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Consultant KB for Microsoft Power Apps: canvas apps, model-driven apps, Power Fx, data and connections, controls and UI, code and extensibility, mobile and offline, ALM and solutions, governance and security, licensing and performance, plus cross-cutting decision guides. Implementation notes, configuration decisions and the gotchas that bite on real projects. Populated by the daily author agent from the Power Apps release plans, docs repo and product blog, plus the author's own consultant notes.

power-apps/01-canvas-apps/feature-powerapps-copilot.md
feature-powerapps-copilot.mdv1 · history
CurrentApplies to BothUpdated last monthSource Microsoft Learn ↗

What it does

Two separate things wearing the same name. Copilot for makers generates apps, screens, formulas and data models from natural language in Power Apps Studio. Copilot for app users is a chat experience inside a running app that answers questions about its data. They have different admin controls, different licensing and different maturity.

Key facts

  • Generally available Copilot features are on by default and can't be switched off by an admin. A tenant admin has to raise a support request with Microsoft to disable them.
  • Preview Copilot features can be turned off per environment (Settings > Features > Copilot toggle) or per tenant (Tenant settings > Copilot in Power Apps (preview)).
  • The tenant toggle turns Copilot off for makers only. It doesn't turn off the in-app Copilot control or Copilot for model-driven apps. Read that twice before promising anything to a security team.
  • The in-app Copilot control is preview and has been closed to new canvas apps since 2 February 2026. Existing apps keep working "for a limited time" and Microsoft's recommendation is to migrate.
  • The replacement is Microsoft 365 Copilot in canvas apps, also preview as of the April 2026 documentation. It needs an early release cycle environment, the tenant setting allowing Dataverse data in Microsoft 365 Copilot, Dataverse Search set to Default or On, and a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence for each user.
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot in canvas apps is read-only — users can view data matching their query, not change it. Write operations need a custom agent.
  • It supports SharePoint or Dataverse as the data source, but not both in the same app. In the initial preview only apps with a single SharePoint list return answers, and a SharePoint list reached through an environment variable isn't referenced at all.
  • It isn't available in the Power Apps mobile app.
  • Copilot doesn't work in environments using a customer-managed key or Customer Lockbox.
  • The modern control set includes a Copilot answer control, still marked preview on the July 2026 reference page.
  • Availability varies by region and language, and features may be subject to usage limits or capacity throttling.

When to use / skip

Maker Copilot is genuinely useful for the boring first 20% — scaffolding a screen, drafting a formula you'd have to look up, generating a plausible data model to argue with. It's not useful for anything with real structure, and consultants who lean on it produce apps that look finished and aren't. In-app Copilot is worth piloting where users ask a lot of "which of these records is..." questions against Dataverse, and worth skipping entirely where the answer has to be right every time, because it's preview, read-only and dependent on search indexing. Don't put it on a delivery critical path this year.

Configuration decisions

  • Whether maker Copilot is on for the tenant, understanding that switching it off only affects makers and only affects preview features.
  • Whether in-app Copilot is piloted at all, given the early release cycle environment requirement.
  • Which data source an app standardises on, since Dataverse and SharePoint can't be mixed for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  • Whether the client accepts the Dataverse Search dependency and its capacity implications, since indexing consumes environment capacity.
  • Who holds Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, because in-app Copilot needs them per user and that's a separate purchase from Power Apps.

Gotchas

  • The tenant Copilot toggle not covering in-app Copilot is the single most misunderstood thing here. Security teams switch it off, tick the box, and the control is still live.
  • GA Copilot features can't be disabled by an admin at all. Support request only. That surprises regulated clients badly.
  • The Copilot control being closed to new apps in February 2026 means any pattern you learned in 2024 or 2025 is now a migration, not a design.
  • Environments with customer-managed keys or Customer Lockbox get no Copilot. Those are exactly the clients most likely to have asked for it in the requirements.
  • Dataverse Search has to be on. On a large environment, turning it on has capacity consequences worth checking before the pilot rather than after.

Consultant notes

  • Separate the two Copilots in every conversation. Clients hear "Copilot in Power Apps" and picture one thing; the admin controls, the licences and the readiness are all different.
  • Don't demo maker Copilot as a delivery accelerator unless you're happy to be held to it. It shortens the first hour, not the project.
  • Get the licensing position confirmed before scoping any in-app Copilot work. Microsoft 365 Copilot licences are a decision made well above the project.
  • Where a client's real requirement is "users can ask questions of our data", check whether a Copilot Studio agent is the better fit. It's more work up front and considerably more controllable.

This one moves fast — recheck the preview flags and the Copilot control retirement timeline before quoting any of it.

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