Jason Haley

My Session at Boston Code Camp 40

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday was Boston Code Camp 40, hard to believe it is still going after all these years. We had a good turn out too!

I presented “Agentic RAG”, which was very similar to the session I presented at the Memphis AgentCamp a couple of weeks ago. Due to all the traveling I’ve done since then, I didn’t have a lot of time to update it.

Agentic RAG

It was nice to have an in person group of attendees, so I was able to tailor the content to spend more time on what they wanted. I spent more time on the basics of RAG than Agentic RAG this time.

My Session at Memphis AgentCamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today is Memphis AgentCamp - you still have time to catch some sessions! The schedule is here: Schedule.

As always Doug Starnes did a fantastic job organizing a multi-track conference. I’m always impressed at how well he organizes his events.

I presented “Agentic RAG”, which was a long form of the session I presented at the Agent Framework Dev in January. This one was all new code too.

Agentic RAG

The presentation was a quick overview of traditional RAG and focused on using agent framework to build Agentic RAG.

Introducing Agentic RAG Python Sample - IT Support Ticket Search

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Agentic RAG Python Sample – IT Support Ticket Search

A Python sample demonstrating how to build an agentic, multi-agent RAG system using Microsoft’s Agent Framework

I finally finished up the code for the Agentic RAG sample that has been a long time in the making … it will answer all the question types I’ve been after for awhile now:

These were inspired by the https://github.com/amazon-science/mintaka project that I discovered a long time ago.

Hands-on Agent Framework Workshop Jan 2026

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Udai Ramachandran and I held the first In-person, hands-on, all-day, free. Agent Framework Dev Day in BURLINGTON MA for the year. This year, we targeted both .NET and python developers (last year we only focused on .NET).

My presentation and labs focused on implementing Agentic RAG with Agent Framework.

Talk: Agentic RAG

NOTE: The repository has moved to the new Agent Framework Dev Day github.

About the Lab

This year I tried to stay away from the instructional labs that just turns into a treasure hunt, copy paste set of instructions … though not completely.

Personal Update January 2026

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This year I am back writing blogs! I’ll attempt to provide a quarterly personal update, but otherwise I’m going to be providing a lot on Microsoft’s Agent Framework, Microsoft Foundry and I will finally be getting to that Agentic RAG Chronicles series I announced Q4 last year.

Personal Update

I will keep this short … last year was not a good year for me personally. Every time I “pre-announced” a blog post series (Dec 2024 and Oct 2025), something bad happened in my personal and family life shortly after. Every quarter had its own nightmare scenario happen. Emotionally it sucked.

My Session at Boston Code Camp 39

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This past Saturday was Boston Code Camp 39 (fall edition). For those of you who don’t know, the Boston Code Camp is the one that started it all (back in 2004) - see wikipedia for more info … at this point it may also be the last remaining one (not sure.).

I got to visit with many old friends that I mostly just see at Code Camp these days … many of which I met at a code camp some time in the past 20+ years. I did not get to attend any sessions due to taking the time to catch up with people instead.

Agentic RAG Chronicles

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing: The Agentic RAG Chronicles (Blog Series)

Last year I chronicled several RAG Demos with the idea I would have a documented place to return to when I was looking for specify RAG features. Having those demos documented and all the reference links in one location really was useful for me - so I am going to do the same thing this year, but with Agentic RAG components.

Agentic RAG

Last year when I was learning RAG, that technique became known as Standard RAG or Semantic RAG. At its core, it’s a system that uses semantic search—understanding meaning rather than just matching keywords—to find relevant information, then feeds that information to an LLM to answer a user’s question. When you first build one of these systems, the results feel almost magical. But it doesn’t take long before you encounter questions the system can’t answer using semantic search alone.

Hands-on Boston AgentCon Workshop

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This past Saturday, I held my latest hands on workshop: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence at AgentCon Boston. I ended up with around 30 attendees. There was quite a bit of interaction, with some real practical questions being asked about RAG and GenAI applications.

Hand-on-Lab: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence

The repository is located at: https://github.com/JasonHaley/agentcon-boston-workshop

What is it?

The end result (which is the “completed” branch of the repo), is a Chainlit application designed to provide four use cases:

2025 Agent Con Boston

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday we hosted our local Global AI Community’s AgentCon conference and had over 150 attendees! It was a full day of sessions and workshops.

I spent most of the day in the workshop room, which were really well attended - we could have used a room twice the size.

I didn’t get to attend to the sessions in the main room - that room was also pretty full:

We ended with a panel discussion on Responsible AI:

PC Build 2025

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On July 3, I was greeted by the following image - reminding me I needed to get new hardware … by October 14, 2025.

Of course it wasn’t a surprise, I knew I needed to replace it for the past year or so but it seems there is never a good time to configure a brand new desktop. Until this month when my project work happened to end mid-month - giving me a couple of weeks between projects … so last week I ordered the parts.

Virtual Boston Azure AI - Microsoft Build Recap

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last night Bill, Udai, Veronika and I gave our top picks from Microsoft Build at the Virtual Boston Azure AI meetup.

In order to not overlap topics, we each picked areas to cover - mine was Copilot and Copilot Studio.

My picks:

Copilot Wave 2 Spring release features – this was announced in April but still hasn’t landed for us. You’ll know when this lands due to the look of Copilot changing. The navigation will be on the left side of the screen with the new release (instead of the right where it is now).

Updated Semantic Kernel Blogs and Github Repo

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend I upgraded the semantic-kernel-getting-started repository to the latest code.

It was mostly to move to .NET 9 (I’d forgotten it was still all .NET 8) and the latest version of the Semantic Kernel libraries. However there were a few things that needed changed:

Planners Were Deprecated

The Planners were deprecated last year (more information here: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations).

This means the blog posts Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 1 and Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 2 are not longer relevant. I’ve updated those blog posts indicating the deprecation and have removed the code projects from the solution in Github (the code is still there but not loaded with the solution).

Microsoft Build 2025: Azure AI Search

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft Build 2025: Azure AI Search

If you use Azure AI Search for your RAG applications, you are going to be excited about the new features that were just announced at Microsoft Build 2025.

If you want a video that provides a good overview, I’d recommend watching Pablo Castro’s talk Knowledge Retrieval: RAG for enterprise agents with Azure AI Search, he did a great job highlighting most of the new features.

Custom AI Search Skill to Convert Markdown Tables to JSON

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Custom Azure AI Search Skill to Convert Markdown Tables to JSON

I was recently asked what options there are for handling large tables in PDFs, when ingesting files for a RAG application. The question was concerning a retrieval system that was having a problem identifying relevant data in some tables. The problem seemed to be due to the headings not being in the same chunk as the data - so the data doesn’t have any context to indicate its meaning.

My Session at Boston Global AI Bootcamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was Boston Azure AI’s Edition of the Global AI Bootcamp at the NERD in Cambridge.

We had a lot of interest in the event - 85 people on the RSVP list and almost that on the waitlist. Since the space we had couldn’t handle any more people, unfortunately we couldn’t let more people in. However since there was such good interest in a Saturday AI oriented bootcamp, we are working on planning another one soon - so if you happen to be one of those people that couldn’t attend - stay tuned!

2025 NYC AI Tour

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In January, I volunteered at that New York City AI Tour Event and got to attend a few sessions in the afternoon.

I spent the morning at the OpenAI booth answering general questions about Azure OpenAI. It was fun to hear what sort of projects people have and how they are using AI in general.

I’d forgotten how sore you legs can get from just standing on a cement floor all day … and was reminded to wear sneakers to my next conference - NOT my normal leather boots.

Hands-on AI Workshop Jan 2025

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I had the second Hands-on AI Workshop - this time in Cambridge MA. Like the last time, the goal was to give the attendees a hands on experience using Semantic Kernel. The target audience was .NET developers using Visual Studio Code looking to learn GenAI.

My presentation and labs focused on RAG.

Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

I made a few small changes since the December workshop, mostly in the part where I discuss chunking.

An AZD Template for a Chainlit Azure Container App

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An AZD Template for a Chainlit Azure Container App

Late last year I was looking for an AZD template that uses Chainlit for a UI application and deploys to Azure Container Apps, but couldn’t find one … so now I’m working on building one.

Chainlit OpenAI AssistantsAPI Azure Container Apps Starter

This is a starter template that works with Azure Developer CLI (AZD) to create a Chainlit application and deploy it to Azure in a matter of minutes. The application code currently uses OpenAI and OpenAI Assistants API - I’m working on adding more functionality to it soon.

Introducing: the Local RAG Series (with Semantic Kernel)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing: The Local RAG Series with Semantic Kernel

This year I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and its related technologies. I’ve also had my eye on agents and plan to focus on them a lot in 2025. From what I’ve seen with my limited work with agents so far is: they can be chatty. This has lead me to believe that agents will really take off once either the price of LLMs available via APIs lower (a lot) or local models become sufficient to use.

eShopSupport Series: EvaluationTests Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the seventh part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

NOTE: This entry will make the most sense to you if you’ve first read eShopSupport: Evaluator Project

EvaluationTests Project

The EvaluationTests project is a recently added xUnit Test Project that uses the new Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Evaluation packages highlighted in this blog: Evaluate the quality of your AI applications with ease. I think the idea is to replace the Evaluator project but, as is, it doesn’t run all 500 evaluation questions in the dev folder (which is good since it would not be cheap to do unless you are running locally).

A Semantic Kernel Workshop

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing: A Semantic Kernel Workshop

Friday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I finally were able to make the workshop we’ve been working on for the past couple of months public. We had an in person day long event where we used the content, which was received really well. The attendees had some good questions - giving us some really good ideas on how to improve the content.

Target audience: .NET developers looking to start using Gen AI in their applications

Hands-on AI Workshop Dec 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I put on a Hands-on AI Workshop in Burlington MA. The goal was to give the attendees hands on experience using Semantic Kernel. The target audience was .NET developers using Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio looking to learn GenAI.

I gave the middle presentations and labs focusing on RAG.

Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

This was an intro level presentation on what RAG is and the concepts you need to know to create a RAG system. The presentation can be downloaded on the github here

Azure SQL, Entity Framework, Semantic Kernel Hands-on-Lab

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing: Build a RAG App using Semantic Kernel, Entity Framework and Azure SQL DB Hands-on-Lab

A couple of weeks ago after Azure SQL DB announced their public preview of native vector support, I put a hands on lab together to help people get started with the new feature and EF Core extension. Bill Wilder and I did mentioned it in our presentations on December 12 and December 15, but I haven’t had a chance to announce it for those of you who missed our presentations.

Boston Code Camp 37 Session

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was Boston Code Camp 37. I spent the majority of the day talking with people in the community I haven’t seen for awhile, as well as some new people I hadn’t met before. I only made it to one session (Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez - Agentic AI: Unlocking the Power of Multi-Agent Systems), which was good and got me thinking about how to rewrite my demos in my talk to use agents.

Virtual Boston Azure Lunchtime November 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today at lunchtime Bill Wilder and I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. Our talks were based on the same material we presented on Tuesday night, however I introduced eShopSupport as well today.

The recording of the session can be found on the (Lunchtime editions) Boston Azure YouTube channel.

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

My part of the presentation PDF can be downloaded here.

Virtual Boston Azure November 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night Bill Wilder and I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. Our talks were about adding GenAI to .NET applications. My portion was mostly demos that focused on Azure SQL’s new native VECTOR support, Entity Framework Core and Semantic Kernel.

The recording of the session can be found on the Boston Azure YouTube channel.

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

eShopSupport Series: Customer Web UI Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the sixth part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

CustomerWebUI Project

The CustomerWebUI project is a Blazor application used to capture support ticket information from customers. It is one of the two user interface projects in the solution that highlight how to adding some AI functionality into business applications can be useful. The project is located under the src folder:

In this entry I’ll cover the functionality the web application provides, a few things I found interesting and some thoughts on improvements.

eShopSupport Series: Python Inference Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifth part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

PythonInference Project

The PythonInference Project is a python project that provides a web API to classify the case type when a new customer support ticket is entered in the system. It does this by passing the user’s comment to the API, which uses a local model from Hugging Face (cross-encoder/nli-MiniLM2-L6-H768) to classify the text.

eShopSupport Series: Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

The Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

Unlike the other blog entries in this eShopSupport Series, this one is going to cover two projects in the solution: AppHost and ServiceDefaults - both are important for the Aspire local development experience. These projects are located under the src folder:

In this entry I’ll cover the details of how the AppHost and ServiceDefaults projects are used in the local development environment, a few things I found interesting and some thoughts on improvements.

Techbash 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I presented at the TechBash conference in Pocono Manor, PA. All the resources for the conference are available on the TechBash GitHub repo. Below are links to my presentations specifically.

It was great to see companies sending their employees to conferences again. This was my first time at TechBash, and I finally got to meet Alvin Ashcraft in person (the Morning Dew). I also met a bunch of people from the Philly area and around Pennsylvania, but there were attendees from all over-even a couple of guys from Panama!

eShopSupport Series: Evaluator Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

Evaluator Project

The Evaluator project is a console application used to evaluate the chat portion of the application provided by the AssistantApi in the Backend project. The Evaluator application uses the questions in the evalquestions.json file to test the assistant API and scores the results it returns against the answers in that JSON file. This gives you the ability to measure the quality of the chat functionality - which is an important thing to do when you are building application functionality that depends on an LLM.

eShopSupport Series: DataIngestor Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

DataIngestor Project

The DataIngestor is a console application that will process the data files created by the DataGenerator - it does not ingest the data into any of the databases. I mentioned in the last entry about the DataGenerator that you didn’t need to use the DataGenerator because there are two sets of generated files provided in the github repo: dev and test. What I failed to mention is those files are result of both the DataGenerator and the DataIngestor being run. So you also don’t have to use the DataIngestor.

eShopSupport Series: DataGenerator Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first part of my eShopSupport Series which looks into the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

DataGenerator Project

The DataGenerator is a console application that will generate multiple types of seed data files for loading into the application or to use when evaluating the question answering functionality. However, you don’t have to use the DataGenerator - there are two sets of generated files provided in the github repo: dev and test.

In this entry I will provide some detail of what the DataGenerator application does, some interesting things about it and a few things I’d like to change.

Virtual Boston Azure August 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. The talk was about the Azure Developer CLI and geared towards developers.

The recording of the session can be found on the Boston Azure YouTube channel.

Talk: What is the Azure Dev CLI (AZD) and How Can You Use It?

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

The resource slides:

I added this slide after the presentation with links I mentioned after the recording was stopped:

eShopSupport Series

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing: The eShopSupport Series

In case you missed this week’s .NET Conf Focus on AI you can find all the videos on the dotnet YouTube channel. The one I want to point out here is: Better Together: .NET Aspire and Semantic Kernel with Steve Sanderson and Matthew Bolanos.

Steve’s portion of the talk is a distilled version of his NDC talk earlier this year: How to add genuinely useful AI to your webapp (not just chatbots) where he introduced the eShopSupport project. If you are a .NET developer looking for ways to use AI in real world applications - you should absolutely watch that video.

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Projects)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about the notebook I created when I was working out the flow of the property graph RAG implementation. In this entry I will go through the two projects I created to provide some reusable code as well as allow for better experimentation:

NOTE: In order to get the most out of this blog post, you should first read the related two posts.

Wisconsin .NET User Group

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday night I spoke at the Wisconsin .NET User Group near Milwaukee, WI. I was nice to meet so many .NET developers interested in RAG and AI.

To carry on the tradition from my Memphis talk, I gave the presentation a local look using images related to Milwaukee generated from Bing/create.

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

One of my demos failed to deploy before the talk, but I don’t think it was missed due to having so many good questions. It was really nice meeting a user group with so many core members. Plus the pizza was really good!

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Notebook)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Monday I posted my notes on this last month’s study topic of property graph RAG, which has the general information I’ve collected. In this entry I want to go through some code I created in a polyglot notebook (ie. a notebook that has C# code instead of python), when I was working through the steps needed for a property graph RAG application.

Where To Get The Code

The code for this entry is in my Github repo semantic-kernel-getting-started under the notebooks folder:

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past month I’ve been focusing on Graph RAG. This entry is an attempt to capture some lessons learned and a place to itemize all the resources I’ve found useful.

NOTE: My approach to this topic was to find a way to improve a typical RAG implementation that only uses vector similarity searching.

Study Notes: Text-to-SQL Code Sample

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I posted my notes from this week’s study topic of Text-to-SQL, which if you haven’t read it - provides more information and resources about the topic. In this entry I want to walk through a code sample I put together after playing with a few samples this week.

Where To Get The Code

The code for this entry is in my GitHub repo semantic-kernel-getting-started under the samples/demos/Text-to-Sql directory.

Originally I considered making this a review of the NL2SQL code sample, but I ended up needing to make some changes to it, so I just copied over some of their code for my sample - that is why the nl2sql.library project is there (also there is a Nl2Sql folder in the TextToSqlConsole project with some other files from their repo). If you are looking into Text-to-SQL, I highly recommend taking a look at their sample.

Study Notes: Text-to-SQL

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I’ve been researching Text-to-SQL (also known as Natural Language to SQL), below are my study notes to compile all the resources I’ve found on the topic to date. There is also a corresponding blog entry that walks through a code example.

NOTE: I am approaching this topic specifically looking at how it can be used to extend usage scenarios in a RAG application.

Background

Text-to-SQL (or Natural Language to SQL) is a pattern where the objective is to have an LLM generate SQL statements for a database using natural language.

Boston Azure June 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night was the Season of AI presentation. We started with Bill Wilder presenting the fundamentals of Generative AI and quick introduction to Azure AI Studio, then I finished up with a .NET code walkthrough implement Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) using Semantic Kernel.

It was nice to see a lot of regular faces and meet several new people.

Demo Code

The demo code is on my GitHub repo BostonAzure-June2024 under a subdirectory.

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

This is the fifth C# demo in The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series) and has the most extensive use of Semantic Kernel out of all the demos I’ve reviewed.

The use of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is different with this project than the other demos I’ve reviewed - mainly because RAG is just one of its features.

With this demo, I also took the time to configure the optional authentication so I could play with the MS Graph plugin … and WOW! Just adding the web searcher and MS Graph plugin really make this a powerful demo app. It gives me a lot of ideas for my own projects.

Semantic Kernel Hello World WebSearchEnginePlugin

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: The Bing Search APIS are being deprecated. See the announcement for more details: Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025. I have updated the post and corresponding Github code to use the Brave connector instead.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I’d written my last of these blogs, mainly due to me getting more in depth with Semantic Kernel. However, after I watched Will Velida’s video Using Bing Search API in the Semantic Kernel SDK … I couldn’t help but wonder what the API calls were behind the scenes. Will does a great job at explaining how to use the plugin and the Bing resource needed to make calls to the search API, so I won’t get into that part of it - I want to focus on the usefulness and API calls made by the plugin.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 2 - (Deprecated)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: Planners have been deprecated. See this Semantic Kernel blog for more detail: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations

Last week in the Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 1 entry, I used the Handlebars planner to implement the sample Hello World functionality and then looked at the token difference between using a saved plan vs. generating a plan. In this entry I use the Function Calling Stepwise Planner to create the sample Hello World functionality and compare it to the implementation in the Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3 entry.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 1 - (Deprecated)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: Planners have been deprecated. See this Semantic Kernel blog for more detail: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations

A few weeks ago in the Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3 blog entry, I showed how to use OpenAI Function Calling. The last half of that entry was all about how to view the response and request JSON going back and forth to OpenAI, which detailed four API calls. In this entry I look at using the Handlebars Planner to accomplish the same functionality. Then I’ll show the request and response JSON for both using a saved plan as well as having the LLM create a plan and end with a token usage comparison.

Memphis Azure User Group

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday night I spoke at the Memphis Azure User Group, it was nice to meet some people in person and see how excited others are about finding valuable ways to work GenAI into their applications.

I also gave my slide deck a completely new look (Memphis themed via Bing/create):

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

Since the presentation was hybrid, there were not as many questions as the other two times I’ve given the talk … or that is my guess at the reason why it was so quiet. That also means I should have put that third demo back in the presentation (I took a demo out after the first version of the talk since there were so many questions and needed to free up time for Q&A). Next time I’ll have it ready to use in case I need it.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I blogged Part 2 showing the creation of a native function plugin, in this post I want to take that native function a step further and use the OpenAI Function calling. This will allow us to not provide the current date when making the call to get a historic daily fact and have OpenAI call a function to get the current date.

I’ve added the HelloWorld.Plugin3.Console project to the GitHub repo for the code in this blog entry.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 2

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago I blogged Part 1, in which I moved the prompt to a prompt template. In this part, I implement a native function that will take in the current date and make the call to the LLM.

I’ve put the code for this blog in the HelloWorld.Plugin2.Console project in the same repo as the other SK entries: semantic-kernel-getting-started.

Semantic Kernel Plugin: Native Function

There is a good Microsoft Learn module: Give your AI agent skills that walks you through the details of what a native function is and how to implement them.

My Session at Boston Global Azure Bootcamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past weekend was Boston Azure’s Edition of the annual Global Azure Bootcamp. This year we focused on AI and hands-on-labs.

The odd thing about when we scheduled the meetup was we had a lot of people sign up for the group just to rsvp - before most of the existing members had gotten around to rsvp’ing. We did not expect that. It is a mystery as how they heard about the event so quick. We only had one room reserved, so there really was a hard cap on how many people we could let in.

Jason Haley

My Session at Boston Code Camp 40

Agentic RAG

My Session at Memphis AgentCamp

Agentic RAG

Introducing Agentic RAG Python Sample - IT Support Ticket Search

Introducing Agentic RAG Python Sample – IT Support Ticket Search

Hands-on Agent Framework Workshop Jan 2026

Talk: Agentic RAG

About the Lab

Personal Update January 2026

Personal Update

My Session at Boston Code Camp 39

Agentic RAG Chronicles

Introducing: The Agentic RAG Chronicles (Blog Series)

Agentic RAG

Hands-on Boston AgentCon Workshop

Hand-on-Lab: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence

What is it?

2025 Agent Con Boston

PC Build 2025

Virtual Boston Azure AI - Microsoft Build Recap

My picks:

Updated Semantic Kernel Blogs and Github Repo

Planners Were Deprecated

Microsoft Build 2025: Azure AI Search

Microsoft Build 2025: Azure AI Search

Custom AI Search Skill to Convert Markdown Tables to JSON

Custom Azure AI Search Skill to Convert Markdown Tables to JSON

My Session at Boston Global AI Bootcamp

2025 NYC AI Tour

Hands-on AI Workshop Jan 2025

Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

An AZD Template for a Chainlit Azure Container App

An AZD Template for a Chainlit Azure Container App

Chainlit OpenAI AssistantsAPI Azure Container Apps Starter

Introducing: the Local RAG Series (with Semantic Kernel)

Announcing: The Local RAG Series with Semantic Kernel

eShopSupport Series: EvaluationTests Project

EvaluationTests Project

A Semantic Kernel Workshop

Announcing: A Semantic Kernel Workshop

Hands-on AI Workshop Dec 2024

Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Azure SQL, Entity Framework, Semantic Kernel Hands-on-Lab

Announcing: Build a RAG App using Semantic Kernel, Entity Framework and Azure SQL DB Hands-on-Lab

Boston Code Camp 37 Session

Virtual Boston Azure Lunchtime November 2024

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

Virtual Boston Azure November 2024

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

eShopSupport Series: Customer Web UI Project

CustomerWebUI Project

eShopSupport Series: Python Inference Project

PythonInference Project

eShopSupport Series: Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

The Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

Techbash 2024

eShopSupport Series: Evaluator Project

Evaluator Project

eShopSupport Series: DataIngestor Project

DataIngestor Project

eShopSupport Series: DataGenerator Project

DataGenerator Project

Virtual Boston Azure August 2024

Talk: What is the Azure Dev CLI (AZD) and How Can You Use It?

eShopSupport Series

Announcing: The eShopSupport Series

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Projects)

Related posts:

Wisconsin .NET User Group

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Notebook)

Related posts:

Where To Get The Code

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG

Related posts:

Study Notes: Text-to-SQL Code Sample

Where To Get The Code

Study Notes: Text-to-SQL

UPDATE: The Bing Search APIS are being deprecated. See the announcement for more details: Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025. I have updated the post and corresponding Github code to use the Brave connector instead.