The end-to-end analytics stack is automatically integrated and optimized, and users can sign up within seconds and get real business value within minutes.
o Fabric offers a suite of role-specific experiences including data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, applied observability, and business intelligence.
o Data brought into Microsoft Fabric is hosted on OneLake, an enterprise-grade data lake that eliminates data movement and duplication. All Fabric workloads are automatically wired into OneLake, just like all Microsoft 365 applications are wired into OneDrive. Data is organized in an intuitive data hub and automatically indexed for discovery, sharing, governance, and compliance.
o Fabric is infused with the Azure OpenAI Service at every layer to help customers unlock the full potential of their data, enabling users to leverage the power of generative AI with their data and helping business teams unlock intelligence to drive critical decisions, innovation, and competitive advantage.
o Purchasing and managing resources is massively simplified with Fabric. Customers purchase a single pool of compute that powers all Fabric workloads. With this all-inclusive approach, customers can create solutions across all workloads freely without any friction in their experience. Universal compute significantly reduces costs, as any unused capacity in one workload can be used by any other workload.
o With Fabric, customers can turn their Microsoft 365 apps into hubs for uncovering and applying insights. For example, users in Microsoft Excel can directly discover and analyze data in OneLake and generate a Power BI report with a click of a button. In Microsoft Teams, users can infuse data into their everyday work with embedded channels, chat, and meeting experiences. Business users can bring data into their presentations by embedding live Power BI reports directly in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Free Trial: try out everything Fabric has to offer by signing up for the free trial:
o Everyone who signs up gets a fixed Fabric trial capacity, which may be used for any feature or capability.
o Existing Power BI Premium customers can turn on Microsoft Fabric through the Power BI admin portal.
o After July 1, 2023, Microsoft Fabric will be enabled by default for all Power BI tenants.

Modernize and protect your infrastructure with Microsoft Azure

The Azure Infrastructure team announced two new capabilities, including confidential VMs with Intel TDX, which helps you move more workloads to Azure, and Azure Container Storage, which manages persistent storage volumes for stateful container applications in a cost-effective way. To learn more, read blog posts here and here.

• Confidential VMs with Intel TDX: We’re excited to announce the expansion of our Confidential VM portfolio with the launch of the DCesv5-series and ECesv5-series in preview. Featuring 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, these VMs are backed by an all-new hardware-based Trusted Execution Environment called Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (TDX). Organizations can use these VMs to seamlessly bring confidential workloads to the cloud without any code changes to their applications.
• Azure Container Storage: Last week we announced the public preview of Azure Container Storage, Microsoft’s unique container-native storage solution. Today we’re excited to introduce several new features in preview to enhance the performance, reliability, and backup experience for Azure customers. These features include volume snapshot, which allows users to capture the point-in-time state of persistent volumes, enabling you to back up data before applying changes. Additionally, the scalability target of Persistent Volumes has increased, empowering users to easily scale up their storage footprint. This means users can focus on building data services without worrying about the limitations of the underlying infrastructure.

Shaping the future of work with AI

In March, we announced Microsoft 365 Copilot—your copilot for work—and today we’re excited to announce even more new AI innovation to inspire developers and ISVs on the opportunity of the Microsoft 365 Copilot. To learn more, read the blog post by Rajesh Jha, EVP of Experiences and Devices.

 

• Plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Developers can now integrate their apps and services into Microsoft 365 Copilot with plugins. Plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot include ChatGPT and Bing plugins, as well as Teams message extensions and Power Platform connectors—enabling developers to leverage their existing investments. Developers will be able to easily build new Microsoft 365 plugins with the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. Developers can also extend Microsoft 365 Copilot by bringing their data into the Microsoft Graph, contextualizing relevant and actionable information with the new Semantic Index for Copilot. More than 50 plugins from partners will be available for customers as part of the early access program and thousands of plugins will be available by general availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Teams Live Share SDK: With the Live Share SDK, now generally available, developers can transform Teams apps into collaborative multi-user experiences without writing any dedicated back-end code. The result: a rich, multi-player meeting experience that enables participants to co-watch, co-create, and co-edit content during meetings.
• Avatars and immersive spaces for Microsoft Teams: Avatars for Microsoft Teams is now generally available and offers an alternative to the binary option of video or no video and features customizable avatars and reactions. Avatars give users the option of a camera break, while encouraging engagement and fun. Transform your everyday meetings to have a sense of natural co-presence with immersive spaces for Microsoft Teams, now in private preview. Immersive spaces for Microsoft Teams can be accessed through a PC or VR headset, with the ability to easily connect with other participants regardless of whether they join a Teams meeting using video or as an avatar, or in the immersive space directly.
• Microsoft Mesh: Microsoft Mesh is a platform that empowers developers and creators to build custom, immersive experiences for the workplace. Mesh gives developers the tools to create shared experiences that help foster a sense of connection and belonging regardless of where workers are located, using a PC or VR headset. Microsoft Mesh is available in private preview starting today.
Making it easier to build on and for Windows
We’re announcing a lot of exciting updates for Windows developers at Microsoft Build, including Windows Copilot, the brand-new Dev Home, how Hybrid Loop for AI is becoming a reality, and major Microsoft Store updates. To learn more, read the blog post by Panos Panay, EVP & Chief Product Officer.
• Introducing Windows Copilot. Windows will be the first PC platform to provide centralized AI assistance with the introduction of Windows Copilot. Together with Bing Chat and 1P/3P plugins, Windows Copilot will allow developers to focus on bringing their ideas to life, complete complex projects, and collaborate instead of spending energy finding, launching, and working across multiple applications.
• Dev Home, productivity companion on Windows. Dev Home allows developers to quickly set up their machines and monitor workflows all in one location, enabling greater productivity on Windows. Dev Home also offers WinGet configuration for easier and faster setup, Dev Drive for enhanced file system performance, and easy connection to GitHub. All updates in preview.
• Microsoft Store on Windows is announcing new tools and AI features to help developers reach new customers at the right time, in the right place. These include:
o Microsoft Store AI Hub: Coming soon, a dedicated section that will curate the best AI experiences, built by the developer community or Microsoft.
o AI-Generated review summary: To help optimize app discovery, we are introducing a new tool in Partner Center that leverages AI to generate and suggest search tags for apps to improve discoverability.
o AI-Generated keywords: Developers will soon be able to reach more customers with AI-powered smart keyword suggestions, resulting in more precise SEO for their product description pages.
o Microsoft Store Ads: Microsoft Store Ads is expanding in three significant ways. Starting in June, it will serve more than 150 regions, supported by Microsoft Advertising. Developers will also be able to reach their customers with a new premium spotlight section of the Store and Bing.com search results.
o Backup and Restore App capability: To help developers retain their customers when they switch devices, we are enhancing the backup and restore experience for apps. This update is in preview and is available to Windows Insiders today.
• Hybrid Loop for AI becomes a reality: With ONNX Runtime (ORT) and Olive toolchain, we are making it easier for developers to create amazing AI experiences on Windows and other platforms, with less engineering effort and better performance. We created Olive, an extensible toolchain, to ease the burden on developers, simplifying the optimization process, and eliminating the need for deep hardware knowledge.
• ORT and Olive are cross-platform so Windows AI investments can extend to all app platforms. ONNX Runtime now supports the same API for running models on the device or in the cloud, enabling hybrid inferencing scenarios where your app can use local resources when possible and switch to the cloud when needed.
• With the Azure EP (execution provider) in preview, developers can connect to models deployed in Azure Machine Learning or even to the Azure OpenAI service, providing flexibility to choose larger in the cloud or small local models at runtime and more control over costs and user experience. With just a few lines of code developers can specify the cloud endpoint and define their criteria for when to use the cloud.

The future of app development with the Power Platform

Developers need to deliver high-quality apps faster than ever before and Power Platform helps by supercharging productivity and changing development with next-generation AI. Learn about the latest Power Platform innovation announced at Build—including how developers can combine the Power Platform, Azure, Visual Studio, and GitHub to accelerate app development, automation, or build chatbots—and discover why Power Platform is the world’s most comprehensive and intelligent tool for developers. To learn more, read the blog post by Charles Lamanna, CVP of Business Applications and Platforms.

 

We’re showcasing advancements in low-code tools to help professional developers be more productive:

• To further enhance developer productivity in the Power Platform, Managed Environments now come with the ability to have a catalog of your enterprise-approved templates and components. Professional developers can publish artifacts such as apps, flows, and bots for their organization to use in their own solutions using the PAC CLI and GitHub actions. With every new component in the catalog, the entire organization will enjoy reduced time and cost for every new application.
• The developer hub in Power Platform, now in public preview, is a new hub that helps code-first developers quickly learn and onboard to the Power Platform. It offers a single starting point to establish a developer environment using videos and guided walk-throughs so a developer can watch the process and then try for themselves to get started building their own apps faster.

Low code and generative AI:

• Copilot in Power Pages: We’re excited to introduce Copilot in Power Pages, now in public preview (U.S. only as this time), as the latest in Power Platform AI innovation, allowing makers to use natural language input to generate text copy, build business data-centric forms, activate chatbots, and enable site design themes in seconds for rapid visual setup and customization.
• Power Automate – Custom Actions SDK: This feature, now in public preview, enables users to create, use, and manage custom actions in Power Automate for desktop. Users are now able to create custom actions through a publicly available SDK (Modules SDK) and manage groups of actions for their flows by adding/removing custom-developed action groups through a dedicated UI (Assets library) in the Power Automate for desktop designer.
• The unified authoring canvas of Power Virtual Agents is now generally available. The unified authoring canvas in Power Virtual Agents brings together the powerful and flexible capabilities from Bot Framework Composer with the intuitive authoring experience that Power Virtual Agents is known for, providing a single authoring canvas where any member of the team, irrespective of their skill level, can collaborate on bot building—from low-code makers through to pro-developers alike.
• Power Virtual Agents introduces generative actions, now in limited preview. This feature can automatically create actionable conversation responses by dynamically chaining components existing in Power Virtual Agents today. These components include pre-built and custom connectors, Power Automate flows, topics, and skills.
Protect and customize access with the preview of Microsoft Entra External ID
We’re announcing several DevSecOps innovations, including the introduction of Microsoft Entra External ID, the future of customer identity and access management. To learn more, read the blog post by Joy Chik, President of Identity and Network Access.

• Microsoft Entra External ID, now in public preview: Announcing our next generation customer identity and access management solution that secures access to any app across any external identity from a single, centralized management platform. With Microsoft Entra External ID, users can:
o Secure digital relationships: Protect identities with strong authentication and granular access policies.
o Control access rights for any external user: Define the right level of access and govern identity lifecycles.
o Create people-centric experiences: Design intuitive user journeys to immerse users in your brand experiences.
o Accelerate development of secure applications: Make it easy for your app development teams to embed identity security to any application or any customer experience.