‘Twas the Night Before Christmas – Power Platform Planner Edition 🎅🎄

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
Mrs. Claus was busy — chasing a little mouse!
Her mind was abuzz with the holiday spree,
“I need a solution, Power Platform, hear me!”

“I am Mrs. Claus, and I’m here to request
A tool for my husband, the holiday’s best.
Santa needs help with his global endeavor,
Tracking kids’ gifts and their behavior — clever!”

Biz problem

 

The Planner responded with AI delight,
“I’ll draft your solution to make it just right.”
Out came user stories, one, two, three,
For Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves’ jubilee.

Santa story

Mrs claus story

Elf story

 

Santa’s app would keep him on track,
With routes and kids in his digital pack.
Mrs. Claus, the queen of inventory,
Had a dashboard and tools to tell the full story.

Santa app

 

The elves got a workspace, tidy and neat,
To log toy completions and schedules to meet.
Dataverse powered the data so well,
With naughty or nice lists as easy as Excel.

Apps

The Planner then showed the data model’s might:
A table for children, one for gifts, just right.
Relationships clear and entities defined,
Santa’s task list was instantly refined.

Erd

 

“Now approve,” it prompted, “and apps will appear,
For tasks, gifts, and kids — all holiday cheer!”
With a click from Mrs. Claus, the work was complete,
A suite of Power Apps, efficient and sweet.

List of apps

 

Santa’s sleigh dashboard tracked every last deed,
With Power Apps lighting his way at top speed.
Nice kids like Tommy, who helped rake the leaves,
Would wake to new toys under festive trees.

Gift list

 

But for Emily, who teased her poor brother Sam,
A lump of coal was in the program.
Even the elves sang the praises of tech,
“Power Platform has saved us from wreck!”

Child list

 

When the work was all done, and the elves went to bed,
Mrs. Claus raised her cocoa and happily said,
“It’s an AI Christmas miracle, all thanks to this tool,
Power Platform has made us the Yule-time cool!”

Mrs claus app

 

So to all holiday makers, here’s wisdom to savor:
When planning gets tough, trust Power Platform’s favor.
Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night,
May your apps and solutions be merry and bright!


Julie uses AI to get new headshots

Oh, AI, you’re everywhere. 

And that’s ok.

I usually adore you.

Yesterday we agreed you’d make some new images for me.  Headshots actually.  I gave you some photos of me, and for a small fee, you generated new versions of me.

100 versions of me actually.

Several of the new me look reasonably like me me.

45

Most of your versions of me have really great hair.

42

 

A few of me have put on significant weight without even the joy of eating the cookies and drinking the wine.

87

75

Some reassemble my sister.

32

Sometimes I look like my daughter.

16

You made a younger me, too.

31

On first glance, she looks reasonable, but she really has no chin.  Directly to neck.

78

I don’t even know who she is…

19

Try it yourself.  There are several options, but I do have a referral code for the one I used.  I get rewards.  You get a discount. https://www.aragon.ai?referralCode=202u%2BzFI1Bu9FC4dxVnHD9


Expanding our Biz Apps Skilling cohorts

As I hope you know, we have been running training cohorts for displaced and vulnerable Ukrainians.  We have been very successful.  We built the program around having a core set of day-to-day volunteers who are Ukrainian speakers, but the support team is currently all English speakers.  We’ve used the technology to make it mostly seamless (specifically Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, Dataverse, and Power Apps.).

We are almost done making updates to be able to bring on additional language groups. We now need committed people to lead the day-to-day operation of the new groups.

Designer (84)



Don’t worry.  We have a curriculum and proven track record of success for you to follow. 

What would you be committing to?

  • No one ever pays to join any of our cohorts.
  • This is run by volunteers. The first one will take a little more commitment, but after that, you should likely be able to take a team of two or three and spend fewer than 10 hours a week each.
  • You would offer help grading weekly assignments. This happens in English in a simple gradebook Power App that you would be given access to use.  You would be grading assignments from all cohorts, not just your own.
  • It’s a six-week cohort. But we are built around being flexible to allow you to succeed, even with all of life’s obligations.  So, often there’s a few people in each cohort who need some extra time.
  • The lessons are primarily located on Microsoft Learn. There are a few out-of-the-box translations available. However, beyond the top 5(ish) you would need to help students learn how to navigate and use browser-based translations.
  • The expected student commitment is about ten hours per week. Most of this is independent learning with touchpoints.  This means students can learn after their regular job, before dropping the kids off at football practice, etc.  You would need to set up and facilitate a communication channel.  Teams works well if students can easily get to Teams.  Telegram has proven effective for our Ukrainian cohorts.  I could see it working in Slack also.
  • There are weekly videos for students. We have them in English to offer you.  You can have students watch them in English, you can create your own subtitles/translations, write a summary in your chosen language, etc. Most of these videos are short (less than 30 mins) and focus on relevant topics that work with the assigned Learn lessons.
  • We recommend at least one open mic-style office hours meeting per week. Make it at a reasonable time based on your students’ availability.  This usually lasts about an hour.
  • You would interact and get to know your students. We have found that the biggest predictor of success is simple, someone cares about the success of each student.  Get to know their names.  If someone misses an assignment, reach out, see if they need help, offer an extension, etc.

The program is focused on core tech adjacent skills and business applications.  You do not need to be an expert in the entire platform, but working knowledge of the platform is necessary, with expertise in one or two core parts.  If you find yourself with a student super interested in something that you don’t know much about, we’ve got you covered.  We will help facilitate bringing an expert to your groups as needed.

This training is designed for career switchers.  Non-tech people who need that core set of skills that we often take for granted.  “Graduates” of our groups are not job ready.  But they are ready to join already in place training that is widely available.

So, what now?  Let me know if you’re interested.  We’ll sort through the details and help you get started.


Ignite 2023 Copilot links

If you were in our hands-on lab sessions, we promised links.  Here you go:

Get Started With Copilot in Cloud Flows (Microsoft Documentation)

 
Create Power Platform Solutions with AI and Copilot (Microsoft Learn exercises)
 
Create and manage automated processes by using Power Automate (Microsoft Learn Applied Skills)
 
Power Automate: HTML Formatting Made Easy (April Dunnam, Microsoft)
 
Formatting HTML Tables in Flow (April Dunnam, Microsoft)

The most effective use of AI is a whisper

Copilots.

Large language models.

GPT this.

Open AI that.

The world is full of excitement for AI. 

And the world is full of doom-and-gloom for AI.

While there are many over-the-top scenarios we’ve seen, the most effective uses of AI for everyday business is in small pieces.  Add some AI here.  Streamline some work over there.  Surgical. Specific.  Purposeful.

The best uses of AI happen when combined with critical thinking directly from humans.

At 365.Training we’re using AI both directly for the benefit of the users while they are training, but also behind the scenes.  I guess that ultimately benefits the user, but less directly.

365AI

365Ai is your training copilot- While in a course, you can ask contextual questions of the copilot.  The models are of course powered by the large language models, but also grounded with our own information.  We make sure that the copilot in a specific course can answer topic-specific questions and not get sidetracked on other topics. The copilot is relevant and there when you need it.

 

mydigest- We’ve got a few different places where we’ve inserted AI. 

MyDigest Only
TL;DR- We’ve manually curated sources (more than 150 of them so far), and we have AI generated summaries of the items in your feed. 

Tldr

Categories- We use AI to help identify content topics and the job roles that are relevant for the items.

My view with counts

Your filters- you select topics, roles and importance and we calculate a score and combine that with our scoring of items and apply that to make your custom feed.

My filters

Your digest email- we apply similar logic as above and curate a custom email on the schedule you define.

Mydigest email

We’ve also used some of the Copilot capabilities of GitHub to help accelerate some of the more tedious parts of development to get us to market faster.

How do you AI in your everyday world?


365Ai now available from anywhere in a course

We added 365Ai a short time ago.  It' s a great tool for getting your questions asked in the context of a course at 365.Training.  We've just released an update that allows us to dock 365Ai to the course dashboard so you can access it at any time.  It's now available in several courses that have already been enabled for 365Ai.

365Ai


I made a quick tutorial.


Deprecation of classic designers for model-driven Power Apps

We all knew it was coming.  Finally, it was announced that the classic designers for app, forms and views are deprecated.   So, what does that mean, from a practical perspective?

Microsoft feels that all essential tasks can be completed in the new designers.  The new designers are all accessible by default (yea accessibility!), and generally easier and more intuitive to use.  They load up with previews that include your own data. 

There is no need to panic.  It is possible that something you do all of the time is not available in the new designers.  You just know you have to revert to classic to do just this one thing.  That is still available but must be enabled by admin on a specific environment.  The setting is found in the Power Platform admin center with other Behavior settings.

 

Display setting

Users/makers will still see the new experiences by default.  This will simply offer them the option to switch to classic as needed.

If you find yourself reverting back to classic, tell Microsoft about it. 

PS. That one thing you think you have to do in the classic designer? Chances are it’s in the new designer too, you just haven’t located it yet.


introducing my digest by 365.Training

A few weeks ago, Dave came into my office and starts scribbling on the whiteboard.  Has a great idea.  And we all agreed.  And so, we jumped into the deep end and a few weeks later, we launched my digest by 365.Training.

MyDigest Only

What is my digest?  It’s your one-stop place for news, updates, blogs, events, podcasts, videos; all things current about Power Platform.  You build your interests in your saved filters and the feed only gives you things you are interested in. You can save items with notes, organized in your own folders.  You can snooze and item to read later.  You can do ad hoc views to narrow the scope of what you’re viewing right now, without changing your saved filters.

We’ve curated over 100 sources and add more pretty much every day. 

We just launched this crazy idea last week.  So, we’re in our beta phase while we work through any minor bugs and improvements.  During this beta, every logged in user has access at no cost.  We’ll sort out how we monetize it later.

Let me know if you have sources we should add or other ideas to make it better.

Go to my digest

I made a quick tutorial of how to get the most of my digest. 


I've updated several courses at 365.Training

I’m always thinking about what new courses the community needs.  I recently went through my library of courses at 365.Training and keep coming back to the fundamentals.  But curated fundamentals.  Courses specifically targeting practical skills. So, instead of making new courses, I’ve re-paved my most popular (and I feel most valuable) courses.

What does that mean?  First all the labs have been updated and fully retested.  Second, I’ve streamlined the talking parts, reduced it to what you need to know to understand what you are building in the labs.  And third, I’ve added summary videos of the labs, and made this video available as a preview. You don’t have to subscribe, or purchase the course before you know more about what you are doing in these courses.

You’ll see that nearly all of these include something called 365Ai.  That’s our training copilot that is there with you while you train.  You can ask 365Ai topical questions without having to leave your training dashboard.  Give it a try, I think it’s pretty swanky.

Experience Power Platform- This course takes you through a series of hands-on exercises all designed to give you practical experience building with the tools of Power Platform.  This course includes 365Ai.

Zero to model-driven- This is a hands-on labs-based course to build a model-driven Power App.  In this course you'll learn how to build a functionally complete model-driven app for Happy Tails doggie daycare. You do not need any prior Power Apps experience. This course includes 365Ai.

Zero to canvas- This is a hands-on labs-based course to build a canvas Power App. In this course you'll learn how to build a functionally complete canvas app for Happy Tails doggie daycare. You do not need any prior Power Apps experience.

Zero to Power Pages- This is a hands-on lab-based course to build Power Pages. In this course you'll learn how to build a functionally complete site for Happy Tails doggie daycare. You do not need any prior Power Apps experience. This course includes 365Ai.

You can buy any of these courses ala carte…or subscribe and get all of these and more included.  Use my link for a 30% discount on your annual subscription.  https://365l.ink/365Julie

365Logo100x400


Biz App professional skilling cohorts-Ukrainian edition/Когорта навчання "Професіонал з біснес-додатків". Версія для українців.

Когорта навчання "Професіонал з біснес-додатків". Версія для українців.

Після вдалого старту нашого пілотного проекту, ми із задоволенням розширюємо реєстрацію. Якщо ви чи хтось з вашого оточення шукає підтримку при зміні професії, приєднуйтеся. Наші фахівці працюють з передовими технологіями та знанням мов, щоб ваше навчання було максимально комфортним. Цей курс є адаптованим варіантом англомовних груп і містить матеріали на двох мовах: англійській та українській. Навчання самостійне з контрольними етапами. І, до речі, це абсолютно безкоштовно. Якщо ви бажаєте вчитися, але не готові зобов'язатися на 6 тижнів відразу, немає проблем. Матеріали основані на ресурсах Microsoft Learn, https://aka.ms/BAPskilling. Можете розпочати з цього сайту, а потім приєднатися до нас. 

Щоб дізнатися більше про курс, перейдіть за цим посиланням.

Для реєстрації в групі, клікніть сюди.

Biz App professional skilling cohorts-Ukrainian edition

After our successful pilot we are happy to open registration more broadly.  If you or someone you know is looking for help transitioning to a new career, join us.  Our team of professionals includes native speakers and some good technology to make this experience as smooth as possible.

This cohort is a modified version of the English-language cohorts.  Content is presented in both English and Ukrainian.  Learning is self-directed with checkpoints.  It is free.

If you’d like to learn but can’t commit to a 6-week cohort at this time, not to worry.  The program is based on the official collection from Microsoft Learn, https://aka.ms/BAPskilling . You can start there, and join a cohort later.

For more information about the training, visit here

To apply for a cohort, visit here