Power Platform Boost Podcast

It depends (#51)

• Season 1 • Episode 51

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Tallinn recap
Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn
"Top 10 Copilot Use-Cases from real customer projects" - Daniel Rohregger
"Master Custom Pages in Model-driven Apps" - Cathrine Bruvold
"How to work like a brainiac in M365 – a no-brainer" - Caroline Kallin
"Overcoming Information Overload Or How to Build A Second Brain" - Pauline Kolde

 

ACDC recap
Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge
Blog posts by Itera Power Potters
Final Submission from video Itera Power Potters

 

Upcoming Events

Canadian Power Platform Summit
March 21-22nd
Tickets on sale - January 1st 

ColorCloud
April 24-25th
Ulrikke's Power Pages Workshop: "Power Pages: From creation to go-live!"
Session with Andrew Wingate: "Business Central + Power Pages = TRUE" 

DynamicsCon
May 13th - 16th, 2025
Nick's session on "Crash course in Power Platform Pipelines"



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Nick:

So the title of the poem this is by a friend, rory Neary is why AI? Lately I've wondered about AI its purpose, its value, the what and the why. I suspect that if Enterprise went to confession they admit an unhealthy AI obsession.

Ulrikke:

We live in billions upon planet Earth. Do we need AI? What is it worth? We have artists and poets and authors galore, so why steal their content just to produce more?

Nick:

And say we're more efficient as a human race. What will we do with this newfound space? What will we use this time to do? To change our role? Or sit on our phones and just scroll and scroll?

Ulrikke:

My concern with all this is my latest activity. I think we're squandering mankind's creativity. The quick create pictures are easy to manage, and deep fake images they all do so much damage.

Nick:

Is this like when we discovered the wheel? But this time we just cannot tell what is real and the chances and possibilities, oh, are so broad for carrying out the most stupendous fraud.

Ulrikke:

Don't get me wrong Now, I love chat GPT it brights the cold whilst I make the tea. But this weekend, try doing something that's real Draw a picture, sing a song and see you feel. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Power Platform Boost podcast, your timely source of Power Platform news and updates, with your hosts, Nick Doelman and Ulrike Akerbk. Hello.

Nick:

This is episode 51.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, and we forgot to kind of celebrate last time that we were at 50. It just kind of blew past us. That was the 50th episode, yeah.

Nick:

Cause it was all about the release plan.

Ulrikke:

It was. And then it kind of makes me feel good as well, because we're not about the numbers, we just did this for fun, and that kind of proves it.

Nick:

If you were all about the numbers, we'd make a big deal out of it and we're like nah it's fun, it's okay, it's just a number, but then, yeah, like I, but still like like doing 50 episodes, that's I don't know. I yeah, who, who to funk.

Ulrikke:

So did it touch your source button or anything? 50? No, no, 38, 38, no no, 51, 52, 38, no, okay.

Nick:

It's all numbers.

Ulrikke:

It's all numbers, all just numbers.

Nick:

Okay, but we I was going to say, but because our last episode was the release plan episode and we couldn't really say why, Like, anyways, it was a day late. Well, a day late. We released it exactly when it was meant to be released and that was the day of the release plan.

Ulrikke:

Yes, exactly, and then sorry.

Nick:

No, go ahead.

Ulrikke:

Yeah. So the episode before that, we promised that we would make a little bit of a deal out of it, and we've made so many promises lately that we're not owning up to. But actually this time we will end the episode with a poem. It's not one that we wrote, but we will end this with a poem. So there you go. So we kind of deliver, which is deliver a little bit later. There's a lag in the Boost podcast at the moment and then and that kind of goes for a lot of things. So, without you know, poking into that more or pointing fingers or calling names, let's get on with the show.

Nick:

Right Now. The one thing that we did we did ask, or ask the listeners, or ask you folks that are listening, watching, and this is now. We're going into February now, so we realized this is really late. But we asked, we talked about procrastinating, um, and all the all the speaking of stuff we didn't do over Christmas, like building things, like PCF controls or whatever and it's funny, we had a text exchange earlier well, how's your PCF coming along? You're like haven't started and you were like, yeah, me neither so just poking see if you.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, I have one up and running. It's so cool. I was like oh and then I would have kind of to scramble to get it, but you didn't do that either. So that's, that's fine by me.

Nick:

We're never gonna get around you know that right no well, maybe I don't know, because maybe we just sort of go on to the pcf gallery and find something really obscure and download it and see what I built.

Ulrikke:

but yay, I I did it. There you go. Maybe We'll see. Time will tell.

Nick:

But there was a couple of comments. I do want to give some shout outs. One is Andy Wingate, which I think you're doing the presentation with at ColorCloud right.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, I just talked to. Andy actually we were planning our session at ColorCloud hey.

Nick:

Andy. So he basically said, like he had planned all the things. Yeah, planned all the things, actual, only the thing that involved eating and drinking. I can, I can get on board with that. Yep, me too. And then the other one was um w james william yeah, do you know him, anyways? And he said I started a YouTube channel last year with grand plans to turn each video into a blog over the holidays so that people could read from them instead. Yeah, copied a couple. Oh yeah, I think just time disappeared and a lovely break spent relaxing with the family, though Can't complain. So, yeah, that's all good. So, I mean, it's all good intentions, right?

Ulrikke:

But at least we have plans and aspirations. I think that's the part of it. We want to do so many ideas and then some of them fall off, and that's okay. And we always always say when we're old, we can get, get into it, I can sleep when I'm old, I can create a YouTube channel and be successful when I'm old, it's fine, but for now I can do only what I can do, and that's okay.

Nick:

But still, of course, um, of course, there was a release plan, so we talked about one of those cool things, but, um, but yeah, uh, there's other things that kind of got released over the last few weeks, or some of the blogs as well. First one I have on the list here unlock new possibilities by customizing Copilot chat in your apps with Copilot Studio preview. Now, this sounds exactly like everything that's been coming out, but this was actually more within the context of model-driven apps, more closely knit, more than just building a co-pilot and whatever, and you could actually go through the model-driven apps and begin to add co-pilots directly in there. So that looked pretty exciting. And that was by Hermit Gar, who's a principal PM architect. So I've seen some of his talks before I've chatted with him before too. So, yeah, some of his talks before I've chatted with him before too. So, yeah, kind of excited.

Nick:

So, of course, the co-pilot story, co-pilot studio story, and all these things are continuing to evolve on a day-to-day basis. It seems every time I log into co-pilot studio I get completely a little bit flustered sometimes, because things keep moving around and I keep. I keep buying into the marketing hype, thinking I should be able to build this agent that's going to go and do my laundry, and then it doesn't, and then I get upset and then I'm texting you going stupid. Co-pilot Studio. Yeah.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, I know, and yeah, to be fair, I mean, the premise of it is absolutely fantastic and when it works, it works. But it's more of a prototyping tool, more of an ideation type tool at the moment for at least plan designer and the new data workspace at least. And we tried to work with it over the weekend at ACDC, but it wouldn't listen to us when we wanted to make the changes that we did. So after a few hours we abandoned it to make the data model ourselves from scratch and we actually that took us a shorter amount of time. So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's all good and well and I'm excited to see where it goes, but right now it's immature.

Nick:

Um, yeah, let's leave it at that. I like, I like the idea of plan designer and I did a video on it, like about a month ago, with the preview one like, but to be, I think, planned is. I love the idea of going asking questions of what you want your app to do, what the user roles would be, um, that kind of thing. But instead of it going, hey, now that I have this information, I'm going to go build an app, I would actually rather it begin to create my Azure DevOps requirements and user stories, so then from there I could start building my app.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe we'll get there as well One day. The Git integration is lighting up, so maybe people one day you can actually do that.

Nick:

Who knows?

Ulrikke:

And also we saw how you can now work with existing tables in the data workspace that I just mentioned and how you can actually use Copilot to do it and you can also go into it through the interface to do it. It will allow you to only to kind of filter and only use what's already in your solution. So that kind of seems like a good experience and I've, I have longed for that and I know you've longed for that Just being able to add components from another solution and kind of see the diff and what you have and what you don't have. Just that in of itself is like oh, hallelujah, because yeah, so that's going to be an awesome tool for sure.

Nick:

Yeah, it's, it's. You know, I keep saying, I keep referring back to like Access 97, where we can draw the tables and connect them. We're like, oh, we finally get this in Dataverse.

Ulrikke:

Yeah.

Nick:

I know, yeah, and this is something. Every so often this comes up. Someone does a blog, but this is uh, uh, mvp out of the us. We know, I know I'm a hard it uh again naming bat batia and hard it wrote battleship in power apps. Like you know, the use of my battleship, that's so cool.

Ulrikke:

I saw that so cool. I love it and this is the kind of thing that I could show, because my daughter and I we play battleship allhip all the time and this is kind of a way to get the kids interested and it shows you the limitations. I really love this, yeah.

Nick:

So that was on LinkedIn, right.

Ulrikke:

Another one of those LinkedIn posts that.

Nick:

Sorry, yeah, no, yeah, it was on LinkedIn.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, and you have the controls and everything and you know lost and flip of a coin and yeah, no, I really like it and the graphics are really cool. So check that out for sure. I just want to see if there's a link to I'll pull up. Just want to see if there's a link to a pull up that says if there's a link to a repo or some source code or anything. But there wasn't really one, but the idea is awesome.

Nick:

Yeah, he did mention he would post the source code eventually. He was just kind of showing the screenshot. So yeah, hardit, please do post the source code, just to see how you did it.

Ulrikke:

I'm always interested in that kind of stuff, so it'll be and yeah, and there's so much learning in that, and I always and we've talked about this a lot as well that you know, one of the best ways of learning, especially if you're one of those kinetic learners who kind of like to pick things apart, is I. That's kind of what I've learned the most from, I think. Just, uh, you pull up one of the templates or you pull up someone else's app and just dig in and pick it apart a copy, of course to see how they did things, because then you see the little neat little hacks and oh, that's a very cool workaround. I didn't know you could do that and that's very clever. So, yeah, it's a good thing to do. And then this is a link that you put in here Someone else had a very creative outlook on something this week. Oh, boy.

Nick:

Yeah, so this is Sean Astrakhan and Franco, and these two guys, like I don't know. We should let these two guys in the same room together because they just cause trouble.

Nick:

And they'll both be in Vancouver at CPPS as well, so that's worth the price of admission just there. So they posted like what some people would almost I kind of shook when I saw that. I'm like what are you clowns up to? So they basically put ahead the concept of, instead of building a model-driven app, instead use PowerPages for your internal app, and they kind of lay out the arguments for that.

Nick:

And Sean actually had a follow-up graphic later about what's good in model-driven apps, what's good in PowerApps. But it was just sort of like wow, and it caused a whole stream of comments. Of course you have the you know well licensing and this and that and the other thing. And we kind of clarified like no, you can use internal users can use Power Pages and the licensing could be cheaper. But that means you might not have certain other things. And then there's questions about well, is Dataverse included? It is when you get PowerPages licenses on their own. So it was a good discussion. We're going to have the link there. The post is now going to be like a couple of weeks old, but still, reading through the comments it was actually very enlightening because there's quite a few questions that came up. Well, what about this? What about this? And then, yeah, there are some things that truly model-driven apps are better for, but if there is a specific use case, maybe do consider PowerPages for an internal app.

Ulrikke:

So it was pretty interesting. Yeah, 100%, and there are some benefits as well, of course, because what I've heard most with model-driven apps because you can't really customize them. Sometimes they are a bit busy and you have developers creating model-driven driven apps they will be a bit busy. So if you have a very uh, an employee base that needs a very bespoke or very kind of condensed user experience to just do that one thing, I think power pages is a very good idea. Um so, and I just love the fact that they're just pulling this out there and the comments, just like you said, that's where the value is, because if you're new to this space, that will give you kind of a lay of the land of what use cases are good for Power Pages or for model driven apps. And that ties in with what you've been saying, because I remember you back in the day went do you need a business application or do you need a model or an app? Wasn't that the thing you had going? You had a big blog post about it.

Nick:

Oh, no, yeah, it was more. You don't need a If you don't. Do you need CRM or do you just need an app Right?

Ulrikke:

Exactly Right, yeah. So then maybe, yeah, do yeah. Do you need a Power app, or do you need a Power Pages website? It's all with a use case, right? So yeah.

Nick:

The famous two words it depends.

Ulrikke:

Yes, it depends. When I say that out loud I cringe, but then sometimes it does depend.

Nick:

Oh yeah, I think that might be the title of the episode we'll see it depends.

Ulrikke:

And then, but someone where it solves everything, uh, that doesn't depend, she finds a way to solve everything. We're both big fans of amy holden. Um, let's filter and delete flows in Power Automate In true Amy Holden style. This is the issue, this is the thing and this is the steps you need to take to solve it. Screenshots circles around what you need to. You could follow it as a tutorial. It's a lab almost more than anything. I think the question or the problem here is that you install customer insights and with the journeys they create multiple power automate flows in the background and to handle automations you build in your journey, but once they're done and the automation is complete, then they become obsolete. So instead of having a bazillion power animate flows in your environment, she and she says I understand, I see the iron in this. She created a flow to delete all the flows. But it's a very neat trick, I find.

Nick:

Yeah, yeah, amy is a bit of a mad scientist sometimes but I actually love what she does Because she it's very practical what she does and, like and like you and I, we always talk. Our favorite people are get shit done people, and Amy is one of them.

Ulrikke:

And also she's very good at giving so easy to follow instructions and also giving the code and the snippets and the little details that you need to copy out. And so I just and we've said this a lot of times, I know, but we absolutely love her style of blogging because it makes it so easy to understand. So, to the point, there's no fluff, and with Amy in general, there's zero fluff, and I love that. So just keep it going, amy, because you're brilliant.

Nick:

Yes, all right, and the next one is yours.

Ulrikke:

Dataverse activity tables from uh, yeah, not eternal dove. Uh, because activities is one of those things where I this is a kind of a gotcha, gotcha uh, new people in dynamics because they think that activity tables are like every other table. But it is not so, um, he's talking about the database out of the box. Uh, um, activity tables and kind of how they're different from other tables. Um, and also the timeline control and how that works. And the timeline controls kind of been one of those are, I wouldn't say, arch enemies.

Ulrikke:

But I came into dynamics when the old one was kind of disappearing and the new one was not yet fully there. So I have wrestled with that beast for more hours than I care to admit, just because the documentation and the interfaces wasn't aligned. So I struggled to get it to work properly. But now, of course, that's ages and ages ago and now it actually works, and it works well through the new interface, of course. So, yeah, it's a very good blog post and it's one of those things that I like, that when you're new to something and you kind of got it working.

Nick:

But this gives a little more depth into what it's all about especially these, these older features, like older, like the activity table structure in dataverse affects effectively goes back to crm version one. Um, and the reason why activity tables are kind of like how they are, it was really about the, the original outlook integration that was there. So that's that's why they're a little that's a good technical term a little messed up but um, clunky, that's probably a good way to put it. But because there's so much legacy there and people using that data plus the continued integration, that's why they are the way they are. But someone new coming to dataverse? Yeah, it does. When you look at it, you're like this why is it? Why is it like this?

Ulrikke:

it's like well, why would you use an activity table? Why would you just create a normal table? Then you have well, because of the, because of the time and control and other you know you have the quick create. You have so many small little things that you won't get with the other ones and it's a whole yeah. So that's why I love also people like natty going in and actually giving you the information you need to understand the differences and then you can dive further and, if you need to, um. So and it kind of goes to other people as well if you you work with something long enough, you can't see the forest world, the trees, but there is value in blogging about things that have been around for a long time, just like you just said. So good job, natty, keep it going.

Nick:

Yeah, exactly Cool.

Ulrikke:

And the next one is for you, Customer Insights.

Nick:

Yeah, and it's been a while, four minutes of customer tag journeys without oh yeah, amy again talking about this is the mad scientist thing, cause I didn't know like, so I don't do work a lot with customer insights and journeys, like you know, or formerly known as marketing. But then she talks like what caught my eye was without editing the form XML. And I'm like, wait a minute, amy is the queen of no code, anything but code. And then she's talking about editing form XML and it's like I know regular developers that don't want to touch the form XML with a 10 foot pole. And then so here she's at, kind of like potentially was messing around, but she shows that the you know talk about this was the only way previously to be able to change some of the insights tab, specifically for leads and contacts.

Nick:

Apparently you had to. I didn't know this. You had to go in and edit the form XML to fix that. But finally now they've actually made it where you can do that in the PowerApps maker, the studio designer, and change the form around, so you don't have to do this voodoo magic with the form XML. So again, once again, amy lays out the steps and everything like that. So for you folks that have been working with microsoft marketing or customer insights and journeys, or whatever it's called, this week, if you're going messing around with the form xml, don't worry, we uh amy's got you covered, uh, so so you don't need to do that anymore yeah, yeah, 100, and it's kind of the biggest joke in the community Anything but code.

Ulrikke:

And then, like you said, she's a mad scientist. There's always code in what she does and she finds the neatest hack-arounds you'll ever see.

Nick:

She's going to be writing full-on C-sharp plugins someday and like, no, it's not really code, because blah, blah, blah.

Ulrikke:

I think actually the approach is, because I know it and I'm not a coder, it's not code, but at some point you have to go ah, now you're a coder. I think I kind of fall into the same trap every now and again. It's like because I know how to do something, because I'm fluent in HTML, css and JavaScript doesn't mean it's not code just because I'm not a coder Okay, as a JavaScript doesn't mean it's not code just because I'm not a coder. But yeah, okay. And this actually concludes the list we have for this episode with news and updates. But you have put a link in here to AI Poem by Rory Neary and I don't know what do you think? Can we read it?

Ulrikke:

Yes, do you want to read it.

Nick:

Yeah, let me actually get the link up properly here yeah, I have it here hold on.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, this will just because Rory is very much an artist he sings, he paints, he draws. He's so creative and we had a conversation about it over Christmas, about AI and how it's kind of taking, it's stealing art from artists and it's repurposing it, and then we you burn forests, right. Maybe it was more of a rant than a conversation, but I know that this is something that's very close to Hart, ferrari and a lot of other people. And I read the poem. It is so spot on and it's so well written. And he says this as well he loves ChatGPT and uses Copilot and ChatGPT all the time. It's not that, but it is kind of a I don't know. It's thought provoking and it's true and I want to highlight it because I think it's brilliant.

Nick:

Yeah. So how do you want to do this? Do you want me to read a verse and you'll read a verse back and forth, or yeah, yeah, let's do that, you start. Okay, so the title of the poem this is by our friend Rory Neary is why AI? Lately I've wondered about AI its purpose, its value, the what and the why. I suspect that if Enterprise went to, confession.

Ulrikke:

they admit an unhealthy AI obsession. We live in billions upon planet Earth. Do we need AI? What is it worth? We have artists and poets and authors galore, so why steal their?

Nick:

content just to produce more and say we're more efficient as a human race. What will we do with this newfound space?

Ulrikke:

What will we use this time to do? To change our role? Or sit on our phones and just scroll and scroll? My concern with all this is my latest activity. I think we're squandering mankind's creativity. The quick create pictures are easy to manage and deep fake images. They all do so much damage.

Nick:

Is this like when we discovered the wheel? But this time we just cannot tell what is real and the chances and possibilities, oh, are so broad for carrying out the most stupendous fraud.

Ulrikke:

Don't get me wrong Now I love chat GPT. It brights the cold whilst I make the tea. But this weekend try doing something that's real. Draw a picture, sing a song and see you feel yeah, I love it oh, that's so beautiful, very really.

Ulrikke:

Oh, I'm just blown away so definitely, oh, I love it and yeah, yeah, no, let's just leave it at that. Oh, it's really really good. Um, thank you. So we're usually closing with, uh, the events that we're going to, um, but, but first of all, where are you? And usually we start with this. But first of all, where are you? And usually we start with this. It's like where are you, what are you doing? But actually you're not home, are you?

Nick:

No, where am I? No, I'm actually in Tallinn. I'm in Estonia. This is the first time I've ever visited Estonia. I'm here for the Cloud Technology Town Hall, talent, which is one of the community conferences. It's kind of headed up by our friend, vivian Voss, and her and her team have put together a fantastic event. The volunteers, the sponsors, everything. The facility is amazing. So I had a session here where I talked about, you know, again, powerpages and the developer side. I went through a bunch of sessions. Now this time I did something a little bit different in terms of the sessions I went to go see is yes, you know, there was technology sessions. So, for example, we're doing a lot in the project with custom pages. So another Norwegian, catherine Bruvold. She did a session on custom pages. So another Norwegian, catherine Bruvold. She did a session on custom pages and her whole deck is going to be like a cheat sheet on how to do custom pages. So I'm really excited about that. That was amazing.

Nick:

And then the other one that I just absolutely had to go to. It's a person I had not met before, daniel Rohriger. I know he does. He also does a podcast in German. He has a YouTube channel and his was titled Top 10 Copilot Use Cases from Real Customer Projects. So of course I had to go check that out and I learned a lot of interesting things about how to use Copilot in real projects. He has even a whole methodology of how to kind of identify and get creative and use AI. This is so ironic after we read Rory's poll about AI, but that was an amazing session.

Nick:

And then the other two sessions I went to really were off the technology path, really more on the brain, brain kind of mental health kind of thing. And I met this wonderful lady, carolyn Callen. She's from Sweden, she's an MVP, I think, with Microsoft Teams and that kind of thing, and she was great. We actually talked about her session, we chatted and she kind of got me to go to her session about how to work like a brainiac in Microsoft 365, kind of a no-brainer, and really she talked a little bit about you know, kind of burning out and all of these tools and alerts and things, but really showed how to use how to set up teams and how to set up your alerts and how to get this balance, this peace of mind, to make sure you're not being inundated by all this technology and using the technology to kind of help you settle your busy mind down. So, carolyn, thank you so much for that session. It really meant a lot to me, it really talked to me and it was also very nice to meet you. I don't know if you listen to our podcast, but we're going to tag you, so you're going to probably anyway.

Nick:

And then the other one was from our friend, pauline Cold, and she, you know, we talked about Pauline before.

Nick:

She's also amazing about overcoming information overload or how to build a second brain, and she talked about the para method and that's something you can go online and learn about, the para method, and she walked through her process of how she organizes all her digital information and kind of keeps her own mind sane by doing this.

Nick:

And it's a method that I kind of do as well, but I picked up a lot of tips from Pauline. So in that respect, I really you know I love these technical conferences, I love learning all the new technical stuff, but if you go to these things, do check out some of these other tracks in terms of, like mental health or just how, you'll pick up some very useful tips that you can immediately apply to your day to day. That just kind of go beyond the technology but just organizing your own life and just getting that relaxing, calm kind of way to manage your information. So hopefully they'll run Talon conference again next year, so if you do get a chance to go, it's one of these like great community conferences, so that's where I'm at.

Ulrikke:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and I just wanted to add that you know people. For those of you who are listening and think that these tech conferences is all about work, work, work, and you go in there and you just kind of learn things to take back to your company, it is also transformative very often beyond that. I remember you and I sitting at the keynote for EPBC one year and there was not a dry eye in the audience. These keynotes, these sessions, these topics, they touch our hearts. It is an experience and it changes your life. It's not just about the tech, it's about the people you meet, the people you connect with, but also these things, for instance, it is real help in the real world, in your real life. Like these things, for instance, it is real help in the real world, in your real life, and I see more and more of this coming up and I really appreciate it and people can share their way of dealing with hard things. It makes you feel like you're not alone and there are systems that you can kind some blog posts or some resources or put a link to their LinkedIn or something for people that want to see more of what they have to offer in terms of that kind of content is really really good. And also, talking about Katrine Bruvold, I hung out with Katrine this weekend, so we kind of just swapped. Katrina was at ACDC this weekend and Ashley's with you in Tallinn. We had an amazing time at Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge Three-day hackathon.

Ulrikke:

That is the highlight of the year for me. And then every Sunday after it, I think why do I put myself through this? I know Marius Bertelsen is in the committee with me every year. He says you know, we're sadists, right, we do this voluntarily. We sit here and we bash our head against the wall for three days straight and we don't sleep. And we were on Red Bull High.

Ulrikke:

But what I got to do? Because this time I asked my team from Itero you know, what do we want to do? We can learn as much as possible, we can win, or we can network and party. What do you want to do? And they're like, yeah, we're all about learning. So we set out to say, okay, we're not going to win and we want to learn max we can. So none of us are going to touch technology that we work with every day.

Ulrikke:

So I didn't touch the power pg site for the whole thing. I did no branding work, nothing, nada. I play with Copilot Studio agents and, man, I love it. I'm just so excited I'm about to burst. I just can't wait to like get my hands on this in the real world project. It's just, it's so amazing. You know what we did I just need to share. I'll share a video, a very quirky video that's probably going to be taken offline any day now. So when you get the link, just make sure you see it, and when you see it or listen to it, you're going to understand why it's going to be taken off the Internet.

Ulrikke:

But, that being said, what we made was a Power App that had the object detection model on it, and so we used our camera on the phone with the app to detect. This is a Harry Potter theme, right? So this is a mandrake. These are some magic beans and different ingredients that we were running around the hotel to find, and Philip scraped kind of a dirty hack. He scraped off the Internet an open service somewhere, a 3D model of the hotel that we were at so we could kind of look and see where the different items were, and then we went in and we scanned them, and then AI builder will automatically detect what kind of object it was and you would recognize oh, this is a mandrake. And then put that into my inventory, my Hermione's beaded bag inventory. And then I had an agent where I could say, okay, this is the ingredients that I found, show me what potions I can make. And they would tell me, oh, but this potion you could do. You know this potion or that potion. And of course, we made a video where we kind of did it live and it was so much fun, got to do a bit of acting and it was so much fun, um, but it kind of goes to show you how.

Ulrikke:

And then we bring that back to the business case, for that, of course, is you look at volunteering, for instance. You come in as a volunteer, you have these certificates, you have this experience, other activities, you have these interests and you have AI. Match you with an activity that's fit for you or maybe your timetable or your preferences, right, um? You look at the 3d model. You can put that into canvas apps, because a search and rescue, for instance, for buildings, yeah, you can look at a 2d map of a building to see where people have searched already. So kind of um to track the people that are searching for someone in a building, but that doesn't really help you. Buildings have different levels. You want to see that in a 3D way. So that was awesome to kind of see that you can do that in a camera set but kind of scroll it around to see objects in a 3D model. It blew me away. I'm just gobsmacked by what Philip can do in three days. It's just amazing. So, as you can see, I love ACDC. It is so much fun.

Ulrikke:

We had a team, an MVP team, come up and joined us this time. They had so much fun. We had great judges. It was sold out. 15 teams were there. We were 80 people total. We were sold out to its max capacity. So next year, if you're listening to this and you know that you're going to participate next year, keep an eye on our website, because you're going to have a kind of an interest, kind of submission thing going so that you can kind of save your spot for next year's event, because it's going to be just as amazing. Yes, now I'm out of breath.

Nick:

And I was FOMOing all weekend. See, like all this, I wish I was there, but anyways I was FOMOing all weekend.

Ulrikke:

See like all this.

Nick:

I wish I was there, but anyways, I'm going to try to go again next year. Put a team of grumpy old men together, yeah.

Ulrikke:

Oh, that's going to be so much fun, right, okay, so do you want to quickly mention, because you have a baby coming up the CTPS baby?

Nick:

Oh, yes, the ctps baby. Oh, it's yes, the canadian power platform summit. Uh, march 21st, 22nd we have workshops on the 21st um, and they are. The numbers are creeping up. So they, if you want to get in on those workshops um, get on it um. And we have, if you do pp boost 15, that's power platform boost 50. So pp boost 15, 15 off general mission and you get 15 off the workshops as well. So, uh, use that discount um and make, take advantage of that and then so yeah, that's coming up this counts I love it.

Ulrikke:

It feels like a weird podcast when we do that Beep, beep, boost 15, because all the podcasts have that Go to do, do, do, shnash, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep to get your discount. It feels like a real podcast. So much fun. And then, yeah, of course, april Color Cloud is coming up and I have a workshop Power Pages from creation to go live, and I'm doing a session with Andy Wingate with PowerPages and Business Central, and I'm diving into Business Central and I'm in love with it. It's so cool and you get all the data and you see all the things and they have co-pilots and it's just blew me away. You can customize everything and I'm sold, I'm sold, I'm going off to BC now. It's up.

Nick:

Oh wow, well, I'm sold, I'm sold, I'm going off to BC now oh wow, well, that's big news, cool, and then it's all good. It's funny because I did a video on integrating Business Central with PowerPages, based on the presentation I did a few months back.

Ulrikke:

So it is pretty neat. I might or might not have looked at that over the weekend when I at acdc tried to connect business central to power pages. I might have watched it, maybe, okay, maybe all right, cool, um.

Nick:

And then coming in middle of may, um, uh, dynamics con and I'm doing, uh, somehow my session on crash course and Power Platform Pipelines got selected. So all the reason why I've been pulling my hair out and turned gray and both you and I have been kind of fighting a little bit with Power Platform Pipelines, so, yeah, putting a whole session to share with you folks all the fun stuff. So hopefully we'll see you in Chicago for that Dynamics con, plus a whole bunch of other great sessions as well. I think I am. Actually. I have another uh part, a session that I'm partnering with somebody, but I'm not sure they actually have fully, uh, accepted that yet, so we'll sort of stay tuned for that. Um, yeah.

Nick:

And then, oh yeah, minds is coming a couple of weeks later and that's in Slovenia and I'm doing a session we talked a little bit about this on like burnout and powerlifting and mental health. The other cool thing talk about team ups. Get this team up. I'm teaming up with Matt Snecker and George Dubinsky and the three of us are going to basically talk about PowerPages versus the world and I know, like George has his WordPress plugin, matt has his way that he used to build the ColorCloud website and the Talon website, and we're going to be basically facing off in a three-way death match to see which technology is the best or the winner.

Ulrikke:

So yeah, oh, wow, stay tuned for that. I hope that's recorded. Wow, wow, wow, oh, that should be just broadcast into the whole world. Oh, fantastic, right, okay. So we have an interesting season in front of us, for sure, and so many cool things to look out for. So this episode will be released on the 5th.

Nick:

Now my calendar is yeah, and the next, so the next episode. So this is the 5th. So this is today. You're listening to this. The next one will be on February 19th.

Ulrikke:

So yeah, All right, right, right. So good to see you and have a lovely rest of your week and, yeah, I'll catch you later.

Nick:

Yep Sounds good. See you later. Bye everybody, Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please make sure you share it with your friends and colleagues in the community and be sure to leave a rating or a review on your favorite streaming service. That makes it easier for others to find us. Follow us on social platforms and make sure you don't miss a single episode. Thank you for listening to the Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, Luric Akebek and Nick Dolman. See you next time for your timely boost of Power Platform news and updates.

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Nick Doelman

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Ulrikke Akerbæk

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