As AI agents evolve, they increasingly need to do more than just respond to text—they must analyze structured data, reason over complex patterns, and perform custom computations on demand. This is especially true in real-world scenarios where users upload large CSV files and expect agents to perform tasks like exploratory data analysis or generating insights—all from natural language prompts.

Why This Matters

The above image captures why this matters - behind this need lies a real challenge that many businesses face today. Data is diverse, fragmented, and large. It often comes in the form of CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, or JSON—containing thousands or even millions of rows. But this raw data is rarely useful on its own.

It typically requires:

• Cleaning and transformation
• Custom logic to extract insights
• Visualizations or summaries that make the data actionable

These steps are often manual, error-prone, and time-consuming—especially for users without data science or engineering expertise.

Introducing "Python Code Execution" in Logic Apps 

We’re excited to announce support for Python code execution inside Logic Apps Agent Loop, powered by Azure Container Apps (ACA) session pool.

This capability enables Logic Apps developers to use Python Code Interpreter as a tool in Agent loop to:

• Accept natural language instructions
• Automatically generate Python code
• Execute that code securely on uploaded datasets (like CSV or JSON)
• Return insights, visualizations, or next-step data back to the user

This brings the power of a code interpreter—similar to ChatGPT’s advanced data analysis tool—right into the Logic Apps runtime. Instead of writing code or manually manipulating spreadsheets, users can now describe their intent in natural language—for example:

• “Find the top 5 products by revenue”
• “Forecast demand by region for the next quarter”
• “Highlight customer segments based on purchase patterns”

Under the hood, Logic Apps now enables this flow by interpreting the instruction, generating Python code, executing it securely in an isolated environment, and returning usable results— summaries, forecasts, or data transformations—within the same workflow.

Real-World Use Cases

This opens up a wide range of possibilities for businesses looking to embed intelligence into their automation:

• Sales & Marketing: Upload raw sales data and get on-the-fly summaries, forecasts, or regional comparisons.
• Finance: Analyze expense reports, detect anomalies, or generate quarterly breakdowns from Excel exports.
• Operations: Clean large log files, surface exceptions, and generate insights to improve reliability.
•  Data Exploration: Let business users ask questions like “Which region had the highest YoY growth?” without writing a single line of code.

How It Works

• The action to execute Python code is powered by Azure Container Apps (ACA)session pool. Azure Container Apps dynamic sessions provides fast and scalable access to a code interpreter. Each code interpreter session is fully isolated by a Hyper-V boundary and is designed to run untrusted code. By enabling network isolation on ACA, your data never leaves the defined network boundaries
• In Logic Apps, choose the action to execute Python code. You need to create a connection to the ACA session before you use the action. The code to execute can be authored by the developer or generated by the agent
• Optionally, upload file to the ACA session which can then be referenced as a data source in the Python code
• Run the workflow to get insights/results from the action execution

Getting Started

The demo video shows how to use this feature. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, please reach out to us via this form: http://aka.ms/la/feedback

As I discussed in my previous post the Uno Platform team have release a subscription based offering, Uno Platform Studio, which includes a runtime visual designer, Hot Design. In this post we’re going to use a new application to launch Hot Design and take a look around.

The first thing to be aware of after creating, or even opening an existing, Uno Platform application is any Uno Check prompts that might appear. If you see one of these prompts, take a few minutes to fix any of the identified issues, to avoid countless hours wondering why you can’t build, launch, debug or publish your application.

Once you’ve fixed any issues, you can go ahead and run the application – Both the Hot Reload and Hot Design experiences work with a running application. Check out the Hot Reload support matrix to determine whether to run with or without the debugger – Hot Reload is required for Hot Design, so make sure you pick the debugging option that enables Hot Reload.

Studio Toolbar

When you launch an Uno Platform application in debug, you’ll see the Studio Toolbar, which currently includes the Hot Design (left) and Hot Reload (right) icons.

If instead the toolbar buttons appear with a blue dot (see below image), this means that you either don’t have an Uno Platform account, or you’re not signed into your account.

Clicking on either button will show a teaching tip with more information and a button to launch the Studio app, that comes with the IDE extension/plugin.

The Studio application will appear (if it’s not visible, it may have launched behind other windows) and will give you options to register or sign in. Both options require opening the Uno Platform website and creating or signing into your account.

Once you’re signed in, the buttons in the Studio toolbar will automatically update, as too will the information in the Studio app.

Launching Hot Design

Clicking the Hot Design button will launch the designer experience.

Toolbox

In the top-left is the Toolbox, listing available controls which can be added to the application.

Controls in the Toolbox can be dragged onto either the canvas (design area in the middle) or the Elements tree

Elements

The Elements tree shows a hierarchical breakdown of the UI elements visible in the current Window.

In the Elements tree existing elements can be individually, or multi, selected.

Properties

With items selected (either from the Elements tree, or clicking on them in the canvas), the available properites for the selected selements is available in the Properties.

In addition to showing the current property values, the Properties can also be used to update property values.

Studio Toolbar

Once inside Hot Design, the Studio Toolbar transforms into a toolbar that assists with testing different form factors, different themes, toggling into interaction mode and performing undo/redo operations.

The form factor flyout allows for adjusting the design size of the application, with predefined devices sizes and the ability to enter a custom size. The flyout can also be used to adjust the zoom applied to the design canvas.

In this post we’ve touched on a few of the key tool windows that make up Hot Design. Stay tuned for more feature deep dives in the coming posts.

The post Launching and Exploring Hot Design for Uno Platform appeared first on Nick's .NET Travels.

If you are already familiar with live templates, feel free to skip to the live template for kotlin tests

If you use IntelliJ-based IDEs like Android Studio, WebStorm, etc., chances are that you have seen some kinds of “shortcuts” (pictured below) show up when you press some key combinations. These are called live templates.

For example, if you type sout in a Java/Kotlin file, you see a pop-up like the one above. When you press tab, it autocompletes into System.out.println (in Java) or println in Kotlin.

Live templates allow you to generate common code constructs by typing keywords that trigger the template. This feature is not new, and I definitely remember seeing it in the Netbeans IDE when I developed J2ME applications.

If, like me, you write a lot of Android code in Android Studio, you may also know that if you type comp in a Kotlin file and press the tab key, a composable function is generated.

I have personally found these templates extremely useful for developing faster, and I use them all the time. I even have a few of my own templates, and one of them is the main reason I am writing this article.

—

Live Template for Kotlin tests

One of the things I do almost every day when I write code is write tests. If you use Kotlin, you might know that backticks are allowed in test function names.

I like to optimise my workflow, and I realised this was an opportunity to save myself a few keystrokes for every test I write. I ended up writing a live template to automatically create a test function with backticks (does anyone else find the backtick key awkwardly placed on the keyboard?).

To set this up, I follow the instructions on JetBrains’ website. You can do the same:

1. CMD + , to open settings
2. Navigate to Editor > Live Templates
3. Select Kotlin group (the templates are usually grouped, but you can also create your own group if you so please)
4. Click on the little + button or CMD + N , and select 1 or Live Template

Now we can begin to set the details for the live template.

The first thing is to set an abbreviation and a description for the template. I used ktest for the abbreviation and a description that says “Creates a Kotlin test function with backticks”.

Next, I define the applicable context. Since this is a test function, I set it to Kotlin > Class. If you want to define a live template applicable to other kinds of files, you can also set that there.

Then the template text:

@Test
fun `$NAME$`() {
    $END$
}

The $NAME$ and $END$ here are variables in the templating system.

• $END$ indicates the position of the cursor after the template has been executed.
• $NAME$ is a variable for the function name.

The overall setup looks like this for me:

And when I type ktest in a test file, this pops up:

The templating system

The templating system is more involved than shown here, and the template could be much more complex. In this example, we are not really using the function name for anything else.

Let’s imagine for a moment that we wanted to add a comment with the function name capitalised. To do that, we could introduce a new variable called $COMMENT$. Then, we can edit the variable and apply one of the pre-defined template functions to the NAME variable.

What else is this useful for?

Another use-case for live templates is for live coding demos or presentations. If you are doing a live coding demo and expect to create certain scaffolding, you can prepare it as a live template before your presentation.

What about sharing?

Unfortunately, sharing the template is a bit manual at the moment. JetBrains does allow you to sync templates, but it only syncs across your IDEs. There does not seem to be an immediately obvious way to automatically share them across your team. I think it’s a solvable problem, but I haven’t had time to look into it yet.

You can see more sharing options on JetBrains website.

I hope you have found this note helpful. I initially started this as a note to share with my coworkers and friends, but I decided to write it here, in the spirit of wisely spending the keystrokes I have left :D.

1100. This week, we talk with popular online linguist Adam Aleksic, also known as Etymology Nerd. We discuss "algospeak" and how social media algorithms are changing language. We discuss euphemisms like "unalive," the spread of trending words, and how content creators adapt their speech to go viral. 

Adam Aleksic - The Etymology Nerd

Adam's book - "Algospeak"

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