Blog
Notes on strategy, systems and thought leadership.
Building modern chat experiences with Microsoft Agent Framework and OpenAI ChatKit
Learn how to combine Microsoft Agent Framework's structured agent orchestration with OpenAI ChatKit's polished chat UI for production-quality AI experiences featuring streaming, widgets and file uploads.
Decoding Australia’s National AI Plan for Builders
Guardrails are the roadmap. If 2023 was the year of "Magic" and 2024 was the year of "Pilots," then 2025 has officially become the year of Standardisation . The release of Australia’s National AI Plan today marks a defin
The Pragmatic Guide to Human in the Loop AI
AI shines on the happy path and trust is earned on the edge cases. Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) is how you keep AI honest. Humans arbitrate ambiguity, absorb asymmetric risk and turn every override into learning. This partic
A developer's guide to the Microsoft Agent Framework
If you’ve been building with LLMs for more than a few weeks, you've probably discovered there's a big gap between a demo that impresses in a meeting and a system that quietly runs every day in production. The difference
Validate Fast or Stagnate with AI Consulting
Across dozens of client conversations this year, I’ve noticed a pattern: everyone has internalised the fail‑fast strategy yet only a handful of organisations actually practice it. Most enterprises and even many mid‑marke
Building Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Communication for Smarter AI Systems
When you start building AI agents , it doesn’t take long before you hit a wall and ask yourself, “ How do I get my agents to talk to each other without reinventing the wheel every time? ” Sure, you can handcraft APIs, de
How I solved the HEIC extension saga with a simple MCP server
Last month, after giving a talk at UTS Sydney, Dr. Nabin Sharma kindly forwarded a batch of session photos with every single one in .HEIC format. I wasn’t impressed when I was asked to pay for an extension just to view a
Hack Yourself with AI Red Teaming
The first instalment in this series celebrated the promise of the open agentic web, an internet where autonomous software workers cooperate across organisational and technical borders. That vision remains compelling and
Leading in the Age of the Open Agentic Web
This weekend, C-suite executives and innovation leaders are digesting the twin signals sent from Microsoft Build in Seattle and Google I/O in Mountain View, where both stages unveiled the same bold future: the Open Agent
Create Personalised Experiences with Azure AI Foundry Agent Service
Throughout the history, human progress has been marked by our ability to delegate. From the first domesticated animals pulling carts to the industrial revolution automating manual labor, we have consistently sought ways
Leap Forward with Modern AI using Microsoft 365 Agents SDK and Semantic Kernel
Happy new year. I know you're excited to see this. It is real, it is happening, but you know what? It is still in preview and things will break. So, get ready for it. If you're wondering what this SDK is all about then d
Building Multi-Agent Systems with Multi-Models in Semantic Kernel
Imagine running a restaurant. Each of your team member, from the chef to server to the cashier has got specialised skills. While the chef prepares delicious meals, the server ensures that the food is delivered promptly a
Give local memories to your local AI Agents
In our previous post , we delved into the fascinating world of local Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using Microsoft’s Phi-3 and the Semantic Kernel framework. I demonstrated how to build a basic Console App that sh
Bring your AI Copilots to the edge with Phi-3 and Semantic Kernel
It's true that not every challenge can be distilled into a straightforward solution. However, as someone who has always believed in the power of simplicity, I think a deeper understanding of the problem often paves the w
Building Your Custom Retail Copilot: A Step-by-Step Guide with Semantic Kernel and Azure OpenAI
Hello 👋. May I request you to write this prompt into your ChatGPT console and see what do you get? My friend is coming from Thailand. Can you please track the flight from Bangkok to Sydney? Also, considering the weather
ParkingGPT - Your AI Parking Copilot
About 10 months (March, 2023) ago, I got a mention in a tweet from one of my good friends and our local community leader, Simon Waight . It was about solving a complex parking problem with Computer Vision. I bookmarked t
Build your AI First Apps with Semantic Kernel
The world is changing rapidly and so are the applications that we use every day at our workplace, home, gym, playground and the likes. Gone are the days when applications were just software that ran on your workstations
Best practices for building collaborative UX with Human-AI partnership
In today’s digital age, it is not easy for any business to work without the application of artificial intelligence (AI). Especially for those in retail or consumer market, AI has now become the integral aspect of their g
Build Sentiment Classifier, Translator and a Flight Tracker with the Generative AI
Last week I received an email from the Microsoft Reactor team informing me that I had 360 RSVPs on the day of my talk . While I was super excited, I was a bit nervous because I wanted to ensure that I deliver the content
Break out of your comfort zone, and start learning new skills
When we’re kids, we explore our interests and abilities, adopting what we like and leaving what we don’t. In this way, we create our comfort zone, where we find less stress, increased efficiency, and improved confidence.
Unlock the power of OpenAI's GPT with No-code AI Builder
As you know, Microsoft's AI Builder now supports prebuilt Azure OpenAI models, allowing users to easily integrate powerful AI capabilities into their applications and processes without the need for any coding or data sci
Create personalized experiences for your apps, bots and websites with Azure Personalizer - Part 3
Personalization in customer service is the practice of tailoring interactions with customers to their individual needs and preferences. This can be achieved through the use of customer data and technology such as machine
Create personalized experiences for your apps, bots and websites with Azure Personalizer - Part 2
In today's digital age, it is not easy for any business to work without personalization. Especially for those in the retail or consumer market, personalization has now become the fundamental aspect of their branding. It
Create personalized experiences for your apps, bots and websites with Azure Personalizer - Part 1
In the last couple of years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has shown tremendous growth opportunities. It is rapidly improving and changing the way we interact, shop and work. AI has become so ubiquitous in our daily lives
Give your Power Virtual Agents a voice with Speech and Telephony
When Power Virtual Agents were released, it was ensured that people who are closer to their customers can create bots for them. The team at Microsoft worked hard on tooling so that users could not just feel the ease of c
Power Virtual Agents get the biggest update ever!
I love the idea of Power Virtual Agents and it's enabling nature of creating the bots. But, because of my in-depth experience (or exposure) with Microsoft Bot Framework and Composer, PVA features never got me excited. Un
Computer Vision Simplified with AI Builder
Few months back, I posted a small video clip on my LinkedIn to show how I used ML.NET (w/ Azure), WinML & UWP to build a custom real-time object detection application. I received a few messages of folks on how I actu
Hacktoberfest for .NET Developers (C# Edition)
Hacktoberfest is celebrated during the month of October when open-source software enthusiasts, beginners, and the developer community participate by contributing to open-source projects. This is its 8th year and since th
Chatterbox with OpenAI's GPT-3 and Bot Framework Composer
Last week my level of excitement just went up to another level when I got an access to OpenAI's API. The API features a powerful general purpose language model, GPT-3, and has received tens of thousands of applications t
Introducing Bot Framework Component Model for better sharing and extensibility
Hey there! 👋 I am back with the bot post again. The Conversational AI has witnessed a tremendous growth just in past 2-3 years. According to latest research, Gartner predicts that by 2022, 70% of customer interactions w
Boost your Customer Service with Opinion Mining
If you run (or a part of) a business then you must have customers and a big number of those customers are driven by the customer service. Good customer service acts as a catalyst for your customer retention and helps you
Generate dialogs automatically using Form Dialogs for Bot Framework Composer
Back in 2016, Bot Framework v3 SDK used to have a famous feature called FormFlow. The beauty of FormFlow was its simplicity for basic conversational flow. You just had to define a class with some options as enum and call
Global AI - The Podcast
Few months ago, during a discussion with one of my colleagues, I learnt that there are a lot of people who prefer listening to podcasts while driving back home, during their morning run or if they're heading back home on
Integrate your No-Code Power Virtual Agents with Low-Code Bot Framework Composer
Microsoft Build 2020 has been quite interesting; not because it was virtual but because I got a chance to represent the Australian Developer Community for Azure & we witnessed a new way of integration between Bot Fra
Beginners: Let's build COVID Safe solutions with AI & Power Platform 🚀
2020 has been unique, unusual and a different type of year. It became a reason for many changes and one of those changes are going virtual from in-person meetups. Virtual meetups have become an essential tool for the com
Beyond Sentiment Analysis: Object Detection with ML.NET
Despite my diverse engagements with different Microsoft stacks ranging from Power Platform to Azure AI, I have always been a .NET (C#) guy and because of that I have a special place in my heart for all things XAML and ML
Enable your Bot Framework Skills to support multi-tenant Power Virtual Agents
Ever since Power Virtual Agents (PVA) have gone GA in December 2019, we've seen significant updates to this total No-Code visual authoring canvas. As an avid Conversational AI enthusiast, I have been following and implem
Publish your Bot Framework Composer bot with already provisioned resources in Azure
In Oct 2019 at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft released Bot Framework Composer in public preview with handful of fantastic features to build some really cool bots (not for production because of a preview). From the first day
Save lives, businesses and more with Anomaly Detector 📈
Around 2.5 years back, one of the data centers in the Hospital of Cairns, Queensland, Australia caught up the fire because of the faulty battery. This year, UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluded that the fire
Build a Flight Tracker ✈ with Bot Framework Composer 🤖 - Part 2
In our previous post , I talked about how can we create a simple Flight Tracker bot with the fixed Adaptive Cards information. In this post, we're going to learn how can you handle interruptions during a bot's conversati
Build a Flight Tracker ✈ using Bot Framework Composer 🤖- Part 1
Knowledge increases when it is shared. As a strong believer of this notion, it always cheers me up when I see a new tool, technology or even a blog post which helps people solve their problems. In today's world, there ar
Empower your existing Power Virtual Agents with Bot Framework Skills 🤖
Are you addressing your day to day customer service operations using Power Virtual Agents? Do you have multiple bots for your organization to cater specific use-cases? Do you want to combine all of them into one experien
AI for Every Developer: Immersive Reader for People with all abilities
By the end of year 2019, we've seen almost a decade of disruptions in almost every sector of industry, from blockchain based agriculture to liquid biopsy in healthcare, from smart banking to personalized products; all ha
Power Virtual Agent gets multiple channels support, authentication and entities
On Tuesday's evening I shut down my machine after completing up all the pre-requisites (i.e. slide deck and just a couple of demos) for my upcoming talk for Power Platform World Tour in Sydney. I was a bit relaxed that o
Extend Power Virtual Agent with Microsoft Bot Framework
Ever since Microsoft came up with the Power Virtual Agent for Customr Service , it was well received by the organizations and community as potential tool for enhancing customer experience and resolving issues effectively
Infuse AI into Power Virtual Agent with No-Code
Last week I gave a talk on how you can extend Dynamics 365 using Bots (mainly Bot Framework / Azure Bot Service), I received a good amount of queries and feedback on the topic. One of them was to explore the capabilities
Enhance Power Virtual Agent with Power Automate and No-Code
During last week of May 2019, Microsoft announced the Power Virtual Agent through which you can deliver rich, personalized bot conversations to resolve customer issues quickly and effectively any time of the day, any day
Bot Framework Skills: How can you develop and add them to your Bots
As it's announced today at Build 2019 and I am happy to have contributed my bits to this specific project, Microsoft wants you to build customized digital assistants tailored to your brand, personalized to your users and
SentimentAnalyzer - On device (offline) Sentiment Analysis for .NET Standard apps
As a .NET (read: Microsoft Stack) guy, I have been a huge fan of applied machine learning with the actual focus on how to solve a certain business problem with efficiency and minimal cost. When Microsoft announced the Co
Extending Dynamics 365 with Bots: "Ok Google, what's next for me"
In our last post , we discussed the endless possibilities of Bots and Dynamics 365. We saw that how you can easily integrate the Azure Bot Service with CRM using S2S authentication and extend the features depending upon
Extending Dynamics 365 with Bots: Lead Generation
Ever since Microsoft came up with an idea to closely integrate Office and Dynamics CRM & ERP (of course with Azure), we all witnessed its benefits and acceleration towards the business goals. As a Software Engineer /
Integrate LUIS, QnA Maker and Personality Chat in your Bot - Part 2
In my last post , I briefed about how can you create FAQs, LUIS models and connect them with your Bot using CLI tools. In addition to this, I also discussed a few basic features of Dispatch tool and told you how straight
Integrate LUIS, QnA Maker and Personality Chat in your Bot - Part 1
After reading the comprehensive documentation of Azure Bot Service, correcting a few logical mistakes, solving syntax problems and fixing some READme docs, I'm going to tell you how easy and straight forward is to integr
Bot Builder Community Project: An OSS Marvel
Today, we're excited to announce a global opensource project for Bot Builder Community which is not just limited to .NET Stack but it's open for Python, Java or Node developers. History It was an ordinary evening when I
Custom Vision (Image Recognition) with on-device processing
Last year, I wrote about how you can enhance your business using the custom vision with Bots (read: Azure Bot Service). It was a time when Custom Vision service was in its early preview and you could only use your model
Integrate custom machine learning models to your Bot using ML.NET
Do you want to recommend your latest products or services based upon your customer's choice of shopping? Do you want to notify your customers with an estimated time of order delivery with respect to their location? Do yo
Sentiment Analyzer - Custom Middleware for Bot Framework
I have been stating these at multiple forums that Microsoft Bot Framework (MBF) is currently the richest in terms of features, supported channels and flexibility. With MBF, you can not just create one basic customer serv
Boost up your business with Twitter by adding it to the BotFramework stack
BotFramework is by far the most diversified bot development framework when it comes to the multi-channel support. The only famous conversational (sort of) channel left as of now is Twitter, which I believe will be added
Accelerate the frequency of Border Checkpoints using Cognitive Services
It has been just two weeks since I started going Saudi Arabia almost 3-4 times a week. The King Fahd Causeway (which is a bridge between Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kingdom of Bahrain) was architect to bring enormous amo
Gem Dealer - My Alexa Skill in comparison with LUIS
Hey Alexa, ask gem dealer to update me about gold rates for today! Either you call 'necessity is the mother of invention' or 'if there's a will, there's a way' -- you need to get things done the right way. It has been al
Globalize your Bot using multiple languages with LUIS
According to the 2017 Ethnologue , English is no more the most spoken language and Arabic language's rank is not the same as it was before. Undoubtedly, English still has the significance but interacting with one's prima
Easy booking bot with flexible Adaptive Cards
Ever since the bot uprising, SMEs have started investing in innovative solutions for better productivity in an optimal cost. Customer services, on all fronts, require a human being. However, 90% of the time that human is
Enhance your business with Custom Computer Vision in Bots
Computer Vision (CV) is one of those APIs which is considered as the essence of Cognitive Services. It provides state-of-the-art image processing algorithms help you moderate content automatically and build more personal
Multipurpose Bot using Multiple Dialogs in Bot Framework
I am still in a delusion of finalizing this blog and how a reader would react towards it but anyway, there I go! First of all, you’re most welcome here. This new and improved blog is all about the business, development t