Data Toboggan Winter 2025 Piste Maps

 The Data Toboggan Piste Maps for Saturday 25 January 2025

Register Now: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Register

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Agenda

Bramberg Room

Pradaschier Room

Rigi Kaltbad Room

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Agent Starter Kit

Jack Rowbotham has shared a great set of tool to get Copilot ready for agents . The full set of tools to use can be downloaded here: https://lnkd.in/gpPBSMmf

This includes 4 areas:

• Agent in Copilot Chat Handout
• Agent Overview Guide 
• Copilot Chat User Training Guide
• IT Controls Guide

This is a great set of resources to help you get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. The Copilot Control System covers enterprise data protection (EDP) for data privacy and security. It has the ability to govern access, manage and report the usage and lifecycle of Copilot and agents. 

The guides include

Agent Overview Guide

1. Options for creating agents
2. Agent templates
3. Examples you can create
4. Agent building steps
5. One-pagers on use cases with instructions

Download: https://lnkd.in/gfxr-rrH

IT Setup and Controls Guide

• IT admin setup steps
• Managing access to Copilot Studio
• Setting up pay-as-you-go for agents
• Managing and viewing consumption

Download: https://lnkd.in/gRqrzAJi

Read more about it Enabling agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Try Copilot Chat today at: www.m365copilot.com

A Postcard from Data Toboggan

Continuing our travels with Data Toboggan

History of Events

2021

Inaugural event Winter Edition 2021: January 30, 2021

Cool Runnings July 2021: June 12, 2021

World Synapse Day 2021: Friday, November 12th, 2021

2022

Winter Edition 2022: January 29, 2022

Cool Runnings July 2022: July 9, 2022

Alpine Coaster 2022: Friday, November 25th, 2022

2023

Winter Edition 2023: January 28, 2023

Cool Runnings June 2023: June 24, 2023

Alpine Coaster 2023: Friday, November 24th, 2023

2024

Winter Edition 2024: February 3, 2024

Data Toboggan Slide Preparation  @ SQLBits: Thursday 21 March 2024

Cool Runnings 2024: Saturday, July 13th, 2024.

Alpine Coaster 2024: Friday, November 8th, 2024

2025

Winter Edition 2025: Saturday, January 25th, 2025.

Register for our next event: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Register

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Agenda

#microsoftfabric #synapseanalytics

The AI Opportunities Action Plan government response

The UK Government's response to the AI Opportunities Action Plan outlines a comprehensive strategy to harness the potential of artificial intelligence. Key points relate to AI infrastructure, a national data library, AI skills and talent, regulation and safety and public services. The government plans to expand the UK's AI infrastructure, including a new supercomputing facility and AI Growth Zones to support AI development and job creation.  A National Data Library is to be established to provide secure access to public sector data for AI research and innovation. There are initiatives to attract and retain top AI talent, including scholarships and fellowships, and efforts to increase diversity in the AI workforce. The government wants to ensure a robust regulatory framework to support AI innovation while addressing risks and maintaining public trust. In addition to using AI to improve public services, such as healthcare and education, by adopting a 'Scan, Pilot, Scale' approach to AI implementation.

The plan aims to position the UK as a global leader in AI, driving economic growth and improving the quality of life for its citizens.

You can read the government response to the AI Opportunities Action Plan.

hashtag

I also think that there needs to be responsible governance, transparency for responsible AI and consideration for AI harms. 

We have the Ada Lovelace institute , an independent research institute with a mission to ensure data and AI work for people and society, which i hope will be involved further as things progress.

AI Opportunities Action Plan

The AI Opportunities Action Plan presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in January 2025 outlines the UK's strategy to harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for economic growth, public service improvement, and personal opportunities. ​

The key goals for AI adoption in the UK, as outlined in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, are:

• To drive economic growth by leveraging AI to boost productivity and innovation across various sectors. ​
• Enhance public services by integrating AI to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen experiences. ​
• Increase personal opportunities by using AI to improve healthcare, education, and how citizens interact with the government. ​
• Build sufficient, secure, and sustainable AI infrastructure to support AI development and deployment. ​
• Unlock and responsibly use public and private data assets to fuel AI innovation. ​
• Train, retain, and attract the next generation of AI scientists and founders, ensuring a diverse and skilled workforce. ​
• Enable safe and trusted AI development and adoption through effective regulation, safety, and assurance measures. ​
• Foster collaboration between the public and private sectors to reinforce AI adoption and innovation. ​
• Develop national champions in frontier AI capabilities to ensure the UK benefits economically and strategically from AI advancements. ​

These goals aim to position the UK as a global leader in AI, driving economic growth, improving public services, and enhancing the quality of life for its citizens. 

Read the AI Opportunities Action Plan

The Microsoft Fabric Accelerator

There is now an accelerator to build a Microsoft Fabric modern data platform using pre-built reusable Fabric items. It uses a metadata-based ELT orchestration used for Azure Synapse and Azure Databricks.  The medallion architecture enables files in Lakehouse or Data Warehouse in OneLake. 

An accelerator has many benefits to accelerate development, makes implementations repeatable and enables best practice. It is ease to use, scalable, flexible, reuseable and everything is automated.

The architecture has

Bronze layer - files

Silver layer - Lakehouse

Gold layer – Data Warehouse

To get started follow these steps:

• Clone or Fork the repository: git clone https://github.com/bennyaustin/fabric-accelerator.git
• Follow the instructions in the set-up guide.

Purview Data Governance GA pricing

The Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog general availability has a new pricing model associated with it. It will start from 6 January 2025. The pricing model should make it easier for customers to track and manage as well as help customers understand this.

The 2 pricing elements

Unified Catalog

This catalog enables data stewards to curate assets and data consumers to view and access the catalog.

The pricing example given

5,000 tables, views, stored procedures, resource sets, and AI models in their data map

1,000 unique governed assets in Unified Catalog

4,000 assets not linked to data products or critical data elements are not considered governed assets and therefore not counted

Cost: 30-days, would be $500 a month

Pay-as-you-go price in  East pricing for a standard SKU for Unified Catalog $0.0165 per asset per day or ~ $0.50 per month

Note: Assets that are collected in the Purview Data Map, but not linked to the governance concepts aren't counted as governed assets.

Data management

This part of the data catalog looks at data quality and data estate health management.

There is the concept of a Data Governance Processing Unit (DGPU) which is the amount of service performance consumed for 60 minutes. The basic SKU is the default and an example  Pay-as-you-go Price  is $15 per DGPU and there are 2 other levels standard ($60) and advanced ($240).  

Introducing Microsoft Purview Data Governance GA pricing