Power Platform Boost Podcast
The Power Platform Boost Podcast is your timely update of what's new and what is happening in the community of Microsoft business applications. Join hosts Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman for a lively discussion of all things Power Platform!Like what you hear? Buy us a beer: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Powerplatboost
Power Platform Boost Podcast
Agent Academy (#66)
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Show Notes
- How to Build an Autonomous Agent in Copilot Studio by Reza Dorrani
- Agent Academy
- Partner Call Walkthrough by Scott Durow
- #agentacademy by Ana Inés Urrutia
- 9 AI Resources by Joel Moran
- Python in Copilot Studio by Scott Durow
- Pac Environment Extension by Steve Mordue
- From PoCs to production By Carsten Groth
- The classic Power Platform admin center will be retired
- How to Roll Back Level Up by Anna Black
- Using AI Hub: Document outputs in prompts by Ana Inés Urrutia
- SPA in Power Pages using GitHub Spark and Codespaces by Neeraj Nandwana
- Build and Extend Agents Directly from Power Pages Studio (Preview) by Nagesh Bhat
- Power Pages: Tired of filling forms? Use an agent! by Nick Doelman
- How to improve Power Apps with typography by Anna Black
- Copilot Labs
- Microsoft Reactor
- AI Agent & Copilot Podcast by Shawn Dorward
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Democratizing Programming Through AI
Speaker 1a low-code platform , as opposed to kind of yeah , so democratize programming for everyone , everyone can make these things . And then now what we're seeing is actually that , in practice , when anyone not you know when personal trainers can learn Python and actually vibe code their way to make stuff happen I mean , jesus , that's .
Speaker 2What I talked about before about AI is not going to take your job , but Steve Mordew will Well guess who put something up on freaking GitHub , an actual open source project . Like any good developer , he wrote something for himself that really bothered him , so he thought I'm going to write a solution to this . Yeah , I know , Steve is viability , but the fact he's now putting stuff on GitHub for the world and these projects kind of blew my mind . I think this is the world we live in . Steve Mardu is publishing code on GitHub .
Speaker 1Wow . Hello everyone and welcome to the Power Platform Boost podcast , your timely source of Power Platform news and updates , with your hosts , nick Dolman and Ulrike Ackerbeck .
Speaker 2All right , here we are for another episode of the Power Platform Boost podcast . We're still calling it that we haven't discussed name changes yet .
Speaker 1Oh , we've discussed it . We just haven't settled yet , but I think we're going to . If I end up with Manana , I think we're going to just end up being Boost podcast and then we can boost whatever we want . It's very transferable . We can boost food and restaurants when we go traveling , we can boost AI and Copilot , studio News , whoop , whoop Represent , et cetera , et cetera . Exactly , community boost . Speaking of community boost .
Speaker 2that could work too . It might depend on domain name availability as well as everything , so that means . I have to look and book it before we release the episode , because people might just go park it and charge us lots of money , like the person who owns powerpagescom .
Speaker 1Well , he's out of luck soon , but he doesn't know . But you know , that's how long do you think he's going to be named , that they change the name ? Of this stuff every two years . It's overdue .
Speaker 2Yeah , they're about due for a name change on everything across the board . Yep , who knows , who knows , who knows ? Cool , so how are you doing ?
Speaker 1oh , I'm good . I'm good . We have a second wave of , so this is weather talk . I say I'm good and then it's always about the weather because I I just listening back to some of the episodes , I realized how dependent on the weather I am . And then everything about me clicks into place because , you know , half of the year there's no sun here and I'm depressed from November until March , which makes sense because my mood is dependent on the weather . So you know , that's me . What's your week been like ?
Speaker 2So it's been good . And speaking of the weather , like I went for a walk this morning before the sun came up and I come back I'm drenched in sweat Like I ran a mile , but I just went for a walk . So we have high temperatures , high humidity here . We need rain , Our lawns are getting pretty brown , but I mean , that's summer in Canada , that's not completely unusual . Uh , it's been good .
Speaker 2I was in Colorado last week , so shout out to the folks that I saw there . Um went to watch the strongman competition , met some of my heroes right up close . Um , for anybody who knows strongman , that kind of I don't know community or whatever you want to call it . Um , yeah , community or whatever you want to call it . Yeah , saw like up close Brian Shaw , Eddie Hall , Nick Best , Tom Stoltman Like some of these are huge names in Strongman and it was really , really cool and my friend , Andrea , who she still does business central work . She power lifted , so I was coaching her . She did really , really well , broke some records , so that was a lot of fun . And then , of course , saw Julie and David Yak , good friends of ours I know , Julie , you don't listen to podcasts and Dave , but hello anyway .
Speaker 2And did the Dynamics user group in Denver on the Thursday . So I met a lot of folks there and did a couple sessions , Of course , one on PowerPages , one on the Power Platform Plan Designer and a lot of interesting talks and discussions there . A lot of interesting sessions as well . So pretty cool and probably the best session , the opening session the guy talked about . You know it was kind of billed as talk about the co-pilot PCs and what you can do with your co-pilot laptop .
Speaker 2So we covered a little bit about this but then went into a whole thing about how to set up your Windows desktop and laptop effectively and got onto this little crazy rant to the point he said I know you people think I'm crazy about removing the Microsoft Store icon from the taskbar . Him crazy about removing the Microsoft Store icon from the taskbar . So to the point where he was showing videos of him removing the Microsoft or Windows Store icon from computers in Costco , for example . And then he's showing a video saying his brother-in-law had like a bit of a heart episode , but he's okay , but in the hospital , him going removing the Microsoft Store icon from the computers where they're connected to everything .
Speaker 2So it was , it was funny . He goes on this little diatribe on this stuff , but a lot of great tips just on using Windows , like who would have thought how to use the voice commands and things like this . So it really changed how I really . So I went into my computer , rearranged how I got my desktop and my icon set up , Plus learned about a whole bunch of new features that I can use on my co-pilot laptop . So that was pretty cool .
Speaker 1Wow , you should make a write a blog post about it or create a video about it , cause now I'm intrigued . I think I'm doing it wrong and also I love people on a mission like that . It's like it's my life mission to . Whenever I see that icon , permission to . Whenever I see that icon , I'm going to remove it . It's like , well , you have a calling , then whatever you go .
Speaker 2It's like , oh , I'm going to just so . He started off his session with he said it was a poll . He said and it was from hey , what do you think of me so far ? And it's sort of the question is like well , you seem okay . All the way to the very last question , was you need help ? And of course when he opened up with this , everybody kind of pulled yeah , you seem okay , it seems interesting . And then at the end of that little session it was sort of like he said , well , we're kind of running short on time , but here's a typical response and of course you need psychological help was like huge .
Speaker 1Fantastic . We should do that for the podcast as well , because as we rant on , people are going like , ok , they're crazy , that makes a whole lot of sense .
Speaker 2How can they rant ?
Speaker 1about the same thing every second week .
Speaker 2Yeah , get getting help , and this is my segue into everything probably a number one question that I mean I'm getting asked at events , and you probably see this as well as like , okay , copilot Studio , how do we get ramped up , how do we start building agents off ? Learn sometimes seems to be a little bit behind . Of all , the new updates is constantly evolving , so this week I'm looking at our list .
Speaker 1We have a shit ton of resources of on getting ramped up on co-pilot studio and building agents , so let's uh , we're ready to dive into that oh yeah , absolutely , and this is so perfect timing for me as well , personally , because I've , or I thought I was going to have some time on my hands to kind of ramp up all these things , because it's it's kind of outside of my natural scope . But I think everyone needs to ramp up on this stuff , even though you kind of work on something else in your everyday job . This is something you need to know about . So let's just talk about Copilot Studio Agent Academy first of all , which I think maybe is the biggest announcement across the board this week . It was launched .
Speaker 1Was it Monday ? No , last week , so that would be Wednesday last week , so this is Wednesday , so a week ago . When this is published . It's
Power Platform Boost Podcast Introduction
Speaker 1created by the advocacy team and it's published on GitHub created by the advocacy team and it's published on github , and it's a new curriculum , uh , complete kind of academy curriculum for ramping up on copilot studio . So have you gone through it yet ?
Speaker 2no , I haven't , but I'm definitely aware of it .
Speaker 1Really , I was so sure , because you always beat me at these things , because actually I went through half of it .
Speaker 1And then we had an emergency at work so I had to kind of dive in to save the day . But this is fantastic and it's not just a click here do this , do that . It's taking you through . It's a real curriculum . It takes you through the basics , the theory , everything you need to know . Of course , it's all AI written right . Takes you through the basics , the theory , everything you need to know . Of course it's all AI written right . But it's also it's full of emojis and kind of bullet lists . But also it's very to the point and I found that reading through it didn't take a lot of time and it gives you just what you need to understand what you're doing and why and also the possibilities around right . So it will say something like this is the way we're configuring it here , because this and that , but also realize you can do this , this or this as well if you have this kind of scenario . So it's , I find it's so good . And also , if you want to kind of get a walk through before you dive in the partner community call last Thursday was the day after it was published .
Speaker 1Uh , the advocacy team did a walkthrough , scott Giro did a walkthrough of the first um tier of this kind of curriculum . So there's three tiers . Did they call it tiers Um ?
Speaker 2or missions , aren't they ? Isn't it missions ?
Speaker 1tiers , um , or missions aren't , isn't it ? Missions , missions , maybe ? Yeah , so you do the first one first . Um , oh , jesus , can't this just ? Oh , sorry , it's on my other screen um , so you do the . The first one is recruit , so that's the one that's available now . I think they have operative , uh , which is going to be the next one , um , and I .
Speaker 2And the cool thing too , is if you're one of these folks that like badges , you can win or gain badges at this , yeah , recruit operative and commander .
Speaker 1Thank you , I got my computer back , so yeah , that's the one . So operative is around the corner and I know they're working on the commander as well , and I don't think they're working on the commander as well . Uh and no , and I don't think everyone gets a badge . Actually , I think it's the first 100 people to get through the recruit and take a picture and send it to them will get the badge a credibly badge . I'm not sure why it's restricted to only the 100 first . Honestly , that's what scott said in the walkthrough .
Speaker 2But , um , yeah , it's got to be very yeah , it's got to be something special , right , because it's like , if you hand it out to everybody , it's like participation medals , right , if you hand it out to everybody , it's not special , so it's got to be to that . Now , I'm guessing the top 100 will be taken by the time this episode drops . I'm pretty sure it actually would be , because I already seen already on LinkedIn a few people popping up saying they've completed it .
Speaker 1Oh yeah , and then also they encourage you to go in and start the repo , and it's almost 400 stars at this point , so I think that also is an indication of how many people walk through it .
Speaker 2So yeah , yeah , right , so that's one Good work team on this . Yeah , yeah , right , so that's one Good work team on this . Yeah , yeah , fantastic . So Eliza and Dave .
Speaker 1Daniel and all the other ones . Sorry , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2Yeah , for sure . Yeah , because I was chatting with Eliza a little bit back and forth on it and she was , you know , she was kind of taking a bit
Weather Talk and Personal Updates
Speaker 2of breather , creating a lot of this content and then , I guess , diving into the next , the next realm of it . So that was pretty exciting . So the other cool thing that I saw was if you , if you're , if you want to , just if you're more of just a passive learner we're not even say passive learner , but want a very condensed kind of step-by-step tutorial .
Speaker 2Reza Darani now , of course we know Reza . He puts a YouTube video every week . He's very , very like to the point , very methodical . Here's how you do this , step by step , very clear , like you can just go through and follow along and pause , and it's amazing . And he did how to build an autonomous agent using Copilot Studio , a step by step tutorial . I have the link there . It's on YouTube and it just to me . It was like , yeah , this makes perfect sense , you can go through as a use case . It just talked about the different points .
Speaker 2So if this is something completely new to you , that's a great place to start as well in terms of you know that , getting up to speed on building autonomous agents and co-pilot studio .
Speaker 2It's kind of interesting because the reason why you know you're laughing at me for not doing the co-pilot agent academy , the reason why you know you're laughing at me for not doing the co-pilots to Agent Academy , I actually took another . I was taking another online course that sits outside of the Microsoft realm . It was like an AI agent boot camp from a company called Lonely Octopus and it's interesting to see what the non-Microsoft people are doing with all of this and there's some amazing tools and some other amazing connections , but at the end of the day , through these MCP servers and connectors , it all can tie together and all these concepts sort of relate to each other . So , from a certain aspect , now is a really , really cool time to be involved in this , because it's all new and we're all learning . But it is radically a whole new new area of , yeah , software solutions , whatever you want to call it . So , yeah , and then there's still more .
Speaker 1There's still more because and I am a bit confused of who kind of came up with the name first , but Ana Ines Urrutia de Souza . She also has a co-pilot studio academy course out . So you know who's going to win the battle of , I think , going up against Microsoft , maybe a hard battle and maybe looking into a new name for your curriculum . But I think , from what I can tell of the context around this , is this something that she created for maybe a workshop or training that she kind of can offer as a , as a trainer . But also she's uh giving it to people for free to follow along . So there's resources and on this website you can download it and follow its instructions and labs , uh , step by step , to go through and learn about ai and code by the studio and the different things you can do there , and she's always so up toto-date on the latest features .
Speaker 1So I have another thing from Anna later on , the show notes as well . So that's definitely worth . So I think , when you're done with the Agent Academy , which is probably kind of cover the basics and get you familiar with the lingo and what the different things are and give you kind of that foundation Diving into something from Reza , for instance , or Ana , would be very beneficial , because then you'll probably learn more about the edge cases or the niche things or the things that are in preview that probably the Academy won't cover .
Speaker 2Yep , Now you had something else here about my , about . You talk about learning journeys and again , if you're , I think it's great to share your own learning journey . Here's what I learned and here's where I went to , so you have a post here my co-pilot studio learning journey . Nine AI resources for power platform makers from Joel Moran . Do you want to chat about that ?
Speaker 1Yeah , no , it's just something I came across on LinkedIn and I love when people do this . It's a collection of resources that Joel has come across for co-pilot and agents and kind of things that he's dived into Videos and video series and other kind of so the Power Up program , for instance . Power Up program , for instance , and he mentions a video , another video from Reza Durrani introducing generative pages , for instance , and Scott Jarrell's vibe code thing that we mentioned last time is in here . So it's just a collection of resources that Joe found interesting for Power Platform makers as they dive into Cobblestone new learning . So this is nine AI resources for platform makers . So , yeah , definitely something to check out . We'll give you kind of a , I think , a diverse introduction to the different things that are possible In other news . Do you want to continue the thing ? Or because I see I have a lot of things here , so should we just go top to bottom ?
Speaker 2Yeah , that probably works best , because some of these I think some of these are yours . I haven't checked out yet , so right .
Speaker 1Ok , so there's a video that I saw . This is one of the things where I think it's super exciting but I have no idea what it kind of unlocks . But there is a video on Lampdine by Scott Juro that introduced code capabilities with Python in prompts in CodePilot Studio , and from just that little short video it shows you how you can get it to update Dataverse for you by kind of reading and understanding data on a row and then on a record and then updating another column on that same thing automatically without you doing anything . Or it can grab lots of data and put that into an excel spreadsheet for you and kind of transform the data . And you know it's too . It's a bit too dev heavy for me to understand , but from what I saw in the post it was like can this one day replace Power Fx functions ? It's like shit . If it can do that , it's pretty powerful .
Speaker 2Well , I mean .
Speaker 2Python has sort of been the language of AI for a while now and I think if it's kind of being more public . We did see bits of this at the MVP Summit . They talked a bit about Python a little bit , but Python is one of those . It's not a Microsoft-specific language , it goes beyond . So , quite interestingly , my daughter is really big into this video game called Stardew Valley and she's big into Minecraft as well . But Stardew Valley it's one of these kind of resource games as well , but you can extend it . And she actually went into AI , copilot or whatever and vibe coded some stuff which generated Python code for this game which both my wife and I kind of looking at her like oh , you're going to join the family business kind of thing to which she's kind of like no , no or resist no , no , no , no , so awesome .
Speaker 1But yeah , I could , because I also know uh . You know the lego league type thing where they program lego bots . That's also running python , from what I understand . So or you can write python to program it with uh , because I have one of the trainers uh the running trainers who have work . He is the leader of one of the trainers uh the running trainers you have at work . He is the leader of one of the teams and he said the girls on his team was learning and he was learning python on . He's a personal trainer , fight by training and and also a teacher , so and he's learning python with uh ai on the evenings . I was like what's going on ? The whole world is turning into tech people , so yep , wow , if .
Speaker 2If personal trainers are beginning to learn Python , then no .
Speaker 1Yeah , but you know . So this is kind of a tangent , but you know , a low-code platform as opposed to kind of , yeah , so democratized programming for everyone , everyone can make these things . And then now what we're saying is actually that , in practice , when anyone not not , you know , when personal trainers can learn python and actually vibe code them their way to make stuff happen I mean , jesus , that's well .
Speaker 2So I know we were going from top to bottom , but I'm going to . This is a segue . So I think going from top to bottom , but this is a segue . So I think we go top to bottom unless we can find a good segue . So what I talked about before about AI , is not going to take your job , but Steve Mordu will Well guess who put something up on freaking GitHub , an actual open source project .
Speaker 2Our good friend , steve actually posted something . It's a pack , it's called
Copilot Studio Learning Resources
Speaker 2Pack Environment per Project and it's a VS Code extension . Like a VS Code extension this is Steve that automatically switches the Power Platform CLI profiles . When you switch between projects , each project maintains its own PIN . And he did like any good developer . He wrote something for himself that really bothered him . So he thought I'm going to write a solution to this .
Speaker 2And it's about you know , of course , if you've used the PAC CLI , you know you'd always deal with auth profiles and then sometimes you're jumping through different projects . Like I do this all the time I'm loading up Visual Studio Code projects . Like I do this all the time I'm loading up Visual Studio Code . I'm like , oh , I got to switch projects , but I still have my other project open , whatever , and this will kind of help switch and manage that . I haven't installed it yet because it literally I saw it yesterday . It was more of the shock of yeah , I know Steve is vibe coding , but the fact he's now putting stuff on GitHub for the world and these projects kind of blew my mind . I think George Dubinsky commented as well , kind of like whoa , what's happening here ? So this is the world we live in . Steve Mordew is publishing code on GitHub .
Speaker 1Wow , that's fantastic . I mean , come on , what more do you need ? And also , so , if that's not enough , steve writes the code . And then you have Karsten Groth coming in , being the world leading consultant , as he is , and also removing the obstacles from getting things into production . Because it's one thing to put Copilot Studios , autonomous agents together you can put all the agents in the world , you can build them , but we still have a long way to go until it's mainstream to have all of these in production .
Speaker 1And I know this from just our customers and the project that we're on . So many customers are very comfortable with AI and agents , up until the point where we say we're going to go live with something and suddenly there's a bit of a threshold , they're not really ready to go live . So Carson and girls put a very good blog post together where he talks about just this setting . Where you're in the customer setting , you have a workshop , you have your agents , you have everything good to go , but then there's something that's holding them back . So what is it ? And he put together he calls it a red team that is putting on the task in the project . Okay , what is it that we can do here to make sure that we feel like we have the security to go live with this and we feel safe to go live with this . And so what they do is they put a list of different things you can do in order to battle , test your agents , so trying to break the internet type of approach to this and it's a very detailed list of things you can do the internet type of approach to this , and it's a very detailed list of things you could do , and they have it on a kind of a time . They put a timeframe on it . So this is week one , this is week two , and then there's a comment at the bottom . So you tell me , if we had this red team three months ago , we could have been live right Right from the CEO .
Speaker 1And it's true , if you have this system in place , you have this red team in place , that their job is to battle , test and try to break and prompt and break these agents and put in malicious content . Then you'll feel much safer and have , like you said , you have , then , concrete evidence that this works instead of just fragile optimism , which I really like . So this is a great blog post and I think this is the kind of content that I want to see more of going forward . It's like , yeah , the blog post about well , you can , this is the code snippet you need to hack your way to this . I think the age of those blog posts are a bit behind us . I think this is the kind of content we want we'll see more of in the future .
Speaker 2Cool . Yeah , I saw that too and I haven't really read through it , but I definitely I mean , carson always does amazing content and very timely and everything like that Because I think we are I'm beginning to see , like a few months ago , yes , we're talking about co-pilot agents . Like a few months ago , yes , we're talking about co-pilot agents no one's really , from a customer standpoint , really there . Yet Now we're beginning to see this is coming through and , you know , potentially working like working with another potential project and we're working with two . It's , yeah , very co-pilot studio , ai focused going forward . So exciting times for sure . This is perfect stuff to make sure we have that confidence level .
Speaker 1Yeah , absolutely . And then another kind of thing to be aware of , so this is maybe okay . Going top to bottom , the Power Platform Classic Admin Center will be retired on September 4th , so it's one of those small little announcements that is good for you to be aware of .
Speaker 2um , and you can find more information about it on the on the power platform admin center itself yeah , and I do want to point out , just to make , just not to freak anybody out um , this is the power platform admin center . This is where you manage environments and go through settings and see your analytics and you assign licenses and but that stuff that's different from the classic solution explorer and that old classic thing that's not quite going away yet , because I , in a presentation I did in denver , actually , I said , oh , by the way , everybody knows that the power platform in mid center is going away and one lady completely out , but how are we going to map that field ? And I'm going no , no , no , no , no . That will be around for a while yet , don't you worry , because , yeah , it doesn't cover everything . So yeah , let's just sort of make sure everybody's clear . This is the Admin Center , so yeah , and it's basically if it yep , definitely so it's a change to be aware of .
Speaker 1And then another small change , um , that may freak you out is when level up or god mode app suddenly changes its appearance .
Speaker 1So , luckily for us , anna black was here to to save the day and give us a bit of a warning that the level up tool has got has got an update . So don't freak out everybody . It's okay , and she points out in her LinkedIn post that it hasn't had a facelift since 2023 . And in our world that's like a dinosaur type thing if it hasn't been updated in two years . So it's just a UI change , as far as I can tell . Did you see any new updates to the tooling itself ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so actually , the developer of this and I'm just trying to find my own LinkedIn link on this Natraj , who's a super smart guy I met him a couple of years ago at MVP Summit and we've had a few interactions in the past and who basically is the person who built this tool , began to make some updates and then I think he realized he did cause a bit of a kerfuffle with this and is trying desperately to fix it , so it's better . So , yeah , I have seen that and I'll try to locate those posts that we can put in our show notes as well . So , yeah , awesome Anna for like how she . You know , this is what we do as a community . We kind of dive in and we help each other out . But I do know that Natraj is still very much involved with putting the like .
Speaker 2The level up tool is . If it was like take extra M toolbox out of the equation , level up is the next must have tool . I think everybody has it pinned . Or , if you don't check it out , despite all these little hiccups , it's a game changer .
Speaker 1Yeah , and so from what I can understand from anna's post , this is just for um I almost said bing for edge , and it's uh . So the old version will still be um in chrome and then , if you want to look at , the new version is still in edge and there's a few little comments here and there about the impersonation mode not being fully baked and a few little bugs here and there about the impersonation mode not being fully baked and a few little bugs here and there . So maybe it's a bit of a trying with the edge users first to see how it kind of sticks and then moving it to chrome . Later we'll see .
Speaker 1Yeah , we'll keep an eye on it for you , yeah for sure , um , yeah , and so looking down the yeah , so I said I was going to mention something else from Ana Ines Urrutia de Zuza today . I practiced her name and listen to the LinkedIn thing .
Speaker 2Did you know that ?
Speaker 1you can . Yeah , I know right .
Speaker 2We love .
Speaker 1Ana as a best friend , so you can go in on LinkedIn , and a lot of people uploaded them saying their name on LinkedIn , which is really helpful when you have people that you're not really sure about their names . I've practiced on his name and it rolls off the tongue . I love it , so it's it feels very good to say on his name , so that's why I keep saying it Right ? So the other thing that I wanted to highlight from Ana this week was how she talks about the document outputs from prompts . So when Scott was talking about the Python thing and the new code mode for prompts , anna's talking about the output mode , because you can output as text , as JSON and also as document , which is in preview .
Speaker 1So this is where you're in CodePilot Studio and you add a tool and then tools . You can add prompts from prompt library , create your own , or you can choose from the existing ones and then you create a new prompt and then you can choose how it's going to be outputted . Now , if you choose document , you can upload a Word document and then you can set . If you create your Word document correctly it doesn't work with PDF yet , but only for Word and you use the brackets that you can then tie that to your prompt so that you can grab data from Dataverse , for instance , and then you can populate it in the right place in the document and AI will do that mapping for you . You just have to make it very logical for it to understand where it goes , and this means that .
Speaker 1So the scenario she's kind of creating was when someone creates a new item in the list in SharePoint , for instance , a Power Automate triggers on that event and then it triggers that prompt and AI goes in and fills in that document for you with those parameters and send it to you or someone in your company as an email . So that's kind of the scenario and I love this . It's in preview , so you have to kind of can't use it in production yet , but this has a lot of potential and just imagine how much work , how many hours per day globally is spent filling in document templates with information . I mean Jesus Christ . So this is one of those huge for me at least , from where I'm sitting time savers . This is massive . So very good and thank you for bringing that to the surface , anna .
Speaker 2Yeah , I immediately . I'm thinking of a scenario that I need something like this for , so this is very timely . That's awesome .
Speaker 1Very cool , yeah , do you want to do the PowerPages stuff first before I go all out on typography ?
Speaker 2Oh yeah , ok yeah . So before we do the font nerds , the font nerd alert everybody in a few minutes . So a couple of things showed up on in PowerPages so we all know we can build single page applications in PowerPages . That's still in preview , but that's a thing we've talked about already before and there's some good examples on the Microsoft has provided Plus we talked about last week as well . Now what ?
Speaker 2Neeraaj nandwana , who's one of the pms at microsoft and I worked with um near ash before super great guy . He came out with a post and they're building , uh , some these single page applications using github spark . So this is really cool
Steve Mordew's GitHub Project
Speaker 2because this provided me an opportunity to try github spark , which is the another one of these AI code generation tools , but it's built within GitHub and Visual Studio and I went in kind of followed the sort of the tutorial they gave and it was just sort of blew me away , the amazing things and I kind of went and followed the example where you just kind of pick one of the examples they give . So it generated this whole single page application but then from there we can immediately upload it into PowerPages and have it run within the context of PowerPages . It was like wow , it took me maybe like 20 minutes to kind of go through this , but in that 20 minutes I learned so many new things about GitHub , spark , about single page applications and how it all worked and , of course , opened my mind to a whole bunch of new possibilities that we can do with PowerPages . So I haven't , unfortunately . I had all big plans to continue to tie it into Dataverse , get the authentication going and of course I was traveling last week and everything and just sort of . There's only so many hours in the day , but this is something I'm definitely going to circle back to , because I just think this is sort of the way PowerPages is going to a certain extent . So definitely check that out . And then the other thing from another PM from Microsoft , nagash Bhatt , who again I work with Nagash as well , like these two got . Every week I'd have a standing meeting with the PMs , with Nagash and Neeraj and a few others , and it was a highlight of my time at Microsoft just talking to these guys , seeing what they're working on , what all the new stuff they were dreaming up , and they haven't stopped since I left . They keep coming up with things .
Speaker 2This is about building and extending agents directly from PowerPages Studio . So if you have those boring forms or those big , tedious forms that you're putting on your page , well , now there's a little button you can click and it will go through and create an agent . Now I kind of went and tried it out myself . I actually did a video this week on my YouTube channel and my post of going through that process . It's very simple You're filling in a form , but of course , this opens up the possibilities .
Speaker 2Now that you have this agent , there's so many things you can do and I think this is just going to be a much better experience for end users in terms of , like the multi-step forms that we've done in terms of collecting information , in terms of getting co-pilot to go do other things , as opposed to just launching different flows or workflows . Now we can get this agent to go and pull information or go and update this information using the action . So all of that good stuff within the context of a PowerPages site . So all of that good stuff within the context of a PowerPages site . So that little chat bot in the bottom right-hand corner , I think , is going to be more and more powerful . This is just beginning to show the early steps into these possibilities , so definitely check that out , the blog and the documentation . Or , if you know , again , shameless self-promotion . I have a whole walkthrough where I've set this up in terms of creating the agent on a PowerPages site , so you can check that out as well .
Speaker 1Yeah this is something that really gets our customers excited , because this opens up , like you said , a whole new way of interacting with data in Dataverse . So imagine this is public or you're behind authentication even and it allows you to actually communicate with your data through an agent . So now I'm waiting for the opportunity to create a new kind of page on power pages being the agent page , which will give you , or the chat page , which will give you , the same experience as you used to from callbot studio marxical but sorry or chat tpt , so kind of being able to enhance on that experience . Because , like I said , it's still hidden away in the corner underneath that chatbot icon , which I , for one at least , associate with the PBA , the PowerWidget agents , and we associate that with the stupid bot that we used to have . So I'm looking for a way to kind of improve on that association , to bring it out as a side panel at least , or have it actually take over your whole page to give you that chat experience . That's kind of next level and what I'm looking forward to .
Speaker 2Yeah , that's what I kind of expected , because when you convert your form into an agent within the design studio , it just says preview not available , which we've seen before . I kind of and maybe I was over optimistic or maybe looking forward but I thought on that page I would see that agent within the context of where the form used to be , but it just came up blank . So I actually I kind of went back and forth with the project product team directly you know MVP privilege to say , okay , where am I supposed to be seeing this agent ? And he goes oh , it's still in the chat bot . That's where you have to select it . And then you also have to have the site agent enabled as well currently , because they're trying to work through that . So you actually see both of those bots available . So you have to choose that new agent that you've created .
Speaker 2So hopefully they're I think they're already said they're going to clean that up , make that a little bit more elegant . Like I said , it is preview , so , but it's a case of trying things out and seeing what works . But of course you see the vision where they're going . So , yeah , I agree with you . Like I should be able to go to my site and immediately be greeted , like at the door , by this agent . How can I help you , nick ? That's our vision right there .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's what I want to see and we're going to get there . I'm sure Just need to be able to edit and customize the experience for one , right ? So and then moving on and segwaying beautifully over to customizing the experience with typography Anna , I love it . So whenever Anna's posting anything about typography , I know the cat's nighter and I go , yeah , typography , because we're just so fun nerds .
Speaker 1But Anna put out on LinkedIn one of those document things that you can flip through ,
Taking AI Agents to Production
Speaker 1talking about typography and how incredibly important that is to the visual aesthetics of your site but also navigating the content . So being consistent , and there's a few fundamental rules there that I love seeing her kind of highlighting , because I think it's something that I'm trained on , but I don't think a lot of people actually know about this . So as you flip through , suddenly there's a page where it says you read this first , and it's because it's the biggest and most central piece of text on the page , and then you read this second . It says and yes , you're absolutely right , so you can actually guide the user's eye through a page using typography in these different visual keys or cues for the eyes and the brain to actually follow your site in a good way . So it's about information , architecture and structure , which I absolutely love . So this speaks to my heart and I really wanted to highlight it . Anna , well done and keep the content coming . I love it .
Speaker 2Yeah . So I know how excited you get on fonts . So if you , yeah , this is definitely your thing . I've seen you multiple times get all really excited on fonts and I was actually watching an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine last night . I'm not sure if you're familiar with that show , but at one point one of the characters , amy , gives the chief , captain Holt , a letter and he said this is very well written , very well articulated , an excellent choice of font . So I just thought of you when you said that .
Speaker 1So anyways , I love it . I have a cue in your head , so whenever you hear the word font , you think of me . I love it . I wish , I wish I knew all the other keywords I bet there are multiple ones . Fantastic , oh , that's awesome . All right , so just a few little things before we round off , because I know that you have a huge chunk of AI written content here that you want to get through , which is your homework from last time . But other AI news I just wanted to say I saw Copilot Action is currently available to sign and copilot pro users worldwide , but not in the European Economic Area , eea but it is a way for you to connect your co-pilot to your credentials and your credit card to actually now allow it to book things on your behalf .
Speaker 1So the thing that we've been talking about , that's been kind of a pipe dream . It is really really here , not in the EU here , but in your part of the world . I'm sure it's going to light up any day now . So it's under the Microsoft Copilot Experimental Labs . You'll find Copilot Actions . So you can now create your co-pilot agent or your own . You kind of enable that and use that in your chat , if you wanted to , to have it book things on your behalf . So for anyone who's waiting for that , it is around the corner . Um , and then there's stuff to check out .
Speaker 2So does that mean if I set this up , I might just expect a bunch of Amazon packages on my doorstep because my co-pilots decided I need certain things ?
Speaker 1Probably a lot of barbells and whistles and stuff . Oh yeah , or maybe it's actually .
Speaker 2Well , there's this mouth guard . I bought a ton of stuff at this event last week , but that's whole Anyways . That's a ton of stuff at this event last week , but that's whole Anyways . That's a whole other podcast . That's a whole other podcast , yeah .
Speaker 1Right , so the rest of the floor is yours , because we said last time that you were going to read up on the Reactor what is Microsoft ? Reactor Nick .
Speaker 2So I asked this friend of mine called his name is Copilot , or they're called Copilot and really what it is . Microsoft Reactor , a global community initiated by Microsoft , designed to support developers , startups , tech enthusiasts in learning , connecting and building with cutting edge technologies , especially in areas like AI , cloud computing and app development . So it goes through . I'm not going to go through all of this , but where the program offers learning opportunities , they host live and virtual events . So I know this is what we talked about , about there being reactors and Microsoft offices . There's workshops , training sessions . Of course , community engagement . I mean , this is what we do all the time . You know where you can have the community hub . You know developers and entrepreneurs . They can network with joint discussion forums , work in open source projects . There's startup support for startups . So if you have a startup , their reactor provides some resources for that .
Speaker 2And , of course , accessibility . So , yes , there's virtually and globally . So there are ways to access this virtually or on . You know insight , multiple language , on-demand viewing so there's a whole website around that . So , basically , yes , I did my homework . I did , I found out all about All about the Microsoft Reactor . So it's really cool and I think it's something we've already sort of known about , but we just never really knew about the details about the whole ins and outs around the Microsoft Reactor . So we'll have a link in the show notes to , so you can kind of check out my homework .
Speaker 1Yep , definitely . Thank you so much for doing that homework . So that's it for today . We just wanted to round off with a bit of an ask . So we're going to do some . We're going to see if we can do some live podcasts this autumn . We're not going to give you more specific details , but we are going to a few conferences and I'm going to try to do a live boost podcast for you , and also it would be very fun to do a bingo chart . So we would want all of you to comment on the post where you say this or send us a message , on whatever platform you choose , with words that you associate with the Boost podcast , and that can be anything from cat to rant , to Hudson to I don't know what . There's so many things to choose from .
Speaker 2I think it talks about fonts . We would love it if that's bingo yeah , out in a boat .
Speaker 1So if we can have words on the bingo chart from all and I know that Nick's wife has done this bingo chart already so if you guys don't give us anything , bridge is done with the bingo chart . So this is your way of kind of injecting words into the already existing bingo chart . But we will love it if we had words in there for you and we'll create Nick's going to wipe code an app which is going to be the interactive bingo chart and you can see live when we do that or something . I heard him say that one time .
Speaker 2Sure , yeah , absolutely . He has all the time in the world . If Steve could do it , anybody can .
Speaker 1You have a fair point and you just talked yourself into actually doing it , so thank you for that . I really appreciate it Awesome .
Speaker 2Cool .
Speaker 1So anything else you wanted to mention before we close this off ?
Speaker 2Just a quick little shout out to a good , awesome , so anything else you wanted to mention before we close this off , or sorry , the AI agent and co-pilot podcast . He joked about how he has like eight viewers , so hopefully we can give him a few more as well on this , but it was . We chatted about AI uses , development and PowerPages , specifically the efficiencies and some of the new ways of thinking that kind of thing . It was a good , it was a
Power Pages Updates and Enhancements
Speaker 2great chat with Sean . He said I keep this , you know , to like , you know , maybe 15 minutes and I kind of oh hey , we ended up going for a little bit longer .
Speaker 2I don't know .
Speaker 1How is that possible ? And he interviews people . I mean what ? I need to check this out .
Speaker 2So when he said that I'm like , okay , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1So , anyways was that's out , now we have some , we have some . Check that out to do yeah and then of course , we have a whole whack of events coming up that we have a whole whack of events coming up .
Speaker 2A quick little thing boost 100 gives you a discount for the power platform community Conference in Las Vegas . So if you have not signed up yet , definitely get that discount code in . So there's that . And then the other thing I am doing a session in my hometown of Ottawa , but that got moved a week up because Microsoft AI Tour is coming to town , which was kind of exciting in its own self , but that also moved that community event , the Microsoft 365 Ottawa . It's now , I think , september 26th or 27th , but if you're planning on going to that on October 3rd , it won't be there . It will be the AI Tour , which will also be very cool , but just be aware of that . So , and then there's a whole whack of other things Nordic Summit , expert Lives , baltic Summit , collab Days , a whole bunch of stuff . I'll be giving out ducks . See you there .
Speaker 1You can see all the details in the show notes . Hope to see you there . Right , so next episode will be on .
Speaker 2It says that's probably the wrong one September 10th , perfect September 10th , perfect September 10th . How does that make you feel ?
Speaker 1Yeah , like it always makes me feel I go . Where did the year go ? Where did the time go ? Exactly Right . Have an awesome time , people , and we'll catch you next time . Bye-bye , all right , bye . Thank you next time . Bye-bye , all right , bye .
Speaker 2Thank you for listening . If you liked this episode , please make sure you share it with your friends and colleagues in the community and be sure to leave a rating or a review on your favorite streaming service . That makes it easier for others to find us . Follow us on social platforms and make sure you don't miss a single episode . Thank you for listening to the Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts Luric Akebek and Nick Dolman . See you next time .
