As time goes by, technology evolves too. Especially within the Power Platform, where Microsoft invests a lot in new features and capabilities. I’ve taken some time to play with the new Mixed Reality features, like projecting a 3D-model in your own space, or taking measurements, just with dragging a control on your canvas.

First things first, you need to be in a preview environment. Currently, this is only supported in the United-States area. You can learn all about it following this link. Important is that at the time of writing, no CDS databases are supported within the preview environment. You can thus not isolate your “playground data”.

To connecto to a CDS database, you can leverage the CDS connector. As in a preview environment, also the connector is a preview version. I was not capable of connecting to my CDS environment using this connector. Luckily, the Dynamics 365 connector (deprecated, do not use anymore!!!) was there to let me play with my opportunities, leads and contacts of my dev environment.

Over to the AI components. There are actually three of them, and can be found when you enable them in the advanced settings of your canvas app:

Now they will show on the insert ribbon or pane:

the three different controls

View in MR lets you project .glb files into space. Those files are actually binary versions of a 3D model. Microsoft has an conversion tool for you, where you need a visio license for. I’ve used an online converter tool, which was free and did the job. Next, you need to have a reference to your .glb document. I’ve hosted it a SharePoint list. To be able to access it, I’ve created a flow in Power Automate where I’ve passed the item url. Why a flow, and no direct link? The request when you go directly to the file requires authentication, which is done automatically once you grant the SharePoint connector used in the flow access on your behalf.

View shape in MR lets you project a cubic into space. You can specify the measurements of it and you can place it anywhere you want. You can take pictures and upload those where you want.

Measure in MR lets you draw lines between points you pick based on the Mixed Reality. It will show you how far the points are from each other. The results are a Table where all the lengths are stored in.

My personal opinion is that it are really great controls which allow you to do things never seen before within a few clicks. It takes however specific cases to be able to fully use the capabilities of it. You also need a well lit environment. Inside I found it not working that often. Maybe it was due to my device which is already a bit older. Also, it takes some practice to get familiar with working how to interact with the controls. Once the app detects a surface, it will show a dotted area where you can put the 3D model. On the contrary, to measure, you only have a circle marker. Nevertheless, if you have a use case, please explore the options of Mixed Reality. It really thrives productivity and creativity to the next level.