Power Apps Copilot widgets are model-driven only for now
Microsoft’s April 22 public preview adds custom tools and rich app-powered UI for Power Apps experiences inside Microsoft 365 Copilot conversations. A May 26 walkthrough from Diana Birkelbach shows what that widget flow looks like in practice. The important limitation is that Microsoft’s preview is for model-driven apps, not normal canvas apps. Microsoft says Power Apps generates an MCP server and declarative agent from a model-driven app, then custom tools and widgets plug into that agent. The widgets are self-contained MCP-compliant HTML files built with Fluent UI. The preview requires a model-driven app, a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and permission to upload custom apps in Microsoft Teams.
For Power Apps builders, the impact is not that every existing app screen can now live inside Copilot. The real change is that Microsoft is making Copilot conversations another place where structured business app UI can appear, but only when the app is built on the model-driven app and MCP path. That makes this an architecture warning for canvas app teams. If a manager asks for a Copilot chat experience on top of a SharePoint-backed canvas app, the hard part may not be the widget. It may be deciding whether the process has outgrown lists and needs Dataverse, model-driven forms, and a packaged agent before Copilot belongs in the plan.
Analysis
Before pitching a Copilot chat experience for a canvas app, ask one question: is this really a SharePoint-backed canvas app, or is it becoming a Dataverse/model-driven app? If it needs chat widgets, MCP tools, or agent packaging, plan the data model first instead of trying to bolt Copilot onto the existing screen.
Citation
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