Power Platform Boost Podcast

What is PPAC? (#86)

• Season 1 • Episode 86

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What Is PPAC Anyway

Ulrikke

Then you have to look uh elsewhere. And the elsewhere is a power platform admin center, or famously known as P Pac, which one of my colleagues just very sweetly came up to me the other day and said, You said PAC like 15 times today. And I really wish I knew what it was. And I was like, sorry, sorry. It's just that's because that's what you do. This is just a language that you adopt. And then you talk to someone that doesn't really know PowerPlatform that well. And she's like, she's she'd been wrecking her brain for the whole day. Like, what is the P Pak? And then I explained it, and she was like, oh, of course now it all makes sense.

SPEAKER_03

It's like uh it's like Jen in the IT crowd. So what does IT stand for?

Ulrikke

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Power Platform Boost Podcast, your timely source of PowerPlatform news and updates with your hosts, Nick Dolman and Ulrike Ackerbeck. I'm not even gonna hit test recording this time. You always seem to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03

We're just diving right in.

Ulrikke

Because usually we can test recording, but I mean you always seem to be able to level the audio out, so I thought, yeah, heck it. What what the heck? Let's just go for it.

Nick

I have tools to do that.

Ulrikke

I have trust in your ability to get us safely into uh listenable kind of free. Yeah, now you've you are a bit low. Yeah, I know, and you're a bit low on my end, which we've kind of fixed, but now he's kind of back to what it used to be, so completely a jingster.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Well f well, it's all good.

Ulrikke

And it looks like I'm in uh winter darkness and you're in summer brightness, and you look so tanned and all kind of good.

Nick

I'm not tanned, but that's a whole other story.

Ulrikke

Because I'm not tanned. I usually by this time of year I am, but it's like blasting. If I do that, then uh you won't see me. I'll just go white. I'll just look like a ghost.

Nick

Yeah, yeah. I wasn't sure if it was gonna show up through the camera, but yesterday me and my coach did a bench press session with the shirt. It didn't go great because it was really humid and get the shirt didn't fit right. And we were just trying to get the going with a lot of technology, just trying to get the bar to touch. So anybody who knows powerlifting probably knows what I'm talking about. Long story short, I my fate, like a lot of a lot of pressure and stuff. So it happens sometimes, especially in competition. You'll see guys with red faces, a lot of little capillaries and whatever else burst. And uh after I looked at the mirror and I'm going, holy crap, like it was a tough session. And we have another one before I leave. But but anyways, that's why I'm tanned.

Ulrikke

Okay. I think I feel like by now, at this point in our relationship, I should know these things. But you haven't done that so many.

Nick

You kind of like this bad. But it was just, it was more of a this the bar isn't touching, so it's kind of like, what do we what do you do in this situation? Well, you keep trying, and then of course you can only do so much because you burn a lot of energy, but then it's like, okay, let's load on more weight to see if we can get the bar to push down further. And we tried that and kind of worked, but kind of didn't. So we'll have another coaching session later this week. So worlds is next week. What's the worst that can happen?

Ulrikke

Oh yeah, well, I know, I know how it feels. But you feel okay though?

Nick

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ulrikke

Yeah, okay, good.

Nick

Yeah.

Ulrikke

And I know because you have to pull it down, then shirt's so weird. It's kind of reversing the whole thing.

Nick

Yeah, you saw me lift with the shirt too. You saw that live. So you you under you've seen the craziness.

Agent Academy Hackathon Details

Ulrikke

I know, I've seen it, and I know how, you know, because you've explained to me how hard it is to actually get the freaking bar to touch your chest, even though it should be hard to get it off your chest, not to touch it. But I get it. I'll just close this off. I am very prepared today, as you can tell. Okay, but let's get started with the news and updates from the power platform community because the list is very long. So bear with us people. There's so many goodies here this week. My god. Let's start off at the top with some opportunities for those of you who like these kind of things to earn some money. Oh yeah, mixing. Okay, so we have been raving on and on and on about the Agent Academy. We do the curriculum as a workshop we did it in Khalilika. We're gonna do it again at European Power Platform conference this summer. And also Agent Academy Live on Ma May 12th was that just blew my mind. I was loved it end to end. It's so good. And also they announced uh the opportunities and win some money. So would you like to kind of go through what it was, or do you want me to?

Nick

Well, I I can talk a little about the the hackathon. So my understanding is it's you're you're going to be, you can go in and post uh work on your own agents. Um, of course, you know, inspired by what you've learned at the Agent Academy. It's open to everyone, which is pretty cool. There's a whole bunch of like there's cash prizes. You have to have your submission in, I believe it starts May 12th. So it's already started. It's already underway, but you have until June 2nd. And you have to be 18 years of older or you know, work with the parent. And uh for our fans in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, region of Crimea, Russia. Um, unfortunately, you're because of where you live, you can't participate. Um, but there's different tracks um to match your experience level. Um, it's got to be your own original work. It's you have to have, I think you have a demo video involved and things like that. But basically you're gonna be building agents and kind of showing off what you've learned, hopefully with real world solutions or very practical ones. And then yeah, you can win prizes, which is really cool. And we'll put in the show notes the link for all the details of how to enter, uh what your, you know, the eligibility, the judging criteria. And uh yeah, I'm really curious to see what people are gonna come up with. This would be really cool.

Ulrikke

This is so cool. And I mean, June, yeah, June 2nd. So there's still a lot of time left to build something cool and get through it. And I mean, if you needed another incentive to go through it, then this is it, right? And if you aren't planning on doing this or getting started with a curriculum, go through Agent Academy Live and the recording. I know it's six hours long, but man, I mean, this is awesome. I will be honest, I didn't go through all of it, so I but I got everything up until the co the work IQ bit. But I must say, the Ryan Cunningham keynote where he left us with the thought of show me your moonshot, if that doesn't register with you, that's something you haven't seen or heard before. I highly recommend seeing his keynote. This is kind of the way that Microsoft is now encouraging us to take this to the next level. And I love this thought leadership kind of idea around it. I've heard some Norwegian Microsoft people present kind of the same marketing um spill the last few weeks. And I must say it actually resonates with me. And not a lot of this Microsoft Kool-Aid stuff do, but this is actually really good. And also we go on to see how the new flow designer, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that later, but the workflow designer is just so cool. So uh Joe Fernandez takes us through that. And then there's a session on some Copali Studio and MCP integration and the new user interfaces in Copilot and PowerPlatform by Andreas Adner, which we've had on this podcast a lot of times. He walks us through a lot of these new capabilities. Also, Marcel Ferreira talks us through PowerPlatform pipelines and all the little things. That was very familiar to me. I do this as a session at all conferences, and it was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He covers all the basics, it's so good. Vivian Voss, who we know well from the community, takes us through testing, which was like, yes, we've been talking about testing, right? And how in this world of AI, testing becomes so important. And how do you test the thing that's supposed to test the thing? I mean, she goes so meta with the session, and it's so much fun to see kind of she has these different metrics to test for, how to use agents to test and how to actually do regression testing so that you know that you get the same results over time. It's just so good. So, I mean, if you have the time, put it on double speed if you like. If there's something you know, you can skip it. But I actually do recommend everyone getting started with this. If you're new to PowerPlatform or Gentech Development, watch it end to end. Then you will know that you get a good foundation to learn all the other things. So this is now my new favorite resource to share with anyone who kind of goes, because I get these, yeah. I'm sure you do as well. I'm getting started with PowerPlatform. Where do I start? Especially for my colleagues. This is where you start right now, it is at least. So awesome. Congratulations to the team. Well, very well done. And I love seeing AirPod and Donna in the studio with a little uh power heel or yeah, the boot. So that was the boot. What do you call it? The stiletto, the shoes, the heels. Power power heels, power, what do you call it?

SPEAKER_02

I I don't know.

Ulrikke

Donna had such a good name for it. I must look it up because I love it. And it's a homage to the the new uh Devil Roads Prada movie, of course, which I haven't seen because I live under a rock, but that's another thing. It's all good. So enough about my raving um about that. So yeah, let's let's move on. But we will put the links to the to in the show notes for all of us and absolutely do check it out.

Nick

Yes. So moving along, of course, uh our our buddies uh Josh and Charles, of course, like our machines talk about I think they think they're an AI. They're a non-stop.

Ulrikke

No, because they're not. Because if it was AI, it would be more perfect. The per the thing about them that's so perfect is that it's so not perfect. And I love it. I just yes, go guys.

Nick

Yeah, yeah, we're definitely uh we're definitely fans, fans of their work. And so now they're talking about, you know, the ability, of course, to call power automate flows within code apps. Um and they talk about the gotchas as well. And uh and you talk about like talk about yeah, connection ownership and connection references. Uh yeah, what a year or two ago, we were like on the like trying to figure this stuff out and trying to weave our way around it. And we got like Benedict on the phone say, like, how the like this, and he goes, telling us no, it does, it's not logical, but you know, two steps backward, one step back forward. But anyways, it's just cool that yeah, it's something that Microsoft should address, hopefully, at some point. But yeah, anyways.

Ulrikke

And Josh and Josh and Tara says so as well in their video because they're going, they're all chippy, and yeah, let's do this, and you just need to do that and determinal this and the security set setting there and go through the documentation, and then they go into it, and then they have the flow and then you have the app, and then they go in and go, uh no, it doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? You created a connection. Oh, I need to be owner of the connection. Still doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? And it's just that's what it's like is you have the app, you have the flow, you have all of the pieces. And actually, you know what? It's the connecting of the pieces now. That's where we're stopping. That's where we hit a little bit of a wall sometimes now. And I just also a little bit of a shout out to Peter, who helped me out in the last PowerPage Portal lunch that I did, uh a community kind of meetup I had last week, where he showed how to work with code apps. And he did that as a demo, 20 minute long, nothing about the app. The app building part, the button, the functionality, what it can do, the fancy looking thing, not a single word. It was all about the project, the scaffolding, the prompts, the agents, the models, the connectivity, the API endpoints, the MCP servers. That's all it was about. Because that's what that is what we need to work on these days. So I feel, and I love that actually Josh and Charles don't stop the recording and edit that bin out, but I actually do go, I'm so happy we're ran into this because this is something Microsoft should improve, and this is hard, and this is what it's like. So yes, thanks, Josh and Charles, for keeping it real, right?

Building With AI Prompts Fast

Nick

Yeah, very good. Looking forward to uh seeing you guys at now European Power Platform conference. And I think they have some sessions at uh experts live UK as well, which I know some of our friends are gonna be presenting and doing workshops and stuff too. So shout out to all of them. Other, another Josh who's actually he's based in Canada. I think it's Josh Cook, and he posts a lot on LinkedIn about using agents and AI and day-to-day work. It's almost his approach is very like, come on, everybody, are you not caught up yet? Like it's moving along, right? So kind of like almost shaming us into getting on top of this stuff. But he wrote a really interesting article. It's not even so much power platform related, but just going through the steps of going with through co-pilot uh with co-work actually, I think, and creating retro game from like the 1990s. And this is something that really touches like um me as well, because I love like the eight, like I grew up in the 80s, the 80s retro video games on the Commodore 64. Of course, I had friends with you know, Ataris and the Sega Genesis and you know, all of this cool stuff. So he goes through and even gets like co-pilot or uh chat GPT to create some of the images because that's a little bit stronger there. And it's just a really good, it's a really interesting read of just using AI to kind of um you know, kind of go through that process not only of learning, but also if there's a retro game or something, you can get a lot of these things, but there's all these little paywalls or upgrades, whatever. Just go build your own. Build your own retro game. If you don't want to pay for Tetris, pilot can build it for you now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Nick

So, anyways, it was really good and interesting read. So, yeah, good work, Josh. And yeah, continue to continue to keep dragging us into the future with all the AI-related posts and cowork and everything else.

Ulrikke

Yeah. And this is, I think, also worth mentioning is this blog post. Because I think a lot of us do this, but we don't take the time to put it into a blog post. This is so short and to the point. They actually I could scroll through and actually read the thing end to end in a few minutes. And I got a lot out of it. And so he and also he sums it up really well. It's like the final result, it's one HML file, is about from 1500 lines along, and also his learnings along the way. The write me a prompt for Chat DP Claude is gold. That's really working really well for him, and he gets Chat DPT actually create this thing on the first go. It's like you don't even have to go back and iterate. That kind of work pattern is also something I've introduced to customers. And when we do courses on vibe coding, for instance, I'm like, I use chat DPT or Claude to create prompts for vibe the perhaps.com. I don't spend more time in there than I need to. And they're like, wow, that didn't even occur to me that you could do that. Like these AI things know about each other. It's like, uh-huh. Right. That's gold. And just small little nuggets like that is so important, and it adds to my workflow every time I see something like that.

Nick

Yeah, absolutely. I'm constantly telling Claude, I said, I'm gonna do this in GitHub Copilot. Tell me the best way to do it. It doesn't care. It has no ego in the city.

SPEAKER_02

That doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_03

Will it be offended?

SPEAKER_02

It's like it's like, well, you can't.

SPEAKER_03

I can do that.

Claude Folder Structure And MCP Context

Ulrikke

I don't even mean to do it. Expecting it to kind of go, why would you use Chat GPT? I can do that. It's like funny, but it doesn't. It's like, yes, absolutely, no problem. I'll give you that to put in there. Yeah, no, it's funny. It's funny how we humanize these agents. Um, yeah. Okay, and then on the Claude uh code kind of theme, we also had a post from um Montan Petel, which was about kind of the Claude folder setup. Because this can kind of throw me a little bit, I must admit still. But it is the because I'm looking, I think the reason why this throws me a little bit is because I'm still looking for the right way to do it. And then every time I look somewhere, it's like different. Like there's beep. Can we just give me just this one? Can we just all agree that the folder structure should be like this? And then we all do it like that. But then I also get that you know, different requirements, it depends, etc. Um, so this is one way of structuring your folders for co-work, where you have agents and commands and hooks and rolls and skills and settings within a cloud folder wherever you need it. And that's gonna of course of course with the cloud MD is the first thing that Cloud Co reads it in any folder. So I think the most important thing that I've learned is that you have the Cloud MD at the top level over your folder structure. Cloud Co will always read that first. That can that can put kind of uh you could the only thing you need to have in there actually is where you have your instructions if you want to have your instructions somewhere else, but that is by default what it will read first. So that's good to know.

Nick

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's still some I battle with too, because there's also context, right? Like if I'm working on a local project versus uh like our global settings is as well, right? Like I fought with what I was kind of struggling with last week and I did kind of I did sort of sort it out, but Dataverse MCP server, great. I set it up, it's cool, it's working. Then I start a completely different project, pointing to a completely different environment. I say, show me all the custom tables. And it's pulling the custom tables from the other Dataverse MCP server. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, don't use this one. Use the new one I set up. And then you have to put that into your instructions or your local what MCP servers to use and stuff like that. So it is uh it is good to see posts like this to help organize and get everything in the right context and for the right thing. So yeah, it's a great little uh and then next.

Ulrikke

Yeah, kind of the learning. Yeah, kind of the local versus the global. And it's like, well, the uh yeah, the MCP, does it have the credentials in it? Because the first time I saw that it was a Miro MCP. Do you want it to be global MCP? I'm like, yeah, sure. I want Miro everywhere. We use it for all of our projects, right? I didn't realize that it had the connectivity in it and that you need one for each. And I was like, oh, okay, but for Etero, we use the same one for a lot of customers. It's just kind of the pointer that is different. So then can I then have it as a global? And then how do I know which kind of um board to use in which so yeah, it is complicated, but we're getting there. Now actually, what I'm doing is I'm having two different GitHub accounts, two different Cloud, no, sorry, uh GitHub Copilot accounts, and I mix in codex and cloud code in my Visual Studio Code kind of window as well. So I'm like, I'm so dizzy. I'm so dizzy. But that's something I'll I'll sort that out.

Nick

Yeah, it's it's an evolution, yeah, right. So you like I'm using Claude for some things, GitHub Copilot for others, and just yeah.

Ulrikke

And also now, because of the credits, I've already ran out on my business credits, my ETERA credits this month, and it's not gonna renew until June. So I'm like, oh, I have a private account somewhere. Oh, I'll switch to that. And then I switched my and I use that up. So now I'm on the the Etera Claude one now. And so I'm now going kind of sequentially until I ran out of and then probably I can start over at the beginning when I'm realizing I'm it's like streaming services at home.

Nick

Like, you know, we have access to Netflix and Apple TV and Crave and all these other ones. And I'm like, okay, can we consolidate these? And I'm also then on the business side, I'm like, oh, I have a chat GPT subscription and a cloud subscription and a Microsoft 365. Can I consolidate these? Like, no, because I use this for this, I use that for that.

Ulrikke

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

It's all the same.

Ulrikke

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, and I also had the idea that it had to do with security as well. Because I mean, what don't want to use my private accounts for my customer stuff because I don't want to end up sending that to whatever it is, right? Or US or not or databases. But that of course has to do with the model. You send you even it doesn't matter which account you're using. If you're using a model which resides in a US database, the pixels, the data is gonna show up in a US database. And if your customer doesn't have that in their policy, then you doesn't matter which account you use, which is stuff I have to learn, which I'm like, should this should be obvious, but it's not. So I'm learning.

Nick

So I I'm sure everybody is is in the same boat as all of us on this. So it's like, so don't this is our this is our way. It's okay to be overwhelmed by all this.

Ulrikke

Yeah, if you feel it too, then we're with you. Okay, let's move along. I saw something from uh Hudang today. Um he's also doing what we're doing.

Copilot Studio Course For Beginners

Nick

Yeah, no, no, he oh, I mean he here's another guy that's a bit of a machine, and like I think he's hit a few blocks along the way. He's kind of have like even posted, okay, I need to slow down a little bit, but then he steps on the gas again and and puts out some amazing content. Super like like friendly, great, great guy to chat with. Um, you know, he's he's always calm, right? Like, you know, like how's it going, Nick? You know, good to see you. Just you know, it's uh very very time of the world. Yeah, and and then he puts out this this content, which is amazing. So he's put together a Microsoft Copilot Studio, full course for beginners, uh going through an introduction, building your first agent, knowledge and grounding, agent actions, like the kind of all the steps too. So again, it's like, I mean, yeah, agent, like of course, we're huge fans of Agent Academy, but then also people learn differently and there's different styles. And again, this is another angle to it. Of course, Hooding is amazing in terms of for creating tutorial content. So it's great, another great resource for those that are just trying to get ramped up. And of course, that's just one of many tutorials. He has his Power Academy group as well, which I think there's there's like a free tier and then there's a paid subscription as well. And I definitely I think if you're if you're getting into it, well worth it uh based on what I've I've seen for his content and everything like that. So yeah, big shout out to Hooting, and um yeah, check definitely another great resource from the community to get you ramped up. And I think this one's a free, a free course too. So uh you can dive right in.

Headless CRM With Rapid Claw

Ulrikke

Yep. And also Steve did the thing.

Nick

Yeah, well, yeah. So Steve has been kind of uh we we haven't mentioned Steve Mordu in a long time. And sorry, Steve, we're still huge fans and you know, don't don't feel left out. It's just sort of a lot of other great stuff. Um, definitely a lot of posts on a lot of things around AI. Of course, Steve has his opinion on things. I think the latest I saw, there was an image of him having a beer with Satya and what Steve would tell Satya if they had a beer together, which is also a very interesting read. But this is, I mean, this ultimately is a paid product that Steve is working on, but it is sort of, I think, showing the future of where our business apps are going. And for those of you who know Steve's business side, he has something called Rapid CRM, which Rapid CRM or Rapid Start CRM, which was a kind of a much more small business approach using Dataverse and Power Platform as the back end, but creating a CRM on top of that. Of course, people are wanting to get it. Level. Steve's is much more the small, medium business level where you can get a basic CRM system with all the all the extra stuff you don't need kind of built into that. And is I, you know, been very successful. I know a lot of people that are out there implementing and using it. I'm very happy with it. Um of course, if you ever you do need to upgrade, there is an upgrade path to get to the Dynamics 365. He and his team have created something called Rapid Claw. Now we've talked about OpenClaw or yeah, yeah, OpenClaw a few weeks ago about this, you know, agent that basically just kind of reiterates like you basically you can set this up to talk to all your things, and it's just like assistant, you talk to it through a telegram or a WhatsApp, just send it commands, it goes through, it comes back with commands, it gives you your reminders. Now he's tied this into his CRM system. That's my understanding, where instead of you going into an app and okay, what are my opportunities or what leads am I working on? You just basically open up your phone and you just send a chat to uh Rapid Claw and say, What opportunities are we working on this week? Comes back. What's our revenue expected going to be? What are my tasks? And it's just going to interact with the CRM system. And it's what you kind of hear the words headless CRM, meaning you're not your CRM, you're not going through a user interface anymore. You're chatting with it through a chat bot and it's off doing its task. It has agents doing the thing, doing the calculations, kind of doing the trending, saying, hey, you should follow up on this particular opportunity because it's been a while, and you know, looking at the emails, the communications. So even if um it's just from a learning perspective, I think it's a very interesting thing to take a look at in terms of even the provisioning, how he's going about, how he's marketing it, how in fact it will spin up on your own Azure system. So it's kind of bring your own Azure and then this whole ecosystem can kind of built on top of that. So to me, it's like it's very interesting going forward in terms of where business apps are going. I think Steve's a few feet ahead of everybody else. I fully expect Microsoft to kind of follow along this path as well, of course, for their more higher enterprise systems. So it's yeah, um, definitely some gives you food for thought and also from our point of view as solution architects, probably changed, is gonna start changing the conversations we have with our customers. You know, I had a customer this week, they're talking about sending out mailings and things like that. Yeah, we can configure the front end or the app and make it a little bit easier for them. But I'm also like, this could be something we could get co-work to do as well. And with the MCP servers talking to our power apps, basically saying, hey, I need to do a mailing. It's only to a handful of people. Do we configure the system to do that? Or can we configure an agent and factored into Microsoft Cowork to go and do that and kind of interact that way? So yeah, definitely it's uh, I think showing the evolution of technology and business systems and where they're going. And and Steve is uh is a is a really very thoughtful on all of this too. So if you're not kind of following Steve on LinkedIn, sometimes even just for pure entertainment purposes, definitely uh give him a follow, read some of his articles. Like he talks about his another article coming up this last week about hourly billing, how or like Microsoft partners are going to be charging for their time. And that's something I'm pretty passionate about too, in terms of talking, and then with this is discussions we've had with uh, you know, Franco and Sarah's course, their extra life course and things like that, and kind of going forward with value-based billing and just how freelancers work. So that's a whole other business side, and we can go down a rabbit hole on that, but I'll sort of back back off because we have more community stuff to talk about. But uh yeah, check that out.

Fixing Power Automate Emails With AI

Ulrikke

Yeah, definitely. And Steve, like you said, he always he's he's tight with us, right? So it's not something that he just spins off of his own head. He's very tightly knit with the where where business is going, where Microsoft is taking their kind of their direction. And he also speaks to it in the blog post. He's like, where this meets Microsoft's direction, Microsoft's direction. And Microsoft is very much started from the personal productivity standpoint with Copilot and all the tools that come natively to us always start with you and your world first, and then you can extend it and explore it if you want. And this kind of meets uh that direction where it's at, where it's like this is from the business point of view, and you add it on top. So uh it's gonna be very interesting to see where this goes for sure. Sean did a thing.

Nick

Yeah, let's okay, so let's uh okay, so Sean did a thing.

Ulrikke

You know and I go on. No, I was just I I'm loving Sean online these days because he's playing with LinkedIn so much. He has I see him try like kind of the Microsoft thing where we said you just throw spaghetti on the wall, see what sticks. Sean tries everything. And I love this. Now what he did is he just fixed the the the weary old uh email that you get in PowerAutomate. He uses clo a chat GPT, throws it in there, says fizz up, and then he throws the code back in, closes the editor, just sends it off, and of course the email comes through looking bright and shiny. And that's actually the whole thing. And of course, working with uh customer insights as long as I have, and with web development as long as I have, I know the struggle that is to create an email that goes through all of the different email clients out there look the same. You think that in in this day and in 2026, we would have solved that problem? No, we have not. So I love the idea of using AI for this because then you will actually be able to get code. You don't have to write all of the stuff yourself. It's something that looks good, but also passes through all the different uh email clients, for instance, in a little bit shorter time than to by trial and error as we had to do before. So great post, Sean.

Nick

Yeah, what Sean's Sean, like I've I've been on some of his webinars and how he, of course, he has the the architect accelerator program as well, which I did last year and I have other uh um actually uh Bridget, my friend, my wife, actually was on the last cohort for his uh architect accelerator as well. And his approach, his he he has said this, and I think you've I've heard him say this before, is everything you do, try to see if AI can help you along the way. And this is a prime example of oh, that email screwed up. Well, hmm, what can AI do to help me out? And he goes through it. So there's so many little things that's helped me along as well, going, hmm, can I get AI to do this? Yeah, I can. Or can I get the Claude? Like he also got me on the Claude browser extension like a few months ago, and like, oh man, I'm using that thing all the time now. So yeah, definitely uh just yeah, again, another great uh resource to follow just to see his content. And of course, his uh he does do some free sessions and webinars and things like that. Of course, he does have his his paid program as well, but definitely another uh definitely good resource to follow along. And yeah, big shout out to Sean.

New Copilot Studio Workflow Designer

Ulrikke

Yes, definitely. And Sean Asterkin is who we're talking about, just to be very clear. We'll put the links in the show notes for sure. And moving on to someone else who we have mentioned a lot is Matthew Devaney had a new video this week showcasing the new workflow editor.

Nick

Yeah, so this was something I saw a screenshot uh a month or two ago of what was going to be the new workflow editor and um in Copilot Studio for now they're called workflows. They were called agent flows before.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Nick

And you know, Microsoft renaming.

Ulrikke

You can actually still create agent flows for whatever reason that might be. Yes.

Nick

So someone showed me a screenshot, and I'm like, oh, that is that N8N. So N8N is a is another competitor to Microsoft in terms of workflow. Uh I did a course last year which used N8N, and I'm like, this is really cool. You can drag itself sideways, you can have it rearranged. I was like, this is what Power Automate should be. Well, of course, Microsoft gets inspired, and now they've made their their editor uh much more kind of aligned to some of the other tools. Um yeah, and Matt does a 20-minute full demo on this, and there's a few other resources as well that I've seen. Of course, some Microsoft announcing this and a lot of other things. So yeah, definitely that's a video to check out. And then of course you can dive right. I think it's available now for everyone, so you should be able to dive in. I haven't tried it yet, but definitely gonna be that's definitely on my to-do list, which of course is as we all know, is massive. But uh, we do get to these things, especially if I can apply them to a project, then uh definitely I can dive in.

Ulrikke

But are you playing the guitar yet? That's what I'm wondering.

Nick

Not yet.

Ulrikke

Not yet. Okay. Have you created the PCF component yet? No, we actually we we scratched that off the list. Yes, we did.

Nick

A long story short, I do actually need to create it. I did write a plug-in the other day for I had to show a client how to do this, and PCF controls is actually on the list of things to go through, but not so much of the old traditional way, but using GitHub Copilot to actually create these things and some parameters around that. So yeah, that's probably gonna spill out into some community content over the summer. So stay tuned.

Ulrikke

Sounds good. And also, just because I I just remembered, I saw a post from Jonas Rap today talking about Andreas Adner. He got some help and now he has released the new version of the X-Rub Tool um fetch XML builder. So if you were looking for it, Jonas is actually now diving into AI work and he's getting help from AI to do the TD's release notes for him, and he has now created a new release, so we will make sure to get that in the show notes as well, which um kind of don't really have the best uh Jonas wrap here for me to remember. Uh okay. So um, but yeah, the the new uh workflow, and also we have to get familiar with the new uh flow flow workflow designer.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

Ulrikke

Because it's part of the curriculum for uh Agent Academy, which you're doing a workshop in EDPC for this is how we learn things.

Nick

We have something we actually tangibly have to do, whether it's delivering a workshop, delivering uh information for a client, doing project with this is the best way to learn is to buy to teach, or you have a have to do it because, as opposed to the, well, it'd be nice to learn, you know, maybe I need to sign up to do a do a concert with a guitar maybe a year from now or something, and that would force me, right?

Desktop Flow Self Healing Arrives

Ulrikke

That will force you, absolutely. Yeah, you know what usually you guys play learn to play the guitar for is to get all the girls. But you already have the have the girls, so kind of what incentive is there? It's like yeah, sitting in your camper when then when you're on your own and playing the guitars sounds very good. Yes. Okay, so next I just saw something I wanted to mention. I have not tried it and I don't believe in it, but par automate desktop flows will now have finally have the self-healing capability. You remember we talked about this like two and a half years ago?

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

Ulrikke

Yes, it's finally coming. Woohoo! So uh you because you know you have a uh desktop flow that in you record a session and it knows everything about the web app and the UI and where the button is, and suddenly in the HMAI the button moves, it now will be able to on its own see that this is what's happened. This is the error. Is it because there's a UI change and run the thing again? And that's the also if you want to try this out, read the blog post first because the areas of which this does not work is longer than the list of where it does work. Let's put it like that. So just make sure you go in and you read through it.

SPEAKER_02

Cool.

Ulrikke

So and also some something else which I love and I need to mention, because you know how generative pages is very all very cool. Uh you have a model-driven app, and then you can navigate to a page, and that can be a generative page, and it looks so cool and slick, but it has no idea that it's in a model-driven app, and it has no idea of where you are or what you're doing or what it's doing there, because it has no context. Now you can give it that context. So finally, you can navigate to and from generative pages in your client API, which means you can also send it parameters and data. So now you will be able to give your generative page some context for where it's at and what surrounds it, and and kind of the give it some a map, if you will. Which I absolutely love.

Nick

Yeah, because I think there was some there was some workarounds to do that, but I to be honest, uh I have a few generative pages of my stuff, and it's still the page, you still have to do the drop down to pick the record to get the context of, like, which is really hacky. So it this is this is great because this makes it much more natural in terms of the user interface and that kind of thing. So yeah, definitely gonna be diving in and checking it out. I had to do a generative page over the last week, and yeah, it was conking out on me. I had to keep changing my prompt a little bit. And I think I was trying to do a rich text editor built into my generative page and it didn't like it and it kept failing. So once I took out that parameter, it got to work. So generative pages has come a long way. I think it still needs a little bit more to get fully what where we where we would really do amazing things. But still, definitely is if it's if you've not tried generative pages yet, definitely do it because I think it's it's just gonna give your model-driven apps a really big pop. And actually, I did demo a generative page to one of my customers who have been using CRM since 2006. They were one of my very first installs, so 20 years, and of course, they fought with like marketing lists and trying to do the email templates and the whole workarounds. And then I showed them a generative page of to help them kind of manage the process, and they were like, this is what we always wanted.

SPEAKER_02

This is so cool. Like, why couldn't we have this before? Like, we because we couldn't do it before. Yeah.

Ulrikke

So that's fantastic. I love those stories where you get that excitement and actually, and you know what? What's weird about it is that CRM solutions from back then, they kind of just still run. And they kind of just still run as they were built because there was no interruption, there was no disruption from then to now. So if you just left it alone, it actually still works, which is a bit kind of I like it, but then also I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, because you look at those old workarounds you used to do, like, why did we do it that way? Oh, yeah, because Power Automate didn't exist back then. You know, stuff like that.

COE Starter Kit Deprecation Fallout

Ulrikke

I know. Yeah, it's so crazy. And then something that also is not gonna exist for much longer is the COE starter kit that the um PowerCat team has been maintaining. So if you didn't catch us last time, I just wanted to reiterate the fact that the COE starter kit will no longer be maintained. So if you are using that and you're relying on Microsoft to support it, then you have to look uh elsewhere. And the elsewhere is a PowerPlatform admin center, or famously known as P Pac, which one of my colleagues just very sweetly came up to me the other day and said, You said P Pac like 15 times today. And I really wish I knew what it was. And I was like, sorry, sorry. It's just that's because that's what you do. This is just a language that you adopt. And then you talk to someone that doesn't really know PowerPlatform that well, and she's like, she's she'd been wrecking her brain for the whole day. Like, what is the P Pak? And then I explained it, and she was like, Oh, of course now it all makes sense.

SPEAKER_03

It's like uh it's like Jen and the IT crowd. So what does IT stand for?

PowerCat Plugins And Markdown Skills

Ulrikke

I love it, I love it. Yeah, I love it. So what does IT stand of? No, but actually what brought me onto this was I have another resource from the PowerCat team because they're not maintaining COE Starter Kit anymore because they have other things to do, as for instance to create skills and plugins for Power Platform. And they have now released a new set of plugins called PowerCat uh Canvas app plugins, which have uh there are three different skills now. One for analyzing canvas performance, which is really cool, one from for into infopath, from infopath to canvas. I know. My mind was like, wait, wait, the time way back machine just needs to Infopath was like when I worked with SharePoint on-prem like a bazillion years ago. For whatever reason, people still need to move away from Infopath. So now the PowerCat team has a tool that you can use to move from Infopath to Canvas. I'm not sure if Canvas is the right destination. So something you have to go, well, also Canvas app to something else. But that's a whole different story. Maybe. So that's the next, I don't know. Uh and also uh migrate to Dataverse, it which is the third one. So just wanted to, and also I saw one of my uh good friends uh in there ha has the initial commit, which is really good. So Kirosia Ru Santos, very well done. I love having uh good friends in high places, so that's just uh for me to feel very cool. So that's really cool. So just check it out and uh and adopt it as soon as you can.

Nick

Yeah, like I've been trying out the dativer skills and the and the solution architect skills and just sort of of course using um the the skills to create uh power pages sites. Actually, I've got Claude been cooking for three days on something that I'll talk about later um using those skills. It's a it's a it's amazing, all of these things. And then the fact that these skills aren't these black boxes, they're not DLLs or plugins, just they're markdown files. Like I lived and breathed markdown for two years. So I I'm like, I this is so readable, and you can create it, you can edit it, and then even your agents can update these these markdown files on their own when you kind of give them permission and you like you keep memory of what you've been doing, and it just yeah, anyways, we could do a whole other session on markdown.

Ulrikke

I know it just feels like home. It I love it. It's so easy to add up. I mean, and and also, so I have a colleague, his name is a skill. Shout out to Steag Arc. He showed me the other side, oh, I've been cooking this little, I need to just need to show you something. And I'm like, okay, between meetings. He's like, oh, can I just show you this? And then he breaks up a website called uh Steag's AI Brain. I'm like, what did you do? He's like, I I created an AI brain. What did it do? It's like this website is just for me to show off what I've done. But actually, what it does is it keeps track of all his agents, all his plug-in, all his skills, where he found them, how to update them, goes and grabs the repos often. He has a whole file structure so whenever he needs it, he can just pull forever it is. And then also he has initiators. If he's starting a new PowerPages project, he just initiates a new PowerPages project, grabs all the things he needs, and the Playwright MCP, the Dataverse MCP, the PowerPages plugins. It's just, I'm just it's just my mind. And it's like all MD files.

SPEAKER_02

Like what the fuck?

Agentic Admin Skills For Dataverse

Ulrikke

It's so cool. And then he had a zilographics, and it was just because it showed a whole kind of node system of how all the different things were linked together, which actually looked like a freaking brain. And when he hovered over the Power Pages project, the the items connected to a project like this lit up in the brain. I was just that's so cool. So shout out. But also, to your point, there is help to be had because we now have the new Agentic Administration Power Dataverse admin skills now available in public preview announced on May 12th.

Nick

Yeah, and I I took a look at this about, you know, and this is where we talk about PPAC, like, oh yeah, just go into PPAC and do this, or go into PPAC. And then, but now this is a way, like again, I I've I've mentioned this other places. I'm spending more and more time in Visual Studio Code or or quad code or these things. You now have this, you know, these admin skills that you can put in. And then yeah, now instead of going to PPAC, it can go do these things for you. Now, of course, I've seen some people say, yeah, but admins are also very it has to be very deterministic as well. So they'll use scripts. But I also see this if you're more of a script person, this could probably help you create your scripts if you're a little bit more control freak, which is not a bad thing for an administrator. So um, regardless of sort of where your where your mind goes in terms of your your comfort level, this is still going to be really an amazing resource because it's this, yes, I want to, I don't want to go to PPAC and click these three things. I do need to write a script to do it. Here's the skill, so I can get AI to do it, but I don't quite trust AI. So maybe I can get AI to say, write me a script to that I can review to go through and do the thing, like you know, turn on an MCP server or configure something, something, or you know what I mean? So yeah, it's definitely it's it looks really, really cool. And uh definitely uh this is something I'm definitely gonna use.

Ulrikke

Yeah, and I also think to your point that in so what you're talking about is infrastructure as code in PowerPlatform, which we've, you know, it it's been a thing for a while, and all the new advancements that we've seen and talked about over the last year has all been moving in that direction. Where we kind of at some point, I think we can go back into the recording syntax, we kind of go, well, at we're at what point don't you need PAC anymore, the visual interface, because actually the the supporting infrastructure behind it now and this through the CLI is actually now more powerful. And we we see the results here. Because what this is, is it's not to replace the scripts that help you book or set up or do the infrastructure as code that you need to set it up the same way every time for you to manage it. This is for management, maintenance, book, delete, long-term retention, and capacity management. This is what's coming and this is what's available. So it says here settings management, read and update 37 uh allow listed power platform admin centered toggles across environments MCP, audit, retention, recycle, then search, bada da da da da da da. So it's still very kind of specific what it is that you can do and cannot do, and capacity management is coming soon. So imagine having the ability, like I said, not having to go through VPAC to look through everything, but just to ask it questions. Show me what our capacity is like, show me what we have enabled and not. Give me a rundown of all the AI capabilities that we have enabled and give me that as a report across all the environments. Now we're talking replacing COE. Now we're talking advanced capabilities that we have without setting up all the reports and all the flows and all the apps to get us to be able to do it. We can get it right in the conversation with the agent that we are using.

Nick

And then take that a step further, use Microsoft, something like Microsoft Cowork to say, create me a dashboard that talks to these that that uses this interface and give me a dashboard of my system performance or my capacity and send that to me on a daily basis, or if there's thresholds being reached, you know, do that.

Ulrikke

There you go. That's the upside.

Nick

Yeah, pieces are coming together.

Ulrikke

Monitoring. Imagine having then a set of agents monitoring all your customers, for instance, if you're a vendor like or a partner like us, and to kind of always just give you the green light or if something's off. There is a COD code plugin and there's a uh GitHub co pilot based code plugin for you to use um for you to access. So this is really cool. This is one of those game changer thingies that actually changed the directory. Because we have a roadshow coming up because COEs deprecated. We need to get all of our customers on board into this new way of working with PPAC. And I see this and I'm like, you know the whole plan that we made? Let's move in this direction instead. Because that this is what we need to be doing going forward, right? So, and by the way, the developers, they love it. So maybe the admin people are scared, but the devs love it.

Nick

Yeah. It just takes that t like, you know, you gotta love it if you can take that tedious out of your work and allow you to be more creative. And this is this is with with all of these things coming together. Like it's interesting. I ran into a buddy of mine yesterday in the store, uh, uh Ian Johns, shout out to Ian because I know he listens every so often. But he was saying, like, you know, how's you know how things will work? And I was like, it's great because we're I'm able to be much more creative. And he's like, Me too, because working with like Claude and GitHub, Copilot and all these things, he's like, you know, he's like, uh getting, you know, getting uh getting the agents to kind of write this code and I can spend more time on the creative parts. And I feel the same way. And I think you and I have discussed this a little bit too. It's like, I think before, maybe last year, a little bit, okay, this is overwhelming, all of this stuff, and is our job changing? And it's like, yeah, but it's like, okay, this is this is this is cool where everything's going, and and we still feel very valued because it's sort of like we're realizing as smart as AI is how stupid it is, and so how we need to guide it, direct it, give it its direction, um, and use it collaboratively like a tool. So, like all of these things, like you know, with the you know, the the the the code development tools, the reviewing, the documentation, the administration. Um, and it's just taking a lot of that boring, tedious work out of it and allowing us to use the the the fun part of our brain this together and coming up with really cool solutions. And it appeals to my impatient side of coming to cool solutions a lot quicker than it would have normally.

Picking The Right Work With AI

Ulrikke

Well, yeah, definitely. I also saw a video from Scott Houselman about choosing the right thing to work on is now becoming uh harder. He has a thousand agents working on 126 projects. It's like, how do I choose what I and it's not just about the most pressing thing, but also because that's not so pressing anymore, because you'll get to it in a minute. But also, what am I, how was my body feeling and what can I deal with at this moment? Do I want to do some triaging? Do I want to do some error handling? Do I want to do some documentation? Do it with an architecture work? Where is my brain at? Where's my energy level at? Where is what am I can I learn now, or do I need to exert? Maybe we can take this opportunity to kind of check in more with where we are and what it is that our energy level afforded us to do, and then choose the right work for that. Suddenly, that's kind of quite cool. I saw a link in here that I can't really open. It's a LinkedIn link, but that's fine. And then I see a C we started kit link, which we've already talked about about C Wee going away. But then you have a promo.

Nick

Well, yeah, I actually talked to someone in Germany, Mirko Peters, who has a podcast as well, where he talked to different people in the in the community. We had an interesting chat, and he turned this around quick because we chatted Friday morning and he he put it out, I think yesterday or even the Saturday. It was like it's an audio conversation, but just talking about it was with me and just sort of I talked a little bit about a lot of things we talked about all the time about the future of the HIIT development and how I kind of work and how I see things going. And I made some predictions and we kind of joked about okay, we got a tech touch base in a year to see if my predictions were right. So if you're not sick of hearing my voice, you can check that out in my conversation with Mirko, which was yeah, a lot of fun. Mirko's based in Germany, and uh yeah, we had a good little chat there. Again, self-same shameless self-promotion.

Promos Shout Outs And Closing

Ulrikke

I love it. But actually, the fact is I opened this up and I didn't realize that it was you. So this is a very good case of AI slap. I'm sorry, Mirko, but this you have to do again because that picture does not look like you. So I didn't catch that. This was give me hate so far. And I cause I try to use AI to edit you and it's impossible because it doesn't look like you. So he has to do that again. He has to do it properly. So yeah, sorry, dude. Okay. But it's fun, and I I'll of course I'll listen to it because now that I know that it's you, I uh definitely and uh maybe some of it will be familiar to me. But I always like hearing your thoughts about this, and I love the bringing the thought leadership to the table and spreading it out because even though you we talk about this a lot on the post, we don't reach everyone. So this is a good opportunity to kind of get it out there. So I I do see the value in that.

unknown

Cool.

Ulrikke

Can I just close out with two little uh community shout-outs as well?

Nick

Absolutely, yes.

Ulrikke

So, first of all, do you see this little guy right here?

Nick

No, I see or maybe yeah.

Ulrikke

Little down there. Um, and this is from Sandra Keo. I I saw her in Tallinn. She gave me this lamp. It's uh it's a Minecraft pig lamp and actually this light up, which is really sweet. And you know, my son is uh no, it's run out of batteries because it's been in my son's room forever. And then or since then, he's now in the phase where he will gift his things that I gifted to him back to me because he's very appreciative. So he's in his appreciative phase where he gives me his things all the time. So it's now back in my room and I love it. But it's really sweet, and thank you so much for the gift. It was really cool. And also, I have my peepaker. I was in pee peapac too many times.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

Ulrikke

How many times in an episode can you say peepak? PPCC 2025 t-shirt. And this has been in the mail from EY Coleman in the UK three times and come back. It's not cheap to send email with you know. So thank you, EY. And finally I got here. So I just needed to shout out to EY for being persistent in sending me these t-shirts. So thank you so much. And with that, I think we're gonna close off next episode will be June 3rd. Yep. Yep, the day after the deadline for the Agent Academy uh hackathon uh money thingy.

Nick

Yep. We'll uh so hopefully see a few of you in uh Dynamics Minds next week. Um I'm heading out there uh this weekend, uh two sessions, uh should be a lot of fun and uh yeah, it'll be uh a good time. And uh also it's somebody's birthday this weekend coming up. So happy birthday to you, Erica.

Ulrikke

Thank you so much, Nick. I really appreciate that. So looking forward to it. I'm gonna treat myself to a spa day. Perfect. It's gonna be very good.

SPEAKER_02

That sounds awesome.

Ulrikke

Yeah, I'm gonna love that.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, and until next time, take care and uh have fun.

Nick

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right, catch you later.

Nick

Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please make sure you share it with your friends and colleagues in the community. And be sure to leave a rating and 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 host, Lorica Akabeck and Nick Dolman. See you next time for your timely boost of Power Platform news and updates.

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Nick Doelman

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Ulrikke Akerbæk

Host