Power Platform Boost Podcast
The Power Platform Boost Podcast is your timely update of what's new and what is happening in the community of Microsoft business applications. Join hosts Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman for a lively discussion of all things Power Platform!Like what you hear? Buy us a beer: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Powerplatboost
Power Platform Boost Podcast
BOOST as a service (#93)
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In this episode, we share some tips and tricks we use when working with coding agents to keep them up to date and our project work coding-agent-agnostic. The Power CAT team has released an update to the Copilot Agent Kit - an essential tool for anyone working with Copilot Studio.
Training and keeping certifications up to date is also important, and we can now get help from Vivian Voss's new Free Microsoft Certification Trainer website. It's also important to keep on top of the changes to security setup for Power Pages, and we highlighted some other new features as well.
Thank you to the amazing people behind the content we highlighted this week: Anouck Fierens, Vivian Voss, Tino Rabe, Nagesh Bhat, the Power Platform Podcast by Mark Christie and Malin Martnes, with guest Scott Durow.
Hope you all are having a great week and that you stay safe and take care.
Show notes
News
- Copilot Studio Kit by the Power CAT team
- Copilot Agent Kit August 2026 Update 1 – Agent Review Tool Setup Fix by the Power CAT team
- Copilot Studio or Microsoft Foundry? Stop Comparing Feature Lists by Anouck Fierens
- Credential Quest — Free Microsoft Certification Trainer by Vivian Voss
- Web API field configuration: Wildcard value (*) support removed after September 14, 2026
- Security Audit by Tino Rabe
- Extend Liquid with Server Logic in Power Pages by Nagesh Bhat
Podcast
- Lasers, Lemmings and Green Hair by the Power Platform Podcast (Mark Christie and Malin, with guest Scott Durow)
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Naming Jokes And Season Change
NickI have a whole whack of ideas up that I'm beginning to use GitHub Cop or the the new GitHub co-pilot co-pilot studio or the copilot studio with the GitHub whatever it's, you know, whatever it's called this week, probably next week.
UlrikkeI'm sure they're gonna find a good name for it. I mean, at some point it's gonna have a new name because now it's like co-pilot studio with GitHub Copilot Harness. It's a bit too long, maybe and clunky.
SPEAKER_00At the end of the day, they're just gonna call it co-pilot. It's co-pilot two is just the wait.
UlrikkeNew, new final new two.
SPEAKER_00Version 2.1.
UlrikkeYeah, last version. Yeah, new.
NickWelcome 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 host, Nick Dolman and Lika Akabek.
UlrikkeHey Nick.
NickHey Elika, how's it going?
UlrikkeYeah, it's uh it's going. How are you?
NickFair enough. Yeah, yeah, all good. It's uh the the summer is becoming to getting close to an end here. I mean, it's still warm but cooling down. They were practicing the school buses and across the street at the school yesterday, so you know it's that time again.
UlrikkeYeah.
NickOne of the delivery trucks, I'm sure, is going to rip the internet cords down, which they do every year by the school.
UlrikkeYeah.
NickSo yeah.
UlrikkeAnd then next week you're gonna have a snowstorm.
NickMaybe the week after, we'll see.
UlrikkeYeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same here. The in the mornings when we wake up, we kind of look out and you can see that the the fall fog is coming in and there's kind of this little sting in the air. But then, you know, midday will be summer temperatures and the kids will come home and dragging sweaters and jackets and stuff and being all sweaty. So it's a few weeks of that fun, which is good.
NickRight.
UlrikkeYeah.
NickIt's it's all about uh, you know, making Norwegians having the right clothes for the right weather at the right time.
UlrikkeExactly that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A Lighter Format And Priorities
UlrikkeSo in in full transparency, we weren't really sure if I was gonna be able to continue doing this podcast for a few weeks. I am a little bit on sick leave and have a little bit of stuff to deal with at home. So health, family and health first. But so this week what we're gonna do is a little bit different because I have had very limited preparation time and not a lot of mental bandwidth. So we talked about maybe mixing the format up a little bit, uh, where you tell me about the latest news and updates, and I can ask questions, which means that I can just be here and be present right now and then uh not having to spend a lot of energy preparing. So it's gonna be a little bit different in the next few weeks. And I really appreciate you doing that for me so that I can continue doing the podcast, which I really love doing with you, and you can help me stay up to date, which is really good.
NickYeah, perfectly. It sounds good. And I mean, I think we all have those troughs of ups and downs and whatever, uh, taking a step back is important. As much as we enjoy doing this and the community stuff and everything like that, sometimes you have to make choices, and obviously, you know, family and your own health comes first. So at the end of the day, we're making the same amount of money doing this as we were all the time, which is essentially nothing, or probably negative even a little bit.
UlrikkeBeer every now and again.
NickYes. Now, to be fair, I know I have some of my customers have sort of made their way to me through this podcast. I mean, I don't advertise as much being an independent freelancer or whatever, but it is just uh to me, this is this is a chance to for us to kind of keep on talk and keep on top of things. And of course, to chat with you every two weeks is always like a big highlight for me.
UlrikkeSo me too.
NickSo we'll continue
Fall Announcements And Copilot Shift
Nickon. Um, but in terms of news and updates, I think we're in a very interesting transition period here. I know on the Microsoft side, there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes. Of course, we're getting into fall event season where I'm sure they're they're brewing up a lot of announcements that will be happening at Power Platform Community Conference at it and also Ignite, which will be following shortly after that. So I also want to make sure that I'm not giving away any NDA secrets of the stuff that we're working on. But obviously, the big, you know, a lot of the big stuff has been talking about lately is the new, and we've talked about this last week, obviously, the GitHub co-pilot harness for co-pilot studio. We're seeing a lot of content around that. I was at an event this past week. Of course, there was a lot of interesting sessions that were showing both the what they call the standard harness, which is, I would say, the old, kind of the PV with PVA inspired way of doing things.
UlrikkeThe classic experience?
NickThe classic experience uh and what that means. And and very interesting. There's because a lot of this event, it was uh the Montreal community days, and of course, they were showing things that people are doing in actual production systems. Of course, that would have been the standard harness for a lot of what they're doing. So it was interesting that I still think that has a lot of life, and of course, the way the credits and the billing work, that's also very appealing to a lot of folks in terms of how they want their agents to work. But to help you along with this whole new, you know, like we said, we talked about learning resources
Agent Academy And Learning Path
Nicklast week. Agent Academy, I did go through the new Agent Academy, earned my badge. I found it definitely a lot more approachable and a lot more streamlined than the original in terms of the whole topic session section, which you and I know when we delivered this in ColorCloud, there's a few little quirks and things that weren't quite working right. Well, that's completely pulled out of the curriculum. Well, sorry, it's not part of the new GitHub co-pilot harness. You can still do the curriculum still exists for the standard harness. So it depends on what you need to get ramped up on. That content's available. But the new content was great. Again, big shout out to the advocates team, Eliza, April, Scott, Daniel, of course, you know, Donna, who's the ringmaster of those crew, and everybody, you know, making sure that we have great learning resources uh to get your head wrapped around this. And I have a whole whack of ideas uh that I'm beginning to use GitHub Cop or the the new GitHub co-pilot, co-pilot studio, or the co-pilot studio with the GitHub, whatever it's, you know, whatever it's called this week, probably next week.
UlrikkeI'm sure they're gonna find a good name for it. I mean, at some point it's gonna have a new name because now it's like co-pilot studio with GitHub co-pilot harness. It's a bit too long, maybe and clunky.
SPEAKER_00At the end of the day, they're just gonna call it co-pilot. It's co-pilot curious to wait.
UlrikkeNew, new final, new two.
SPEAKER_00Version 2.1.
UlrikkeYeah, last version. Yeah, new. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00100%.
UlrikkeBut yeah, we had the same. So we've had a colleague try it a this quite an advanced scenario for a customer. It's been kind of going at it all year in the this is a learning experience, but it's also uh the first kind of Copeless Studio project thingy for the customer. So they're learning was tackled. This use case been rubbing up against some limitations, some things that are a little bit weird, some bugs, some stuff. And then now it's like it just works. Wow, it's so it's like the the power, it's so powerful, and it works like the so you're on the side, you're with your coding agents, that's a great experience. And then you're in the co-pilots classic carnus, and then it's not such a good experience. And as you said, the topic stuff is just so out of date the way that it worked. So now just bringing it over is like bam, just works, and it's yeah, yeah, it's phenomenal. And I can't wait to go through the the academy,
Paying To Build Agents And ROI
Ulrikkethe new one.
NickAnd and like everything, it still has its quirks and things like that. Of course, a lot of people are grumbling, as we predicted last week, about the fact that it will cost you to actually, you know, build your agents. But again, this is I think a cost of doing business and your ROI, I think, will, depending on your scenario, will more than cover it. I think training availability will be a challenge going forward. Um, hopefully, Microsoft will address that as well.
UlrikkeBut I'm thinking in terms of credit, if you're using your coding agent at the same time, kind of will it will be costing, is it more expensive? The credits are kind of the same, right? So it's not like it's overly if you're spending your days talking to a coding agent, anyways, using the Copa Studio with the GitHub harness, it's gonna cost you around the same thing. If you were to go through the CI, for instance, and create a Copa Studio agent with as you could now with the with the skills that it has, that would also cost you. So I mean, it's not like it's outrageous.
NickNo, and it's but it's it's it's no, it's not, it's more the paradigm that people have been used to building things for free and now they're not. And I think for some, I mean, for me, it's like, yeah, it's it is what it is. Like you have to pay for the resources when you build something. Like, definitely on the coding side, we've been doing this for months now. Yes, and as you you you and I have both run into, all of a sudden we run out of capacity, and then we have to deal with that. So again, this is this is the reality we live. And it's it's not being anybody being malicious or Microsoft grabbing money or anything like that. It's just the nature of the the beast and these things at the end of the day do cost money, but the value, what you'll get in terms of time saved, in terms of efficiency, that's where you're gonna get your savings. And that and this is the proof in the pudding. If it doesn't, well then probably you shouldn't be building it if it's not gonna save you time or money, right? I did watch another uh I watch a lot of YouTubes on stuff that's outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. And there was one on you know being an AI consultant, and they talked about all about the value to your customer. Is it gonna save time? Is it gonna save money, or is it gonna earn you money? These were sort of the criteria they put forward when you're building agents or building solutions for your customers. And this is something that we've lived through before. I've heard an interesting saying, like customers don't want to buy a drill, they want to buy a hole. So how you get there and what's the easiest way is a lot of where you have to figure out this ROI, a whole process there. Like, yeah, it'd be cool to have an agent to do stuff, but if it's gonna cause you more grief or not save them you personally time or money or your company as a whole, then what's the point?
UlrikkeSo Yeah, yeah, exactly
PowerCat Agent Kit For Testing
Ulrikkethat.
NickSo but it's interesting with all this, with the copilot studio information coming out, again, the PowerCat team is just their their resources that they're providing in terms of we talked last week about the webinar they did in terms of upskilling, but of course they have a lot of these skills uh coming out. And you go to the marketplace, the co-pilot agent kit. So this is something that if you're building co-pilot studio, you definitely need to, as it says in the marketplace, get it now. So, you know, a lot of these different capabilities like testing, agent inventory, and they also had like this uh the agent review tool, the art, which you know allows you to go through your agents and make sure everything is connecting properly, make sure everything's working. So it's one thing to trust that the AI will do the right thing, but also making it go through scenarios to make sure it actually is doing what it says it's doing and putting some real life scenarios kind of in front of it and monitoring it. So if anybody's been building anybody building solutions for that matter, building agents from day one, it's always been you you don't just set it and forget it and walk away from it. A lot of times users will come back and they'll say, can we do this? or this isn't working right, or can we make this more efficient? It is an iterative process, and this is why we have versioning and software, and agents are no different. You can't just create an agent and set it. There's so many things to consider. Is it doing, is it reacting? Because now we're trusting the LLM to do a lot of these things in that non-deterministic manner. Even though it's non-deterministic, is it doing non-deterministic correctly? I guess is one way to put it. So a lot of these tools will kind of help you determine that. And there's a whole whack of others there too. There's libraries, their compliance hub, their insights, there's a debugger, a change, a change tracker, which I liked as well. Basically, who changed what or what got changed along the way. Um, and basically also DLPs and you know, different things. So get the uh, like I said, the co-pilot agent kit is something that should be in everybody's toolbox uh going forward if you're building agents within like the the Microsoft framework.
UlrikkeThat is very true. And and also that having it testable and also to see how it there's a new shortcut as well, a dash cost or something that will show you what your last session costs, which is a good way to kind of see and help building that business case because I find it's a bit difficult to keep track of, and then you have the planning phase, and then you have the building phase, you have the the testing, the evaluation, the governance of all this, and and what is the different phases cost, which is a smart way to keep track of everything.
NickYeah, but again, it's that ROI to make sure. Yeah, it was about the ROI, but again, also if you're uh it's also a good way to show the value to your if you're building agents for your customers to show them the the actual dollar value that this maybe is costing, but also kind of if they if there's ways to track the the manual processes that it's replacing, how much that costs and be able to kind of show what your savings are again. If you're above that curve, then you're on the right track.
UlrikkeYeah.
Agent Builder Versus Foundry Path
UlrikkeAnd I saw an interesting because you know, not you know, Cobalt Studio, it's one thing got its new harness, and maybe now it's even harder to to separate between, okay, when do I use something like Microsoft Foundry? When do I use Copa the Studio? And I saw an interesting article from Anouk Firenz Firens? Firens, Firens, you know, me and names, sorry, which was like, how do you choose between Copa the Studio and Microsoft Foundry? And it was like, stop comparing featureless. That's not what it's about. It is a tier thing. Always start with Copa Studio. And if Copa the Studio doesn't cut it, then move to Foundry. It's cheaper to be wrong in Coplay Studio than to be wrong in Foundry. And I've found that that was such a good argument and such a good way of looking at it. It's not like this is the featureless for one and this, and then you compare and you see what's what. Because that's the kind of role map that we're used to. It's like, well, or do you use model-driven apps or canvas apps for this? Well, do you need custom UI? Do you need this or that? No, no, that's not what it's about. It's it's a path. It's one first, then the other. If you hit a snare, you're hit, you hit a boundary, then you have to move on to the next one kind of thing. So and I and I like that approach. And I think that still holds true, and especially now with the new harness, you can do more and you can do more easy more easily. So it it's it makes it possible to go further and more advanced with Copilot Studio than it ever had before.
NickYeah, and I would take that challenge even one a little bit of a step, I wouldn't say well, further or earlier in the process. We keep forgetting because uh I know we're you and I, because we worked at the power platform, we're very excited about Copilot Studio. And for us, I think instinctively we might know that's the good starting point, but also know that there is the agent builder, which is part of M365, and that actually might hit some of the use cases uh early. So again, it's not over-engineering some of your things. So if you have a very simple use case, chances are agent builder might actually do enough for you. I've been using agent builder for just a couple little things like doing email summaries and things like that, and it's great. I don't need to go into co-pilot studio and build anything more complicated, but I know that if as soon as I hit some walls there, that I do have the option to move on into you know co-pilot studio. And then now I also know that once we go beyond that, then Foundry is sort of the next level to get into as well. And to be honest, I've not done a ton in Foundry. I definitely, it's on on you know my list of my list of a thousand things to learn. Foundry is on there, but this is uh but this is sort of another consideration. But again, it's like this is a great article. This really goes, and there is this. I think whether we just get this competitive nature, it's like pro devs versus low coders or dataverse versus SharePoint and all of these things. Um, at the end of the day, the the the guess what the ending of the story always is better together or one enhances the other and you can kind of move up a progression there. So, you know, before when you're doing the evaluations, this is a great article to go through and to kind of help you decide where where really should we do our starting point. And again, co-pilot studio is a great, great place to start. And then maybe if it works there, perfect. You're done. You can you know continue to enhance that. But you know, foundry is sort of the next step and it is there, it's available for you know for you or whoever to build the next level.
UlrikkeYeah, then we saw something else exciting from in terms of exams and keeping up to date with the latest and greatest.
Certification Planning With CredentialQuest
NickYeah, from our good friend Vivian Boss. So shout out to Vivian, who's probably like one of these people that are always like busy with a thousand things on the go and where she found time to build this site. I mean, I know obviously she probably had some AI helpers along the way, but if you're uh if you're trying to work through your certifications or your boss told you to need to get some certifications kind of thing, this is a great resource for you to kind of search for the exam, go through the process, and just basically just go through and see what all the concepts that you need to cover to make sure that you're comfortable with and with links back to MS Learn to kind of get ramped up in something that you might not be aware of. There's also practice quizzes as well, which is pretty exciting. So if you want, you can kind of see where you stand and what are some of the areas you have to drill down to before you kind of make that. I think it's $125, whatever that's Canadian or $150 now, maybe, before you make that investment to go and get that certification exam to make sure that you're ready. And again, always keep your eye open for two for ones. And Microsoft tends to have deals going on with that. I'm not aware of any right now, but this is an amazing resource uh for you to go to certifications. And it's interesting because I saw posts from Vivian and a few others, you know, kind of how they spent their summer vacation, and a lot of it was going through and you know, getting a lot of certifications that they were behind on, or also getting new certifications because, as we talked about before, things there are certifications that are retiring, they're going away. So that also means for some of us, we need to start thinking about getting new certifications to, you know, not that we need them for our job, but does offer a level of credibility. But if you're a Microsoft certified trainer, you do actually need these certified certifications in order to train and deliver this content as well. That's one of the requirements. So in Vivian's website, we'll have a link in the show notes. It's MSMS CredentialQuest.com. But you can click on that link and you can check it out. She's doing it for free. So thank you, Vivian, for this great community resource.
UlrikkeYep. It's good. I uh yeah, it's on my uh list of things to do as well, for sure. And also kind of on the fence a little bit to see where everything lands and what I'm gonna do when I grow up. Kind of waiting a little bit to see. But yeah. But uh we also had a little bit uh we talked a little bit about the um power pages stuff yesterday and last
Power Pages Security Deadline And Fixes
Ulrikketime. And you put some links in here for some resources around the security breach and how to mitigate those for PowerPages. You want to talk a little bit more about that?
NickYeah, it's interesting. So even when I was beginning to put my content together on this about the, you know, that we talked about a little bit about this. Of course, you could've had a few posts, and I had pretty much all of my PowerPages clients have come with it if at least the questions, some more panicked than others about all of this, as I'm sure you did as well. And first off, if you are building a PowerPages site now and you attempt to use the wildcard value on any table, it will not work. It will immediately allow you to set it, but as soon as you run your code, you're gonna get an error message saying that the you know the API is not able to connect to those tables. Now, if you have this set up already prior to the fairly recent version that rolled out, on all tables except for the contact account and incident, it will continue to work until September 14th. And then the wild card will be deprecated, meaning you will have to specify your table columns in the site setting. Now, I know for some of our listeners who don't do power pages, and we're getting very technical here, and I apologize for that. So if if you're if you're not a PowerPages person, still listen to this because you never know. Someday you might this might be important. Or maybe one of your customers and maybe your PowerPages person has you know moved on to other things, they might be pinging you in a couple weeks saying, Hey, our portal doesn't quit working. And you'd be like, wait a minute, I heard something on the Power Platform Boost podcast about this. Let me go back and check. So, long story short, this is being deprecated. Um, it is because of the security breaches and the web API stuff, which we've there's a lot of information on how it works and what the issue is. Now, the other thing that is concerning for some folks is in their site setting, it only allows for 4,000 characters. So if they have extremely wide Dataverse tables, they might exceed that 4,000 character mark. If this is your situation, I would recommend at this point. Now my my guidance might change in a week or so, but right now open a support ticket so you can kind of get on Microsoft's radar and see how they can help you out, whether it's going to be a temporary extension. And if it is an extension, it will be temporary. And I know that they're coming up with a few ideas to resolve this as well. So hopefully we'll hopefully we'll have more information soon on that. So that is something just to be fully aware of. If you are in a position, and I uh normally we don't we don't have sponsors or we don't do shout-outs, but our friend Tino Rabbi does have a service that he provides, and he will do a full audit, a security audit of your PowerPages site. We'll throw a link in the show notes as well. But definitely it's a flat fee service. We're just throwing a bit of hopefully he's uh not booked up too much with this, but uh definitely if you have a PowerPages site that needs a third pair of eyes to look at, Tino's a great per a great resource, and he'll be happy to help you out. So and again, big shout out to Tino, and he's beginning to throw some content and stuff back out there specifically around this. So um you'll be in good shape going forward. And when that September 14th deadline hits, hopefully your sites will just keep on running without any issue.
UlrikkeYeah, yeah, we we have the same with all our customers as well trying to go through. And actually, it's been a quite a good way to take a another look at everything, right? Let's run all the security things again. Let's look at all the monitoring and all the things. Maybe some of the customers with smaller portals, we don't look at it too often. But it's a good been a good excuse in a way to kind of get them a little bit ramped up again on what's going on and a few other things that we can look into. So it's a it's a good opportunity to get back in touch with customers that maybe have some long-running portals that haven't been looked at looked at for a while. And also a good way to talk to them about some other new capabilities that have come along that also has to do with security, right? So I know for us we have a few customers where we created a few workarounds back in the day to accommodate for some little special niche thing, and now suddenly we can use server logic for that. So now we're kind of getting back in touch, and we're like, well, actually, now we can solve this in a better way. So yeah.
Server Logic From Liquid Tags
NickEspecially, especially caching issues, if if that's always been a pain point. Uh like again, caching's there for a reason. This is this is an extreme workaround, but I have used this server logic to get around that. Now, the cool thing that maybe you didn't see is we can now server logic up until this point, you actually had to write some some JavaScript code to invoke it. Now you can do it directly from Liquid. So with a Liquid tag and some parameters, you can call your server logic. To me, this this opens up a whole new level of capabilities or makes it a lot simpler and a lot easier to manage going forward. So basically, as opposed to kind of writing a bit of JavaScript and dealing with all this, now you can just actually still the server side logic is still code, it's still JavaScript, which again, you know, GitHub Copilot or Claude, they're your friends here, can help you put that code together if you don't have direct access to a developer. But then you can just put in this liquid tag and call that code directly. So even if you have a developer creating these things for you as a maker, if you're comfortable with liquid and HTML, then you can begin to kind of again fusion teams working better together, making making everything happy and slick and all this. So on the server logic side, yeah, like there's the caching bit, but I've also created uh Dataverse custom APIs that I'm able to call from server logic and then call from the PowerPages site, which opened up a whole bunch of new capabilities for PowerPages. So this is the type of thing that server logic will give you. So yeah, interesting times.
UlrikkeYeah. Absolutely. I had one of my colleagues come back from maternity leave last week and she's been she's been away for a year. Uh so her mind is kind of fried.
SPEAKER_00No doubt.
UlrikkeShe's like, Where do I start? Well, yeah. What happened? Tell me about it. But actually, so over lunch today, we kind of concluded that actually she's she can just start right here because what we had is a year of trial and error and kind of beta beta problems. Now it's mature. Now it works. Now it's actually usable across the board, feels like. So it's mature enough. So maybe she didn't really lose out on much.
NickWhen you go back to Copilot Studio, for example, and to be honest, like I didn't do a ton of stuff in Copilot Studio up until like maybe a couple months ago. And it's not that I avoided it, it's just sort of the nature of projects and stuff. Customers just weren't right ready and stuff. But now they're starting to ask questions, and it's like perfect. Now I have a new easier interface that uses skills and all these things that I totally get in a much better way.
UlrikkeSo it's kind of like sometimes it's good to wait or put a Yeah, but I also recognize that when I use my coding engines, I and I can I so let's say I uh do this kind of work over here, and then it's uh the the project moves on, and then I have another customer, kind of similar to work, and I want to kind of grab the skills and the ages that I that I created last time I did this kind of work. And I always ask, okay, uh, you're so familiar with the project and also look at these skills and agents that I built uh some months ago and then make do an assessment to see if we can make anything better. And the the gap is always huge. It's like, ooh, nice to try, but now we do like that, and then you you're missing this and this and this and that. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And that's like months away. So I'm thinking the core studio agents we put up now, we put in skills and we connect them to all these sources, and then you kind of need to get in there every month to make sure that these skills are up to date and that the the it's it's nice to kind of keep it consistent, but if if you were gonna be hands-on and and and keep things up to date now, that should be it. So it's uh it's nice for governance, the people that do get governance and maintains solutions out there. I think it's uh golden times for you to keep everything
Portability And Better Prompt Hygiene
Ulrikkeup to date.
NickSo it is interesting you say that you say that about, you know, like relearning and refactoring and everything like that. The c I've been watching a couple videos, like I said, lately on you know the very concept, and they're going through building, you know, uh building systems using whether it's clawed code or something else. But a theme that I'm beginning to see is about, they say we're what we're showing you now is valid now. In six months, this you may need to move to a completely different platform. They say, like you look at GitHub Copilot work has come out to as a competitor or something than to Cloud Co-Work or Microsoft Co-Work. So here's a new platform coming out. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know how good it is, but a lot of these videos are saying, hey, we're building stuff, but if you need to make it portable, here's also things to consider. And that's something not to say that we would move from Microsoft to another platform, but even like you look at things like GitHub co-pilot, and I know there's already tools and skills to help migrate your co-pilot or your agents created in the old way to the new way. So again, it's beginning to think a lot about future proofing and understanding the harness might be different down the road. So you want to make things a little bit more portable. So this could be a new, I don't know, a new concept coming out as well. Like, you know, we talked about prompting and creating skills and those types of things, but also considering making things a little more platform agnostic because, again, of all of these evolving things so you know, evolving so rapidly. And it was interesting because there's two complete different videos. One one guy was talking about kind of a business system, and he goes, Oh, and by the way, he actually has agents that will copy things like his system prompts and things like that, will copy it to other platforms as part of his nightly process. Because he said, You never know when we might have to switch. At least everything's kind of keeping in sync. And then another guy, too, he's going through his whole tutorial and he goes, Well, yeah, we're structuring it this way because he said this is on clawed code now. He said I might want to move it to codecs down the road.
UlrikkeYep.
NickSo yeah.
UlrikkeAnd I know for me, I kind of because I run out of credits on one, I'll switch to the other. Well, there's so of course now I have my whole setup so that it is coding agent agnostic. And and I have customers that they don't allow us to use uh Claude or sorry, anthropic models, for instance, because they want to keep the data in the user. We use open AI models, uh, which means that I have to use, you know, I have to be very conscious of the model, the context, the user, the you know, where it is and and what it's using. So I become very accustomed. So my whole setup is now coding agent agnostic. So if I create a skill somewhere or an agent somewhere, I know where to put it so that all my coding agents can access it, for example, right? So and there's a special way of working that allow you to do this to kind of have that easy switch between the different and also in my projects as well, always keeping a state, some breadcrumbs, uh project definition, always document what I do, always kind of keep track of the work. I can delete them when we're done, but just as I'm working through something, if I suddenly run out of credits and there's this one huge prompt or this whole huge chat that I've had and I haven't really worked on my files, everything's in the files. So that if I have to switch context, it's easy to pick it up again. And those are kind of it's hard-earned experiences because I have been there where it's like, oh, that was all in that huge conversation, now it's all gone. So of course that's how I learn.
NickBut uh yeah, it's yeah, that's something I've been putting in my instructions. Like whether you use if I'm using Claude, of course, the Claude.md file. If you're using GitHub Copilot, there's whatever it's called, agent instructions or something like that. But basically, every time I'm on a new project, one of the things I know it cost a few more credits, but I'm basically saying create a change log.md file. And every time you make a change, log it with the date and time that you made that change and why. And that has already kind of saved my butt a few times, being able to go back and even when it reviews, going, oh, but last week you changed this because of this. Just sort of be aware of that. Are you sure that's still the right decision? And like, oh yeah, well, maybe it's not. And then the other thing that I've been doing, I think I've been I have kind of got lazy with lately, but I'm starting to do again is after I do a segment of a project, I will actually go back, okay, now that we're done, generate me the prompt as if we were going to start from scratch based on what we know. And then even if I'd never used that prompt, partially I have this prompt now, it's in source control that when it comes like a new uh agent or a new harness or something, at least we have that prompt to work with. But also just to see the thought structure. So it makes your own prompting better by looking at this, whether it's a spec or a big prompt that the the LLM has generated to make yourself better as a solution architect when you're putting these things together. Like it's meant, you know, human in the loop. We can learn from AI as they learn from us as well.
UlrikkeAbsolutely.
Selling Agents As A Service
UlrikkeSo but I'm also thinking in terms of customers and keeping things up to date. And as you said, you know, as a as a service, you don't want the the drill, you want the whole. I think also the idea of not selling, I create you an agent, and that's gonna run the procurement agent's gonna run for you for the next three years. That's not gonna happen. So actually selling the automation as a service or the agentic loop as a service, or this kind of that's gonna be much more interesting going forward. And as a customer, that's what I would lean towards, something that is always up to date and that uses utilizes the the latest models, the latest tech, the latest way of working with this that is agnostic and that it can be maintained by someone. Because that's what initially, you know, or that's basically what you want. That's it's the the flight engines, you know, they buy flight time now. They don't buy engine flight engines anymore. So it's the business models shifting kind of to that turp type of yeah service. So it's so interesting to be in this space. Is there anything else you wanted to? I have a uh have a competitive podcast or a competitive competitor uh note at the end. But did you have anything more you wanted to touch on before we No, no, no, I think news and updates.
NickI know it was a bit of a shorter one this week, but I think uh it's
A New Community Podcast To Watch
Nickall good.
UlrikkeSo I discovered this week uh that Marlen Motnez and Mark Christie has a podcast called the Power Platform Podcast, which I found very interesting. So it's kind of is now competing against us on the SEO sides for Power Platform Podcasts. Um but what they're doing is an kind of in-depth, longer format interview with uh different people in the community. And the reason that I discovered it was because Scott Jr. was a guest. They recorded the summer, I think, before EPPC sometime, and they just published a new episode, which is really good. And it's uh worth checking out if you're in this space. So, and there I see you put some uh dates and places to be this uh. We've touched on a lot of these already. We touched on them yes last episode. Anyone, any new uh events for you this fall you wanted to mention?
Fall Events And Choosing Powerlifting
NickActually, one less. So I am not going to Las Vegas, um, as you know. Again, we talk about choices going through the whole process there. And don't get me wrong, I love Power Platform Community Conference. Uh, for me, just of course seeing everybody, of course, Microsoft tends to make a few bigger announcements there. You know, Charles and Ryan, their keynotes are always epic. It also is a great opportunity for FaceTime with actual Microsoft people in terms of the actual product team, the actual people that are delivering this stuff, and you get some very interesting insights, whether you're an attendee or a speaker and that kind of thing. But it was actually happening the same week as the North American Pan American bench press championship, which I was trying to see, could I pull off both? And very realized very quickly I cannot. So and yeah, the being on the international powerlifting teams is getting, speaking of competition, it is getting more and more competitive to get on these teams. I'm currently on the reserve for the world master team, which I went to last year, but even to get on that team was even to get on a reserve was pretty hard. So I'm probably that means I'm probably not competing in worlds, but going to the North American Bench Press Championship, I have other friends going as well. So yeah, I decided this year that's that's the choice I'm gonna make. And again, this is important. There's a lot of, you know, yes, power platform, this technology stuff is fun. I absolutely love it, but I also kind of need to focus on other hobbies as well to keep my brain a little balanced with all of these things. So again, and like you said last time, you don't you can't go to them all. So, anyways, tagging, I want to quick little shout out to some of my friends who have I've tagged out too. So Rami Moonla is gonna team with Eliza. So, you know, basically New Zealand connection there, they're gonna knock it out of the park with their solution solution. And then I handed over another session to Sean Asterkan and George Dobinski. As George noted, he said it takes two of them to replace me. I'm not quite sure about that. So whether you want the content or not, just going in one of their sessions is just pure entertainment.
UlrikkeYeah.
NickIt's about the hidden features of Dataverse. So I'm kind of curious. I said, like George was kind of like, well, you know, what do you want us to talk about your stuff? Whatever. You're like, no, you guys, you make it your own. I'm just, but we need to stay on topic. So I'm very curious to see what they've come up with because already George, you know, George has already disagreed with me on a few points. So definitely. So, anyways, yeah, that that's the biggest thing that has that has changed up since our last time chatting.
UlrikkeOkay. Yeah, I'm uh so gutted I won't see you there, but I know I'm gonna see you soon anyway. So I know we're gonna have lots of fun in here in Norway in a few weeks. So, but I'm gonna miss you in Vegas for sure. But I I know the circus goes on without us as well. So it's gonna be lots of fun in Vegas. Right. And with that, we're gonna
Wrap Up And Listener Requests
Ulrikkewrap it up. Next episode's gonna be September 9th. And until then, take care and uh health, family and health first, and catch you next time.
NickYep, see ya.
UlrikkeThanks 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 Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, Ulrika Ackerbeck and Nick Dolman, and see you next time for your timely boost of Par Platform News.
