{"id":135345,"date":"2026-10-29T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/?p=135345"},"modified":"2026-10-29T09:06:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T16:06:40","slug":"built-by-makers-five-years-of-power-platform-community-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/2026\/10\/29\/built-by-makers-five-years-of-power-platform-community-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Built by makers: Five years of Power Platform Community Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Something happens when you put thousands of makers in one place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n You could hear it in the questions asked in sessions. You could see it when engineers pulled up a chair next to customers to work through a problem. You could see it in the people who arrived at the fifth annual Power Platform Community Conference (PPCC)<\/a> with an idea and left with something that worked.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 9,000 people filled the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for five days of learning, building, and connecting. The scale of the conference has changed since 2022, but what makes the community special has not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Register for Maker Con 2027 in Chicago<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n A first-time maker can sit next to a Microsoft MVP<\/a>. Customers can work directly with the engineers building the products they use. People come ready to share what they know and help one another build. That spirit matters because technology can make the most impact when people use it to solve problems together. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start with the process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every innovation we celebrated this week started with a maker<\/em>. A maker is someone who understands a problem, sees what could be better and decides to do something about it. Today, that includes IT pros, developers, longtime Microsoft Power Platform<\/a> builders, and people building with AI for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Asurion<\/a>, an IT team embedded a Microsoft Copilot Studio<\/a> agent into its invoice capture process and touchless processing rose from under 20% to more than 70%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NHS Scotland<\/a> built a solution on Power Platform that helped clinicians move 25% to 35% of patients out of the multidisciplinary meeting process and into more routine care pathways. That gives doctors more time for complex cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NFL<\/a> built an AI-powered Game Ops Dashboard with Copilot Studio and Power Platform that has helped save its team 8 to 12 hours a week in data entry and reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These teams aren\u2019t outliers. More than two million makers are active every month, creating and running more than four million apps. And that momentum continues to grow; daily active users of Microsoft Power Apps<\/a> increased 20% over the past year, while AI usage in Power Apps more than doubled. Makers are automating more work behind the scenes too, with flow runs growing 20%. And in Copilot Studio, where makers can now build apps alongside their agents, app usage more than tripled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those growth numbers point to something broader. Makers are using their talent and these capabilities to rebuild processes that matter to an organization. By connecting apps, automation, and agents, makers are changing how work is getting done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Innovation on the main stage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before PPCC, my colleague Ryan Cunningham<\/a> challenged every attendee to bring one process that matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Ryan and Charles Lamanna<\/a> opened the conference, their message was clear: there\u2019s never been a better time to be a maker. AI is expanding who<\/em> can build and what<\/em> they can build. Microsoft Copilot is changing how work gets done, and every new way of working needs makers to shape it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It begins with the work in front of them. A maker can take a broken process, describe the outcome they want and bring together apps, automation and agents to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, it\u2019s about improving the entire process. What starts with solving one pain point can change how an entire team or organization gets work done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw that all week on the show floor. People were following through on Ryan\u2019s challenge, working with peers, experts and Microsoft engineers to figure out what to build next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From an idea to a working business process <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PPCC gave makers the opportunity to get hands-on with capabilities across Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Power Platform. Just as important, it gave them access to the people building those capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Makers don\u2019t have to start over. We continue to invest in the core of Power Platform, from modern Power Apps controls to the Microsoft Power Automate<\/a> improvements and quality-of-life features this community asked for. Through Work IQ<\/a>, the apps, flows, and sites customers have already built become available to agents in Copilot, so the work makers have done becomes part of what comes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That connected approach also extends to Dynamics 365. Many customers are using Dynamics 365 alongside Copilot Studio and Cowork to bring business data, agents, apps, and workflows together around the processes their teams rely on every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across these experiences, three themes stood out in how makers can turn ideas into complete, connected business processes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Build the experience around the process<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The people closest to the work can create apps in Copilot Cowork<\/a> and in Copilot Studio, where apps are now in public preview<\/a>. Makers can describe what they need, like an employee onboarding app, in natural language and refine a working app alongside the agents and workflows supporting the process. This gives teams a more direct path from understanding the problem to testing a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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