What Your First Day of Power Platform Really Looks Like

“I like working with a computer, but I don’t know how to change jobs. I’m already 48 years old.” This is from an applicant to one of my training programs.

That one sentence says what so many are feeling.

Maybe you’ve spent years in a different career. Maybe you’ve been out of the workforce and are just coming back. Or maybe you're simply ready for something new, but you're not sure where to begin — or whether you’re even allowed to start over.

Here’s the truth:
It’s not too late. It’s not too early. And it’s absolutely not too much to ask for a fresh start that works with the way you think and learn.

That’s why I created this workshop:
My First Day of Power Platform (Powered by Copilot).

It’s built for beginners — people who like to solve problems, who think creatively. People who just haven’t been handed the map yet.

Let’s fix that.

My audience typically ALREADY knows something about Power Platform.  But you have friends, family, acquaintances who are looking for a new start.  Send them my way.

Register here:  My first day of Power Platform (powered by Copilot) - Power Platform Community Conference


AI making things faster?

But is it better?  I have a new course out.  It's about using Copilot to accelerate solution building.  I thought it would be a nice touch to have what we call a "talking head" intro.  Those are costly, in time to prep, multiple takes to record, then the editing.  So, I decided to AI-it.

Using Synthesia I made an AI video avatar, and so did Dave.  I wrote a script and had it produce the video.  Here they are.

Opinions?

Video one- Julie

 

 

Video two- Dave

 

 

Video three- fake AI lady

 

 

 


‘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.