Power Platform Boost Podcast

Burning Tokens (#87)

• Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman • Season 1 • Episode 87

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When Tokens Start To Cost

But we're gonna be it's interesting, we're going back to the early days of computing before my time when they talked about um memory management. You only had so many kilobytes. Yes. And then okay, you had to write your code efficiently to fit those kilobytes. And then eventually memory became sort of like I wouldn't say inexpensive, but just so much we didn't even need to worry about it anymore. Everything kind of comes around again. All of a sudden, when then internet came around, where we only had certain bandwidth. We had to write applications that worked over dial-up, over low speed communications, over mobile phones. And then again, the bandwidth expeded. Here we are again. Now we're talking about token usage. It's like, okay, we're burning up a lot of tokens. These are now getting expensive. We see this on LinkedIn of people like that are, okay, we've run out, you've run out of tokens a few times.

Recording From Norway And Conference FOMO

Welcome everyone to the Power Platform Boost Podcast, your weekly source of news and updates from the world of the Power Platform and the Microsoft community with your hosts, Nick Dolman and Litika Akkebek. Hi, Nick. Hey Litka. How are you? Good. So yeah, we're recording live. We're recording live. Or the same spot. The same spot. We're not live. No, we're not definitely. We still haven't figured that out. And we have probably taken the last two hours to figure this out. Yeah. So, but it's working now. We hope. Yeah. It might be a big bit of a lag, but uh, I think we can figure that out. Yes. So we're here from Norway. Yeah. Yeah. Together. That's great. Um, you decided to detour your trip to come see us, would you? Yeah, exactly. I was in uh Slovenia at Dynamics Minds, which we'll probably chat a little bit about. And then I was in Warsaw, Poland, and then like Norway's kind of on the way home. Like a shopping mall. It's like Europe, everything's close by. Yeah. So I thought, why not? Why not see my friend who I had seen in a while and a few weeks anyway, and catch it. And then rub it in my face that I didn't go to Dynamics Minds. Just tell me and FOMO the bitches out of me. Dynamics Minds. Yes. It is, I think, probably one of the best, well-organized, like just let's just take in terms of a conference or event. It is well organized in terms of how the speakers are taken care of, in terms of the shuttles, the the travel organization, the swag bag when you get in, um, the theming around it. Everything just seems to be like a well-run oiled machine. Um, I have no idea how it is behind the scenes. Um I know myself sometimes things may not appear as they they seem, but overall, um, amazing. And then of course the venue, a hotel on the Mediterranean. You have the the sea breeze coming through, and then there's the parties on the beach. Um, every night there's the speaker, there's the speaker dinner, then we had uh different parties um uh kind of every night to celebrate. Yeah, in terms of the content though, again, just I mean, we know this community just knocking out of the park with different themes around dynamics, footpower platform, of course, a lot of chat about AI, believe it or not, um and co-pilots and all of these things. Um, and it's just really it seems like a festival of sorts, and it's just something very magical about the whole event. Um, in terms of you meet new people, you meet old friends, new friends, and the whole bit, and definitely you learn a lot. Um, the sponsors there, uh great to see those back. I mean, supporting these events, not only Dynamics Minds, but events all over the place. And yeah, it is probably one of my most favorite uh events every year. I just wouldn't miss it. Um that being said, not without it's a few challenges uh for those of you who who were there who know uh my bag never did arrive. Uh so that's why if you did see me, I was wearing gym clothes a lot of the time. Um just kind of wandered around sweating. You always have your gym clothes with you? I do always have my gym clothes with me. I did. And um, but but overall, it uh again, um Mira and the Doccentric team that puts us together. I I don't even have words to express of how such a special event this is, and I can't wait till next year. Uh they already announced the dates. Um your birthday again. Of course. So I never get to go to Dynamics Minds because my birthday is uh always cut colliding with it. But actually this time I have asked my kids if it's okay if I go next year. So we'll see. They gave me their blessing. They said, Why haven't you gone already? Why would you not? It's fine. It's like, okay, well, it's not fine for me. But you know, so actually I am working on getting there next year because I've heard nothing but good things about it. And also I think it's kind of cool. And I think maybe, maybe some people frown on it upon it, but I know that they kind of um market the this event as the this like you said, this is celebration, it's like a festival. It's a lot of partying, it's a lot of crazy kind of artsy things going on, and there's the kind of vibe of the hotel and everything. It feels like a resort of sorts and on the beach and everything, which is smart because you all all the best speakers will apply. And then you get all the best speakers, you get all of the people to come, and it's it's such a good kind of working, it really works out. Yeah. So I think it's a great thing, and I yeah. A work a work hard, play hard kind of situation. Yeah, I'm familiar. I think I'll fit right in. Yeah, absolutely.

Dynamics Minds Highlights And Travel Chaos

And uh speaking of uh work hard, play hard, um a lot of people have uh worked hard or playing, uh we as we will see uh this week uh for the um for the show notes for the content. But yeah, the the stuff that this all podcast is about. Yes, that's why we're here. We're not just here to drink uh Norwegian summer beer. Yeah. In yeah, Norway in the summer. Summer. Okay. So first on our list today was uh an another Norwegian, actually. Okay, Alexander Holzet. Uh he is an a Norwegian Azure MEP. And he uh created a blog post where he went through all the things you could do with co-pilot cowork, which is really cool. So uh this our whole article starts off with him going, well, of course, he can do all the things you think it can do, it can uh write emails or do all the little nitty things that you know that we see AI tools being used for in the beginning. But also then he starts with hmm, I wonder, can it uh download and export all my emails from the dawn of time into PDFs? And yes, it can. And then he accidentally created 160 Teams channels. And but also he created a prompt. So if you it's it's a lot of fun and games to begin with, but if you scroll all the way back down to the bottom, he will give you a prompt that he's used to expose vulnerabilities in your system, and also so uh I think the premise is uh something like someone has gotten access to co-pilot co-work that shouldn't have. So, yes, a lot of fun and games to begin with, and a lot of kind of playing around, but then it gets serious. He's an Azure security MVP. So this is the thing that he uh really wants us to see. So uh I recommend anyone to go put this prompt in um to to find if there's any security vulnerabilities and also give uh Alexander a shout out if you find anything. Yeah, this looks amazing, and I think we're seeing a lot more content coming out about cowork. Um and I've been using, like I think I mentioned last time, I use a lot of cloud cowork, yeah, but trying to kind of do a lot of the Microsoft cowork as well to understand the capabilities. But it's like a game changer, like even um, you know, organizing emails, working on different presentations and things like that. It's just it's kind of it's really flipping the script and taking a lot of that administration minutiae out of my day and letting me focus on the fun stuff, yeah, which is using AI to develop software, which we'll talk more about, I'm sure. Yeah. But also make sure they understand the tool that you're using. I talked to someone the other day who was frustrated because she'd um created a clot account on her mobile phone, and then she's like, Yeah, but it doesn't translate to my computer, so then I have to delete my account and start it off on the computer so that I can use it on my mobile phone. And I was like, no, actually, you what you're running into is actually the the nature of clot, it's local. So even though even if she had gone into her computer and created a account there, she would have had the same experience. It doesn't translate between your devices uh because it's local to your device, uh and which is its power, it's it reads your local files in a way that other AI tools don't natively do. So um understand the tool that you're trying to use and what its benefits are, because there is a bazillion of these out there. So every tool has their benefits, as we'll talk about later. So it's always the right tool for the right thing. Right. Um, and also I I think I miss might have might misplace this, but let's go just top to bottom. Yeah. Um, how long since you did a certification? Just to put you on the spot and make you have to go. Uh I did my PL 200 renewal about two weeks ago. I did it over lunch. Um and of course it was the last time ever to do PL 200 because that is being um uh retired at the end of April uh end of August, actually. So you but it's being replaced obviously with new uh certifications which move us into the new agentic world. Um and it was kind of funny because it was like I saw it come up and I'm like, well, it's going away anyway, why should I? But it was like the renewals, as you know, you can do them online. It's usually like 20 uh assessment questions. Um and I went through it, and it's because I know that content fairly well, and it was it it kind of made me reflect back a little bit of the this the whole life cycle of these certifications. Um this this was this PL200 came from the Dynamics 365. Um I think it's called the functional consultant, uh, but also came from the old CRM customization and configuration. Yeah. Um and kind of going back going back to the years when I think I wrote the first exams on CRM way back when and the evolution of this. So this is just a regular thing, it's just to keep continuing evolving, meaning that there are new um new certifications come out, which uh it's kind of overwhelming. There's a lot out there. Yeah I am actually scheduled for one of the beta exams. Uh came across because of an MCT. You get free access to some of these things. So I booked it. Um now that I say that out loud, I'm wondering if it was this week when I'm supposed to be back home. So I might have to reschedule, which is fine. You can reschedule these things because it was at a testing center. But you found uh this one, the Intelligent Applications Builder Associate. Yeah, which is also a beta beta beta, beta, beta, beta. Potato, potato. Patado, potato. Yeah, I'll get a bit uh language confused, as you guys know. Um, but uh it's more a note to self that there are a bazillion new certifications out there. And I haven't really been diving into any one of these new AI certifications. This is interesting because this one, this particular one, is under the Azure uh product group, but it is has to do with Power Platform. So if we scroll all the way down, then the course you can take is first bail build um your first AI solutions for PowerPlatform, then it's data modeling with Dataverse, then it's intelligent apps and portals with Power Apps, and then Extend Your Solutions with AI with Microsoft

Copilot For Work Security Prompt Demo

Power Automate, which was a bit surprising to me. So I haven't been diving closer into this than that. Um, but I encourage anyone who works with this day-to-day, because you probably can take a lot of these certifications without actually doing a lot of work, and it does matter. So for what you'll do if you gain a certification, it will be a personal certification to you. So it doesn't have anything to do with your employer, but if you work at a partner like me, you can associate the credential to your partner and that will grow your partner status with Microsoft, for instance. So and we we also use them when we deliver CVs. We always make sure to enter the certifications. So if you're butting against another partner, those kinds of things can always make a difference. So it's something to investigate. And I also know summer is coming up. I have an odd week in the middle of summer, and my employer is not really happy with it. But then we decided, why don't I spend it doing certifications and upskilling work? So it's a good thing to kind of get ready for summer and maybe have the odd day here and there, and you can spend it upgrading. Yeah, and a lot of people you see this, a discussion that happens on LinkedIn quite a bit about what's the value of certifications and things like that. Well, to me, um, first off, is getting whether you're ever going to use this or not, but getting exposure to some things by the virtue of the fact that you have to look at this material, understand what the functionality does. In a client project, whether you work internally or whether you're working with other clients, they might come across something and immediately, wait a minute, I saw something, I read something, this is part of the certification, this is where we apply this particular base of knowledge, and then you get the hands-on experience on that. Just because you passed a certification exam doesn't necessarily mean you're good, but at least you're getting that exposure. You've gone through that material. At the end of the day, your true value is your experience and what you did for hands-on. So the whole certification process to me, I think is very important as part of that path. Um, and I think on you're right, in terms of uh a resume or applying for a job, sometimes it is that differentiating factor. If like it's not so much you had the you got the certification, but it's that you've gone through the experience of getting the certification, is what I think it like. If I was a hiring manager, that's the type of thing I'd look for. Yeah, and also you show that you have an interest, right? Because if you're gonna go through this, you have to go through the kind of the course and enough to understand it so that you've sought this out and done this for yourself also shows a quality for you as a person that you are someone who wants to be skilled and that you want to have the proof and the certificates for it. So, all in all, better to have them than not to have them, which I've learned from you. Yeah, better to have and not want than to have it. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. So my daughter knows this every time we're like packing or going on a trip or yeah, like you know, having a camera in case you're gonna record a podcast. For instance, yeah, right. So, and I'm trying trying to travel light, doesn't really, but yeah. Yeah, okay. Um, next up, uh, why this is something okay. So, this is the video that I saw. I haven't watched a video end to end, but I picked this up and I think this is interesting. It comes out of anthropic. So this guy, Barry Shang, works at Anthropic, and they did the session, they had a full uh event, and one of the sessions was how we build a efficient agents. And the whole session is about how to use agents less, which was surprising to me. So that's why I caught my interest. And actually, uh one of the so I I've gone through kind of skim through the video, and on the during the session, he has a checklist. Should I build an agent? Is the task complex enough? If it's not, then use a workflow. If it is, then an agent. Is the task valuable enough? Because it costs a lot of money to run agents because of the and even today, I think they change the copilot. So of course, uh a workflow is more um is is uh less expensive than an agent. And also, are all parts of the tasks doable? If it's not, reduce scope. If it is, yes, then agents. So it's uh there is a a mindset, and I like to see that Anthropic even has this on their agenda to say to help us make better decisions, which is why I wanted to bring it up. Yeah, because we've heard that too. It's like, you know, a lot of that everything should be an agent. Oh, we'll make an agent for this, an agent for that. Like sometimes a good old workflow is all you need. Yeah. Um, if you definitely it's gonna be deterministic, that kind of thing, or even classic workflows, plugins. Uh, there's different ways to automate the processes. Now, don't not say agents are bad, but it's good to kind of they're becoming not the not the hammer for every single nail that's out there. Yeah, and also I think customers confuse us a little bit because now AI has been com become synonymous with automation. So actually they're using the words interchangeably and without even knowing the difference. That you can automate without agents or AI today. So for us to read the the customers and go, I hear you, I think you mean automation, and there are different tools for that. If it's very deterministic, there are other things you can do. And it gets even deeper. Do we write instructions? Do we write skills or do we create a plugin? I get dizzy, I get dizzy. We'll get into it. So right. Um, because on next here on the list also is um a code extension for VS Code that analyzing that analyzes your a agents and automatically help you better your agents. Like, oh, an improvement. Yeah. Okay, it goes through it. So what it does is it goes through, it analyzes your chat, um the chats you already had, and then it analyzes it to help you improve the agents. So it will right, so it will track the progress, detect anti-patterns, uh, measure outputs and discover skills, and then uh score contact health, and then it will help you fix your agents. Yeah, which is awesome because I think these are the things we have so many of these tools creating agents and and we're putting it together. Um it's good when we're starting out experimenting and trying to learn all this stuff, but as we're again, we're probably gonna dive deeper into this in this episode and probably in future episodes in a big way, uh, burning through tokens. Like I talked about this the other, you know, a few weeks ago when I was playing with the the power pages um the co uh Claude skills to build the site and how I ran out of tokens, and it's fine, so I just upgraded. But we're gonna be it's interesting, we're going back to the early days of computing before my time when they talked about um memory management. You only had so many kilobytes. Yes. And then okay, you had to write your code efficiently to fit those kilobytes.

Certifications Changing For The AI Era

And then eventually memory became sort of like I wouldn't say inexpensive, but just so much we didn't even need to worry about it anymore. Everything kind of comes around again. All of a sudden, when then the internet came around, where we only had certain bandwidth. We had to write applications that worked over dial-up, over low-speed communications, over mobile phones. And then again, the bandwidth expeded. Here we are again. Now we're talking about token usage. It's like, okay, we're burning up a lot of tokens. These are now getting expensive. We see this on LinkedIn of people like that. Okay, we've run out, you've run out of tokens a few times. Um, I've gotten, you know, I've gotten close. You kind of wait, okay, what am I going to spend it on? Or like I said before, flip between my different things. Okay, I've got to use GitHub Copilot because my claude is kind of running low on fumes, you know, that kind of thing. It's the first of June today, so I'm so happy because my GitHub Copilot is now renewed. Because I've been so I use GitHub Copilot, and then I have two of those on a professional and my private one that again through the MEP programs. I'm used all of those tokens. Then I moved to my c my Claude. And then actually I was I was thinking, I hope I don't have to use Chat DBT or Codex. Uh because that's kind of the end of the line. And it's like, no, I don't want to. But no, I was good. Um so I'm now on my fourth kind of account this for May. It's like having multiple credit cards going shopping. Yeah, it feels like that. Exactly like that. Um, and also actually the worst part was I lost so much because actually I didn't realize how close I was, and then I put a very good prompt in, and then it ran out of tokens while it was uh getting my prompt, Claude, actually, in the Visual Studio Code. Uh and then I couldn't get the prompt back because it timed out, because I was like, oh, you ran out of credits. I was like, nope. And then I couldn't get it back. So but um and and but I but I do see it there is a bigger picture here. Um when so I remember when I grew up, we could only use internet after five because it was cheaper after five because they had a a higher uh rate on on the because off because of offices, right? So the people that worked with internet had to pay more, and then private people kind of was after five, and you have to use a broadband dial up thing. So I I remember that, and I'm looking at this and I'm going, actually, this is now setting apart, um, it's creating a class divide between people that can afford it and people that cannot. And also another thing that I think isn't discussed enough is how as a partner, as a consultant, do I bill for my value? Right. So the tokens I've used, I'm not used to creating recipes and and uh and and speeches. I'm I've created real solutions, I've done analysis for my customers, I've done a lot of business um uh what is it called? Business uh kind of work. Um I've I've Done a lot of work with it, so it is benefiting my customers. But they still I just bill them for the hour that I spent doing the work, right? Because that's the consultant model. The consultant model has to change in a way where we maybe we get paid by maybe we bill the customers for the tokens. I don't know. But there's something here that is so new that the systems are old and the practices are new, and the business models don't really hasn't taken it into account yet. Right. And this is interesting because I've been listening to another uh we don't have the notes here, but uh uh articles or information from someone else, not in our community, but I think in the greater Microsoft community potentially, his name is Jonathan Stark. He's written a book on hourly billing is nuts. And it is all about value-based billing. It really is not. It is, but it's an old, it's it's a it's a it's a thing we have to measure, right? But yeah, because I am um working on projects that I think six months ago would have taken me days, and I'm down to hours creating the same bit of code. The value to the customer is the same, or they're even getting greater value because AI is picking up things that I'm missing. Um, so overall, it is this isn't gonna be a much bigger discussion, especially amongst like freelancers, consultants, and what value you bring to the customers, how much should they pay for this? Now, again, we're we're beginning to hear rumblings of c I've not run into this myself yet, but customers saying, Well, you should be quoting me less because you're using AI, right? I've heard that too. But you know what? Maybe we need to start adding, maybe, sure, we'll keep charging you the amount of time it takes, but start adding a line item for token usage. Yeah. Very much like any other, like if yeah I build a house and I hire a contractor, he sends me the bill for his labor, but he also sends me a bill for his supplies. Yeah. So maybe that's sort of the approach that we start taking. It's like, yeah, we did this in less time, but we're gonna start charging you for tokens. But if you look at it, if you think about um a consultant company saying, Um, well, we use internet, so we're gonna bill you for internet. I mean, it's it's a bit it sounds a bit ludicrous, but then it it is that is as um a cost for the consultant company or the it the the that is baked into the hourly rate, right? So that's kind of part of the package that our business models are taking into account. It is taken into account the lunch money and electricity and building uh kind of cost of having the buildings and everything. So, of course, in the new world, this is changing that because it's expensive. Right? So it needs to be taken into account. So but I'm very curious where this discussion is. Yeah, so yeah, comment on this if if you guys have other ideas. We'd love to hear this more of a discussion, like because I know like any like law firms would charge for photocopying and parking and whatever else um on top of the regular hourly billing. So uh different practices for different industries, which is now crazy because now all of us are starting to use these things. So yeah, no, definitely. This is so interesting. So more of those to come. Yeah, so thanks to actually it was Joe Unwind who that article. Thanks, Joe, for uh stealing about 10 minutes of us going down a rabbit hole. No, but it's a lot of fun, and also but it ties in, so we're gonna continue because Andreas Adner posted a video on LinkedIn where

Anthropic’s Checklist For Building Agents

he showed off the skills for co-pilot studio. So when uh Joe Unwind shared um resources about how you can create how you can use AI to enhance your agents, this is how you can now um be able to create agents through Visual Studio Co, for instance, right? There's a new um a new set of agents. So this is a Microsoft Skills um repo that you can open uh and download and use uh for your own um on your own laptop, and you can use it for uh Cloud or Make Hub cardboard. And that is a cool thing that I I I do appreciate that things like skills and all of this are cross-compatible with these different tools. The fact that you can down like these skill repositories can apply to different tools, it's kind of a standard uh using markdown format and everything like that. That makes all of this much more approachable. And definitely as these some of these different models um kind of begin to overtake each other, or also if you run out of tokens in in one subscription and then the other. Right. So uh the basic skills are um uh a skill for managing, so that is cloning, pushing, publishing, everything. Uh, there's one author that will create, and there's one to test, and then there's an advisor, which is design guidance, which I absolutely all right, so uh Andreas Adner posts this on LinkedIn, uh, and then there's a few comments, and also um someone in the thread also posted a link to something called claw dynamic workflows, which I found interesting because workflows now is a bazillion things. I think I can name on the top of my head 10 things that are called workflows at this point. So it's kind of become like activity, it just doesn't make any what is so okay. In this context, what is a dynamic workflow? And also, as I looked at the article, it was really funny. They had uh kind of a a comparison between subagents, skills, and then workflows. Um and I think this is also one of those when we looked at the article earlier, um, where to use agents. You remember the video that I talked about from the topic where he said when to use agents? He was comparing between workflows and agents. These are the workflows that he's talking about. So a workflow moves the plan into code with subagents and skill. Claude is the orchestrator, decides where everything lands um in the Claude's context. Workflow scripts hold the loop, the branching, and the intermittent uh intermediate results itself. So Claude context holds only the final answer. So this is a non-agentic way of orchestrating an agent and the outcomes so that you don't get the context fatigue, but you get the context back into the workflow. So it's like an orchestrator that is not an agent. That's how I read it, anyways. So um, yeah, it scales very well. It's a dozens or uh to hundreds of agents per run it can handle. Um, it can uh use script variables because it's now um this it there's a script in the workflow that decides how what the sequence is like. Um yeah, and then it looks really cool. Yeah. But yeah, it's just there's this um again, and it everything seems to be changing and evolving on a week-to-week basis of how these things go, but it's amazing about how everybody seems to be writing skills. Uh I created like different skills on some of my projects. Um I wrote a skill file how to create like uh RDL files for SSRS. I did it as part of my presentation last week. Yes, exactly. What is a beatback again? Yeah. Beatback. All right. Um yeah, it's and it's interesting. So someone else also com uh commented on the LinkedIn post. Like, yeah, it seems like it's kind of a token generation thing going on as well. And of course, we also have to think about that a little bit if you use agents to uh create your agents, to analyze your agents, to improve your agents, and then to manage them. And then

Tools To Analyze Agents And Token Burn

you have it's burning a lot of tokens. So setting up your workspace, sure. And for the work that you're doing, sure. But you can also go down a rabbit hole with these things I find. Oh, yeah. Uh, where actually does it serve a purpose or is it just skeeking out? And so, but I think also we're in the exploratory phase, so we kind of need to dive in and play with these things to understand how it works. So, yeah. All right. Moving on, Karsten Groß from Germany, um, former MVP, now Microsoft guy. Uh, so yeah, this was um he posted on the the NPM based CLI for working with connectors for Power Apps Code app. Okay, so we're getting new CLI commands. So again, code apps every week there seems to be something new. And things we have like Josh and uh Charles that are constantly creating that are cranking out videos as soon as we need to know something. Yeah. Um, but here uh Carson has a uh is a uh a LinkedIn post. And this is what Carson does, because uh he'll get the admin emails from the admin notifications. Yeah. And then if there's something interesting that people need to know about, he'll post them on LinkedIn with a screenshot of the message center message and then how it applies to you. And this has saved my butt so many times, Carson. You have no idea. Because there will be an announcement in there that I had no idea about, and then you share it like this, and it's so valuable. And this is another one of those. Yeah, oh, the uh the the admin emails that you know your PowerPages key is expiring, uh your environment is inspiring, expiring, things like that. Top three tips what you should do with your environment this week and the weekly tie tests or something. Yeah, I actually it's funny because with PowerPages, because you when you set up a new, you know, when you set up a new PowerPages site, it's like 30 days, and then if it's it will it will be deleted, but they'll send you these these emails like sorry to see all your work go. Um, one of my clients who got side who started a portal project, but then got sidetracked on some other projects, went back to like, okay, now I need to go back to my PowerPages project. And then, of course, it wasn't working, and he's going through his emails and found this and then messaged me in a panic, going like, all that work did we do? Is it gone? Like, no, no, it's like um like first off, we have we have the source control of this because good ALM. But then also for you know the power pages, it's like it's just in an inactive state. Like click on the inactive tab, and yeah, for so long, but you know, yeah, there it is. So then it's a sort of like, okay, you know, so again, it's like I get the message, but there's some panic. So I'm gonna work on some content so people are aware of nothing's really gone until it's gone. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. And also, can you please, for just for me, create a little gif at the bot gif, gif, I can't remember, uh, at the bottom from the you your site is now created email. Because I think you worked on the team and someone went bananas on the emails because it's not just the pity party. I'm sorry to see you go. Are you sure you want to do this all that work? But it's also your site has finished, boom, and then it's just confetti everywhere on the email. I was like, is this Microsoft? Microsoft did this. This is fantastic. I was like, no other team does that. I love it. It's so cool. So if you don't know what we're talking about, hold your horses or put a pin in it or whatever you say, because we have more on this so absolutely. All right. But we didn't talk about what this was. So this is this is just an NPM-based CLI that allows you to programmatically from using Visual State Code, for instance, or an agent or whatever it is, to can create connections for card apps. But previously, and if you remember, last time we had a video of Josh and Charles where they tried to show us how to connect to it, and then there's like, oh no, you created the flow. Oh, I'm owner of the flow, which means no, the connection is on you. And then they had a that's the thing that this is solving. So now you don't have to go in through the studio, create the connection there, fiddle back and forth. You can actually do it all programmatically. So this this is that's why I put it in there because I thought it was fun. Because the the guys, they fixed it. Oh, and and I'm sure next week we're gonna get a new video from Josh and Charles going it's not working. This is these are the limitations. Yeah. Let me check YouTube right now so I'm sure there's one there. These guys are machines. Yes, really, yes. All right. So on on to another machine. Uh uh Reza Durani. Yep. I mean, uh speaking of how many uh workflows can you uh name on the top of your head? How many release plan apps do you know? I know Yuka built something, of course. Shout out to Yuka Sawman. He also was at Dynamics Lines. Yeah. And he lives. It's not just an AI. Nope. Is it Yuka AI or Yuka UK? It was the real I I I I did touch him. I didn't put my hand through him or anything. Wow. But yeah, and he also won the community awards as well. Of course. And that is well deserved. I think that was actually Yuka AI that won that, probably. Probably. But yeah. Anywho, good job. Um point is Reza created another video. But to be fair, Reza does a video every week. He's like just every week a brand new video. So do you if you first off, if you're not um like subscribed to his YouTube channel, why not? Because his content is great. He's through the point, he very methane like you can follow along. It's one of the few channels that you don't have to kind of pause, you can just follow step by step. It's so well done. Um, and thank you, Reza, for doing these. And now he's created an app for the release planner. Yep. And and it is really good what he's done. So because a release planner has an API. So when something has an API, what do we do? Just connect to it. Yeah. And I do it and we grab it and we do something with it. So he created, but the what he showed off, two things. First of all, the app that he created is smashing, it has everything that the original release planner does not have. It is stunning. It's so good. I love the UI for this. And also, he's added other functionality that is in the API that is not in the release planner. For instance, if it's uh what is it called, the governance uh cloud stuff. Yeah, so other things that the release planner doesn't have. And on top of that, you can download the app for free. You just put the app on this uh video as a link to it, and you can download the solution, add it to your environment, and boom, you have your own map and your own release planner that is connected to the official API. Perfect. Perfect, doesn't get more perfect than that. I love it. It's a very good use case, I must say. Yeah, and that's the thing. It's like, you know, he saw a need, he went and built his own. Like I think I'm sure, I mean, it's definitely helping him in his topic day-to-day job, but that's the type of thing people are asking me like, how do we get into this? Find a need and build something for yourself. I've said this before. Um, and now with these tools, um, you can start building something. I'll show you something later that I've been quite working on and we'll talk about it later. But yeah, sounds cool. I'll show you the agents that I and the the skills that I created for colour. Yeah, we've actually, and that's funny because we're working on skills and agents to help manage our podcast as well. Not the content creating and not the content gathering, but the small bits in between. Right. And there's even like because I'd not run it through this week, but we we even have something that will help us pronounce names because we know we're horrible at this. So we're actually using AI. It's gonna help. Probably not. Maybe what we'll do is actually we'll get it to create an audio bit. And every time we're gonna say a name, we're gonna just go beep and then Yeah, you won't be able to tell at all. No, we'll just move our

Billing For AI Value And Token Costs

mouse a little bit now. Yeah. And then it's gonna just run the audio clip. Oh, you could do that with LinkedIn. Because the LinkedIn we have the you can people would say their own names. Yeah. Maybe that's what we should do. Yeah, exactly. Put that in there. Why haven't we tried this before? I don't know. Everything needs to be solved with AI. No, exactly. Because I remember listening to yours multiple times to figure out how to pronounce your name way back. You were one of the few people that get it right. So I really took like three years. I practiced yours as well. It's really hard. Yeah. Okay. Um I lost track. No, it's not the BR. Okay, so we're talking, so we're talking about power pages, portals. We were talking about that. Uh Megan V. Walker. Now, Megan, uh, what I I love about, and I'm gonna talk to you directly, uh, Megan, because I know you're I know you listen to us. Uh we love your content because you're you're you're developing stuff that's still very real and grounded in the day-to-day project work. Um and the stuff you do around um uh customer insights and journeys and everything like that. Definitely uh we love you, we miss you. Uh we haven't chatted you in a while, but we will. Uh but you posted something really cool this week, which I really love. Um, ADX Studio Portals to Power Pages, a journey of learning. And it's starting off kind of talking a little bit for those of you to the we'll have in the show notes as well about Megan's journey of where she started with with ADX Studio Portals and went into PowerPages. And I remember uh Megan was one of my the first time I met her in person, we recorded an episode of Refresh the Cache. If you remember that podcast that George and Nick do once every nine months, it's not called that anymore. But yeah, I was thinking Refresh the Cache. I remember. And uh I remember we we talked about we talked specifically about portals and stuff like that. So she is a long journey, but also she's providing content, uh new content for those that are new to PowerPages, of the bare bones where to start. I know there's a lot of content out there, but um Megan's approach to this is very approachable. It's great for people just starting out. So definitely check out that link if you're interested in learning power pages. And basically starts off very simple just going and creating a brand new site, like um explaining all the bits and pieces around that and everything. So Megan, again, awesome content. And of course, her and Lisa, their podcast, the Up Podcasts, inspired us to create the Boost Podcast. Um, which does remind me of something else, which we'll talk about in a few minutes, uh, if I remember. But overall, yeah, great content. And yeah, and um and it's it's a part of a series, I think. So she's gonna go through. So the first one is how to create a portal. It's a little bit about uh the uphill struggle, uh, so that you don't feel alone when you hit that wall because you will, and we're here. Uh so and so I like that. And so kind of she ends it with uh once you have your portal up and running, how do you kind of get it to show up um not private but public? And a few of the things that we know how to do immediately that you no one knows about, that you should know about, um, which is great. And also, I had a thought, I see people posting online going, oh, I if you need content, uh I'm I'm kind of running short of things to talk about. It's like if you are or if you're new to this and you're thinking, I don't know, do I like blogging? Is blogging my thing? Do I have anything to say? Start with the basics. Start with something you know, something that you do every day, and write a blog post about that. Doesn't matter if there's a bazillion other blog posts that show up case exact same thing, as we've said so many times, your voice and your perspective and your kind of in into this and your context makes a difference. Yep. So it's such a great way to start. Now, Megan has been doing this for eons. So if you're curious to what a great getting started with something blog post look like, this is what it should look like. Yeah, absolutely. Done and done. Cool. And speaking of power pages, sort of our last uh content for this week, um, from this is from Valentino, right? Yeah. So excuse me. Talking about uh PowerPages entity lists or what we call PowerPages um table lists or however you want to put it. Um when it becomes a liability, what to use instead. Now, again, this is kind of talking about this is a very common discussion um when creating power pages, especially people that are new to power pages are using just the out-of-the-box components. You start to run into limitations with lists eventually and how

Skills Repos And Workflow Orchestration

they look, how you want them sorted, how you want them to look and feel, and there's ways around that. And then you get to a point where this is the I probably hit this point a lot sooner than others because I get impatient. I'll just go and create my own, first off, my own liquid template and create my own grid or chart or different view there of the different drop-downs and the whole bit. And Claude's my friend on these things lately and actually doing some amazing stuff, but there's still a definitely argument to using the out-of-the-box components. Um, so this has been a really cool article um by uh Valentin Gasenko. And he basically goes through the whole idea of PowerPages entity lists and some of what they're uh good for, some of the roadblocks that you run into, talk things about performance, which I've heard a lot about. I'm sure you have as well in your projects. Yeah. So especially when you bring in things like virtual tables, for instance, it works differently than Dataverse. And the entity disks are designed to work with Dataverse. They work with um oh, I touched the mic. Sorry guys. Um, they're designed to work with Dataverse uh tables. They work with virtual tables as well, but not in the best way. It's not optimized for that. So as soon as you add those kinds of complexities to this, you need to look at other um ways of going about it. And and also I love the fact that he's calling the modern lists out because we had the all entity lists for a while. They are old and frumpy from the 90s, but they allow you to add JavaScript to them so that you can edit their look and feel and how they work. So you have a certain degree of customizability with them. And also, if you need to take it a step further, there is actually, I have this on my blog, it's one of the first blog posts that I ever written, wrote was actually in the documentation from for PowerPages from Microsoft, there is an entity list uh web template with HTML and how to connect. So what you do. You create a web template with this code on it and you connect an entity list to it, and it will actually render and you have full control of your HTML. That is something that very few people know about. And instead of going that route, they will hack the bigs out of it. So but little things like that helps. And then modern lists came along. And what did he call it? He's like, it was uh a glossy, overrated something, something. It was beautifully written. Just hit the nail on the spot. I giggled when I when I wrote it when we read it. Perfect. Uh and also ego he goes through and compares all the different things that you will that you can choose to use instead. So data tables, uh HTML grids, PCF controls, actually. Yep. Um uh if you hit some of the limitations, and then he brings up the pros and cons with each one so that you can choose the right approach for your thing, depending on complexity, how many how much data, how um often they need to be updated, all sorts of things, which is really cool. So very good article. Yeah, absolutely. So definitely a lot of great links and a lot of great articles here. Um, a lot of great stuff covering the whole gamut of the power platform. Um but there's there's the the content that people put out, other ways to get it, going to events. Yes, a lot of events coming up. Now, by the time this episode is released, build is wrapping up. Yeah, it starts today. We record a couple days ahead, you know, podcast magic. Um, but this is happening in San Francisco, so if you're lucky enough to attend, that's very cool. Um obviously we're not there, but uh, I did sign up for the online experience, which is free, so you don't even have to watch it live. You'll be able to go back and watch the recording. So I'm actually looking forward to catching up on some of the things. I'm guessing there's gonna be a lot of stuff on Copilot. You think they're gonna mention it? Maybe AI, maybe a little bit on AI. Build is the developer conference, right? So this is very developer focused, so I guess I guess a lot of CLIs and a lot of code magic, all right. Yeah. And also another thing we know is that Microsoft always keeps a few golden nuggets for build. Yeah. So I'm expecting some uh announcements, and we will talk about them next time. Right. I I expect we're gonna hear something about um uh claw-related stuff. I I'm I'm saying it because Donna spilled the beans on it, dynamics minds a little bit. But anyway. All right. Something claw something. Something claw something. Speaking of other events in terms of for those uh in Canada, a couple um regional events. First off, DynamicsCon Regional, and we love the folks at DynamicsCon. They just had their event in uh Las Vegas back in May. I wasn't there, but I heard a lot of people were there and had a really good time um and uh a lot of great sessions and everything like that. They also do what they call their regionals, they're having one in Toronto. Um, I'm not presenting. Um, I might be there one of the days. Uh I think I might be there on the Friday just to help out and sort of uh taking some of the sessions as well. Um I'm gonna, in terms of just to kind of along the same lines, in August in Montreal, there's the Microsoft Community Days Montreal. I am I do have a session there. I found out I got accepted a session this morning. Um so a lot of things on M365. I'm talking about uh building, bringing your own code to PowerPages uh at that conference. Uh Montreal is like a two-hour drive from my house. So uh something is two hours. I thought like you were in the middle of the pretty much, but anyways. Uh so in terms of the key, if you're uh in Canada, check out those. Um but for us, you and I are gonna be at European Power Platform Conference in just a couple weeks. Oh, really? Yeah. Uh so I am gonna come home um in in between, visit my family uh before I turn around and come back to Denmark. Um that's gonna be awesome. That's gonna be three, four days. No, it'd be more than that. Oh, you oh sorry, the conference. No, no, no. I'll be more days at home. It's gonna be more than that. No, a European Power Plan for Carfets, yes. So Monday until Tuesday, we have the Agent Academy curriculum recruit as a workshop on Sunday. On the Monday. I think there's one or two spots left, if I'm not mistaken. So if you need to learn it and you can't do it on your own, then book a seat at our table and we'll take you through it. Yes. And you'll earn the very prestigious in-person badge. Live badge. Looking forward to that. It's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of fun. Um Copenhagen's a great city. I've been there once before once or twice before. Um, hopefully get a little bit of a chance to explore around a little bit and see some of the sites. Yeah. Um and then coming up, speaking of uh Denmark or things, new um events coming up, uh the Hellish Summit, which is happening in Finland, which has evolved from Collab Days Finland. Uh Hell, because Helsinki. Yes, you know, clever, you know, these Finns and their humans. They're so clever. They're so clever. Yeah. Um, I'll be doing a session there, so I'm looking forward to that. Um Nordic Summit. We're hopefully have new information coming soon on that in the next couple of weeks. Um, which is really exciting, uh, which is happening. Now, we were talking about this earlier. This is happening on a Monday and a Tuesday. Yeah. And a lot of these community events happen kind of on the weekend, or sometimes I know Color Cloud was on a Thursday. Was it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday during the week? Yeah. Germans don't like to give up their weekends for uh. No, Nordics don't either. I guess. Yeah, so many people will be excited about it. Yeah, just curious in terms of feedback, leave us a comment of do you prefer the event on the weekend um where you know you're not worried about client calls and things like that. You can kind of focus, or do you prefer it kind of during the week where it is work? They keep telling people keep telling me this is work, right? Yeah, or career, whatever. Um so yeah, it'd be interesting to see. So Monday and Tuesday, Nordic Summit. This is the fifth or sixth edition. I'm lost. Fifth of a Nordic

Power Platform Tools, Power Pages, And Events

Summit. Of the official Nordic Summit. Oh, yeah, definitely. And then also this time we're trying something new. So you'll look at the agenda and you will see that we have four-hour workshops instead of eight, and they're distributed across different rooms on the different days. So at any given time, you'll be able to get a workshop or a 45-minute session, a 90-minute session, or a 20-minute session. So you'll get a lot of a huge variety of different kinds of levels and depths that you can go into, uh, and also across the different domains and technology areas, of course, which is really cool. So I'm very excited to see how that lands when you think about it. Right. And then and then uh coming on to that, of course, there's a few other events that'll be popping up, which hopefully we'll talk about in a few weeks. Um, and then of course, it's gonna be uh back into the fall conference, big conference schedule, power platform community conference uh happening in Las Vegas as it does every year. And then Scottish Summit and all the other ones. Yeah, exactly. There's Scottish Summit, there's a whole bunch coming up, and and then of course Ignite. And every year I say I'm not going back to Ignite and every I here I go again. Yeah. So we'll see if I show up at Ignite this year. That'll be kind of a running bet. Um fake bets on the side. Yes. Our next episode will actually be the week before EPPC on June 17th. Well, who knows where we'll be recording from next time, whether it's in our regular or like hard to say. Yeah, maybe we didn't like this was planned just a day or two ago. Yeah, 100%. Yes, we do that's what we do. That's what we do. Traveling circus. Absolutely. So hope to see you on the traveling circus road. And uh hope you enjoyed this episode. It was a little bit different this week. Um, it'll just keep you on your toes. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye. Thanks for listening. And if you like this episode, please make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues in the community. Make sure to leave a rating and review of your favorite streaming service and makes it easier for others to find us. Follow us on the social media platforms and make sure you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening to the Par Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, Ulrika Akerbeck and Nick Dolman, and see you next time for your timely boost of Par Platform News.

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Nick Doelman

Host
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Ulrikke Akerbæk

Host