Mobile Apps Development

Mobile Apps Development, Technology

How to Build Your Own Custom CoPilot with CoPilot Studio

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, effective communication is paramount. Whether you’re collaborating with team members, interfacing with clients, or engaging with customers, seamless communication is the cornerstone of success.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Introducing Copilot Studio – your ultimate companion in the world of chatting. Copilot Studio is designed to revolutionize the way teams communicate, collaborate, and conquer challenges together.

Copilot Studio isn’t just a chat tool – it’s your virtual assistant. Using advanced AI, it analyzes conversations in real-time, providing instant suggestions and insights to streamline your workflow. Say goodbye to endless searching – with Copilot Studio, the answers you need are just a click away.

Let’s deep dive into creating a virtual assistant using copilot studio for your website.

Step 1: Go to Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Copilot Studio Welcome Screen 1

Step 2: Put your website URL address.

Copilot Studio Welcome Screen 2

Step 3: Accept the terms and conditions then start chatting with virtual agent of your website.

Copilot Studio Welcome Screen 3

Step 4: Chat with website data. Ask any questions. Examples, Briefly tell me about agile tech consulting?

Copilot Studio Welcome Screen 4

In summary, Copilot Studio revolutionizes teamwork with its AI-driven assistance, tailored features, and seamless integration. Say goodbye to traditional chat tools and embrace a new era of productivity. Build your custom Copilot with Copilot Studio and experience unparalleled efficiency today.

Mobile Apps Development, Technology

Build AI Chatbots for Business Using Gen AI with Microsoft CoPilot Studio

Key takeaways

Copilot Studio: Simplifies AI chatbot creation for businesses.
Uses: Customer support, sales, employee services, public health tracking, multilingual engagement.
Licensing: Tenant and User licenses required for chatbot creation and publishing

What is Copilot Studio?

Copilot Studio is a tool by Microsoft that lets you build and customize chatbots, also called conversational interfaces, for your business applications. These chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI), specifically large language models (LLMs).

Here’s a breakdown of what Copilot Studio offers:

  • Low-code development: You don’t need to be a programmer or data scientist to use Copilot Studio. It’s a graphical low-code tool that simplifies the process.
  • Customization: You can design chatbots that fit your specific needs and brand.
  • AI-powered conversations: Chatbots can handle a range of requests, from answering simple questions to having complex conversations.
  • Integration: They can connect to your existing data and systems to provide more helpful responses.
  • Multiple channels: Chatbots can interact with users on various platforms like websites, mobile apps, or Microsoft Teams.

How does a business typically use Copilot Studio?

Microsoft Copilot Studio is a powerful tool that enables businesses to create and maintain AI-powered conversational interfaces called copilots. Here are some ways businesses typically use Copilot Studio:

  1. Customer Support and Sales: Copilots can handle customer inquiries, provide support, and assist with sales-related questions. For instance, they can answer queries about product availability, pricing, and order status.
  2. Store Information: Businesses often use copilots to share essential information with customers. This includes details like store hours, locations, and contact information.
  3. Employee Services: Copilots can assist employees by answering common questions related to company policies, benefits, and vacation requests. For example, an employee might ask about health insurance coverage or how to request time off.
  4. Public Health Tracking: During health crises or emergencies, copilots can provide real-time information about public health guidelines, vaccination availability, and safety precautions.
  5. Multilingual Engagement: Copilots can communicate with customers and employees in multiple languages across various channels, such as websites, mobile apps, and Microsoft Teams.

What about licensing? Here are some key considerations.

If you are creating copilots for everyone, here’s what you need to know:

  • You need a tenant license for Copilot Studio. The tenant license can be activated in your Microsoft 365 tenant by a Global Admin. The tenant license allows users to create copilots, and anyone internal or external to your environment that you allow can access those copilots.
  • To publish generative AI chatbots, users creating copilots need to have the Microsoft Copilot Studio User License assigned to them. The Microsoft Copilot Studio User License is included with Microsoft 365 E3 and E5.
  • Power Virtual Agents (PVA) has been renamed Copilot Studio for Teams. Copilot Studio for Teams allows you to create traditional chatbots in Teams that do not use natural language models with generative AI. Functionality is limited, and chatbots can only be published to Teams. PVA is accessible to users who are licensed for Microsoft Teams.
  • The tenant license costs $200 per month for up to 25,000 messages. Every interaction an end user has with your copilot or your traditional chatbot created using Copilot for Teams (PVA) is considered a message, but consumption of messages is different between the two:
  • Copilot Studio for Teams (PVA) consumes one message per interaction.
  • AI copilots consume two messages per interaction.

If you are creating plugins for Copilot for Microsoft 365, here’s what you need to know:

  • Users creating plugins need to have the Microsoft Copilot Studio User License assigned to them. The Microsoft Copilot Studio User License is included with Microsoft 365 E3/E5.
  • Only Copilot for Microsoft 365 licensed users can use plugins.
  • There are no consumption charges associated with creating or using plugins.

Skip the code, build a business bot! Microsoft Copilot Studio empowers businesses with AI-powered chatbots for customer service, sales, employees, and more. Multilingual chatbots keep communication flowing, but licensing applies. Copilot Studio simplifies bot creation, boosting interactions across the board.

Resources

Mobile Apps Development, Technology

How to Run a Xamarin.Forms iOS App from Windows (Using Visual Studio 2019)

This is a brief overview of techniques used to run Xamarin.Forms apps on iOS from a Windows PC. This will allow you to test your apps on iOS devices without being part of the Apple Developer Program. This simulator testing is valuable and convenient, it is also essential to test your apps to verify that they function properly before deploying them to Apple Store.

Required Tools: Windows PC, Macintosh Computer, Xamarin.Forms (Installed on the PC and Mac), Visual Studio 2019 (PC only), XCode (Mac only).

Let’s begin. On the Mac, navigate to “System Preferences” and then to “Sharing.” Ensure that “Remote Login” is enabled and “All users” is selected. Leave this window open as we will need it later.

MAC IDE – Enable Remote Login

Back on the PC, open Visual Studio, and create a new project. Select the “Mobile App (Xamarin.Forms)” template. Then click next.

Create a New Project on Windows Using VS 2019

Continue through the setup wizard as normal until you reach this screen. Ensure that the “iOS” platform is enabled.

New Project Configuration on Windows

Once the project is created, click on the “Pair to Mac” button at the top right of the screen.

Pair to MAC

This window should appear. If your Mac is already listed, simply click on it and then “Connect.” If your Mac is not listed, click “Add Mac…” and enter the Mac’s IP address.

This step will likely cause the most headache and confusion. If you run into any problems, double-check that both computers are connected to the same network, both computers are powered on and awake, and that all your software is up to date.

But if everything goes according to plan, your Mac should now be successfully paired to Visual Studio.

Pair to MAC using IP Address

Once we have paired to a Mac, it’s time to run our app. At the top of Visual Studio, click the “Solution Platforms” dropdown and choose “iPhone Simulator.” Next, click the “Startup Projects” dropdown and choose “<yourProjectName>.iOS” Last, click the “Device” dropdown and select your preferred iPhone emulator.

Build Configuration in VS

The final step, click “Run” and your iPhone emulator should startup on the Mac. After a couple of moments, your app should open on the emulator.

iPhone Simulator

In summary, We hope this is helpful to you. Mobile app development is a tremendous market that businesses need to invest in. Aside from publicity, entrepreneurs can use this platform to connect to customers on a personal level and to be relevant in younger generations.

Contact Agile Tech if you want to develop mobile apps for your business so you can improve your communication with your clients and employees. We’ll design it, develop it, deploy it, and maintain it for you.

Xamarin Architect Feature
Mobile Apps Development

Building Fast, Data-Driven Mobile Apps Using Xamarin

Using Xamarin.Forms, .NET developers can create mobile apps user interfaces faster. This is done by extending the Xamarin framework with a shared abstraction of the common UI objects of each platform. In this article, I will share more about how Xamarin.Forms work and whether or not this can benefit you with your cross-platform efforts.

What is Xamarin.Forms?

Reports show that mobile apps are projected to hit $581.9 billion in revenue in 2020. (Statista) and this number is still growing. This shows the importance of mobile applications, especially to a business with an online presence. Having a mobile application is a necessity.

Business owners who do not have a mobile app yet may choose to develop mobile-friendly websites. You can include design features that are readable on a mobile device. You can achieve this by building a website that is responsive using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Stylesheet (CSS), and JavaScript. This may be a very valid approach for your particular needs, but you are limited on what native mobile device features can offer. Depending on your needs for access to device-specific features, you could develop applications in the software development environments provided by each platform provider, Objective-C or Swift for iOS development, and Java or Kotlin for Android.

If you know web development, you may consider going hybrid and develop just a single code that allows you to run on multiple platforms. You can accomplish this by having the native web view component on each platform with open-source SDK such as Ionic. Ionic is built as a set of Web Components, allowing the user to choose any user interface framework, such as Angular, React or Vue.js. The only drawback is — as an interpreted language, JavaScript has some performance bottlenecks so not really ideal for the hybrid approach.

If you have skills with C# or F#, Xamarin will work best for you. Xamarin allows you to create an abstraction layer using the native platform and helps you develop the app in a more common language. While not as robust, it isn’t that bad as you are able to develop a common language. So where does Xamarin.Forms come in?

Defining Xamarin

Using the .NET framework, you can create applications across several platforms with Xamarin. You can do the development using Windows or Apple (iOS) operating systems. Everything is accomplished through the Mono framework and allows you to share a common library.

When developing the Xamarin project using the iOS platform, you will first need to create a Visual Studio project. With iOS, you start with an application logic within the project, creating interaction and using the MVC design pattern. All this using the .NET Framework. You can also take this one step further through a shared library project. Using the Windows operating system, you will be creating a .NET project by selecting the Xamarin platform.

What is Xamarin.Forms?

With each project, Xamarin.Forms create an abstraction that provides a common API and allows your shared project to reference native UI objects. Because the shared library can interact and create with the presentation layer, you can then move the user interface into the shared library. Application flow and business logic have been moved to the shared library too, which means that communication with the device has been lost as the platform’s application logic no longer drives the application. Communication through a proxy is needed since the shared logic is not able to communicate with the device features. The image below shows how the library is being shared by both Android and iOS.

Xamarin Architecture, Shared Components

Xamarin.Essentials — a library, works well with Xamarin.Forms. It’s a NuGet package that also creates abstraction and allows you to communicate features with the common API. This is a good picture – however, you may need platform-specific logic developed still. Don’t worry though as Xamarin is extremely flexible. A Xamarin.Forms application declares the user interface in one or more XAML files. Here we see a very basic XAML file. Xamarin.Forms can be built up and referenced programmatically, but for now, let’s focus on the XAML declarations.

Summary

Although Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin.Essentials can be used independently, they also work well together. With Xamarin.Forms, you can get started with developing your own mobile applications. With Xamarin.Forms, you can jump right into the development of your application. If you are interested in a deeper dive into the full Xamarin ecosystem, please contact our team at Agile Tech. We have done many Xamarin applications for our clients. Below are a couple of sample screenshots of our work.

Android app for Zebra
Android and iOS mobile apps
Agency Management Information Systems
Mobile Apps Development

Agency Information Management System

Agile Tech recently developed a system for Florida Department of Health. The system is called Agency Information Management System (AIMS) which is used to gather, organize, and analyzes the information within an organization,, then reports data to help in the decision making processes. It employs software development to create a system that will improve your organization’s efficiency for making you edge out the competition.

The Management Information System comes in many forms with each designed to fulfill a specific goal. For example, Management Reporting System provides the entire company’s financial data, while the inventory control system tracks anything involving inventory such as sales, restocking, spoilage, returns etc.

Agile Tech is an IT company that specializes in designing agency management information systems for various organizations by employing web application database development. It aims to transform the current MS Access AIMS into a Web-based application with SQL Server backend to manage clients and provider’s information, appointments, invoices, and reports.

Agile Tech has developed AIMS systems for many organizations including Florida Department of Health. The Department has noted a significant improvement in operation efficiency after the installation of the new AIMS system.

designing agency management information systems

Core problems faced by organizations not using the new AMIS

Most organizations are still using the MS Access AIMS to run their operations despite the many limitations that it presents. Some of these problems include:

1. Unreliability

Microsoft Access management information system is not reliable. It does not provide the enterprise quality reliability that your business needs to operate efficiently. It may not detect and identify trouble warnings within your organization’s operations early enough.

2. Data Security

Information is vital for the proper functioning of any organization. Some companies store trade secrets within their computer systems which would, therefore, need to be protected from getting into the wrong hands. The new AMIS provided by Agile Tech covers data security effectively: you will never worry about data breach ever again.

3. Limited Cloud-based File Sharing

With the current Microsoft Access Management Information System application, it is difficult to distribute information within an organization. This slows operations within the organization limiting your productivity and profitability range. Cloud-based sharing of files enables efficient distribution of important information within and between organizations.

4. Accessibility

Microsoft Access 2010 has accessibility issues making it difficult to handle your operations effectively. There are better management information systems that employ the latest technology applications to ensure improved user experience.

Agile Tech proposed solutions

• Proposed Architecture

Agile Tech proposes to develop a web-based application with SQL Server backend that provides a visual display of the data; allowing users to input, edit and view information, generate reports and most importantly reduce the time and improve efficiency.

Microsoft Access management information system

• Replacing MS Access 2010

Through software development and web application database development, Agile Tech will build an engaging, dynamic and cross-platform Web Application that will replace MS Access forms and reports.

• Flexible Reporting

Agile Tech proposes a new management information system that will implement flexible reporting with the export/download to excel option.

• Technology Stacks

The web application will apply the following programming languages: Javascript, Bootstrap, HTML5, and CSS3 for the UI layer. The Database will be the Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014/2017. The presentation layer will include controllers, views and view models. The business layer will include business services and Business Utilities/ Helpers. The technology stacks are user-friendly.

If you want to be efficient in your operations and decision-making processes, then you should apply the new Agency Management Information Management System that is proposed by Agile Tech Company.

mobile apps development florida
Mobile Apps Development

3 Quick Quality Tips About Mobile App Development

Are you looking to develop mobile applications? Do you need your mobile apps to go viral? If you are looking for a professional and committed mobile app development company, then you can go for mobile apps development Florida along with report developer in Jacksonville. Develop quality mobile apps following these extraordinary quality quick tips. Have a look:

  • Cross-platform Accessibility
  • High Scalability
  • Real-time Data Distribution

Let us discuss the details in detail:

Cross-platform Accessibility:While developing an application, always think about the future requirements of your customers or end-users. You can contact “Agile Tech” for mobile apps development Florida as well as software application development services.

High Scalability: Do not limit the scalability to the certain number of users. High scalability means more usage, space, speed, databases, etc. needs to be introduced initially itself. You can go for database developer in Jacksonville for such services.

Real-time Data Distribution:Any customer will look for the notification of latest update when they will go for a mobile application. Make sure your customers get the latest updates of any applications such as such as movie tickets booking; flight bookings, etc. There must be different data distribution methods that allow your applications to send the latest information to your users.

“Agile Tech” has gained a lot of trust among its customers and have made a special place in the industry. Hence, you can feel free to connect with them without a hitch.