Power Platform Boost Podcast

Awesome, what is it? (#52)

• Season 1 • Episode 52

Share episode

News


Events

Canadian Power Platform Summit
March 21-22
PPBOOST15 -> 15% off general admission + workshops 

ColorCloud
April 24-25, 2025
Ulrikke's Workshop: "Power Pages: From creation to go-live!"
Session with Andy Wingate: "Business Central + Power Pages = TRUE"

DynamicsCon
May 13th - 16th, 2025
Nick's session on "Crash course in Power Platform Pipelines"
Session with Angeliki Patsiavou "The Ultimate Power Slam: Dynamics 365 vs Power Pages Portals"

DynamicsMinds
May 26-28, 2025
Nick's session on Burnout, Powerliftin



Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of Power Platform BOOST!
Thank you for buying us a coffee: buymeacoffee.com

Podcast home page: https://powerplatformboost.com
Email: hello@powerplatformboost.com

Follow us!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/powerplatboost
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerplatformboost/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/powerplatboost/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090444536122
Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@powerplatboost

Nick:

I asked Microsoft 365 Copilot to summarize these emails. It keeps failing. It comes back and tells me with the utmost confidence that, hey, there has been no emails sent to this distribution list in the last 24 hours. There's 100 emails sitting there. I can see it. I have it in a folder. I even tell you the folder. And the thing is, if I wrote a Power Automate flow and then it would give me an error that it couldn't find it or couldn't read it, so I know there's an error.

Nick:

Co-pilots and these AI tools, they have that confidence level that it's like, oh, nothing exists. So, as an end user, I'm like, okay, nothing must exist, something truly exists. So this is where I think this is some of my. This is, I know, going down a deep rabbit hole here, but this is my frustration with some of these tools where, especially the AI, the co-pilot, there is this implicit arrogance of, yes, this is how it is, and it's like, no, that's not how it is. So, from an end customer's perspective, you want to get them on board. You got to start building trust in these tools and if something, if co-pilot can't do something, it's got to start building trust in these tools. And if something, if Copilot can't do something, it's got to come back and say hey, I'm sorry, I can't read. I couldn't find emails there. Could I can't read the emails, as opposed to saying nope, there's nothing there.

Nick:

Welcome everyone to the Power Platform Boost podcast, your weekly source of news and updates from the world of the Power Platform and the Microsoft community, with your host, Nick Doelman, and Ulrikke Akerbæk.

Ulrikke:

Hi Nick, Are you ready?

Nick:

Yeah, I guess. So I just Kat was visiting.

Ulrikke:

Show Cleo to the. Did she jump down?

Nick:

Don't worry, she'll be back. I'm pretty sure She'll be back.

Ulrikke:

Hi everyone, Welcome to Power Platform Boost podcast and cat podcast and everything All right, Nick. So how are you?

Nick:

I'm good. Yeah, we had a few technical issues this morning, so that's why I'm set up in my alternate studio here this morning. And it's also family day here in Canada, so that's why the rest of my family is sleeping upstairs, so they're not having to listen to our recording this morning. They're sleeping in. But overall, yeah, I'm good, how are you?

Ulrikke:

Awesome, I'm good, thank you. It's a winter holiday here this week, so the kids are off of school, uh. Luckily, herman does still have his after-school program, because he was kind of running up the walls, uh, from being home alone this morning, as I put him there and then we record, and then afterwards we're going to go cross-country skiing, because it's pretty cold still and the sun is out, but it's uh, they have fake snow up at uh, so that's where we're going to go later.

Nick:

Oh, because I have probably about three feet of real snow on my yard right now. We had two major snowstorms, one earlier this week, one last night. You know, I love it, I love the snowblower, it's very soothing for me.

Ulrikke:

Good to use the snowblower Boop boop, boop, boop.

Nick:

So we do have it's like minus 15, we have a pile of snow. Um, like I said, it's family day, it is. Uh, in here in ottawa it's a. There's a winter festival called winterlude. Um, we may or may not go and check that out, because usually it's a lot of people, but I think I sent you a picture the other day. Um, for those of you who don't know, in ottawa we have the world record for the longest skating rink.

Nick:

There's a canal that goes through Ottawa. Every year that freezes. They make it into a skating rink, they flood it, they make it smooth. You can get hot chocolate and beaver tails and you can just skate for many, many miles or kilometers. And you see people. Years ago, when I worked downtown, you would see people going to work with skates over their shoulders because they would skate from home just to work. Um, and it's really funny. You see people in military uniform, because in the capital city, of course, the national defense is here. So you'd see guys in full military gear wearing skates over their shoulders. Like, how canadian is that really? You know?

Ulrikke:

yeah, it doesn't get more canadian than that, really. So that's uh, oh, that's so cool. I hope you, if you do, just take a little short short video. Maybe we can add it after the thing on the podcast so everyone else can see. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, it's really really pretty. I've seen pictures, so it looks so awesome.

Ulrikke:

All right, um, but there are other cool things to talk about today as well. We have a list, as long as ever, with news and updates from the community. So, and also, did you see the massive kind of Rory's poem, and the thing we did last time was so much fun. I really enjoyed that. And, yeah, talked to Rory a little bit afterwards and he was so much fun. I really enjoyed that. And, um, yeah, talk to her a little bit afterwards and he was so he really liked it. So, uh, yeah, it's good to do that for people. I think absolutely. Yeah, no poems this time, though. So, um, yeah, maybe next time we'll see. Uh, okay, so let's dive into the.

Ulrikke:

The news updates. First on my list is because, now you've structured it so that we go Power Apps, power Pages, power AdMate, stuff like that. First on my list is Power Apps and a post actually on LinkedIn from a guy called Tulu Victor Sanvu where he asks what's your biggest challenge with Power Apps graphics and kind of. The thing behind it is that now we've had kind of three generations of Canvas app graphics from Gen 1, kind of the out-of-the-box components looks like something from the 90s. You've seen the default Canvas apps doesn't really look all that good. And then you have Gen 2 with the modern controls and then also, sorry, the, the first controls, and then you have kind of the layouts and the, the modern grid um components that makes it um kind of adjustable to the screen size and there's a lot of modern ways to work with that. And then, of course, you have gen 3, which is the modern controls, uh, with ai and other capabilities.

Ulrikke:

And he's also kind of nodding to an announcement made from our friend, claudio uh, romano, who made an announcement I think it's january 17th or something where they announced the ga of the most commonly used modern controls. So now you'll have things like um, um, I put it down here just to be sure I got everything. So you have text and text input, number input combo, box, state picker and form, which is now completely modern, um. But so even though we have all of these modern controls and it now looks a bit more sexy and up to date than kind of what we used to have, people still struggle with it.

Ulrikke:

So his kind of question to the audience was even though you have all these tools, what is it that you struggle most with? And I said for him it's kind of color combination. It's still kind of a gotcha. So just got the conversation going, I think, and he got a lot of comments in the LinkedIn chat as well from different people in the community. I chimed in a little bit as well. But, nick, what would be your kind of biggest challenge with Power Apps, canvas Apps, in terms of the graphics?

Nick:

You see my design skills right, very, but you know I think the colors is a good one, because even even um, you see, you see sort of the mix and match of colors, uh, it looks. It can look almost jarring to look at a particular app, like I like something very, you know, very neutral, like not neutral, but very kind of something that flows well together. Of course, really it's the user experience, like making sure that you're not jumping all over the place and you know, and just making making these apps look professional, like I did see the post, I did see he had a couple of before and after or sort of the evolution of things, and one looks like, yeah, a canvas app that maybe I would make, and then you see something that, wow, that looks like something professional from an app store. So you can really see the, you know, and it's like these little things do make a huge difference in terms of user satisfaction. Again, I know for me I'm very functional, I want to make sure the app works, but also I think that once you kind of get these aesthetics and things out of the way and of course this is evolving as well I don't do a ton of canvas apps purely on their own.

Nick:

I do a lot. I do embedded custom pages where you're trying to met in a custom page situation. You're trying to kind of match at least a little bit of the look and feel of the overall model driven app that you're embedding in, because that could look really weird too If all of a sudden you have this other window popping up that looks completely different. The end user is going to question wait a minute, am I in the same app because of the differences. So yeah, it was a great post. It's something that I've definitely saved for there for when I do have to dive into some of these design decisions and make it better, and it's something I am working on and it's on my bucket list of things to get more ramped up on modern web design and look and feel and that kind of stuff. I know it's a weak area for me, but you can't know everything and I rely on very smart people and very talented people like yourself to make things look good, but it's something I think all of us could aspire to get better at.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, thank you. But um, and for me, I think kind of the I think I've cheated in this area a little bit because I have the uh, the training from school in terms of color, um, theory, that I know which color goes together and kind of have the theoretical foundation to understand how the user navigates with their eyes and how they kind of look across the screen and what's important, the stop stop effect, the things that go together and doesn't. But you look at the picture that he has in that post. Like I said, the first picture is kind of gen one where you just put the elements on the page and you don't really think about it. And the next one is, of course, a lot better in terms of the graphic. But also I'm curious to how much work actually goes into making an app that looks like the cause.

Ulrikke:

That's second and third generation graphics, because before and, as you know so, christine Kononeski, for instance, she introduces she was kind of the one of the first one, in terms of my feed at least who who dived into the more custom graphic UI in Canvas apps, but she relied heavily on the HTML component and created it using HTML, css and JavaScript. It's very much my home base in terms of what I know coming from web development. But I'm curious how much of these, the things that we see in the second screenshot, is actually out of the box components, because I don't work with Canvas apps a lot either. So for me it's still one of those things that I need to-box components because I don't work with Canvas apps a lot either. So for me it's still one of those things that I need to dive more into and I can't wait to actually have a Canvas app project on my hands so that I can dive more into it. But also it's funny because in his post he says so repost. Can we stop with first-gen apps for good?

Ulrikke:

And you make an interesting point because canvas apps and the design around it right, it's the same one for custom pages, so the components they cross over right we should yeah yeah, so then you can't really remove it because you're dependent on the old kind of interface to make it look like a model driven app, for instance, you still have to have some of that so that it can align. Because I completely agree with you, if you suddenly draw or you put a modern UI canvas app or custom page into a model-driven app, it will look very odd. So you need to make sure that the UI they have in model-driven apps they can kind of match that in canvas apps as well, because it's an important thing. So it is not to say that we can just kind of get rid of the first end all together, uh, but sure, moving in that direction, I think, yeah, absolutely for sure, yeah, so, uh, next on the list is and I hope that you know more about this than I do, because this is where I'm getting, I'm walking on thin ice PowerFx functions used to be called local plugins, which didn't even get it make it out of preview before they changed the name.

Ulrikke:

So if you see functions or PowerFx functions, it is what used to be local plugins and I'm told that kind of the plugin words scared people off because that's so pro-codey that they removed it purposely to call it functions, and now you can also reuse them across canvas apps and and and power automate. So how much have you kind of worked with this nick?

Nick:

a little bit at the start, when they first came out, definitely played around with it and I did find that there was some limitations. Um, it became very obvious the limitations compared to what we would call traditional plugins that we would write in c-sharp code and dot net and of course that those are those are trigger words for people that are very low code. Um, but I could see where the evolution is going. It was pretty exciting because I thought, wow, if we can get to a point where I can just go into the regular maker portal and actually build my functionality using Power Fx. Not that I don't like writing plugins, but in my particular role I haven't written. Honestly and we've talked about this before I haven't written a plugin in like four or five years. I haven't written a plugin in like four or five years. So because I've been involved in projects where I've had other access to other developers, I understand how it works. I could write a plugin if I was forced to, but it is something I don't do every day, so it's a case of you know that. Okay, I need to relearn or remember stuff to get into it. Power effects functions is great because if you're already using power effects in different areas and I'm beginning to find that, yeah, you know we talked about canvas apps previously, but power effects is now beginning to pop its head a little bit into power pages. It's uh, showing up in the commanding when we're doing the command bar stuff, uh, and of course, in, you know, in the custom pages as well, there's power effects. Again, we can extend this. So, yeah, I did a video on using the low-code plugins in Power Pages and how all that works, probably last year or the year before, if I remember. But now seeing what's coming with the Power Facts functions and also seeing Matthew's post on being able to call these directly from a flow, that's also pretty exciting, because now we're getting into the world where we were before with classic workflows. With classic workflows, you're able to create what they call workflow plugins or something like that. It was a special plugin that you would call from a classic workflow, where it'd be this, this whole world, and that opened up a lot of opportunities. This is now now being brought into Power Automate as well, so you can write a Power Fx function that's reusable and you can actually call it from a Power Automate flow, which is really cool.

Nick:

This, to me, is we're just on the tip of the iceberg with some of this stuff. We even have our friend, like Sarah Lagerquist has done presentations I think she did one in Tallinn on the new power effects functions as well. So we're really getting. You know, we're bringing a lot of that power that would before was very much, uh, limited to the pro developers, bringing it into the hands of the low code makers, which is great, but in leaving and again we still need developers and letting developers again focus on those more advanced scenarios. So again it's just sort of a shifting of work, because developers are really good. Developers are hard to find. I do know very good developers, but they're always super busy, they're always tied up in other projects. So the more we can kind of bring some of that down to the regular low-code maker folks PowerFx functions is a great way to do that. So I'm excited to see the evolution of this.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, me too and also the fact that you can add it to solutions. I think that's also one of the major things, right, so you can, and I tried it out. I just went into one of the solutions I had. I took add new and the functions. They're in the automation thing. It showed up and I can select sources, I can select inputs and outputs and I can choose which tables in Dataverse, for instance, that they're going to connect to, and then I can write my Power Fx function. And that was really neat. Even I could do it right.

Ulrikke:

So what I was missing? Actually, for once and hold on to your socks For once I missed the Copilot thing, because I'm not good at writing Power Fx. For once I missed the co-pilot thing because I'm not good at writing power fx and I'm used to working with power automate where the prompt thing asks me what is it you really want to do? And I say I want to calculate these two fields together and it says here you go, and it gives me the prompt, it gives me the power fx function. It was not, it wasn't in there. So I was like oh no, now what do I do? I have to write this power fx on my own from scratch. Where's my Copilot? And then there's a first time in forever that I had actually missed the Copilot.

Nick:

So there you go, there you go.

Ulrikke:

Even for me there was hope.

Nick:

You had to write your own code like a chump. I know right when do.

Ulrikke:

I start, I don't even know where to start. Oh, it's so much fun, but now yeah, of course. This is the preview, though. So kind of, use it with care, don't use it in production and do what we say, not what we do, et cetera, et cetera. My dad always used to say that when I was young, when I was a kid, and I said, well, you do it.

Nick:

He said do like I say, not as I do. You did it.

Ulrikke:

I made a vow that day to never say that to my kids, but maybe, maybe, and actually something else, okay. So, talking about things that have no idea what it means, this is one Okay. So this is for all you Dynamics 365 Customer Insights people. I saw a post this week from Megan Walker on LinkedIn. It was a post and it just said, finally, and there's a screenshot of something in customer insights and the whole comment section is a people in Swedish and Danish and Norwegian going it's here. Does that mean what I think it means? And people go, yes, it's finally here. I have no idea what it is, but I thought if this many important people thinks this is awesome, I'm going to highlight it. So this is what the screenshot is.

Ulrikke:

You have customer insights, a model driven app, open. You're in the customer insights you have on the far bottom you have assets libraries, email template, task templates. You got form templates. You open that and then you can select active form templates on the tops. You kind of have a view selector thing at the far top and you can see galleries and custom templates and favorites and stuff. Isn't that fantastic? Yeah, I mean nick. Finally, finally, it's here it is.

Nick:

It's funny. I like megan who's like hooray, and then I f? K, you know, I f? Y k, y k, like, if you know, you know, like you know, you know, I'm not sure if there's that. There's that scene in the latest spider-man movie where the three Spider-Mans from the different multiverse are together and the Tom Holland Spider-Man says he says oh, I was once part of the Avengers. And the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man was like wow, that's so cool. What is that? What is that? That's how I feel.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, yeah, that that's how I feel. Yeah, yeah, no, so so let's just, you know, just be a part of it, like whoo finally celebrate the wins.

Nick:

Yeah, whoa awesome awesome.

Ulrikke:

It has a lot of comments. I love it. Go marketing people. Sorry, customer insights people.

Nick:

And this goes like in all seriousness, this goes to show the breadth and the depth of the Power Platform and again, we've said this before, you cannot be an expert in the entire Power Platform. There are so many areas. Market like, customer insights and journeys is one of them and, as you know, because I've been ranting about it, I've been fighting with some of those solutions this week in our own project of things that are getting deprecated and re-added and trying to introduce all sorts of dependency issues. So I'm seeing a bit of the back end of all of this going ah. But again, it shows that this is a very important piece of the Power Platform. It's used by a lot of people, it's very powerful, what it does, I mean, I understand what it does, but just the whole getting there kind of thing. So, anyways, this if, if Megan says this is awesome news, it's awesome news.

Ulrikke:

It's awesome news, exactly, yeah, and and the the thing that you're now bashing your head against that. You inherited that from me and you've gotten further in a week than I did in three months, so kudos to you.

Nick:

That was me having a meltdown on Microsoft support yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ulrikke:

And I watched that from afar thinking, oh, I'm so happy that that's you and not me, because I am Norwegian and you are Canadian and they are lucky it's your call. And then I counted slowly backwards from 10. So let's move on to another kind of existential question, and I feel Sean Asterkin is full of these lately. So this is another one SharePoint. And Thomas Sunser, please take a breath, we're just kidding. Sharepoint versus Dataverse what do you think?

Nick:

So I mean, I am very much the like friends, don't let friends use SharePoint as a pure data source. Now I get why. Um, and here's, here's the to me the sort of dividing line and sean and and we love you, sean, uh, but you are a bit of a shit disturber, you know that, right? Um, I think it does it on purpose, to be honest. Oh, totally, oh, yeah, yeah, but that's, that's how he rolls man.

Ulrikke:

So yeah, it's good marketing.

Nick:

You get mentioned on podcasts yes, there's no such thing as bad breasts I hug out with shot in chicago at ignite. Uh, this is he's. He's a super, super smart guy, very like. He just fits in with our crew so well. Um, he helped out with the labs. He was one of the proctors, um, very knowledgeable, uh. But yeah, he does kind of throw like there's certain topics that it. So here's a here's next lesson on how to get a lot of things on LinkedIn Just post something very controversial, just put managed versus unmanaged solutions.

Nick:

What do you think? And then just get everybody to pile up and do whatever he talks about. You know, and my thing with with Dataverse, if you're building anything enterprise where it's in a company, even in a, you know, even a small medium business, if you're working in a team where you're working on an application that needs data storage and needs security, dataverse is the obvious choice. As soon as someone starts saying, well, price and licensing, like, come on, it's less than a cup of cost of a cup of coffee per employee per month, per day, per month, kind of thing. So again, it's like we said last episode it depends, but for the most case, if it is an enterprise or business solution, dataverse is the way to go. If you're building a power app more for yourself. And again, this is where, if it's more of a personal productivity type app that you're building, then, yeah, doing it against a sharepoint list is probably very acceptable and that's and I know that's blasphemy from based on things I've said before. Um, but really you know the right tool for the right job, even if it's an excel online list, if it's something very simple. But as soon as you start expanding to more than a few people, where there is some issues, where you want to make sure your data is protected data versus the way to go. Now sean does have a lot of like pros and cons listed here. You can read his post on that um, contribute to your own um, your own ideas. He even has a little chart here, the pros and cons and the whole little you know gartner style chart there. So, yeah, um, very, it's also one of these things that, like, really it really comes down to. It depends on what you're building. That's my attitude toward it.

Nick:

If I build, if I'm building anything in power apps for me, like for customers, or even many projects. I'm using Dataverse because I've been working with it for 20 years. I know how it works. I know how the security set up. I know the table relationships. I know all of this stuff. Sharepoint to me. I use it like document storage, those types of things, intranets I know it has. I know SharePoint. When you say SharePoint, it actually has a whole bunch of different things it can do. There's things that it used to be able to do that it can't do anymore. So it in all in all the end of the day, right tool for the right job.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, exactly, and I used to be a SharePoint consultant in my previous life and even I know that and I've seen some crazy shit. To be honest, I mean people trying to creating relational databases using SharePoint. I mean SharePoint lists aren't a database. People Come on, even though you have rows and columns, it's not a relational table. So I mean, but you can do it if you know how to work, create workarounds.

Ulrikke:

Even last week I saw a customer who they are very cost conscious and he's created so many cool apps and solutions using sharepoint as a database. It works until he reaches a 2000 role limit and then he has to do some creative something, something, and I'm in awe of this guy, what he's actually been able to do. But I'm also worried. It's like you said, I I he needs more bandwidth because now he's he's the only one who knows how any of this works. Sure, and then last weekend, you know, last summer, when he was on holiday in greece, they hit the 2000 limit and he had to, you know, kind of grab his computer and get off from the beach because he was the only one who could do anything about it. So I mean there are things that, um, that you should use SharePoint for, but as a database, uh, no, it's a no-go Documents, sure. So, yeah, right thing for the right, uh, right tool for the right job.

Ulrikke:

I think that's kind of what we're preaching, but it's fun to see this kind of side-by-side comparisons what is the pros, what is the cons, and how to kind of know, and from a high level. If you have no idea what any of this is, of course this will help. So, good job, sean, and keep the PR stuff coming. We'll continue to shout your name in this podcast.

Ulrikke:

Also speaking, I think this is going to be the episode called lurker talks about things she has no idea about, but things is really cool because core palettes and ai guys, um, I tuned into powerful devs last week, um, and I saw, for instance, I saw this and, first of all, uh, uh, scott and kendra very good job at kind of bringing everything together, and I saw scott's video from behind the scenes. That was a lot of fun to see how all this comes together. Robin did a huge job at kind of managing the back office. It looks so much fun, um, and also, if you're kind of, and manganus did something on, uh, did a session or something, and we had Leon coming on announcing new capabilities for PCF co-pilot APIs, for instance.

Ulrikke:

I don't know, the first thing about it. So I kind of dove in to see what this is. Okay, PCF co-pilot APIs announced new co-pilot APIs for PCF and client API developers. So, from what I can understand, this is going to enable pro developers to create inline AI-driven experiences powered by Copa, the studio agent, in a PCF component, Right. And then so there's an announcement. There's a guy called, yeah, Hermant Gur. He posted on LinkedIn, kind of grabbed the announcement from Leon from Powerful Devs Conference, pulled it into LinkedIn and kind of talked a little bit about it and then also highlighted the URL for how to sign up for the private preview of this. So you would get. We have the links in our show notes. If this is for you, you can sign up for the private preview now.

Ulrikke:

But even with his description and Leo's description, I don't know PCFs. I'm not that familiar with Copa Studio yet to understand what this can unlock. And also, looking at the comment section of the post that Hermant posted, nor can anyone else. So it's one of those things where everyone goes what Whoa, Awesome, Fantastic, Whoop, whoop, whoop, what can we use it for? What can we use it for? And there's crickets and I go. No wonder, I don't understand it. So I'm like and I love these announcements, right, and it kind of baffles me that there's not a lot of use cases out. And actually someone also wrote that as a comment on Herman's post Like great, what are you going to use it for? And he's like I don't know.

Ulrikke:

So this is the challenge for me to all of you listening If you can tell me what you can use this for and no, Scott, you cannot answer then let me know and I'll talk about it on the next episode. How's that? Because I'm really curious and this is a way for me to learn. What is the big deal? What does this enable? What does this unlock that we couldn't do before? Help me understand, please. So I'm looking forward to getting smushed by a million gazillion messages from people going. This is so obvious. This is the use case, this is what you want to use it for, this is what I couldn't do before that this enables me to do. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right go, people go yeah go.

Nick:

I mean I have some ideas, but uh, I haven't shoot.

Ulrikke:

I didn't know you worked with this so much, so you kind of had this. So no, no, I don't.

Nick:

I just I'm. I just say, in terms of ideas, let's say, like all I can think of. Let's say, if you're doing a pcf control, let's say, sir, like a like, think of a pcf control that we've used before rich, rich text editor, for example. That's a PCF control that you apply to to like a text there. Potentially could you actually have that tied into AI, to a co-pilot, to actually, you know the help summarize this text or help me write this text out a little bit better. Or you know, again, I'm just I'm spitballing here because I don't write. Like I said we talked about, we have to learn how to write PCFs. This is sort of the first thing that kind of comes to mind, because even now, built into your browser, I have this little co-pilot. You know you want me to clean up your text or summarize the text that you just wrote. I could see that being built into something like that, being built into a PCF control or you know so, either some sort of calculations or, you know, be able to paste in something, extract certain values out of a block of text. You might paste into a control, those types of things. Again, I don't know, maybe I'm completely off base here, but that's just sort of the ideas that are beginning to pop up in my head. On building something like this, building that within a model driven app, um, you know, trying to do some of the stuff that I've been trying to experiment with as well, um, and I'm still at a stage where I'm experimenting with stuff. I'm building some stuff and I'm like, is this really the right tool there's? There should be a better way. This, this to me seems like a pure power automate thing or that kind of thing. So that's just kind of going off the co-pilot studio side. But, yeah, I think it.

Nick:

I think this is a good discussion to have. Yes, there's a lot of great tech, but what is? Give me what you can do with this. Look at, like, customer service and what they've built in there in terms of being able to locate and find information, whatever. Yeah, that's great, I get that totally. But what are some of the other? What are some of the day-to-day stuff that we can use this stuff for? And I think that's where we need to be right now to get people really on board and excited about this.

Nick:

The days of demoing, the yes, you can do. Here's what Copilot can do on a conference stage. That, yes, you can do. Here's what Copilot can do on a conference stage. That's great. Give me some real world, and beyond the customer service side and beyond the sales side. Yes, those are great scenarios, but what else can we do with that? We've talked about this too in our own projects in terms of volunteer matching and that kind of stuff. I think that exists. But there's where you take that scenario and, yes, we can begin even to build that into the app a little bit, potentially with some of these controls, I think yeah, but I'm also waiting for the customers to be more in line with this and be more mature.

Ulrikke:

I can't tell you how many times the last year I've I've demoed the simplest use case, the thing that ai builder could do for years and years already. And the customer goes awesome, yeah, that looks so cool. Let's put that on ice for now and just let's get the MVP up and running first, and then we'll readdress the AI later. And I go please don't, because this AI builder thing is going to save you and your end users so much time. If we start with this, that to implement it later means we have to do the same work twice. Why wait? And they go ah, well, you know it's, it's us.

Ulrikke:

We're not really that mature and we're not sure if our users are ready for ai yet. And it's like well, actually the user don't know they're using AI, they simply upload an image. The work we do is on the back, and they go no, we're not ready. It's like well, where do you go from there? I mean, it frustrates the crap out of me, because I want to, I want to, I want to start. We'll start working with this right.

Ulrikke:

And it's only so far I can go on my own. I have implemented a few things on my own and it's fun and all that, but it's that's not where the the learning is for me. Going like you said, going through the learning material fine, uh, setting up some small things for you on your own, doing it on a hackathon fun. But actually when, when the kind of the rubber hits the road in a real world project where you hit those little nitty-gritty, that's where I actually learned the most and it's kind of those little nitty gritty, that's where I actually learned the most and it's kind of it's you can't get the boy, my biggest challenge with all of this, and I think we might've talked about this before.

Nick:

So, for instance, let's say I so, for for those of you and I do want to talk some about the MVP program. But we're on distribution lists. We know discussions on particular product groups. Every day there's a distribution list. Emails come in, people asking questions, product managers clarifying things, uh that kind of thing. Very interesting, a lot of great information. But these as you, you know yourself, these distribution lists can result in dozens, if not hundreds, of emails per day.

Nick:

I don't have time to read through these emails. Oh, wait a minute. I can use Copilot to summarize that for me. I asked Microsoft 365 Copilot to summarize these emails. It keeps failing. It comes back and tells me with the utmost confidence that hey, there has been no emails sent to this distribution list in the last 24 hours. There's a hundred emails sitting there. I can see it. I have it in a folder. I even tell you the folder. And the thing is, if I wrote a Power Automate flow and then it would give me an error that it couldn't find it or couldn't read it, so I know there's an error.

Nick:

Co-pilots and these AI tools, they have that confidence level that it's like, oh, nothing exists. So, as an end user, I'm like, okay, nothing must exist, something truly exists. So this is where I think this is some of my. This is, I know, going down a deep rabbit hole here, but this is my frustration with some of these tools where, especially the AI, the co-pilot there is this implicit arrogance of, yes, this is how it is, and it's like, no, that's not how it is. So, from an end customer's perspective, you want to get them on board. You've got to start building trust in these tools and if something, if co-pilot can't do something, it's got to come back and say, hey, I'm sorry, I can't read I. It's got to come back and say, hey, I'm sorry, I can't read, I, I couldn't find emails there could I can't read the emails as opposed to saying nothing?

Nick:

there's nothing there. Yeah, yeah, I know, bries me bananas and I even pinged. I know, daniel, I sent you the screenshots and like how the f do I get this working and even anyways. So that's just sort of I know I'm kind of I love these tools. I love, like I've been, I have sometimes I had this you know, this comma separated file, a throat hit copilot or chat GPT and say format this into a nice table. It will do all that. Um, I put together a whole big training plan. I want to cover this, cover this, put it in a training plan, break it out. The number of weeks. Do this, do that? Like this kind of stuff. It's great because you know this is that that part of AI absolutely love. It's actually saved me tons of time. You know, putting together plans, putting in agendas, reiterating on that Again.

Nick:

For those of you who don't subscribe to Donna and Jeremiah's third rodeo weekly newsletter, it is so good. Every week they come with different scenarios for stuff to try and to learn. I've learned so much from their newsletter. We should probably put a link into that again. Those types of things are great. But now we're into the scenarios where we're trying to build these and trying to incorporate into our own tools and it's, it's, it's a struggle, the real that part. So it's struggling for us to get things working from an end customer. They're not seeing the value, because the value is it's, it's, it's it's, I won't say broken. In certain it's working, but other areas it's not where we're being marketed, that it is fantastic. Sorry, that was a.

Ulrikke:

I know I'm all over the place on this one, but no, no, it's absolutely fine, and I, because I think a lot of people will uh find this useful because it kind of speaks to what they're going through, uh, and we, we are honest about these things. We don't give you just a sugar-coated marketing message, because we live and breathe this every single day and actually just let's just kind of pick up that a little bit, because we are talking about powerful devs and we're talking about hackathons and how to make AI work, and there is going to be a powerful devs hack for a couple of weeks, so it's actually going to it has started this weekend, this past weekend, I think you can still sign up.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, and there's the deadline as well, of march, isn't it? Yeah, so we're going to put a link to it. And also on the powerful devs conference, robin talks about the hack, so I'll just put a link to that in the show notes where you can sign up and what's expected and what you need to do. There needs to be a submitted video, kind of going through the solution that you made, and I read somewhere, nick, that you will be a judge.

Nick:

Yeah, and you're a judge as well.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, I was asked to be and I was a bit late responding, so we'll see. Maybe I'm a judge. I didn't really hear back. So I'm just pinging Danieliel as we speak and he's like I'm gonna check and then we'll see. Maybe I'm a judge, maybe I'm not. Um, okay, yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun, even though I hope I get in and I hope I can be a judge to see all the crazy submissions coming in. Um, because also for us it's a huge. It's a nice way to kind of see what people are actually working with, what's the use cases, exactly the way we talk about.

Nick:

And real world use cases. It just shut us up. If you can come up with real world use cases that are awesome, I'm more than happy to like. We're more than happy to show those off and tell the world.

Ulrikke:

Oh, definitely so, if we're both judges and or, of course, even if you're just a judge. And then the next episode, after we're finished, let's highlight the top things that we saw, because that's, that is exactly kind of the solution to the things that we've been ranting about this episode, I think, isn't it? I think? That's pretty cool absolutely okay, so we're kind of running way over. Uh, you have a couple of things here okay, yeah, yeah, there was something.

Nick:

Just I won't dive too much into it because, again, if you're building, you want to learn, if you're more of a pro, from a pro dev aspect of it, using ai foundry, there is, uh, building ai, ai agents for beginners. I think donna posted that somewhere and it's actually a github repo that has a bunch of lessons to go through. And that's more going beyond the Copilot Studio side. This is going into the Pro Code. That's your jam. Check that out. I think that looks pretty interesting.

Nick:

Speaking of building AI agents, our good friend, lisa Crosby posted a video this week. I love her videos. She is my calming voice on all of this because I'll watch her stuff and it makes sense to me after watching some of her videos. She, she is my calming voice and all of this because I'll watch her stuff and she can make it makes sense to me after watching some of her videos. So she's done one of building ai agents. Which tool should you use? Um, including the pro dev stuff, which I know lisa's not. That's not exactly her comfort zone, but she does a good overview of all of that, so you should check out that. I mean, you should check out your her youtube video. She, you should check out your her YouTube video. She has almost like a 70 or almost 80,000 subscribers, so you're probably already subscribing to your, uh, if that's your thing, um, and then the other thing, um, yeah, maybe I'm going to. I'll. I'll sort of save this.

Nick:

There was a post by Agnes, uh Barnicus, um, about so, do you want to become an MVP? And that it's funny because that generated a lot of chatter and I still go to my LinkedIn and that was posted a couple of weeks ago and there's still comments being generated and all of that. Maybe this is something you know, because that could actually go into another rabbit hole of things. But to really summarize, there's been a lot of, there's been some posts about how to become an MVP, what the roadmap should be, trying to treat it more like a certification or something that you can achieve. That's the wrong way to think about it and that's really the focus of his posts.

Nick:

To me, getting the MVP was more the result of work and what I posted there and I've said this before to become an MVP is it do you want to become an MVP or do you want to do the stuff that an MVP does? I want to do the stuff that an MVP does. Even when I was at Microsoft, I was doing it because I wasn't an MVP. Then, even if I was no longer an MVP, I would still want to do the stuff like the podcast, the presentations at events, doing the blogging and things like that. Mvp yes, there are benefits. You do get some stuff. There's, you know, a lot of cool things that comes with that program but it isn't so much something you can work. It isn't something you should be working towards. It should just be something that comes to you. So check out that. We'll put the link into that post and maybe we'll pick up more in that conversation later, because I think this is a bigger, a bigger thing.

Ulrikke:

I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that. Yeah, just the benefits. I mean, come on a few. What credit? A few azure credits, a few um licensing things? If you accumulated the time that I spend on the content, that makes me an mvp over the year. If, if I did that, if I spent those hours doing my job over time, I would earn, I could buy those benefits a million times over. It's not about the benefits, you guys. If you're not doing the thing, that means you're doing enough to be an MVP. Then you shouldn't be an MVP. It's not worth it. The majority of us, we get to be MVPs because we do this anyways, because we love doing it, not because we're called MVPs for it. And that's how it should be.

Ulrikke:

I know that there's some chatter about how the whole program is watered down and how it's way too easy to get in now and what's happening with the whole program. I don't know. I don't have any insights into that, but I know that some segments, some part of the world, some demographic it's easier than others. If you're a white man in the US, probably going to be harder, because I think that bucket is already kind of full. So I mean sure things like that applies because marks don't need to be diverse um. So there is some in kind of imbalance there.

Ulrikke:

I think that's where some of the the chatter and the comments are coming from. Um, but, as I said, from an economic point of view, or a kind of a um um, what you get from, from what you give point of view, if that's the way you're looking at it, it's not worth it really. Um, make sure you do it for the right reasons and that you're willing to keep it up. Anyone can become an mvp and renew, but if you don't do the work over time, you're not going to be even considered. So yeah, that's my two cents on it cool.

Nick:

Um, now, as we should wrap up, speaking of events, um, there's, of course, as much. As I said I wasn't going to do as many this year. Uh, here we go. Um. So march 21st, 22nd canadian power platform summit happening in vancouver. Still seats available, even their seats available in the workshops. Use PP Boost 15 to get 15% off. Still amazing deals. I think the co-pilot studio one, speaking of which my gut feeling is that will sell out, so you might want to consider getting on top of that. But there's other great ones as well, on Power Facts and ALM, so great opportunity to do some learning. If you're in Vancouver or wanted to do a trip to Vancouver, I'll turn the next one over to you, because that's the one you're going to in April.

Ulrikke:

That's ColorCloud. It's April 24th to 25th and then, of course, we have a workshop day before, so that's a pre-day workshop. On the Thursday I'm doing the Power Pages from Creation to Go Live whole day workshop on my own. I'm so excited. We have such a great curriculum going and some visitors from some good friends of mine to help us get through how to make a Power Pages fit for Go Live. And then I'm doing a session with Andy Wingate on Business Central and Power Pages together and that's yeah, that's going to be awesome. I'm so excited.

Nick:

Yep and then.

Nick:

So yeah, I'll be missing out on that. I'll have the major FOMO that weekend, for sure, I know. And then in mid-May, dynamicscon happening in Chicago, I have a session, crash course in PowerPages or Power, not power pages pipelines. So that was something we've been dealing with a lot with. I know there's a new learning path from Daniel that we didn't I think it was in our list, we didn't mention it. So lots of resources. But you know, check out my session. I can tell you some of the good and the bad and the ugly about pipelines. And then I'm teaming again with Angeliki on this. We're doing the same redoing the session that we did in Prague about, uh, the ultimate power slam, dynamics 365 versus power pages, kind of a very unique way of kind of where to use one versus the other, where they work together and that kind of thing. So that would be pretty exciting. Um, on that one Um, and then the next one, uh, happening a few weeks later, dynamics, minds, um, and I have a session on burnout, powerlifting and mental health.

Nick:

So again, I've talked about a little bit about this one. This is one I'm a little bit nervous about, but uh, should be good. And then I'm teaming with, uh, matt's necker and George Dubinsky on a session on uh, we called it the portals cage match, uh, power pages versus the world. So this is going to be. I think that to me is worth the price of admission the three of us in that one, if I was to go um. And then we found out this week, um yeah, european power platform conference. Uh, we have a session together. Um, we, I have my another session as well on power pages, and it looks like you and victor are doing a workshop, but I think I'm helping out with that one as well. So, yeah, what's going on?

Ulrikke:

yeah, one of those things are do you realize that you have a workshop with victor's like? No, do I? It's like, and I'm going to check and go, nick, do you realize that you're on it too? You go what, go what, I'm on it. It's like oh, okay, someone needs to start getting on top of their emails, I think.

Ulrikke:

But yeah, we're doing a workshop on Power Pages with Victor, expect to see those top gun suits because we need to wear them enough to kind of, yeah, keep it going so definitely, so definitely looking forward to it.

Nick:

It's going to be fun.

Ulrikke:

You and me get to do the top tips and tricks for Power Pages together again that's always fun, so that's kind of my highlight, even though, yeah, I love doing the Top Gun thing with you and Victor. The 10 tips and tricks for Power Pages is the one I'm looking forward to the most cool okay next episode March 5th.

Ulrikke:

March 5th. It scares me to see that. Okay, it goes so fast I'm blown away. Okay, this is a long one, you guys, a long one where I talk a lot about things I don't know anything about. So please help me out and comment on the thing where you saw this thing, and call me out and tell me all the use cases, please, for the things I don't know. Thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next time. Bye-bye, thanks for listening and if you liked this episode, please make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues in the community. Make sure to leave a rating and review your favorite streaming service and makes it easier for others to find us. Follow us on the social media platforms and make sure you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening to the Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, ulrika Akerbeck and Nick Dolman, and see you next time for your timely boost of Power Platform news.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nick Doelman

Host
Head Shot

Ulrikke Akerbæk

Host