The Evolution of Agentic Coding with Nick Doelman [MVP-MCT]

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the M365 FM podcast.

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Today we diving into one of the most exciting shifts happening in software development,

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the evolution of agentec coding and how natural language is becoming the purest form of

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low-coded development.

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Joining me today is Nick Dorman and an independent power platform specialist, trainer,

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coverage, Microsoft MVP and Microsoft's certificated trainer from 2003, Nick worked at Microsoft

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as a senior content developer, focusing on power pages, power automate and power platforms

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skill content. He also is a co-host of the Boost podcast, a content creator and outside of tech,

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an international competitor, power lift, representing team Canada. Yeah, Nick, thank you.

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Yeah, thanks, Marco. I hope I have never forgotten.

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Oh, it's a lot, yeah. It looks impressive on an autobiography, but yeah, I do those things,

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so yeah. Interesting, power lifting.

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Well, we could talk about power lifting, the whole session if we're not careful about it,

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but yeah, it's a hobby sport. It's something I took up probably about

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I think 13 or 14 years ago, just getting out of shape, I'm like, okay, I want to go to the gym,

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met with a personal trainer, hated running. I tell people, if you see me running,

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then you better start running too, because something's gone horribly wrong.

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I much prefer doing weightlifting, free weights, that kind of thing,

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got into powerlifting competitions and, yeah, in a couple of weeks, I'll be competing at the

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World Bench Press Championship. I look at the stats, I won't win, but I'll definitely compete

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and have a lot of fun. To me, powerlifting is my mental therapy. It's my going to the gym.

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It gets me away off the keyboard away from the screen and kind of gets resets my mind.

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There's an expression I hear, exhaust the body, calm the mind, and that's for me is what powerlifting is all about.

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And how did you then powerlifting bring you to power platform?

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Well, I was doing power platform, log before that. If anything, power platform brought me to powerlifting.

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Been working with tech, oh, man, like I got my first computer when I was like, I think it was like

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15 or 16 years old, I got a Commodore 64, I started programming at basic, I started doing a little bit

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of assembler and machine language. I went to school for electronics engineering in computer systems,

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so did a lot of at that time, C++, assembler as well, working on different microprocessors,

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really got more into software and then eventually that kind of led me to something called

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which of course is the great grandfather to Dataverse and PowerApps

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started building what, you know, building applications on top of Microsoft CRM. We used to call those

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XRM, meaning anything relationship management and of course that evolved into what we know is power

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apps today in Dataverse and all that. So along the way working in IT, as I'm sure a lot of people

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understand, it is, it can be a bit of a stressful job, a bit of a lowly job, a lot of pressure

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if the client's systems are down, they're freaking out, they're calling you at all hours to get things

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up and running. So I found that very stressful, so for me getting back in physical shape and getting

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into powerlifting was a way to escape some of that for at least part of the day, so I think the

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power platform brought me to powerlifting, not the other way around.

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Okay, I think it's good to be something with the name, but okay.

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Yeah, you also worked at Microsoft and now you are, yeah, free LAN, free, or free LAN, sir. Yeah,

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yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was, I mean, it worked for some, it's interesting in terms of my career, I

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worked for other Microsoft partners, I went off on my own as an independent contractor, free

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LAN, sir, I grew a company, we had employees, we had an office, we had the whole bit. I learned very

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quickly that I'm at my heart, I'm a technician, I like to always say fingers on keyboard, even though

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I'm using my microphone more and more these days, but just more that hands-on building things,

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so running a company really didn't line well with me, it really stressed me out, like dealing with

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HR issues and payroll and the bank and the taxes and of course, multiple, you know, doing multiple

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project management, it was like, nah, I really want to do the hands-on stuff, so ended up going,

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taking the company, we kind of got absorbed by a larger firm, I did a few years at that, went

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back on my own, and then got contacted by some folks I knew at Microsoft saying, hey, we, we think,

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you know, based on, because at that time, I was an MVP, I was writing blogs, you know,

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doing presentations, they said there's an interesting position at Microsoft doing working on the documentation

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for at that time, it was called Power Apps Portals, and again, no, I don't want to throw anybody

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out of the bus, but the Power Apps Portals documentation wasn't necessarily the best, there was,

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so in a way, it was good for me to become an MVP because I could write a lot of blogs on how to do

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things, set things up, so it was a great opportunity for me to kind of get involved in that, and so I

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joined Microsoft, I thought, oh, this is going to be an interesting career move, but that point,

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I wasn't sure I wanted to work for a big company, but it was actually during the pandemic, so I really

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wasn't doing a lot of the traveling and community stuff anyway, so joined Microsoft, as I like to tell

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people, it was good to see how the sausage was made, so working, working at Microsoft was good, if I

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got at that point, they were transitioning, they were basically creating what was going to be a new

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product, Power Pages, which was, of course, just transitioning Power Apps Portals and do a bit of a

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rebrand, but of course, they added a bunch more tools to make it a standalone product, so I work

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with that, reworking all the documentation, of course, writing new documentation for the new features,

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it was a lot of fun, but then over the course of the years, I found like, I'm a builder at heart,

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I want to be building these things, it's great to kind of explain the process of how things are

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done, it was great to work with the team, so after two years, I decided to go back out being a

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freelancer, it wasn't laid off, like a lot of people at Microsoft had been, it was my decision to go,

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it was interesting because they were doing a layoffs and I kind of like, we've all been tiered for

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this and at that time, that was not an option, but it was good, I made a lot of great friends there,

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I wouldn't be adverse to going back to Microsoft for the right job, I'm just not sure the right job

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exists for me there, but it was really good, so it was a good span of time, I met a lot of great people,

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got to see how products were put together, how the marketing worked, of course, it was in meetings

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with marketing people and they were like, oh, we're going to rename it and I'm going, do you guys not

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realize the stress and the anxiety and the confusion that happens every time you rename something and

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they were like, oh no, no, it'll be fine and sure enough, months later, there was confusion and

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whatever else, but this is Microsoft, they like to keep things interesting.

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Anyways, it was good and then, yeah, when I went back on my own freelancing again, now it's been a

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couple years and I absolutely love it. I think it's like running joke, the rename is of

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in Microsoft, yeah, I think in Edra and I have these and seen these lists with all the services,

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and it's 1,100 services, and now often they change the name, it's like, yeah, I don't know,

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and they're services, I never heard before, like, satellite service, and so on, and they really,

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I think, oh, yeah, okay, but, yeah, there's this marketing or something, I don't know,

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but what excites you most today compared to power platform, say, five years ago?

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Oh, it's, I mean, Mercco, it's radically changed. It's interesting. I would say, if you

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talked to me even a year ago or two years ago, the make.powerapps.com would be the main tool that I would

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be living in, of course, creating tables, working on apps, building, building things out that way,

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in power automate designer, those types of things. I would say today, I'm kind of, and then of course,

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with PowerPages into the design studio, and then of course, for the PowerPages folks, you know,

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people, everybody knows about the, the PowerPages management app or the Portals Management app,

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which was a model driven app where we did a lot of configuration. Those are the tools that I lived in.

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These days, I would say if you look at the last three to six months, I am living in Visual Studio Code,

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probably at least 75% or 80% of the time, and I'm seeing that every day become more and more,

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because there's more and more things we can do to build on top of the PowerPlatform, and that

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not only PowerPages, but even building PowerApps, and even if you're building traditional PowerApps

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and model driven apps, I had to create an app with a whole bunch of tables. I didn't go into the

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make your portal and start creating these tables. I went into Visual Studio Code. They have,

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of course, the Dataverse MCP server. They have Dataverse skills. I'm basically using

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natural language. I'm saying, "Hey, design me a data model that fits this." Then let it iterate. We go

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through, like I say, "We, me and the agent, we go through. We take a look at that data model. We

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might make a few adjustments." Then it's like, "Okay, go build it, and it will go and create all those

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tables in those fields and wire it up." Does it do it perfectly all the time? No, not necessarily,

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but it's saving me going through the make your portal and clicking in back and forth and everything

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like that. Some of these tools are only a couple of weeks old. They're constantly being updated.

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It's radically changing how we build things. Then even as doing development and code,

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working in PowerPages, even working what we say, traditional PowerPages, sites with Web templates,

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and things like that, I'm working with these coding agents, whether it's GitHub, Copilot, or

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Cloud Code, and we're building HTML, we're actually getting a handle on CSS, those types of things,

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and it's not like I'm just telling it to go and do something. I'm working with it going, "Okay,

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we need to work on this Web template today. I need it to do these features." Okay, we'll hear

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some code. I take a look at it again, making sure it's like supervising, making sure it's lined up.

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Usually it's pretty good. Sometimes there's a bit of iteration going, "No, I think you need to do

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this or know this liquid tag. We need to do this." Overall, my productivity has just gone through

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the roof in terms of what I can create and what I can modify. That's the exciting part. Now, I come from

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a development background, but I also think from a maker perspective, I think if you're a traditional

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Power Apps maker, or if you're doing Power Automate or Copilot Studio, you definitely need the

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load Visual Studio code on your computer. Yes, it is a bit technical, but get your head wrapped around.

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It's getting easier, but begin to use some of these agents because I think it's going to make a lot

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of your chores a lot easier. You can focus your brainpower more on the creative design stuff.

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It's blowing me away, but changing. This is just the regular stuff. We haven't even touched on the

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new stuff like code apps and single-page applications and how that's going to radically change how the

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Power Platform evolves. Of course, the question keeps popping up. It's, "Okay, does this mean

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do we still need the Power Platform? Can't we just use some of these other tools, whether

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GitHub, Copilot or Clawed, or even Replicate or Lovable and just talk to the machine and build these

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apps? What do we need the Power Platform for?" Well, I mean, what the Power Platform is giving us is

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the data versus that data layer, that data structure. At the end of the day, you still need a place to

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store your information. And then the governance and security, could you vibe code all that? You could,

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but do you really trust it? Are you going to get all the nooks and crannies? This is where Power Platform

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has all this stuff built in. They have the governance. They're getting more and more the monitoring,

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the metrics and all that kind of stuff. Things that, whether you're a pro-coder, a maker,

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a vibe-coder, things you don't need to worry about. So it's great. We can build the apps. It's great.

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We now have a platform where we can host it, let our users access it. So that's how I see things

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changing the Power Platform. Awesome. And we have this wonderful title, the evolution of

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"agentic AI coding." We have all this, I say, buzzwords. We have a low-code, no-codes, vibe coding,

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co-pilot studio AI found redol. All this, this, yeah, this, buzzwords. What does "agentic coding"

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mean to you? Yeah, it's an evolving term because we've heard vibe coding, we've heard vibe engineering.

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So to me, what "agentic coding" is, as before as a developer, if I was going to write some code

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even a year ago or two years ago, there's a blank screen in Visual Studio Code or in Visual Studio

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or whatever editor you're using. Now it's, to me, "agentic coding" is, we started with that

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blank screen, but we now have that side panel, or we have the terminal open to a "cod code" or

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a GitHub co-pilot. And then we are, again, I've always, whether you're a maker, developer, I always say,

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you should start with a plan. And this is where I'll generally start with other tools.

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A cloud, cloud, co-work is my kind of place for I'm living these days in terms of the front-end design

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it. So of course collecting all those customer requirements, their diagrams, meeting transcripts,

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we do Teams meetings, we record all that. You put that in a place, whether it's a

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"cod-cowork" project, whether it's in a Microsoft 365, "cowork" project or a notebook.

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And then you begin your "agentic" process where you're beginning to work with an agent and say,

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"Okay, here's all the information. We need to, here's our goal. We need to design a system that does this,

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help me design the data model, help me put together a product requirements document,

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that kind of makes sense of what we're going to build. And then once we have that product

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requirements document, whether we call it a vision document or a SPAC or whatever you want to call

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it, something that we could even share with our customers to say, "Okay, here's what we describe,

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here's what we're going to build. Does this make sense?" Absolutely. Or a "not" or we can again iterate

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on that either with the agent or with the customer. So that to me is sort of the first step in the

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"agentic" development process is getting that SPAC or that thing right. And then finally,

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once we're happy with it, then we can tell our AI tool of choice to say, "Okay, build me a prompt

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that I'm going to feed into the tool of choice, whether it's plan designer, whether it's an

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agentic code or cloud code or whatever, or even if you're not in the Microsoft space,

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lovable or a replete, telling our agent, "Build me a prompt that I'm going to feed into

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a code generation tool." Or give me a series of prompts breaking down things at the data model,

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the UI, the agents it's going to create. And then we can feed that into our,

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you know, we have Visual Studio Code open, we feed that into our cloud code, or you know,

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we have it already thing wired up to the, our dataverse, whatever. And then we can actually begin

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to work with it. To me, this is agentic development. It's not necessarily vibe coding, just go build

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me this and trusting that, trusting the agent knows what it's doing. Spoiler alert, it doesn't,

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doesn't always know. To me, agentic is, now I'm more of, it's like pair programming. I'm getting a

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developer, I'm working with a developer, they're building it out. I'm using my experience and knowledge,

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taking a look at the code that's generated, taking a look at the process, is generating

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current testing along the way. Now, some of you might, well, that's kind of inefficient, like,

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what's the point you're still in front of the computer, but that whole process goes from 10 hours

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to one hour because you can begin to build things very quickly. You'll generate that code very

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quickly. You can test it. You can even get other agents to test it along with you using things

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like playwright. And that, to me, is an agentic developer these days is more, in a sense, more of

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a supervisor than an actual coder, but we're still, we still need to have that technical knowledge.

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We still need to know how the pieces work. So, yeah, I mean, the, I've put it in an analogy,

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the AI could be building things like the wheelbarrow, like in terms of you're building a wheelbarrow,

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the AI is still building your wheels, your handles, your bucket. You still need to tell the AI how

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to put these pieces together, understand how these pieces are being put together to get the end

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result that your customer wants. So, to me, it's a very exciting time to be very creative for me being

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very creative. I'm not worried about AI taking my job. I'm AI is helping me with my job more than

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anything. And it's allowing me to be a lot more creative and then also addressing things that I

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might have forgotten. I was working on some code the other day. And again, talking with cloud,

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again, need it to do this. It goes through, okay, we're going to do this. And then they didn't even

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keep back. It's it, oh, by the way, don't you think we should also update this other piece?

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Because there's this other panel where customers are going to be looking at it. Yeah, for sure,

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we should update that too. And it's kind of amazing to kind of work with these tools. So, yeah,

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I mean, there's a lot of a lot of terminology being kicked around. And I think everybody might have

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their own definition. But to me, this is what agente development is all about.

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Can we say, are we moving from writing code to describing intent to orchestrating

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into that? Yeah, you think it. Well, if we think about it, that's always that's always been the

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goal, right? Because let's let's go back like before my time, when they developed these, you know,

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what computers were first built in the 40s and 50s. They were all switches and the transistors and

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things like that. And then they got to punch cards and everything like that. But it's even those

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early languages like Coball and those types of things. It was still a matter of trying to take English

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word or as they English words or regular words that would translate into computer code. So,

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even look at like basic or C, like we're still using actual words like let X equal 10 or,

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you know, go to line whatever or loop through for each iteration. So we're still using

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language words to describe things to the computer. But it's getting more and more natural language now.

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So we're key. So at the end of the day, the goal's always been the same. Just the language is getting

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much more aligned to how we talk. So before if I was going to do a loop, I would say

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for X equals 10 loop through, but now I can say, hey, AI, we need to loop through this or even,

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not even that. I need, I needed to display a table on the screen and it already knows to loop through

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the data and it writes the code for that. So it's interesting in a sense of, yeah, we are, you know,

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it's always been language, but it's getting more and more to the natural language. What's also

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cool about it too is, and this is where the other thing we're transitioning. If I was to write code

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even a few years ago, I'd be typing the language, right? I'd be on my keyboard typing the code. And of

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course, I was sort of no, but we got into things that can tell us sense and then more and more with the

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GitHub code pilot, it starts to kind of predict that code, what's being written. I'm actually more

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and more using my microphone now. I'm actually, I'm using an ad in called whisper flow, but of course,

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there's other tools out there. And I basically, I press two keys in my keyboard and I will talk

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to the computer. And I would say, okay, I now want to create a web template that reads from this

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dataverse table and blah, blah, blah. And I, that's how I'm interacting. So I'm even saving time in

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terms of keying in stuff. So we're getting into that almost that Star Trek mode where we're going,

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hey, computer, I need this to happen. But even if you look at Star Trek, there are still people on

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the bridge. There are still people talking to the computer. So if that's our future, I think we're

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okay. Yeah. I'm, I've always speaking with the AI. I'm not sort of big fan of it. But what I, I love is

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it's making diagrams and graphics and upload this and say it made me this, I find this, I love this

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for so I can, I think when I speak, I, I forgot something. And though I have all the process, I have

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thinking hours and then do, I think that this is also what actually I see it, what not, not going

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is to make to think about systems and, and this is in thinking. And I think also we have, especially

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when we look at Microsoft, it's an enterprise software, what they build. And this is a so big ecosystem.

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So I think, yeah, that's really, really interesting. But when we look a little bit more

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to the power platform, what, or how would the evolution actually be there with a genetic coding?

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Yeah, it's an interesting time because, you know, everybody's talking about like code apps or

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genitive pages or single page applications. And this is where we're no longer using the, the, the,

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the front end, the power apps infrastructure. So you look at something like Canvas apps. Well,

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it's like, oh, we can now create a code app. And this is using frameworks like React and fit or

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Angular or some of these other things and building traditional way. So in a way, it feels like,

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I don't want to say it's a step back, but it's a sort of a step kind of into the mainstream.

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Yet at the end of the day, we're still talking to dataverse and still, you know, using that governance.

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So it's interesting, but it's also what I think, what's sort of missing at this point is the layering

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of things. So right now, if I build a model driven app or build some Canvas apps or whatever else,

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I deliver that to my customer, or if let's say even build a product, we deliver that to our customer,

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the power plot from allows users to extend that. Oh, that's great. You, you know, built this, you know,

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event management model driven app, but we want to add our own fields or we want to add our own

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flavor. The layering can do all that. This is something in something like code apps is not quite

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there yet. Or I'm not sure how it will be kind of thing. So I think there's still definitely a place

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for model driven apps in the future power apps. And interesting, if you would ask me a few months ago,

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I would have said, yeah, Canvas apps are dead. And I probably said that publicly, but looking now,

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we actually have Canvas, a power apps, MCP server, Canvas apps, MCP server, where you can use

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agentic methods like I described, but you're not actually writing React code. You're actually

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it's creating Canvas apps kind of with the same method. So I still think there's definitely,

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and of course, that way a maker can still go in and make those kind of fine tuning adjustments,

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where in an agentic coding place or a code apps place, you're talking to your agent and they have

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to make those adjustments for you. So there's still a bit, yeah, you can still go into the, if you want

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to make adjustments manually to a code app, you need to know React or TypeScript or some of these

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things where at least if you're creating a Canvas apps or a model driven app, yes, the agent can do all

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the stuff for you, but it's much more approachable for you as a maker to go in and make these adjustments.

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So it is, it's going to be an interesting gear, how this all evolves. To be honest, in terms of my,

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I've been definitely making my own code apps. I've been building single page applications.

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In terms of customer projects, yes, a few generative pages, definitely using the agents to build

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traditional code. I've not deployed an actual code app into a production system yet, or a single

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page application into a pure production system. I definitely will probably in the next few months.

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So I think a lot of people are sort of in the same boat. So I think that's where we're going to see a

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few of these things kind of pop up along the way going, oh, okay, we created this partner,

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created this code app. We needed adjusted, but the partner has gone away or whatever else,

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but where's the original source code? It's uploaded as a solution. Where are the original prompts

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for this? No one has those anymore. To me, I think if I was a customer and I'm getting a partner

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writing a power app for me or creating a code app, because we always talked about someone you should

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actually maintain control of your own source code or your own unmanaged solutions. If I was a

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customer, I'd be asking for the original prompts as well. Or as I do in my own, we didn't talk about

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this in my agent coding process. Usually after I create something, what I have been doing is getting

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the agent to document it to actually write all the parameters, the variables and all this,

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put that in the wiki, but I'm also saying it now write me the prompt that can

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generate this because of course it goes through all the duration by having that prompt.

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That gives you a starting point that if you need to rewrite it or refactor it. So I think these are

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the types of assets customers should be maintaining control of it should be in there. GitHub repositories

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are the radio repositories as just a part of regular source code. So in our source code, we've always had

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code where we've had our solutions or unmanaged solutions. We should also have the documentation

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that the agents are creating test cases and as well a document that probably says or even the skills

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that we're used, but also a document that says here is the prompt to recreate this because to go

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back on that later could be pretty tricky. And I think these are the things people are going to be

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facing in the next year. And I think a little bit about the power platform. We have so many tools in

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it like power apps, power pages, power automates, digables and power, probably I am so on, but

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what did you think get this stronger through AI and will it make more sense to separate these

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products or see it as one product? That's it. I think we might see more of a consolidation. Of course,

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there's also about 50 different dynamics 365 modules and projects that are built on top of this.

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I see in terms of the user interface experiences, everything coming more and more together.

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I think you see where Microsoft is going and where they started to go down the road of teams,

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but also now with M365, coal pilot. I see that sort of being the surface of how we're going to interact

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with our business systems. So we're going to come to a place I think, probably not that far down the

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road where we're not going to open up our sales or dynamic 365 sales or our power app that we created

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for event management. I think what's going to happen is we're going to open up Microsoft 365

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coal pilot and that's how we're going to interact. We're going to say, we're going to open up

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my sales agent or I'm even just going to chat and it's going to know to interact with my sales agent.

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What are my opportunities and the chat will tell me or it's going to have the back-and-processes

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updating these things. From our customers perspective, I think PowerPages has a good future because

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that could be the surface for our customers to interact with our agents, but PowerPages is going

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to be less about clicking buttons. It's going to be more of interacting with an agent or even providing

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an agent to our customers M365. Hey, I need to log a support ticket with ABC company.

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Microsoft 365 coal pilot is going to know my account to log into their portal or interact with

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their agent to be able to interact that way. It's going to be like, hey, I need to open a ticket

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and there's an issue with my phone or something. Then it's going to be, yes, your agent is going

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to say, yes, I talk to their agent and they're suggesting that you do this, or I took a look at your

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back and config it. It's going to be our way of interacting with computers is going to radically change

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in that the PowerPlatform, I think, is in a good place, but I don't see us working with multiple

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Canvas apps, Molderman apps down the road. I think we're going to be interacting more, I think,

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either through Microsoft 365, coal pilot or Teams or even for that matter, something like a WhatsApp

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or a telegram. My WhatsApp, I'm going to send a WhatsApp to my sales system and get all my details

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and it's going to send me a text back with all the everything I'm looking for.

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It's hard to get your mind wrapped around it, but that's my vision, how I see things going.

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Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, I have no idea. We'll see. We should maybe schedule a follow-up

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at about a year's time to see if my predictions are right. We only think, I say, not the

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one of us, I say, PowerPlatform. So they spend less time in pure coding, development and so on,

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but have they now spent more time in validating business intent?

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I think, I think, well, this is the problem, we always should have been spending a lot of

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time with the business intent, right? Sometimes it gets cut a little bit short because of course we

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have our ideas. It's funny because you open up the maker portal and then you have this blank canvas

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or you start building a model driven app and I'm always telling people when I'm doing training,

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don't start here, start with a plan. If it's on paper or do diagrams, at least have an idea of

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what you're doing to build out your app where I think now it's like if we want to make sure that our

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agent is going to work well with us, you're right. I think it maybe is giving us a little bit more

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focus on getting those front-end requirements a little bit more clarified. The cool thing,

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though, is we have an agent to help us go through all of those team meetings, those documents.

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So we might not necessarily be spending more time, but we're spending more quality time to give us the

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results we want. And then the cool thing is it's not like we're getting any kind of free time back

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because I think no matter it's a fish bowl effect, no matter what free time you have it gets filled

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with other things, I'm probably taking on probably a little bit more project work than I probably should

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do, but it's becoming easier to manage because I can get more efficient. But then the other thing,

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we're kind of the nice benefit is customers always have a big long to-do list. Like here are the 10

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things we want and then a lot of times you can normally focus on the top three. Well because you're

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able to accomplish those top three, then you can move on to the list of the other things

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with some of these tools. And in the beginning to see a little bit of that too, it's like, oh,

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we wanted to do this. And it's like, yeah, that's pretty easy to incorporate that into it now.

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It's not a lot of extra work. I've always said to a good CRM project never ends because of businesses

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constantly evolving. Their business systems need updates said needs to evolve with the business.

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So if you do a good job getting the initial requirements right, then it kind of keeps coming back

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with all the new things or the adjustments that business make. Cool thing with the AI tools,

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they're much easier to get some of these things accomplished.

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I think back for three years, I think the prompt engineering was, I don't know, the

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highest job in the world. I think it's about 360,000 euros dollars. I come to these paid for

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for this. And now can we say it's, I will say it's over, but it's becoming a core skill for every

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developer or every app maker? Absolutely. I think definitely, I don't know if you're prompting

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right, but I think a lot of that prompting is also evolving into using those prompts to build

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reusable skills. So when I say reusable skills, I'm not talking about the skills that we have as

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developers, but the skills that we give to our agents. So right now, if you open up my, my cloud

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or into my visual studio code or a project, there's a skills file or there's instructions or there's,

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plugins or other little agents building these things and understanding what fits best and trying

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to make that repeatable. I think that's a, that's a requirement that, I say, makers,

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local developers or at all developers need to get better at something that I'm trying to get better

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at as well. If I look at some of the skills files I made like a month ago, I kind of cringe because

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I can do them better now. But that's just sort of, you're right. Prompt engineering is, you definitely

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need to know how to talk to the AI. And I think everybody's gotten better at that and there's a lot of

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good information out there, but it's also now is putting together those reusable skills files and

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those skills to make, to make this stuff your own and to be able to utilize skills that other people

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have made in Microsoft has released some plugins with multiple skills files like, you know, there's

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the power pages generator that you put in cloud or GitHub, co-pilot, the data for skills, there's

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a solution architect skills that I played with and talk about diagrams. It was able to build a mermaid

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format diagram, ERD diagram another day and I was like, wow, this is really cool. This would have taken

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me a long time to use Vizio like a year or two ago and it just sort of did it. So yeah, it's,

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yeah, I don't where I was going to follow this, but yeah, it's these tools are amazing.

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Yeah, and when we look, yeah, well, I would think a little bit can enterprise trust auto-autonomous

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systems yet and what's happened to GRC governance risk and compliance in an agentic world?

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I think, I think a lot of organizations I dealt with are so not ready for that yet, not ready

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mentally that you're going to trust agents to do certain things, but I so, so I think what that does

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is open up a huge opportunity for anybody to be a governance consultant or go in and to make sure

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to put in the tools and the guardrails and the monitoring so that these enterprise can get

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that trust level in. I know Chris Huntingford does a lot of the sessions and presentations on

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on this kind of stuff and I see that being, you know, you talk about AI is not going to take your job.

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AI just created a whole new industry about governance and guardrails and everything.

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So you think about like, you know, but it also, Merkel, it's like about the transition to the cloud.

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If you remember 10 years ago, I had customers that were, oh, no, we don't want to move our servers in the

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cloud. We don't trust it. We don't see where our servers are. We don't know who's looking at it,

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what access they have, what bits are flying over the internet. And but it, I mean, that evolved too.

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Like now, I mean, like, you don't even, customers don't even buy servers anymore. I'm trying to

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remember the last customer I knew that actually bought a server. It's just become part of, oh, we

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will need this service. Well, we just sign up for it on the internet and it's just there for us. And

369
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they now have that trust that the security is there and everything. Of course, we do still hear

370
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:04,720
incidents where, yeah, there are data leaks and whatever else. But over and but the thing is

371
00:39:04,720 --> 00:39:08,720
even with that, there is a whole, there are people that I know that are strictly, you know,

372
00:39:08,720 --> 00:39:14,720
their careers are on cybersecurity and governance, not going to think. So I definitely see about an

373
00:39:14,720 --> 00:39:25,200
AI security engineer being probably that's your next $500,000 or $5,000 euro your job, AI security

374
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:31,200
engineer. And I think customer like eventually companies will get there and the reason why is

375
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:37,520
because all their competitors are going to do it. So if you're not, if you're a company and you

376
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:41,280
don't want to use AI because you don't trust it or you don't know it, well, your competitors

377
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:46,320
going to and they're going to become more efficient. The same thing if you're a customer, you have a

378
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:51,040
server, well, your customers, your competitors went to the cloud so they're not spending time on servers

379
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:57,680
or maintenance or replacing servers. So becoming more competitive. So they'll get there. I think

380
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:03,440
they're a little bit behind of where Microsoft probably wants to see folks. But they'll get there

381
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:15,680
eventually. That's I think, yeah, really, really if new product is a data worse. And I think a little bit,

382
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:23,040
why, why, why we need to date data worse to a traditional or graph database I can take from

383
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:30,000
Azure. What, what's your opinion about data worse? I'm a little bit critical. So we talked about

384
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:37,760
Microsoft renaming earlier. Dataverse is not a new product. Dataverse can go the I would say and

385
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:44,160
I know there's a few folks that sort of may not completely agree with me, but to me, dataverse

386
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:56,480
version one was released in 2003. And that is 23 years ago. So is it the exact same as it was then

387
00:40:56,480 --> 00:41:01,840
absolutely not it was basically a business layer sitting on or a business application layer sitting

388
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:08,000
on top of SQL server? Of course, at the if you start if you peel back the layers of dataverse,

389
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:13,440
there's still Azure SQL behind behind the scenes. So you still have that robust data. But what

390
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:19,840
dataverse gives you is a security layer. There's automation built in there. There's the ability for

391
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:25,600
whether it's a, you know, originally a maker to build their own data models very easily. Now it's

392
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:31,600
coursing at agents to build those data models very easily. They have the performance in there. They have,

393
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:38,880
you know, a lot of those integrations to other systems. So there's a reporting. There's the ability

394
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:45,680
to store information efficiently. They'd be able to retrieve it efficiently. Is it perfect? Definitely

395
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:54,000
not. Is there some old code in there? Absolutely. That probably could be refactored. But overall,

396
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,880
dataverse in a sense to me is really the core of the business system because at the end of the day,

397
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:06,080
you still need to store your information somewhere. Yes, you could do it in an Azure SQL database or,

398
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:10,960
you know, or any other databases that are out there, like even non-Microsoft. But

399
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:16,400
dataverse sort of gives you a lot of that extra stuff. Has that governance built in? Has that security

400
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:21,200
level built in? Has that monitoring built in? Things that you don't need to worry about when you're

401
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:26,640
building applications, it's just sort of all baked in. You hire somebody in your company that knows

402
00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:33,520
dataverse. Regardless, you can be a completely different industry. But if you're, if they know data

403
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:47,040
So to me, it's like this is sort of the key thing with Power Platform. You have that sort of core

404
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:55,040
engine that's been running enterprises for years, despite the fact Microsoft renamed it, or

405
00:42:55,040 --> 00:43:01,120
originally didn't even have a name. It was just sort of all the back end of CRM. And then, of course,

406
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:07,040
came up with C, like they called it CDS, the common data service. That was, and they started

407
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:11,040
building that and they realized everything they wanted to build already existed in CRM,

408
00:43:12,240 --> 00:43:18,720
became common data service. They called it, I think, for about 20 hours, it was called data flex.

409
00:43:18,720 --> 00:43:25,760
And then that became dataverse. We've talked about, talk about renaming snafus, but overall,

410
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:32,720
I still, and then looking forward, we're going with the the agentic stuff or even having

411
00:43:32,720 --> 00:43:38,560
Microsoft 365 co-pilot interact with your business systems behind the layers, whether it's

412
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:42,880
building something co-pilot studio or foundry. And if you're building with those business systems,

413
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:47,680
you're still talking to dataverse. It's sort of the place where things, place where data lives.

414
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:55,760
So can we say, data was will become the brain for business applications?

415
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:59,600
I think so, at least the memory of sorts, yeah.

416
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:13,040
When we think a little bit, yeah, what tip can you give companies to prepare for this

417
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:20,720
future power platform, AI, agentic, coding stuff? How can they prepare for this?

418
00:44:20,720 --> 00:44:27,680
I think it's, you can't just, it's not like you're going to walk in one day

419
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:32,960
and shut off all your old systems and turn on the new one. This is a new way of working, okay?

420
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:39,120
I think what we're going to have to see is a transition from where people are doing and

421
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:46,080
start introducing new tools. So for example, you look at a traditional model driven app,

422
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:51,280
forms, lists, that kind of thing. People have been using it for years. They're used to it.

423
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:55,760
Now we can add, I don't know if you've seen some of this stuff, like the agent feed into this,

424
00:44:55,760 --> 00:45:01,840
a little co-pilot sidecar. Even filling in the forms, a model driven app now has that new thing

425
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:08,960
where you can begin to paste the smart paste or whatever they call it. These are, this is sort of how

426
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:15,040
companies are going to evolve. They're going to start getting these tools into their day to day.

427
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:20,000
They're going to start saving time and then eventually it's going to, some of the addicting tools

428
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:25,040
will begin to drop off as we use new ones. I think we saw the same thing with the cloud. A lot of

429
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:30,720
customers didn't necessarily jump completely in the cloud, 100%. They started getting some cloud

430
00:45:30,720 --> 00:45:37,840
services. Maybe they do it a jump or like move their exchange server from an on-premise into the cloud.

431
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:42,480
And then they realized, okay, this works so much better. And then to the point where you don't even

432
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:49,280
all of a sudden, one day you realize, okay, we're now fully in the cloud. I think for AI and

433
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:53,440
agentic, we're like, okay, we're now more and more, we're using agentic systems.

434
00:45:53,440 --> 00:46:00,000
For instance, from now it's going to be a case of, hey, I'm no longer loading my app anymore because

435
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:06,800
I can do everything in Microsoft 365 co-pilot. It's all sort of there on that surface. Or I'm going to

436
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:12,560
start, you know, what's happening my app directly. And then it's just going to be the little things

437
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:17,200
and eventually it's going to transition out. So that's sort of, you know, I know it's, it's not,

438
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:21,520
it's hard to kind of describe that in a roadmap if you're kind of presenting that to a customer.

439
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:26,720
But I think that's how things are going to evolve. It's going to be a gradual to a point where in a

440
00:46:26,720 --> 00:46:32,000
few years we're going to be like, everything the software reintegrate interact with is going to be

441
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:37,040
much agentic whether we're chatting with it or whether it's just happening, whether it's automatic.

442
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:44,720
And it's, you know, and whether and even how, whether we're like, to me, I've been talking more and

443
00:46:44,720 --> 00:46:48,960
more on my computer like less than less. I'm going to the keyboard to type things and I'm

444
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:55,120
in final last month or two. I'm just automatically got to that mental state where I'm immediately

445
00:46:55,120 --> 00:46:59,680
talking to it to write an email or do that kind of thing. And I think overall that's sort of how

446
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:06,800
things are going to transition as well. Okay. Yeah. Now we have to one of my favorite parts in interviews.

447
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:13,680
I have a look for some quotes and internet and you can say what can comes in your mind when you're

448
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:22,960
this. Agentic AI, now popping everywhere, power pages is not exception. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

449
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:29,440
Yeah. I mean, I built a, I built a fun site yesterday that I might blog about in a few weeks.

450
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:35,600
Again, completely agentic created. It was me. I had it actually writing on my other laptop,

451
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:41,760
chatting with it. So, yeah, power pages is definitely evolving and even in traditional

452
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:46,400
building web templates and things, I'm talking, talking to within AI is rebuilding it.

453
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:52,640
Power pages is evolving into a robust secure platform for AI and

454
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:59,280
ablement agents. Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, the security, so interesting. We talk about security

455
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:07,360
power pages. There's been a couple news articles over the years of data, data leaks involving

456
00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:13,920
power pages. And in both instances, it was not a fault of power pages. It was actually a fault of

457
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:21,040
how it was configured. But because of those things, there are features that are now turned on by default,

458
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:25,840
where they weren't, it was something you had to turn on before. So, we'll talk about specifically

459
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:31,280
something called table permissions. Originally, you could build a site and this table permissions

460
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:36,320
existed, but you would have to physically turn them on to lock down your site. Of course,

461
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:40,800
what happened was people built a site. They didn't bother, they didn't spend the time. And then,

462
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:45,120
of course, someone's able to go in and leak a bunch of data. So, that was a fault of really

463
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:50,320
of the developers that put that together. But because of that, Microsoft flipped and say, okay,

464
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:56,080
by default, table permissions are now turned on automatically. In order for you to see data,

465
00:48:56,080 --> 00:49:01,680
you actually, you're forced to go into the configuration. There's something else too. Like, now when you

466
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:07,280
spin up a brand new power page of site, you physically have to make it, it is private facing first.

467
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:13,600
You have to click a switch to make it public facing. I mean, even then, your administrators can set up

468
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:18,320
guardrails around that, that not not everybody can make public sites. And the minister, you might need

469
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:26,000
to give approvals for that. So, in terms of a secure platform, definitely, there still is a white paper

470
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:31,680
that's a couple years old, but still really good. That's published on Microsoft site about security

471
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:38,400
within power pages. It was written by one of their engineers, Dipty, who, one of the smartest people,

472
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:43,440
I know, wrote a very good, while white paper article on the security of power pages and

473
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:48,160
best practices there. Plus, a lot of the features they got built in, like web application

474
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:54,000
firewalls and content delivery networks. And again, to make it run efficiently, but in terms of

475
00:49:54,000 --> 00:50:00,000
security, definitely, it is something that I think is a huge feature of power pages over some of

476
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:06,960
the competitive products. Okay. And then the next one is the ultimate form of low-cortis natural

477
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:12,880
language. Yeah. Oh, I mean, we've talked about that already a little bit about how, you know,

478
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:19,600
we're already talking like programming, programming and basic was, yeah, it was where we're trying to get

479
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:26,400
to speak as much regular language. I keep saying English, but I also realize that, you know, there's other

480
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:32,320
other languages out there as well, but just trying to talk in the way, you know, things that anybody,

481
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:36,400
so I know a lot of people that are functional consultants and solution architects, they say they're

482
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:40,960
not coders. They don't know how to write code, but they could look at code and read it.

483
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:47,840
These are the type of people that, again, if you can now take your logic and just talk to an agent

484
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:53,200
and have it generate the code, it's definitely a game-changing way of building software.

485
00:50:53,200 --> 00:51:01,360
Yeah, thank you. This was awesome. So I think I learned a lot and it's really interesting. I think we

486
00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:06,480
had to do another edition sometime. For sure. See my predictions are right.

487
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:16,240
Yeah, so when you say or when you think, what is what listen those should take from this episode?

488
00:51:16,240 --> 00:51:22,960
What's the one thing? I would say if you're, if you're worried about AI taking your job,

489
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:29,040
I don't be, but I would also say in terms of the warning side, definitely try, like, get into learning

490
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:38,080
these tools. Do get, think with, or something that I've been doing is trying to, everything that I do,

491
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:43,440
kind of asked a question, can AI do this? And guess what? The answer for a lot of these is,

492
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:48,880
no, it can't. You still need to go in and do something or you still need to go click here in there,

493
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:54,080
but there might be a few things that might surprise you that you can get AI to do.

494
00:51:54,080 --> 00:52:00,080
And a lot of the other things too is when if you try to get AI to do something for you six months ago,

495
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:08,560
try it again. You might be surprised. So for example, I'm on, as in the MVP program, we have

496
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:13,360
these things called distribution list that I can email list where they, you know, people ask questions

497
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:18,480
in the Microsoft product team. It's a good interaction. There can be 50 of these emails every day.

498
00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:27,360
It takes forever to read through them. And I'm like, so about, I'd say a year ago, I went to Microsoft

499
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:35,120
Colpilot and I said, summarize these emails and send me a digest once a day. Do you think Colpilot,

500
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:42,720
no, it, like it told me it did it and it failed miserably. And I even poked a few people at Microsoft going,

501
00:52:42,720 --> 00:52:46,720
okay, here's what I'm trying to do. How do you get this to work? And then, oh, yeah, it should work.

502
00:52:46,720 --> 00:52:53,360
And then, anyways, I ended up building a power automate. I used the,

503
00:52:53,360 --> 00:52:58,960
a custom prompt and it took me quite a while, but I got it working fair enough. It worked.

504
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:04,640
I got to digest every day. I'm in that of course with power automate. I changed my password and then,

505
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:08,880
of course, the email connections broke in a few other things. I had to go in and fix it. And then,

506
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:15,600
I thought, okay, I'm going to ask Microsoft co-work or 365 co-pilot co-work, which has just been released

507
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:22,240
in the Frontier program. And I asked it again, here, I want to do this summary of emails to the

508
00:53:22,240 --> 00:53:27,520
distribution, most blah, blah, blah. And remember, six months ago, it couldn't do it now. It actually

509
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:32,320
went through. And then it asked, oh, can I have permission to read your inbox? Yes. Okay, I'm going to do

510
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:39,600
this, do to do. And then, boom, within probably about 20 minutes, I have now this repeatable process

511
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:45,360
built in my co-work that does this every day. So I would think in terms of for anybody that's out there

512
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:51,280
who has tried some of these tools last year or even a couple months ago, try it again. You might,

513
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:56,080
like I said, you might be surprised. The other thing, if you're a power plot for maker, if you're

514
00:53:56,080 --> 00:54:04,480
into the make.powerapps.com or whatever else, load Visual Studio Code. Don't be scared. Load it,

515
00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:09,760
try it. Try some of these agents out. There's a lot of good content out there. I've actually

516
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:14,960
pitched a few sessions for some of the fall conferences about how to use Visual Studio Code for

517
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:20,080
for power for power apps makers. Hopefully those sessions get selected, but I'll probably make a few

518
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:26,000
videos in some content around that because I think that you wrote a point where I think if you're

519
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:31,360
comfortable making, if you're comfortable writing power effects code, go into Visual Studio Code,

520
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:35,520
work with these agents and it's just going to make your own productivity so much better. So

521
00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:42,880
I would say just have a curious mindset. Prepare to be disappointed because a few things just

522
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:48,560
still don't work, but just be experimental and see what works and you'll be surprised. I'm always

523
00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:55,680
what I love about this job was I'm always learning new things every week and just and it sort of

524
00:54:55,680 --> 00:55:06,240
keeps me going. Yeah, so thank you for your time. I hope we see you in six months again and then

525
00:55:06,240 --> 00:55:13,280
we talk more about what I've changed. Absolutely, sounds good. Okay, then bye, have a nice day.

526
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:16,880
Thanks, Seymarco.