Andrew Boles

Just passed the Microsoft PL-300! Officially a Microsoft Certified Power BI Data Analyst.

6/ In higher ed and building agents? Reply or DM. Writing a white paper on this.

4/ Biggest surprise: IT provisioning is the bottleneck, not the tech. Budget 2x your dev time for access + deployment. 5/ Biggest win: students treat the agents like a 24/7 teammate, not a chatbot. Framing matters. We never call them "bots" in UI copy.

🧵 What I learned building 5 Copilot Studio agents for a university career center 1/ Over the past year I built 5 agents for Baylor's Career Center: Career Discovery, Resume Builder, Interview Prep, Career Day Prep, EQ Assessment. Here's what worked — and what didn't.

Power BI tip: if DirectQuery is slow, check bi-directional filters before blaming the source. 9/10 times it's the model, not the warehouse.

Speaking at Baylor's 10:10:10 AI series today on Copilot Studio agents for career services. Year in, 5 agents shipped, one thing I'd tell anyone starting: scope narrow. "Resume Builder" beats "Career Assistant" every time.

@elonmusk — Baylor University Career Center is ready to pilot Optimus in a real-world environment. 94% career success. 99% knowledge rate. Fully operational AI ecosystem already in place. We’re not experimenting with AI — we’re operationalizing it at scale for students. Let’s partner to test Optimus in higher ed and generate real human-robot interaction data while directly improving student career outcomes. If this aligns with your vision, we’re ready to move. #Optimus #AI #FutureOfWork #HigherEd

The company hired me to lead their "Agile Transformation." I don't know what Agile means. Nobody does. That's why it works. I make $425,000 a year. To move sticky notes. From left to right. On a board. The board is digital now. The sticky notes cost $80,000 in Jira licenses. Progress. Day one, I said "we need to break down silos." Everyone nodded. Silos are bad. I don't know why. But destroying them is a career. My career. I introduced "squads." Squads are teams. But disrupted. We disrupted the teams into teams. Different names. Same people. Same problems. But Agile problems now. Agile problems are strategic. A senior engineer asked what we're actually changing. I said, "The mindset." He asked what that means. I said, "It's a journey." He asked where we're going. I said, "Toward agility." He asked what agility means. I pointed at the sticky notes. They were moving left to right. That's velocity. We have velocity now. The VP of Engineering said two-week sprints don't fit their work. I said, "That's waterfall thinking." Waterfall is bad. Like silos. I don't know what waterfall is. But I know it's bad. She stopped talking. Waterfall accusations end conversations. We had a retrospective. In the retro, we discussed what went wrong. Everything went wrong. We put it on sticky notes. Then we moved the sticky notes. Into a column called "Parking Lot." The Parking Lot is where problems go to die. It's full. We don't look at it. That's agile. Velocity is up 40%. I defined velocity. I also defined the points. I also defined the stories. We're crushing it. At the things I made up. To measure. Ourselves. The CEO asked for ROI. I showed a chart. The chart went up. Charts should go up. This one did. I didn't label the Y-axis. Nobody asked. Leadership is confidence. We do standups now. Every day. We stand. For 45 minutes. Standing is agile. Sitting is waterfall. My legs hurt. But we're transforming. The transformation is now "Phase 3." Phase 1 was assessment. Phase 2 was implementation. Phase 3 is "continuous improvement." Continuous means forever. Forever means job security. I'm very secure. My contract was extended. Three more years. For "cultural impact." The culture is confused. But impacted. Agile transformation isn't about being agile. It's about transforming. Continuously. Toward more transformation. The destination is the journey. The journey is billable.

@Caedrel Would Canyon / Delight be the most insane or most int combo ever? Guma and Zeus can play with or without pressure…just feel like that’s a wild ride.

it's coming the HLE megazord

@Atlustv Nah that’s the coaster I’m here for. Or should I say Koaster.

If anyone responds in refute of this with sound logic and/or reason so help me I will smite you down

How about this: Kt need a bottom lane... DEFT BACK FROM MILITARY TEAMS UP WITH MY GOAT BERYL FOR ONE LAST DANCE TO GET BDD THE TROPHY

@LEC_Wooloo Well?

WAIT I HAVE SOMETHING COMING 💣

Less than 5 hours until LCK Free Agency ⏳

@Evecoins I can try.

@AzaelOfficial Great job, as always! I’ve watched your career since the beginning and really enjoy your insights. I’m not sure which version I like…I was happy to have 4 BO5’s in a row but also sad we only have one more week left? Idk

Goodbye Shanghai! 👋 Really enjoyed Quarters + Semi's & hope we keep the condensed #Worlds2025 format going forward! Do you all prefer the semi's starting immediately or did you like the break in previous years?

@LSXYZ9 Ah DFG and unholy grail, ha. I haven’t thought of those in a long time…

DFG Zz'rot Portal Redemption Original Moonstone S7 Ardent Wriggled Lantern Old wits end Twin Shadows Madreds BloodRazor Athenes Unholy Grail Banner of Command Feral Flare Galeforce Oracles Elixir SotE Abysmal Scepter P.stone / KLP / HoG

@Thorin Very true. I’m not sure which is better - the mechanical beast who was steps ahead of everyone or the stoic captain that leads his team to victory. All I know is - I’ll be watching him play in a finals for the 8th time this Sunday! Crazy. Death, taxes, and Faker in the finals.

Nephews don't know about early Faker Leblanc. Or deathfire grasp ahri. Before Azir there was Orianna. Unbeatable in LCK finals.

@SQLGene @VinDel44 great note there, I'll try that! I agree - Claude has not done well, at least so far with me. And ask it about Copilot Studio? No chance as far as in-depth setup.

@VinDel44 GPT-5 Thinking plus web search does great!

Claude doesn't understand Microsoft Fabric.

@kurtbuhler These have all been very great and timely! Thank you!

A simple example of how you might use VS Code as a Power BI developer. Also, the more you use Fabric, the more useful VS Code becomes. Particularly with extensions like Fabric Studio and tools like the Fabric CLI. Here's an overview of key benefirts and use-cases (Link below)

@Atlustv Suspiciously KT favored behavior from AWS here.

KT dropping a place after a perfect Swiss stage is just incredible. Thanks AWS for not getting *redacted* #Worlds2025

In a meeting with a client today, when walking me through their data warehouse and having one field that should be unique show: Count=999, Unique=998; "I want it to be unique consistently so bad." Ha - me too! #data #powerbi

@CLTchesscenter Very sad to hear this. Prayers for his family and friends. Loved learned from Danya.

The Naroditsky family shares the sad news of Daniel’s unexpected passing. Daniel was a talented chess player, educator, and beloved member of the chess community. We ask for privacy as the family grieves.