In this episode of Betatalks the podcast, Rick and Oscar talk with Ana Ines Urritia, a Microsoft MVP and digital transformation architect working at the intersection of HR, AI, and enterprise technology. Ana explains how her background in psychology and HR led her into software and AI-driven solutions, where she now bridges business stakeholders and IT, and how AI is reshaping HR through automation, analytics, and responsible, human-led decision-making. She also shows how art, design, UX, and data visualization help make complex AI systems more human, accessible, and effective for non-technical users. 

About this episode, and Ana Inés Urrutia in particular: you can find Ana on LinkedIn and via her website. Also, you can find her book The Microsoft AI Human Resources Handbook here (also on Amazon and Bol).

About Betatalks: watch our videos and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. 

Most folks reference "AI coding" like it's one thing. It's really not. In this foundational episode Kaushik & Iury walk through (at least) four paradigms — from super autocomplete to agent orchestration — each with different workflows, expectations, and mental models.

What do most developers follow today? Where is the frontier? What's coming in the future?

Listen to the episode and find out!

Full shownotes at fragmentedpodcast.com.

Show Notes

Gen 1: Super autocomplete

• Intellisense - regular autocomplete
• Github Copilot
• Cursor Tab

Gen 2: Chat Oriented Programming

• Cursor IDE
• Firebender

Gen 3: Agent

• Nvidia's definition of an Agent
• ReAct Prompting
• Chain of Thought was a prompting hack
• DeepSeek
  • DeepSeek - R1 paper
• TUI tools (or Harnesses):
  • Claude Code
  • Open Code
  • Codex Cli
  • Gemini Cli
• IDE style tools
  • Cursor Agent
  • Copilot (MS)
  • Junie - Intellij
  • Antigravity - Google
• Headless Tools:
  • Jules - Google
  • Claude Code on the Web
  • Codex Web

Gen 4: Agent Orchestration

• Git worktrees

Tips

• Iury: Transfer between agents using your own
  compact command
• KG: Ask the agent to clarify your prompt

Confirm if my requirements are clear. If you have follow up questions, ask me
first and clarify before executing anything.

Contact us

• Newsletter
• Website
• Contact us
• Youtube

Co-hosts:

• Kaushik Gopal
• Iury Souza

Graham is the Chief Technical Officer at Redgate Software, where he leads the teams behind industry‑leading Database DevOps tools. Before Redgate, Graham's experiences includes multiple decades in complex projects and leadership oversight at many companies including Elsevier, IBM, Sun, BEA, and Oracle.

He's also a two‑time round‑the‑world yachtsman, bringing hard‑earned leadership experience from some of the most demanding environments on earth. -

Want to Learn More?

Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

This episode opens with mic and Nintendo banter before plunging into macOS release pain points: sandboxing, hardened runtime, notarization, Sparkle auto‑updates, and automating releases with GitHub Actions and tags. James and Frank offer practical tips—drag builds into /Applications to test signing—and unpack .NET 10 trimming/reflection pitfalls and CI/CD quirks for anyone shipping native apps outside the App Store.

Follow Us

• Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub
• James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub
• Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord
• Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface

⭐⭐ Review Us ⭐⭐

Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm

Support Merge Conflict

Today, we’re thrilled to announce a powerful new reporting feature in Playwright Workspaces – designed to make debugging Playwright end-to-end tests faster, easier, and more insightful. If you’re using Playwright Workspaces (part of Azure App Testing) to run Playwright tests at scale, this update brings you –

• Streamlined access to all your test reports through the Azure portal.
• Greater control over your test artifacts with the bring-your-own-storage capability.
• Customizable data governance including retention, security, and compliance settings.
• Easy collaboration with team members using shareable test report URLs.

What’s new in Playwright Workspaces Reporting:

Integrated Reporting Experience in the Azure Portal

All your test reports are accessible in one place, right within the Azure portal. As soon as your Playwright tests finish running, the results and test artifacts are available in the Test Runs page in your Playwright Workspace – no need to pull files from CI or scour different logs.

Debugging test failures is now more visual and intuitive. Playwright’s Trace Viewer is integrated directly into the test report, so you can time-travel through a failing test, step by step. Open any failed or flaky test and you’ll see a rich timeline of actions: hover over each step to reveal the page state before and after each action. Detailed logs, DOM snapshots, network activity, errors, and console output are available at each test step for better troubleshooting.

Flexible Data Governance with Bring Your Own Storage

In this release, you have full control over where your test reports and artifacts live. Playwright Workspaces now lets you link your own Azure Storage account to store test results, traces, videos, and screenshots. With this update, you get to define your data retention, security, and compliance settings. For example, you might plug in an Azure Blob Storage container under your company’s account – all test artifacts will be saved there, under your organization’s preset governance.

The bring-your-own-storage approach gives teams flexibility to meet enterprise policies or cost management goals. Once connected, the dashboard will seamlessly pull reports from your storage, so the experience remains smooth.

Collaborate Seamlessly with Team Members

Using the centralised test report experience enables you to easily manage and share access to your test reports. You can also see the URL to the test report as a part of your CI logs. Share this test report URL with your team members to debug failed or flaky tests faster. Having a single source of truth for test results not only saves time but also reduces miscommunication during crunch times. 

We’re excited about how the new reporting capability in Playwright Workspaces will empower teams to ship with greater confidence. By combining scalable test execution with a centralised, fully controllable and collaborative test results experience, Playwright Workspaces takes debugging and test results reporting to the next level.

Happy Testing and Debugging with Playwright Workspaces Reporting!

Get Started with Reporting in Playwright Workspaces

Ready to take the new reporting feature for a spin? Playwright Workspaces Reporting is now available for all Playwright Workspace users. Use the following links to get started –

• Quickstart Guide
• Troubleshooting FAQs

Share your feedback

As always, we welcome feedback: let us know what works great for you and what you’d love to see next.

Overview

End‑to‑end testing at scale is a common challenge when teams need reliable, cross‑browser validation without managing infrastructure. Azure Playwright Testing Service (Preview) simplifies this by allowing you to run Playwright tests on cloud-hosted browsers directly from your local setup.

In this post, I’ll walk through how to:

• Set up Azure Playwright Testing Service
• Configure your Playwright project
• Run UI and API tests on remote browsers
• View execution logs, HTML reports, and traces

This guide uses Playwright with TypeScript in Visual Studio / VS Code and is based on hands‑on setup steps.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• An active Azure subscription
• Node.js installed
• A Playwright project using TypeScript
• Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code

Step 1: Create a Playwright Workspace in Azure Portal

1. Go to Azure Portal → Microsoft Playwright Testing (Preview)
2. Select your subscription and region
3. Create a new workspace

Once created, the workspace will serve as the execution environment for your cloud browser tests.

Step 2: Create a Playwright Project Locally

Create a Playwright project in Visual Studio or VS Code and add your test cases under the tests folder.

Example structure:

tests/

└── example.spec.ts

Your Playwright tests will be executed from this project using Azure-hosted browsers.

Step 3: Add Playwright Service Configuration

1. Open your Azure Playwright workspace
2. On the Home page, download the Playwright service configuration file
   • Link provided in portal: https://aka.ms/mpt/service-config
3. Add the file (playwright.service.config.ts) to your project
4. Place it in the same directory as playwright.config.ts

This configuration enables communication between your local tests and the cloud service.

Step 4: Generate Access Token and Service URL

Within the Playwright Testing portal:

1. Generate a new access token
2. Copy:
   • Access Token
   • Region-specific Service URL

Step 5: Configure Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the same folder as your config files and add:

PLAYWRIGHT_SERVICE_ACCESS_TOKEN={YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN} PLAYWRIGHT_SERVICE_URL={YOUR_REGION_ENDPOINT}

These values authenticate your test runs with Azure Playwright Testing Service.

Step 6: Install Playwright VS Code Extension (Optional)

For an improved developer experience, install the Playwright Test extension:

• https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-playwright.playwright

Step 7: Run Tests on Remote Browsers

Open a terminal and run:

To execute a specific test file:

npx playwright test example.spec.ts --config=playwright.service.config.ts