Agent Dudecast EP9 James Oleinik

Author: Dewain Robinson - The Agent Dude · Watch on YouTube

Video authored by the channel shown, not by IANIA; all rights belong to the creator. Transcript and summary generated automatically; the original-language content is preserved.

Original language: English

Original video: Agent Dudecast EP9 James Oleinik · Channel: Dewain Robinson - The Agent Dude · 56:49 · Watch on YouTube

Topics: AI agents, Task and workflow automation, Data, databases and embeddings, AI developer tools

Summary

Microsoft product leader James Oleinik discusses the evolution of Microsoft Copilot into a unified “super app,” including conversational assistance, delegated work, document creation, and Copilot Code for business users. He explains how Work IQ brings Microsoft 365 and business application data into a shared intelligence layer, helping agents retrieve relevant context more efficiently while respecting existing permissions. Oleinik describes how agent traces and existing apps can help generate and refine business skills over time. The conversation also explores how AI is enabling people to automate personal routines and tailor both their tools and business processes to their needs.

Key points

Oleinik has worked at Microsoft for 16 years, including a decade in business applications and the past five years focused on the Dataverse data platform.
The Copilot “super app” vision brings chat, delegated work, Office creation, and coding capabilities into a more unified experience.
Copilot Code is aimed at business users and makers building solutions in a Microsoft-managed environment, while GitHub Copilot serves professional developers.
Work IQ connects Copilot with organizational information, including business data and processes in Dynamics 365 and Dataverse.
Oleinik says Work IQ can help agents use up to 80% fewer tokens and run up to twice as fast compared with agents calling raw APIs directly.
Work IQ is designed to use existing permissions and security policies rather than escalating access or copying customer data out.
Existing Power Platform apps and automations can provide a starting point for generating skills that represent an organization’s business processes.
Agent traces can inform suggested refinements to semantic models and skills, with changes reviewed and moved through a CI/CD process.
The speakers emphasize that AI can automate personal routines as well as professional workflows, from scheduling sports to coordinating work.
Oleinik describes the broader goal as making AI increasingly tailored to how each business operates.

Chapters

Start	Chapter	Summary
00:00	Welcome and introductions	Dwayne Robinson welcomes Microsoft’s James Oleinik and introduces the conversation.
01:03	Oleinik’s Microsoft and Power Apps background	Oleinik recounts his Microsoft career, from Windows and mobile development to Power Apps, business automation, and the Dataverse platform.
03:42	Project Sienna and the early low-code story	Robinson shares how he promoted Project Sienna and built an early app, reflecting on how both speakers entered the business-apps space.
06:19	The Copilot super app vision	Oleinik describes a unified Copilot experience combining conversation, delegated work, and Office creation.
08:23	Copilot Code for business users	The speakers compare Copilot Code with other coding tools and explain its focus on makers and business users rather than professional developers.
14:06	Business applications and Microsoft IQ	Oleinik explains how Microsoft IQ and Work IQ connect Copilot with trusted organizational data and business processes.
18:14	Context, retrieval, and agent efficiency	Robinson and Oleinik discuss why relevant context matters for reducing repeated data hunting, token use, cost, and delays.
22:25	Work IQ’s intelligence layer	Oleinik outlines the scale and complexity of enterprise data and describes how Work IQ helps agents retrieve information and use APIs more effectively.
27:11	Combining context with skills and business apps	Robinson describes how Work IQ context, business data, and reusable skills can help produce consistent outputs such as RFP responses.
30:21	Continuous learning for business processes	Oleinik explains how existing apps can seed business skills and how agent use can lead to reviewed refinements over time.
36:35	Agent traces and process improvement	The speakers clarify that agent traces can reveal opportunities to improve Work IQ’s semantic models and make later runs more efficient.
38:10	Conferences, previews, and community feedback	Oleinik previews sessions on Agent 365, Work IQ, and business applications, while the speakers discuss upcoming community events.
42:50	Pickleball and AI-powered personal automation	After joking about pickleball, Robinson describes using AI to manage league schedules, calendars, weather checks, and substitute coordination.
47:30	AI for everyday life and individual workflows	Oleinik reflects on how AI lets people automate more of their lives, while Robinson discusses building tools tailored to personal needs.
53:10	Tailoring AI to each business	Oleinik frames Work IQ’s goal as adapting AI to the full, distinctive processes of each business and invites community feedback.
55:14	Closing remarks	Robinson thanks Oleinik, encourages viewers to follow him and attend his sessions, and brings the discussion to a close.

Quotes

I’m like a professional lurker, you know. — 01:35

it’s a manifestation of the last 10 years of kind of like that power platform ethos. — 12:34

through work IQ you get up to 80% fewer tokens consumed by that agent and can be up to 2x times faster — 25:02

it’s not about building an app, it’s about building your app. — 52:09

Make your AI tailored towards how your business works, right? — 54:12

Concepts and entities

Work IQ, Microsoft IQ, Microsoft Copilot, Copilot Code, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Dataverse, Power Apps, Agent 365, Microsoft, James Oleinik, Dwayne Robinson

Full transcript (original language)

00:00 Agent dude cast [music] where AI and agents bloom. Tune in [music] and come alive. Get ready to learn from the best. Agent Dude. [music] >> Hello everyone and welcome to the Agent Dude Cast. I’m your host Dwayne Robinson and I’m here to with the one, the only Mr. James Olnick. James, welcome to the show and thanks for being able to make this fit in. I we know you’ve got a lot

00:32 going on in your schedule because I know I’ve got a lot going on between both uh Summit North America and Power Platform Conference coming up. So, yeah. So, thanks for coming on, man. >> Thanks, Dwayne. I’m a longtime subscriber to the Agent Dude, so I’m happy to finally be here in person. >> Hey, you know, it’s funny. It seems like just the other day you and I are sitting at the uh over at Lake Washington having a big conversation about this uh you know all these crazy things that were

01:03 just coming along and and all you know and for those that don’t know James actually is he loves to lurk in the shadows of a thing called data versse and so for those that don’t know uh James kind of tell people what you do at Microsoft and kind of what your history is because like I said, you like to kind of hide in the shadows and not have to be the guy that’s always out in front of everything and it’s my job to pull you out of that shadow so that you can talk about all the cool stuff you’re doing.

01:35 >> Yeah. So, I think I think I think uh it’s a good way describing me. I’m like a professional lurker, you know. [laughter] >> [clears throat] >> No. So, um yeah, I think uh been at Microsoft for guess 16 years now and the past, you know, uh 10 years of it has been kind of within enterprise business uh operations. Ironically, like by the time this comes out, it’ll probably be a year, 10 years since the general

02:07 availability of Power Apps because that’s when I basically joined kind of the Bisapps realm was uh early kind of uh private preview of Power Apps which was kind of called Project Sienna back then. It was all about hey what if you could build apps like building a PowerPoint slide and in fact like the very first apps look very much like building PowerPoint slides. So anyway, that was 10 years ago. And so I I joined kind of this uh crazy world of kind of business like automation and I came from

02:39 Windows and the Windows phone and like you know it was really the birth of kind of mobile. So I was it was all about like professional mobile development and I was like what is this what is this world of enterprise apps and like it was very very foreign to me back then. Um, but over the past 10 years, I’ve worked on really the full stack, I would say, of kind of like business applications and automation at Microsoft. So, the the service, the the the platform, um, kind of helping scale it out. Um, and over

03:10 the past five years, I’ve worked on the data platform. So I own kind of like all the product areas for Microsoft data versse. All of our connectivity that we provide for power platform and copilot studio. So this is increasingly kind of MCP servers and kind of access coming across even like all the copilot services. and most recently um our integration with Work IQ which is kind of the intelligence platform that underpins Microsoft Copilot and all of our agent platforms that are built

03:42 within it and so kind of run the full gambit at Microsoft and now kind of happy to be talking with you all today. >> Yeah. Well, you know what’s funny, James, is that there was this thing, and maybe you remember uh Yasser and Ben Hodess back in the day, they pulled me in, and the thing that started me in this space is the same thing that started you in this space, which is I used to be the guy who would go out to all of the internal events and present on Project Sienna. And matter of fact,

04:16 James, do you know that the first app ever put in the Microsoft Windows app store from Project Sienna was done by me because I wrote the white paper on how to do it. And it was a RSS feed from uh from the uh one of the podcast networks that uh like Leo and uh Windows Weekly and all that was on. And so what I did is I literally built that into an application using Project Sienna and

04:47 then realized that I could then crossost it and add it to the Windows Store uh and everything. So So that’s kind of funny, James, that you and I both kind of entered this world all at that same time. And I remember because I got in trouble because of the fact that somehow u there was this friend of mine that owned a podcast and it used to be called Surface Geeks. And I asked and said, “Hey, is it okay if I let talk to these guys about it?” And the day that it went

05:18 out, we we went live with it. And they were the one that broke the story about Project Sienna. And I remember other podcast and other news outlets getting mad because of the fact that uh that I had done this. But I got all the all the right approvals there, James. I didn’t I didn’t go like go crazy there. It’s just they didn’t think it was as big as it was going to be, but I knew that it was a big deal. And I think you did too at the time because it was pretty innovative and a different way of thinking at the time that people really hadn’t thought like that yet. So, it’s

05:49 pretty cool. And now, >> see, Dwayne, even from the get-go, you were always kind of like pushing the limits, you know? That’s what I’ve always appreciated about working with you. [laughter] Uh, you know, I always like to try to figure out like how this stuff works and then figure out, oh, how far can I take it? Um, and now there’s something I hear that’s coming that you were talking about and I don’t know a lot about this one. So, James, you’re going to have to fill me in with everybody else, but apparently there’s not just apps now. There’s apparently

06:19 something called the super app. And so, I’m curious, you tell me about this super app. What the heck is this thing? And why do people care about this super app? >> Yep. So the, you know, the quoteunquote super app is uh a re reimagining of Microsoft Copilot. Um and uh I think you had I think Jared Sparo had a great blog post around this uh just a couple weeks ago and it’s going to be a big part of kind

06:49 of some of the announcements over the next couple months. But really what what the goal of kind of like the super app kind of vision is is really a single single app for kind of how you leverage AI that’s built for kind of your work, right? And so there’s a couple different things that came together as a part of this announcement. So number one, there was kind of actually a merger of kind of what today if you come to co-pilot, you can either kind of chat with co-pilot, which is it’s kind of a usually it’s a

07:20 modality. It’s a little bit more about discussion and kind of like explor exploring and then or you could switch into kind of the co-work mode which is where you essentially go you know delegated a task that could be long running for it to go do something. So kind of like the first kind of key thing about kind of this copilot announcement is like there’s kind of a merger of those two things into kind of one one experience that’s all about kind of like hey you can either have the same kind of thread have a conversation or kind of delegate some ready work. That was the the first part of it. The second part of

07:51 it was the introduction of a what they called a new uh home experience which is all about kind of bringing office uh into kind of the copilot app in a first class way. So that’s a lot of your like creation of kind of like spreadsheets, documents, kind of presentations kind of and that’s kind of has a more native tab within the cobot experience. And so those are a lot of like what was already out there, but it just kind of brought those more together in a first class way. But then >> yeah, so kind of so is that kind of what

08:23 we’ve seen in the industry where a lot of these like all these different chat things are all coming into one app like I I I’ve noticed like Anthropic seems to be doing sort of the same kind of concept. Um, this is just Microsoft bringing it all together is what I’m hearing and and making it where it’s more cohesive as a user, right? >> Yeah. If you if you have have Claude installed, you see that like you can kind of when you go and create a new conversation, you can either enable chat

08:54 or co-work. That’s kind of synonymous with uh kind of what we talked about there. or um you know Chad GBD is doing the same thing with their their codeex app and I’ll talk about that a little bit where they brought together kind of even the coding paradigm together with the more kind of productivity flows and and in that regard there’s going to be a new newcomer into the copilot app called copilot code and that is all about the ability to allow people that aren’t necessarily professional developers to

09:24 be able to build solutions directly within co-pilot um And it certainly touches on a lot of like you know what we were talking about with like the low code revolution. Now it’s going to be brought into copilot where you can essentially directly within copilot build any of your solutions. It comes with what uh we’re calling the Microsoft co-pilot managed runtime where if you’re familiar with what some of what we’ve been doing with the evolution of Power Apps where we introduce a kind of managed apps concept or that kind of supports kind of the code apps the idea that um essentially has a managed

09:56 backend um for any of the custom solution that you want to go build and it hosts it for you completely in a secure way. Um and now you can do that within Cobbot. Today cobot is largely know today it’s about helping you kind of do tap into your kind of intelligence across what you’re leveraging across Microsoft 365 co-work was a lot about like actually delegating tasks for you know you to do across that create spreadsheets draft documents reply to emails now you can

10:27 also build with it with copilot code as well um and so it’s like kind of it’s becoming you know the one app that you need to launch and maybe stay within kind of your end to end day and we haven’t even gotten to the autopilot announcement the art form and the scout. >> Yes. Yes. I definitely want to talk about that. The thing I would ask though is with this whole code thing um there’s a GitHub co-pilot app that exists, right? So how is that different than

10:59 this concept or is it the same thing? like are these the same? >> So it it’s powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub copilot. So it it’s think of it as it’s not the same as GitHub copilot but copilot code it runs in a sandbox environment. It’s hosted securely within your tenant. Um but GitHub copilot is for your software developers right doing doing their work. it it’s where that you have your own cloud hosting hopefully on Azure but you

11:31 you know you’re you’re leveraging that as kind of like you know your development harness. The idea with co-pilot code is it’s kind of tapping into the same kind of um you know uh individuals that would leverage kind of the power platform or low code, right? These were not professional developers. A lot of times it was people within a line of business group that were trying to kind of build solutions to kind of make their day-to-day team, their day-to-day productivity better. And that’s what Copilot Code is really going

12:03 after where it’s around enabling kind of people that are closer to the business to build solutions and automation that run within their, you know, Microsoft’s environment. It’s kind of hosted in a SAS way, right? So it’s not you’re not spinning up, you know, uh cloud subscriptions to kind of host all this. It’s kind of managed by Microsoft. So think of it as like it taps into a broader kind of community of makers and developers than just kind of like the professional developers that use a lot of like the coding agents which is like

12:34 what GitHub cop is about. Um and so you know in many cases it like I think it’s a manifestation of the last 10 years of kind of like that power platform ethos. um now available within kind of the co-pilot experience >> there. There you go ladies and gentlemen. You heard it here. Project Sienna for conversational building. That that’s what it is. So uh so >> just imagine how amazing your first app would have been if you had coding agents at your fingertips to

13:04 >> you know I I I don’t even want to think about how crazy the things would be that I would build. Um because um James, I I I’ve gotten crazy to the point where like I need to make sure that you know kids aren’t skipping school and that they are where they’re supposed to be. So I just build apps that run and be able to cross cross check against APIs from their car to life 360 and all that kind of stuff. So I get crazy now. Uh, every child in the neighborhood and all my kids’ friends, their their parents

13:35 love me, but their kid all the kids hate me now because I am that I am that guy that goes and shows them how to build trackers and stuff, which takes all the fun out of life, guys. So, be glad that if you’re old enough that you’re no longer a teenager and you’re watching this, then know that be glad that you didn’t have a parent like me and coding agents around back back in the day because you wouldn’t have gotten away with anything. And now uh now you would have to deal with people like me. So uh so yeah, I’m the >> You know what? I’m gonna go I’m gonna

14:06 uninstall the agent dude app that you sent me from [laughter] my phone right now. >> Yes. Yes, I’m tracking you. Uh James, [laughter] that’s that’s my goal. Um I I don’t have to track you because of the fact that just innovation I just follow innovation at Microsoft and James Olnick is going to be there, right? Uh which brings me to a point. Um the there’s been a lot of cool announcements that have happened in the Bisapp space. What all happening there? Because I know that

14:37 there’s a lot of stuff that could be getting overlooked because there’s so much noise in all these other places and there’s so much stuff. But I’m sure that you run into some of the things that are really cool that are happening in the BISA app space that a lot of people maybe aren’t even paying attention to, which is kind of a bad thing because there’s it sounds like there’s a lot of cool innovation with some of the most recent announcements of what’s coming out. So maybe kind of give people a tasting of what all is going on in that space.

15:07 >> Yeah. And it all starts with um kind of what we call is like the Microsoft IQ story. So, you know, Microsoft like this is something I’ve come to understand for kind of working at this company for for so long is, you know, we’re leveraged by, you know, all the biggest companies in the world. They trust Microsoft today, right? be it they trust Microsoft 365 with their productivity, their email, their their documents or they trust um kind of Azure or Fabric with

15:37 their analytics and their their cloud or they trust Dynamics 365 with their their business processes their kind of like some of their most business critical workloads like you know biggest companies in the world trust Microsoft and Microsoft IQ is kind of the unified intelligence platform that underpins Copilot and it’s What makes it such that when you go to copilot today and you ask a question, you ask it to delegate a task, it immediately has it at its fingertips all of the data and knowledge

16:10 that you know you’re already trusting Microsoft with. Um, and what was really amazing about the announcement that we had last week, which is if you’re one of those customers that over the past 10 years, you’ve um you’ve bet on Dynamics 365 for you know transforming your your Salesforce or your contact center or you know your your finance systems or you’re leveraging bet on power platform to kind of enable your your businesses to kind of you know transform their their

16:40 business automation however they see fit. Um now all of those kind of like custom data those custom business processes those are now part of Microsoft IQ and work IQ. So which means that um if you enable kind of like those kind of those apps those environments for work IQ you come to copilot you not only can get an answer grounded on your documents and shareepoint or your latest teams chats but also the actual state of the business that is mastered as part of

17:12 the uh dynamics 365 and data versse and so like to me it’s like it actually like with this announcement of business apps and work IQ you. It actually allows us to even, you know, live up to that claim of the super app even more because now I don’t have to open up the bespoke custom app that I built. It’s still running that still kind of has the source of truth, but now I can access that through copilot and I can kind of delegate work that spans kind of like these end to end

17:43 uh systems. And because it’s the one thing I’ve come to understand from working with a lot of customers over the years is that especially in kind of like the bigger enterprise, you know, if you have an end toend process, it it doesn’t just talk to one system. It’s hey, it’s it’s going to like start in our CRM system and then it goes over here and it has like some custom process and it kicks off this approval and updates this finance system. It’s like it spans end to end and and that’s what I’m excited

18:14 with Bis apps and work IQ is that same kind of end to end understanding is now there in Microsoft IQ and accessible in >> well that’s it’s actually kind of cool because one of the things that I was watching the other day and and I know you probably had a hand in this um behind the scenes there Mr. which is there was um a video that Charles Lmano released on LinkedIn and he started talking about

18:46 uh a combination of work IQ but we’ll get to work IQ in a minute. It’s more that the the importance of context of data and that AI and I I’ I’ve been spending a lot of time James with a lot of different customers. They come in and they they come to me and they go, “Oh my god, I rolled out um let’s say I rolled out co-work organization and then I had to roll it

19:16 back and they did it and they’re why are you rolling it back?” back and they’re like, “Well, it’s it’s amazing. I love it and my users love it.” But the challenge that I run into is that I can’t afford the cost of the bill because of the fact that they’re all just going off. And so what I’m having to spend a lot of time on right now is teaching people about the impact of context, rederiving the same thing over and over, having to recalculate how

19:49 you’re like rebuild a Python script that calculates a formula that is how you calculate something over and over again. And so as you start to find out more and more in the AI world, it’s not that the agentic reasoning loop isn’t amazing and powerful and it can go do all this stuff. It’s that what we’re starting to see is the need to reduce the number of turns to not have to rederive the data or go hunt. When you see hunting of data in the agentic application, you know

20:21 that you’ve done you need to optimize it, right? And when I look at kind of the work you’re doing and the stuff that Charles is talking about in that video, you’re kind of doing a lot of that pre-process work and doing the get the right context or the right thing to in a simpler query which ends up resulting in a much more cost-effective solution across the board. Right? It’s and and I tell people all the time, I feel like this is one of those things that

20:52 Microsoft is uniquely positioned for and I actually think it I I tell people all the time that when I look at the power of Microsoft and what Microsoft has in the AI space, it’s the gravity of data and the context that actually makes it way more powerful than just yet another model, right? And I think in your world, this is kind of the place you’re playing in with what you’re doing in work IQ and kind of what you’re talking about with the business applications being able to be included in this so that you get the

21:23 full context and everything and and everything and all this. And I really do think this is like the next of being able to take AI to the next level. And without that, I just don’t see the parties that are playing with just, you know, model makers being able to produce a good quality, consistent result and a cost-effective one because they’re just constantly hunting and rederiving and coming up with a different way to answer the same question over and over again.

21:55 So, you don’t get consistency, you don’t get the quality, you don’t get the speed, you don’t get the cost efficiency. And so I think that’s kind of at its heart really what you guys are doing in your space which is just insanely innovative innovative. So, I really like that and and maybe that’s kind of, you know, when you talk about it, I really liked how Charles kind of went around uh discussing how all of these different things. Maybe you can kind of explain using like work IQ or

22:25 even that business applications to kind of talk about context and how context is being used to derive this to optimize that because that’s man and I think that’s the most innovative thing I’ve seen out of Microsoft in a very long time and you know of course that’s all because like I said if you want innovation just follow James right guys >> well like let’s Let’s evaluate and not everyone works this you know big of a company but take like a Fortune 500

22:57 company today um like for for a customer like that across their business and of course there’s variance you’re talking about something on the order of 600 terabytes of relevant data for AI that is that’s a lot of context and um and you’re talking about like high quality for kind of AI agents. That means building kind of a semantic index of the data that can be retrieved. It means

23:29 building a semantic model of kind of like an end toend business process or or data schema. It means um understanding kind of like how processes runs which means kind of extracting out things in format like skills. means acrewing kind of a memory over time not just of how every user interacts but how the organization as a whole does. So you’re talking about a huge amount of data and if you’re having to even rebuild parts of it for [snorts] every agent for every

24:00 workflow you’re you’re number one never going to get them all right. Um, and you’re also going to kind of have a bunch of duplication across your organization, which every, you know, every CISO and chief data officer doesn’t doesn’t like. So, first of all, there’s just so much data. Um, and everyone has just one piece of it. Like, it’s really really hard to get it right and hard to get it right if you rebuild it every time. The second thing is is we have spent a huge amount of science

24:32 resources figuring out the right way of optimizing retrieval and uh actions and APIs for AI consumption. And so you know when we look at kind of evaluating say AI running against work IQ and it could be for like a productivity workflow or for like a business process. So like hitting your your dynamic sales or your Dynamics finance system. Um when we’ve run our tests around like hey what does what

25:02 does an agent look like that just hits our raw APIs directly because these coding agents can just call the APIs we have directly versus through work IQ. We see that through work IQ you get up to 80% fewer tokens consumed by that agent and can be up to 2x times faster and like so so like why is that the case because and I think it’s important to understand that um you know when an agent kind of looks at kind of like a set of tools in order to kind of respond

25:34 to a given task or problem it builds a plan and we’ve done a bunch of optimization in terms of uh surfacing kind of the real-time context to help the agent kind of select the right tools but also we have kind of like an efficient kind of like set of signals to build allow it to build the right plan. So if you have an agent that builds against work IQ, it’s going to build a more efficient plan which going to mean fewer tokens spent overall and it’s going to kind of get there faster, right? And you know even like you know I

26:06 don’t think we published any data on this but you can even see with a more expensive model might even get more ROI over time when building against work IQ because it’s kind of like we’re more optimizing the data retrieval and the tools for the latest and greatest models that are out there. Um, and you know, all of it doesn’t have to be rebuilt. I think we’re going to talk about like the more you kind of use work IQ, the smarter it gets. And because we’re Microsoft, we’re not copying your data

26:37 out. So, if I’m accessing some data, if I’m calling some kind of existing system, we’re not escalating privilege. We’re honoring your existing, you know, permissions. for enforcing kind of all the security that you have in place, all the policies that are part of agent 365. Now at Microsoft, you know, you don’t have to rebuild all that. All of those investments that you know these say many comp many large enterprises out there are already done with Microsoft, those are all honored out of the box, right? So, you know, it’s more efficient,

27:11 results in faster plans, and it just honors kind of the existing kind of estate that you have in place with Microsoft. So, it’s like a really powerful story that I think pays dividends over time for a lot of the customers that are already leveraging it today. >> Yeah. And and one of the things that I like to talk to people about is if you kind of think of it like you take that context, you take that power of work IQ, right? And then imagine you add in the business application side of it as well. Let’s say that you have sales, right? Uh

27:42 the bis uh business applications dynamic skew for sales. All of this stuff. You’ve got all this context. You’ve got all of this information that’s available. And now you want to go do something like you want to build a skill or a plugin that can plug into your co-work product as an example, right? Then you go and you say, “I want to generate an RFP response that comes in.” Now you have the skills and the plugins that are making sure that you’re doing that consistently and you got that

28:13 context coming together to be able to get a really consistent way of doing this. And one of the things uh James when I was working on this and I was playing around with it and seeing what’s the difference between hitting these things and I did it with skills plus work IQ and I saw a massive in uh decrease in the cost that’s associated to it when you brought skills in. But when you really think about it, if you included your business application that had like your sales data and you had all of your

28:45 productivity so that it can cross reference the RFP request, the things that you’ve done in the past and all the different sales data. You’ve got a consistency on this is what a RFP response looks like. This is where our product catalog is. All of this stuff just brought right there to it. I was able to get it down. I think I did one the other day just to show someone and it was like about $2 worth of co-pilot credits to be able to do this and and people are like, “Oh, wow. That’s $2 that that command.” And I said, “Yes,

29:17 but that’s over $5,000 typically at a minimum to generate this thing and two weeks worth of work. We did it in five minutes for $2. So when you start looking at this return on investment, it’s just absolutely absurd what you can do and and I don’t think people completely have gotten it yet. And I’m really glad you and I are talking about this and I’m also glad that this is a piece that Microsoft’s kind of leaning in on is because I feel like people need

29:48 to understand to get consistency to get good data. You want to solve the hunting problem. I feel like you guys are doing a really great job at being able to solve the hunting and the context problem across this massive amount of data. And then you combine it with the process the automation like the process definition of how to do the job that you get in skills and plugins. And then you throw it into that agentic reasoning loop that would allow you to be able to take the best of both of these and you get this huge valuable thing that can do

30:21 work that we could only dream about in the past. And I really feel like if you don’t have both sides of those coins, you can have all the skills you want in the world. But if you don’t have the data context, the bigger your data set gets, the bigger the problem becomes. And I just think the work you’re doing in this space is just absolutely phenomenal. Which leads to that work can’t just stop. Like you can’t just calculate this one time and be like here you go, right? Um so one of the things that I’m really impressed with is the continuous learning function of what

30:53 you’re doing in work. IQ across the board as well. And I think with the amount of processing and the amount of cost that’s associated to keeping that context up to date, making it more intelligent, letting it be able to understand what’s happening. like I’m working on an RFP as an example. you understand which which copy of the RFP is the one we’re actively working on for this particular client for this particular thing and who’s the team that’s working on it and what’s the latest one and then what about all the

31:25 interconnections between that to all of the other aspects from teams calls to all the way down to uh things in the BIS apps back end and and so kind of talk a little bit about how in the world is this continuous learning piece working and kind of what people should expect about this and you know like this is in my opinion is super important as we continue to go because we can’t just calculate this thing one time and it just be great. >> Absolutely. So I maybe I’ll I’ll give it

31:56 an example that probably makes sense to most most companies which is that you know like say you have a CRM system um maybe you’re using Dynamics we hope or maybe you’re using another one of our competitors but you know like that like I I’ve never met either a salesperson or a sales leader that talked about how much their sales force loved keeping the CRM up to date with all of the activities or that they had with their customers that’s not their job. Their job is to go

32:27 out and you know build those relationships if it’s relationship selling or you know turn through those leads if they’re doing something more at scale. But like um but like let’s say that you have like a process like that where you’re like you’re generating leads, you’re kind of qualifying them, you’re taking them through that sales cycle, right? That’s like that’s a very very common thing in in a lot of in a lot of lot of businesses around the world. So like what we’ve done kind of with bisaps and workq is first of all um you know how your

32:58 process works everyone every company serum system is unique to them right this is the thing you if you’ve worked in kind of the business you know SAS bisapp space is that no one customer has the same CRM system same ERP system like no they’re they’re accustomed to their industry their business you know like how they how they do things right And so there no one no serum system is is is alike. So one of the things we’ve done is first of all with kind of the the learning is if you have existing kind of

33:29 app and automation assets on our platform we’ve built the ability for you to kind of like automatically we generate skills from the apps and automation that you’ve already built. So we there’s so much knowledge that’s already built into kind of these solutions that you’re using today probably cross dynamics and power platform and so we figured out how to kind of like build skills for you and these are not just like Dwayne’s skills they’re you know for like how you sell if you’re the the salesperson it’s no no it’s like how your sales process works

34:02 right because it’s kind of built from the system and so number one we provide a starting place for your AI right but you know like no battle battle plan, you know, exists like long term, right? As you kind of like as these skills are kind of used, we also have something that we’re calling business learning. So, as your agents are say like assisting kind of the salesforce with qualifying leads or updating the CRM and

34:32 they’re leveraging the skills that kind of encapsulate how that process works for kind of that particular company. Um there’s also refinements that could be made. Oh, you know, we forgot to kind of include this context or we forgot to kind of attach um kind of like this kind of example. And so what we’re doing behind the scenes with work IQ is we’re also suggesting refinements or missing skills as the process goes. Um, and we have the tooling with kind of data

35:03 versse to allow you to take those through a CI/CD process, right? Where you can go take those into your sandbox, do your eval there, apply them to production. So like the vision that we have for kind of you know say like the future kind of like agentic CRM or agentic business apps is it’s not one where you do like a six-month implementation of an app you know and you do a pilot program and maybe make some refinements. No no like you start from your existing system that you have

35:33 today. We’ll extract out kind of like the starting set of intelligence, the semantics and skills that are there. And then as you run your evals and run your workflows with increasingly agentic clients, we’ll suggest refinements to this intelligence layer that you can QA, you can eval, and then kind of have essentially this agentic loop that gets smarter and smarter over time. And trust me, like this is not it’s not trivial thing like multiple steps along the way

36:04 here. Like that’s where like we’re really excited with work IQ because like we can not only give customers a starting point for this intelligence layer, but we can also give them the tools to kind of like improve it over time. Um, and so I’m I’m really bullish about this. We’re going to like uh have a bunch of this uh rolling out in preview in the next couple months start uh around Ignite in November. So I’m really really excited um to kind of get in the hands of customers. So what you’re saying, James, is that you’re

36:35 actually looking at these queries that are coming back, trying to find the data, and you’re watching the AI hunt and going, “Hey, you know what? I’ve got some context. I could help you with that.” And suggesting the improvement back in to improve even the process to make the process more efficient in the next query to come in because you can see it because of the inter relationships and the way that it’s hunting and what it’s trying to find. Is that is that kind of what you mean by that? >> Yeah. Essentially the exhaust the traces

37:06 from the agents and their accessing of the system can be used to essentially improve the work IQ the semantic models and the skills behind the scenes to make the the next time that agent runs or the other another agent that’s accessing it more efficient the next time. >> Right. And it sounds like you don’t even have to really push that back into the skill because you can say they’re trying to achieve this and this organization the inter relationships are like this. So I can just improve and learn I should just include this additional piece of

37:37 data or this context as part of this query for this type of organization because I see a pattern that this is what they’re doing uh and this makes intelligent sense on the back end and they don’t even need to worry about it. Right? So that’s pretty pretty awesome that we’re doing that on the back end for the on the work IQ side. Now I assume Okay. So it sounds like there’s a lot of cool stuff coming and we should start off with Okay, you and I both.

38:10 We’re going to be at Summit North America what next week from when we’re recording this. Hopefully I should have this out in a couple of days. So, it will be next week for all of you as well. Uh, and so, James, I know you’re going to be out there. You’ve got a couple of different uh, things you’re going to present on. What are some of the things that you’re going to talk about next week that people should come see you about? >> I’m going to I think we’re going to be out there talking about security. So, agent 365. So, how do you govern and manage your growing kind of AI kind of

38:42 actors and your AI agents? Um, also gonna be talking about work IQ and kind of biz apps kind of like and business processes coming into work IQ and what that enables across, you know, your employees leveraging co-pilot or the agents you’re building against. And so, um, in short, I’m going to be out there at Summit A talking about everything we talked about today. And, um, and the good news is that a lot of what I’ve talked about is going to be being made available in preview. So, it’s like my

39:13 hope is that don’t just talk about it. People are getting hands-on with it in the community, which is I know a big part of like what I love about all the community events is like, you know, we get the raw feedback from the people that are honestly closest to the the products. And um that’s what I’m excited about next week. And then we have what we get a week break and then we end up going to Vegas and uh you know that and so we’ll be in Vegas for uh the power platform conference and the funny thing

39:44 James I and you heard this here first is uh dynamic communities and the training that we’re doing we are actually a sponsor now and we are going to have a booth and I will be out there. I have some presentations to do some uh I’m going to be helping with the um the full day pre-training thing and then I have a a session as well. I know you’ve got numerous sessions probably same topic sets just even more details and more information. So it doesn’t depend if

40:16 you’re over here in Nashville area. We’ll be there next week. Then we’ll be in Vegas. And then James, I’m hearing that not only do you have that, then you get about a two-eek break and then you got to go knock down Ignite. Um, which is is just uh, man, I I all I can say is more power to you, my friend. I I just two of these are going to be enough for me. So, I won’t be at Ignite this year. I am I’ve decided that I can overload myself on events. Uh, and I’m not as

40:47 powerful as a James Olnick. I can’t quite keep up like you can these days. So, you know, that’s uh that’s for younger men like yourself to be able to go do. >> I think you’re selling yourself short. I mean, say you were to state some kind of subscriber goal. Would you, if you hit that, would you not then volunteer to buy yourself an Ignite ticket and show, >> you know? Maybe. Maybe, James. But you have to realize like at Summit North America, there’s going to be 16 people who get the opportunity to take me and

41:18 my lead sales guy from DCI training on. We’re going to literally have a pickle ball tournament and we’re going to go and allow people to challenge us. And guess what, James? If you beat us, you get a really cool prize because I actually play pickle ball about four times a week. Uh, and I have sourced us some really nice things that if you can beat me in pickle ball, you get some really nice gear. Maybe even like a

41:50 paddle that might be competing for paddle of the year 2026. So, so not cheap things. Um, so needless to say, if you feel like you can take us on on the pickle ball court, then uh then you know, come on over to the T-Mobile area where we’re going to be because we have an indoor pickle ball court at the event. And so I’ve got an hour and a half. You guys, you get to you got to sign up to say that you’re going to challenge me. And uh if James Olnick signs up, I’m sorry. I got to

42:20 give him a spot because I don’t often get the opportunity to hit James Olick with a pickle ball. So that that would just be too tempting for me. James, [laughter] >> got it. So the just in short for the listening audience, go to Nashville, beat the agent due to pickle ball or come to Vegas, you know, to like Power Community Conference or come to Ignite, you know, like there will not be pickle ball in San Francisco, I don’t think though. >> No, no, there won’t be any pickle ball

42:50 there, but that’s okay. So, so it it sounds like you’re pretty excited about the pickle ball and the opportunity. Maybe you and Shane should take me and Jeppi on. Uh, that’d be a pretty a pretty entertaining thing >> to do. >> I haven’t played pickle ball, but I’ve heard there’s like you get a ranking with pickle ball, right? >> That is true. >> Yeah. Yeah. What What ranking are you? Because like I I feel like you might be sandbagging. >> Oh, I I play in the 35 uh group, you know. >> Okay. So, everyone should look up

43:21 whether or not that’s good or bad. [laughter] >> I can tell from your face and I bet it’s probably pretty good. >> No, no, no, no. I I play with that’s the highest level they have here. So, we in my >> Oh, it’s not that good, but it’s the highest level that they [laughter] >> But but it’s not that’s not that high in pickle ball. Um it professional professional is a five. Um a really top tier 65 to give you a perspective. So, I would probably say I’m probably at a

43:52 four to four five uh level. So, >> today I also learned something that there’s professional pickle ball. >> There is professional pickle ball. It’s actually um about the same size as tennis these days. I I couldn’t believe that because I’m also an avid tennis player, which is >> And I should know this because you know where pickle ball was invented, right? >> Yes. It was invented in your home. Well, where you live? Um, for those don’t know, Seattle area is uh, so, so here’s

44:23 a here’s a funny thing for you really quick. >> I’m going to tell you my little AI story and then I want you to go through and I want you to be thinking about what you’re really excited about, what’s coming, okay? Because uh, so let me explain how crazy I am with AI these days in the world of pickle ball and tennis. I play seven times a week, games. I am in seven leagues. uh four pickle ball and three tennis leagues. The way that Williamson County, which is where I live

44:55 in, uh just outside of Nashville, the way that they do this, they will send you a PDF document. That PDF document will give you like a number from like 1 to like 16 or something like this is your your person. And then underneath that in that PDF document, it’s going to say this on this date, you’re going to play on this court and you’re and one’s going to play play with two against three and four and who has to bring the tennis balls um to who’s responsible for

45:26 the tennis balls, where where is the location, what is the time and all of this type of stuff. And then over here is all the subs. So if you can’t make it, you got to go and here’s how you get in touch with all the subs. Okay, so at this point I have now gotten it where I provide the AI this. It automatically puts it onto my calendar, calculates and tells me inside of the media invite whether I have to bring balls or not, who I’m going to play with, what their contact information is, what court we’re

45:57 playing on, and all of that. And it it goes ahead and loads up my calendar with all of this for everything. But James, I play both indoor and outdoor depending on the the league that I’m playing. So I also have a different thing that’s running that goes in in the AI goes every single morning and it checks to see if I’m playing indoor or outdoor on a court that day. And if I’m playing outdoor, it checks the weather during that time slot, and then automatically if there is a potential for rain, starts

46:28 a thread and a text conversation with the entire team to ask them whether or not we’re still going to be on for tonight and what they want to do. It’s absolutely insane. Just like I I just sent an AI off because next week I’m not available. This weekend I’m not available. So because of summit, sorry. So, it’s out actively finding subs for me to figure out who’s going to substitute for me next week so that I can make sure I’m at all these events to

46:59 be able to entertain everybody. Right. So, so this is how far I’ve taken AI uh is just literally it’s managing my entire pickle ball tennis schedule so that I don’t have to worry about it anymore. James, how do you like that? I I’m not surprised. [laughter] Not surprised. No, I think like >> I think it just to me and I I would imagine a lot of

47:30 people on, you know, who listen to your podcasts, that story probably resonates and they’re, you know, doing their own version of kind of their pickle ball mega automation suite like uh like you are. Um but I I think like the biggest thing that like one thing that doesn’t surprise me and one thing that does surprise me one thing doesn’t surprise me is um you know the passion that kind of individuals

48:01 especially motivated individuals to have to like improve and tinker and automate that’s always been there you know like that’s that’s like part of what I love for the past 10 years of working with like the low code in aentic automation is like, you know, I used to call like the group that comes to like these community conferences is like the low code rebels because talk about a bunch of fanatics like they’re they’re trying to like automate and help and improve what’s around them. They’re like the the one person out of 15 in their team that

48:31 can’t stand things being in being kind of inefficient, right? Like that’s always been there. I just I’ve seen it like one out of 15. You might have better odds on your team. I hope you do. But like when I have 15 people can’t stand when things are inefficient, right? That’s always been there. What does surprise me is like how much more of your life, your professional life, you can automate now than you could previously. You know, I was um I was at

49:02 a personal kind of like trip with some with some friends this past weekend. Um, and I do some of this myself, but like one of the gentlemen on the trip with me, he was showing me he his his iPhone app that he’s been on a t he’s been on a push to like I don’t want to download all these apps. I want to build my own version of all of them. It’s all tied back to kind of things he has running on his computer at home, right? and he’s automating every part of his life, you

49:34 know, like myself, like you know, when you go and uh you know, like I have like two young sons, they do like little league, like you know, they have their walk up songs. Now, you don’t have to like pick a walk up song. You can go and AI make their own walk up song, right? Like there’s nothing honestly that you can’t customize, transform today. like the only thing that’s really limiting you is like trying it like getting your your fingers you know like on like it and

50:04 starting and building and so like to like that you know innov urge to kind of innovate and and improve I think is always there like I think what’s so exciting to me is like how much more of my life it’s allowed me to kind of tinker with and improve and optimize and and then also I’m encouraged by people like yourself who are like taking that to the next very extreme level, right? And like in their own right because like a lot of people are like realizing that their the

50:35 previous limitations they may have like just time in a day and focus is like that ceiling is so much higher now like and you can do so much more and so uh it doesn’t surprise me. I think it’s uh it really honestly it motivates me I would say. Um what I’m excited most about all these events to see I want want to see what other people have done like um want people to share with each other. >> Yeah. And I I tell you it I think as we continue along right people are going to

51:07 start to realize just how much they can improve their lives. Matter of fact, I encourage everybody to come to my general session um that I’m going to be speaking out with. Like Leon’s going to be part of that as well. And at the very end, I’m actually going to have some people on stage that we’re going to talk about how they do their professional and their personal lives, how they’ve actually learned to leverage AI to improve. They started doing it, you know, from professional, but then they

51:38 move it naturally into their own personal life and just make their life better across the board, right? I think that’s the part that really is exciting for me personally. It’s also one of the reasons why you see me kind of take a step back from the co-pilot studio dude and focus more on the agent dude or the AI dude like we were talking about. It’s because there’s so much more to the story. And as people start to explore, they’re going to really realize that there’s things that it’s not just about, hey, how do I get this find this switch

52:09 or flipper to be able to do this thing that nobody else knows where that little hidden switch and flipper is? Like all the switches and flippers are exposed now, right? So there’s none of that anymore. It’s now how do I actually apply this to my world and improve my own experience, you know, because it to your point, it’s not about building an app, it’s about building your app. Like, it’s about building what is right for you and making it exactly what you need

52:40 and what what you want. And not to say that there’s not going to be commodity products. Absolutely there’s going to be commodity products and there’s a need for that. But you need the commodities where I think a lot of what we’re going to see is the commodity products being pulled together in all that integration work that you could never do. Now you can do that integration work and it’s kind of like what you were talking about with work IQ where you’re pulling all that context from all of these different places and you’re pulling it in. I think as that just becomes more and more a

53:10 commodity. I just really am excited about what’s going to happen in that space. Is there anything else that you see coming along that you know that you’re working on or that you’re seeing that really gets you to where you’re like, “Wow, I just really can’t wait to see where this goes.” >> Well, I guess everyone’s just going to have to come to all the events. >> No, no. Um, [laughter] look, I think, you know, like what you were talking about, which is like, and I like that sentiment that like and I choose to kind

53:41 of believe the uh the glass half full approach with AI, which is like that, you know, whenever technology comes in, it changes things and then, you know, we go and move on to like the next the next thing, a a better thing. And I and I do think I choose to kind of be optimistic around that. And like the one thing I would say that I’m excited about professionally is like that same way that like AI has allowed you and me to to to make more of our our lives about

54:12 like tailored towards how we want it. What we’re doing with kind of work IQ and kind of bisapps and work IQ. It’s trying to bring that same sentiment but to your business processes, right? Make your AI tailored towards how your business works, right? And more tailored the longer it runs, right? And and ultimately that’s that’s what I think really matters to a lot of companies, you know, like there’s there’s very few companies that like, you know, historically said like, I want a website and I want it to look like every other company out there, right?

54:43 Like no, it’s like it’s about our brand. It’s about how we do things. And and to me like that’s kind of like our mission with like work IQ and Bis apps and work IQ is to allow you to kind of have your AI understand your business kind of the full end to end of it not just a couple silos that you’re kind of like leveraging at a time. Um and and I’m excited to like actually starting to get our hands dirty with real customers, real use cases. um we know this is just

55:14 kind of like the beginning of this journey and so um it starts with the community. It starts with kind of like all the people listening here that you know and you’re you trying out the products, you coming and giving your your your feedback and helping us build a better product here at Microsoft. So yeah. >> Well, James, I really appreciate you taking the time out. I know you’re super busy, especially this month. I can’t believe we were able to fit anything else into this month. So, thank you so much for coming and joining us today. If

55:44 there’s anything that you or the team ever need, feel free to reach out to us. I’m really excited. You guys, please come out and one, follow James on LinkedIn. He posts a lot of really good stuff like whenever there’s really cool innovative stuff that’s happening and especially in the work IQ space, he’s definitely one of the people you need to go follow. Um, and you need to go and see him at these events. like he’s going to be speaking and I’m telling you, I’ll be at at the events following him around and occasionally trying to get another

56:17 follow-up conversation between you. I I’m not I tell people all the time that I think one of the funnest things I’ve done in a long time was sitting and out at Lake Washington the other day with you and Shane and us sitting there just kind of talking about everything that’s going on. It’s just that’s kind of just fun for me and I absolutely love it. So, thank you again for coming out and helping me with this. And everyone, if if you get a chance to go see him, please go do it. Thanks, James.

56:49 They doing