Power Platform Boost Podcast
The Power Platform Boost Podcast is your timely update of what's new and what is happening in the community of Microsoft business applications. Join hosts Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman for a lively discussion of all things Power Platform!Like what you hear? Buy us a beer: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Powerplatboost
Power Platform Boost Podcast
#noLazyAI (#54)
- Introducing Managed Availability for Power Platform
- How to: Use the portal Web API
- Company Logo API with Power Pages by Tino Rabe
- Event portal enhancements by Malin Martnes
- Call for Speakers - Nordic Summit
- What’s new in Power Apps: February 2025
- Making sense of Data Exploration Agent by Jukka Niiranen
- Using Copilot to visualize data in views by Jeroen Scheper
- Resources for getting started with Microsoft Copilot by Femke Cornelissen
- Use agents to create social media posts by Femke Cornelissen
- Power Platform Pipelines: Perform A Delegated Deployment by Matthew Devaney
- The Complete Power Platform Pipelines ALM Setup Guide by Matthew Devaney
- Power Platform Magazine
- Portallunsj
- Powerful-Devs-Hack-Together
- ColorCloud Hamburg 2025 | ColorChallenge
- Power CAT Tools
- Unexpected Hats - Guest: Ulrikke Akerbæk on Sprint Zero
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if you put something that is just AI out there, then that's one thing, but you always make sure you read through it, right, cause it's your words, you're publishing it as your own. Then is it Copilot anymore? I don't know. Yeah, no, I agree, uh, let's, uh, I like that. No, zero AI shame. Let's go for it, come on.
Nick:Yep, no lazy AI, but zero shame.
Ulrikke:No lazy AI, no lazy AI. Okay, I think we found our episode title, yep.
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 hosts Nick Doelman and Ulrikke Akerbæk.
Ulrikke:Hey Nick.
Nick:Hey Ulrikke, How's it going?
Ulrikke:Oh, still sick, Still have a cold. So I'm faking it. I've stuffed my face with all the things that I can and I put on lots of makeup.
Nick:Yes, how are you? I'm good because I took my zinc, so I feel great.
Ulrikke:Yeah, you keep rubbing that in my face. It's like I'm never sick because I take this and I go. Maybe it's not that, I think it's something else, but, yay, good for you, it could be something over. It's probably not. It's not even legal in Norway, you know. So it's not like I can just send me something and then I'll never be sick. But let's try it. Send me a year worth and then in a year we'll recess and we'll see if I've I've not been sick, okay.
Nick:Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good deal. It sounds like a good deal, it's. It's funny, because you're not the only one that makes fun of me. That cause during the pandemic, that's all I was like I was popping these things every day and like I'm not getting sick. What's everybody and everybody. And it was actually recommended to me from a scientist friend of mine.
Ulrikke:Hey, bruce, hope you're doing well you're not listening, but anyways, um, but anyways you're, you're, whenever you can kind of you can throw my scientist friend in someone's face. It's like well if well, I mean I. I think also the fact that I'm on public transportation you're not. I have kids in kindergarten school age, you have not. And I also frequently visit like 10 different grocery stores You're not.
Nick:I think that may have a little bit to do with it, exactly Like when my daughter was small, when she first started going to daycare and everything like that, like I wasn't sick before, but that winter I was like one cold progressively after another and I remember going into clients and going oh, you still have a cold. I go no, no, this is the third cold from the last time you saw me Exactly.
Ulrikke:But it's a region thing, right? So, without going in, we had one of those office meetings on Friday. They had to postpone it because 75 of the people at the office was sick. So it's a norway thing and also, you know, our customer project, everyone's been out sick for a long time. So I mean, I think it's also one of those things where in norway, we are allowed to be sick because we have all those the mechanisms in place so that when we get a cold and we're sick, we can just be sick and we don't have the drugs that you have to keep everyone going always. So it's okay. I mean, what did I do the week? The whole weekend I I uh, blew my nose and I watched tv and like I can't remember the last time I did that and I needed a break. So it's, it's all good, right.
Nick:Yep. Yeah so it's good to have a break. For sure, my week, my weekend, was doing a unexpected furnace upgrade, so it's it's all good, that's so crazy.
Ulrikke:Waking up from text to you going, oh, the furnace is now out, and I was like, oh, shoot out. And I was like, oh, shoot, how's that gonna work? You know like what they're replacing it today.
Nick:What no, okay?
Ulrikke:this, this is, this is we're doing today.
Nick:This is the timeline of events, because we have like a, a furnace maintenance contract where they come in, uh, twice a year or once or yeah, whatever it is on a regular little check the furnace, make sure it's running efficiently and everything like that, fix any little things, and did it. Guy came in he goes how old's this furnace? And we figure it's probably well over 15 years, which is sort of you know, 15 to 20 years is the lifespan. We're not exactly sure. It might even be older than 20 years. And then he basically said yeah, it's, it's not leaking carbon dioxide yet, but there's rust holes.
Nick:That it like gave the whole explanation. He says I have to red it. Red tagging means not allowed to run, it needs to shut off the gas. And anyway, he said somebody from the office will talk to you Within two hours. I had a guy come in, show us all the new features and then literally half hour later signed off and everything and he says the technician will be there tomorrow morning. So we were one night without a furnace. It really wasn't that cold, so not a big deal. And then probably by mid-afternoon we had our new furnace installed up and running, all wired in, all good to go. It was a blur. But it's homeowners, that's what you got to do.
Ulrikke:And also, I don't mean to be kind of poking your little adventure here, but isn't that a fantastic business model? It's like he couldn't have told you this six months ago when he was there looking at the thing. And then also they're like oh, you know what, shoot, we don't have a lot of things going on this week. How can we generate some more things to do? You know what I'll do the next week. I'm, I'm out, I'll actually red tag all the things that are, you know, above 15 years and and what do you know, the week filled out. Maybe that's what we do, right? So we're going out and we're doing all this assessment work and we go. Actually, I'm sorry, your prior platform is now, uh, like you can't, you're not allowed to run it anymore. I have to red tag it. And then, um, if you, you know, if you need some work done, let me know and I'll hook you up. And then there you go, week is full exactly.
Nick:Let's check your flows, let's check a few things. Oh yeah, you know this oh, I'm sorry.
Ulrikke:I have to shut this off now. I can't use it anymore. So yeah and you know. If you need any guidance on how to fix it, just let me know and I'll hook you up with someone.
Nick:Yeah, for sure, it's one of those things. It was to be expected at some point, like I think I just knew. Okay, the furnace is going to go in the next couple of years. This has been on my mind, so it is because it is the lifespan and stuff like that. But I mean it is a good business model because it was a slow time of year for them.
Ulrikke:There's a slow time of year for them and yeah, they got it, yeah, and then whenever you spent that amount of money and afterwards you say, well, it's all kind of a blur, it's also an indication that it may have happened a tiny bit too fast, but that's if you don't worry about it. So, speaking of platform and shutting things down, let's move on to the news and updates, because there are a few this week as well.
Nick:Yeah, and think about segue. So because we have the segue, I'm going to jump actually. Uh, because you talk about maintenance and things that we expect will work, um, that just should be fine.
Ulrikke:And you found this article on managed availability, so this you want to say all the way to the bottom oh, that's completely fine, right? So this is one of those things where I hold your horses, people, I'm going to go on a rant. No, manage availability Right. So it's on the power apps list of new features coming out. It's so short, it's production. Workloads in Azure are synchronously replicated across multiple independent data centers within a region, ensuring zero data loss and rapid failover with minimal service disruption in case of failure.
Ulrikke:And then you and I went sorry, what, yeah, is this new? Because I'm sorry. I thought it sorry. What, yeah, is this new? Because I'm sorry, I thought it already did that. Yes, so the news is that now you have backup and it will automatically backup and move your things to different data centers within your region so that you have almost zero downtime. Oh, I thought, like I said, it already does that. The news, I think, is that they put ai in charge of it. So and this is what one of the headlines in the article reads build confidence with automated backups and self-serve disaster. No, that does not build confidence at all, actually, and it has something along the lines of it will self-fix. So they put an agent in charge of your. Yeah, I'm going to stop now because it's probably a very good update and fantastic new capability. So introducing managed availability for proud platform people Yay.
Nick:Yeah, you can check it out and see how confident you are. And it's interesting, I'm going to talk about something a little fun. So this is like what we're hoping to do later this year at some point is actually, do we want to do this last year we didn't happen but is to do a live boost recording at some point. And what we're going to do is we're going to hand out these and these are a boost bingo, boost bingo card and things are, and already I've got two this morning. So Erica goes on a rant and then also we express trust issues with AI. So it's things like this that we'll go through.
Nick:And this idea came from my wife, bridget Mou. So Bridget came up with this idea. She said you know what you guys should do, like she says I don't listen to your podcast, but you should do like a bingo card for all these little things. So I made up this bingo card and she actually found it kind of funny. And it was funny because she looked at certain things on the bingo card. Like it's like oh, does this happen or does this happen?
Ulrikke:Like yeah, so anyways, so you know how, the last few episodes, I've been trying to get Bridge to listen to our podcast. This is how it ended Not only will she not listen, she'll make fun of us. That's fantastic. Thanks, bridge. Okay so yes. Okay so yes. Bingo chart. There's a lot of fun stuff in there and I'm sure we'll check all of those boxes by the end of it. Pretty much Moving on other news and updates.
Ulrikke:Well, it's not really news, but I have something I need to follow up from last time, because we talked about the PowerPages table permissions for web APIs last time and how it was kind of in the middle of figuring something out for one of our projects. Now I was diving more into it and it seems that the web API permissions follow the logged-in user's table permissions. So if the logged in user has created access to something through a table permission and they're logged into the portal, they trigger the web API. The web API will simply follow that same permission for PowerPages. Specifically, of course and this is it's not new, but it's probably I started working with the web API before it was publicly available, so of course, I have learned stuff that I still think is true that has been changed since, Because the things that were in place then you had to have special table permissions set up for the web API. So it's probably not new, but if there's anyone out there that has worked with this for too long and haven't updated their knowledge about it, then this is very valuable to know.
Ulrikke:Yeah, and then I saw something that was very fun from Tino. Tino made like a two minute video about how he put company logos on PowerPages by using a company logo API and I thought that was kind of cool because he had a use case where he had supplier portal. So imagine you have a business and you have like a thousand suppliers and they log into your portal, want to see their latest orders and the different products that they can sell and buy. Then they can now see their logo on the PowerPages site by using this API. So it was a small little thing, but I think it's going to bring value to someone. I didn't know about it, so sharing is caring.
Nick:Yeah, yeah, no, that'd be really cool. Actually, I can think of. I know a couple of projects that I do have like that I worked in assisted with. Like they have suppliers and partners logging in, so they yeah, that's really cool.
Ulrikke:And you saw something else regarding PowerPages and Advent Portal the ugly, Angular thing that we had back in the day that no one touches. Is that what you mean?
Nick:Well, you know what? I don't because guess what and this is something. This has actually been out since February, I think. But of course we admittedly were not big in customer insights and journeys. I mean, we've touched on it with our project, but we're not dive deep like a lot of it. But our good friend Malin Martinez, Malin, malin Martinez.
Nick:Yep, yep. She talks about the event portal enhancements and that was a big release in the February, february release of Customer Insights and Journeys. It's using Power Pages as the event portal and she went through on her blog it's really good breaking down the template and how to set it up, how to set up the event portal, registration pages, all of this stuff, which is really cool because this is something we said from the. This is very odd when the event portal came out. So here's PowerPages, or at that time it's PowerApps portals, here's all your templates and here's the portal that comes with Dynamics at the time, marketing, and it's written in Angular and it's this whole Angular website.
Nick:And it was odd for a couple of reasons. First off, why wasn't this done in PowerPages? And yes, at the time, powerpages didn't have the web API to do certain things that you'd probably want done in an event portal, so that would actually mean a lot of extra customization, which I've done in other projects to address those issues at that time. But then, but then the second question was like, okay, that's, it's not done in PowerPages. That's weird, why not? Why not? And then the second one is Angular, which is weird again because Microsoft doesn't really use Angular anywhere else that I'm aware of.
Nick:I get the fact that you can take this Angular website and inject it in a current CMS If you're not using PowerPages. If you're using PowerPages, you could inject it there as well, but that was, I found, very clunky. So finally they got away and finally, and I think PowerPages has now evolved to the point where they're able to build the event portal completely within PowerPage, which is great, because that way it just makes it easier in terms of the learning, the technology, your knowledge base. Now, like folks like us, can come in and actually help from the customer insights and journey on the on the power pages side, because we can take that knowledge and apply it, or vice versa, and just sort of, again it's again. It's another case of the story everything better together so 100.
Ulrikke:And also she showcases um. She uses Nordic Summit as the example in her blog post. So a quick shout out to Nordic Summit, which is in September. Call for Speakers is now open. So if you want to submit your session for a workshop or a session at Nordic Summit this fall, you make sure to do that now.
Nick:Yep, and I got one workshop I've submitted already and I'm working together with a mentee because there's a mentorship program as well, and it's great because we're bouncing ideas off each other and I've sort of again letting my mentee kind of drive the car but I'm sort of in the passenger seat saying, well, let's try together and really, and thanks to the organizing committee, which I know you're a part of, for putting that mentorship program together, because that allows new speakers to come into our community and, you know, get them in front of, you know delivering sessions and things like that. So yeah, exciting times.
Ulrikke:Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun. Sarah Lagerquist and I are running a point on the mentorship program and it's so much fun to match people together and to see how they get on. And also I've been mentoring a few people myself and it's so rewarding. And also it's fun to see because we get people in that want to be part of the mentor program as a mentee, that are MVPs or have a lot of speaking experience from before but they don't know our community or they've done a lot of speaking experience from before that they don't know our community, or they come in from they've done a lot of blogging. That's why they're mvps and they want to get into speaking. So it's not just for new people to the community, it's also senior people that haven't kind of dove into the session stuff and presentation yet. So it it's uh, it's anyone's game really and so rewarding, so so much fun and thank you for being part of it. We really. It's so rewarding, so much fun and thank you for being part of it. We really do appreciate it.
Nick:Oh my pleasure.
Ulrikke:Right, so moving on, I've had my rant, so let's make some room for someone else's rant. Let's move on to the visual visualize with copilot. So one of the the most amazing things I the one of the things I like to do when I demo power platform or, and especially, model driven apps to people is to show them the visualize in power bi button that you get from a model driven app. That kind of takes all your the data you see on your list and then transform that into a Power BI report like that. It's so much fun. Now there's a new kid on the block. It's a new button called Visualize with Copilot. Is it the same feature as Visualize with Power BI, but with Copilot? It says that it will instantly transform your business data into a meaningful and interactive chart, and it's from the Power Apps feature update for February. Actually, now we both have this item on our list, but we found slightly different approaches to the thing. So you want to go first or you want me to go first.
Nick:Yeah. So for those of you who've been in the community for a long time for many years, probably everybody who works or has worked with charts like when I talk about charts there's, of course, power Platform. There's five different ways to create a chart. You know you can do SQL serve and you can create them in SQL server reporting services, which is a bigger discussion for another day. Of course there's Power BI. Of course, within Canvas apps, there's little chart controls, but there is from the old I'd say the old, the classic or legacy CRM days. There is the ability to add charts to views into dashboards, and that's been around since CRM for 2011 days.
Ulrikke:And it's.
Nick:You know it evolved quite a bit for a while, but then, in lieu of going to Power BI, that's sort of where Power BI was the new exciting kid on the block, so that's sort of where a lot of this stuff was being pushed to. And again, power BI. That's what it does Charts, dashboards and all this other stuff. But the built-in charts in the model-driven app actually are very sufficient for a lot of use cases, and I've done charts for different organizations and they just absolutely love the fact they can log in, they can see a dashboard, they can see how many people signed up for an event or how many people are registered for a particular subsidy program and things like that, and then from there you can drill down into the records and everything like that. So, yes, classic technology, but very valuable. Again, people love visuals, so now they have this. So, of course, if you're working with charts and you need to go to the community to figure out things or to do a few special things, one of the top people in the community was Ulrich from Denmark, ulrich Carlson. He's in the US now, but he is known as the CRM chart guy. He blogged and did a lot of content. He even has some XRM toolbox tools on building or managing charts. And he was like if you had any questions with charts, you just ping Ulrich and like within seconds he'd, oh, do it this way, do it this way. He just always had the answer. So he actually and sorry, ulrich, I'm saying this without permission, but I think you'll be okay he quoted and I quote here he said finally tried out the new Copilot chart visualize feature. It cannot have multiple aggregates, no secondary Y-access, no using fields from parent tables, can only use fields from current view, can't filter view after drill down, can't save, can't share breaks if you ask for a field not in current table and, the worst part, it removes access to current charts. Do not enable and rant. And then, even when you enable it, yeah, you're sort of stuck. So he kind of that was his reaction to it.
Nick:Now, of course, we've talked about this before. A lot of these AI features they're kind of version one or version 0.999, but they are being aggressively pushed. I think we also have a link from Jukka Nurnen from Finland. For those of you who don't know Jukka everybody knows who Jukka is. He posted his opinion on things. Making sense of the data expiration agent Also is a very good read on the current state of this new tool and his opinions, and I think you found another link from someone who we talked about last time. Joran, correct? Yeah?
Ulrikke:Yes. So Joran Schepper has a bit of a different take on it. I think his summary is the same, but he has more of a. Okay, so let's compare the two.
Ulrikke:So the classic you can save your charts, you can share, you can use it in dashboards. You can have different, more types of charts are available. You have more control over the generated output. So that's kind of the classic experience.
Ulrikke:And then the co-pilot experience. Of course it is an improved user interface. It feels more modern. You're able to generate charts where there are no charts available for a specific table. You can create a copy of the chart as a PNG and put it on the clipboard for you to paste other places, and then you can generate an AI description via the explain function. But also, you cannot have both.
Ulrikke:If you enable this new co-pilot experience, you disable the original, the classic experience. Now, is that a valuable thing to do now? I guess, from what we've seen so far, don't flip the switch yet. Maybe explore it in a sandbox environment until it's good enough for you to kind of enable it in a production scenario. But this is something that isn't fully baked, but it's a fantastic new thing. Right, you can, and and it kind of brings associations to project to feel a little bit, because that's also creating a user interface on top of data that allows you to visualize and ask questions and and kind of dive into data from a not power bi, but same kind of of point of view where you explore data and charts and stuff, so kind of same, but not so. Yeah, definitely check it out and play with it, but it doesn't seem like it's production ready yet.
Nick:Yeah, it's just unfortunate, because I think the fact that you have to pick one over the other I think that's probably the biggest issue that we're seeing with this Like, yeah, it's great, we should be trying out these new tools.
Nick:But even there was some other posts that I think we talked about maybe last week or maybe I just saw that I didn't have here on the list about going back to the classic experience within Dataverse and model-driven apps. I found this week I had to go back If that had to be shut off versus one versus the other. That makes things very, very difficult to try to move forward with some of these tools. And then what happens is then no one will use the new tool because they're like well, we don't want to lose access to the old one, and so the new tool doesn't get the ability to provide that feedback on okay, here's what's wrong here, to provide that feedback on okay, here's what's wrong, here's what needs to be fixed. So I think this is something. If there's any kind of feedback from Microsoft, yeah, keep building these new tools, but don't take away our old thing to give us the new thing, because, you know, for these reasons, yeah, but I also get it right.
Ulrikke:It's hard to kind of do both. That split and that user interface is hard. You want to split from one to the other. So I think it makes sense to have this in a sandbox or a development environment until it's ready for you to go public with. And, of course, they're looking for feedback. So if you enable this in your sandbox environment, you play with it and you find that it's not sufficient, maybe give that feedback back to Microsoft and say, okay, this is fantastic, I love the new interface, but these things need to be fixed until I can start using it. Please give me feedback when you've done that, so that I can go in and check again, because they are looking for feedback and that's why they're pushing these features so quickly. It's for us to give that feedback too, and it's also a very agile way of approaching um application development, the same thing we do with our customers. You want to give them something quick and early and for them to give you the feedback, so you don't spend time developing something someone doesn't want and just focus on the thing that people actually do want.
Ulrikke:So I am in two minds about this, to be honest. Um, let's move on to other co-pilot things. So I found so we've talked about femke clandestine before and she is so hot. Uh, right now on linkedin, I cannot um go into my linkedin feed without seeing a new post from femke and her stuff is incredible. For instance, one of our latest articles was about she says I get prompted maybe two or three times each day people asking me where do I start if I want to start learning about Co-Pilot Studio. So she made a list of the resources that she liked and favored. So this is kind of her curriculum to go through if you want to dive in and learn copilot studio. And I share that with all my colleagues and all the people coming in because I get the same question and this is a fantastic resource to just share. So thank you, famke.
Ulrikke:But also one of her older blog posts I think that was last week she talks about how she's probably made this post, even with ai. Yeah, so it was a post where she actually just said I don't have any AI shame. I use AI for everything and also in my social media posts. So she has a post on LinkedIn explaining how she uses AI to create the majority of her social media posts right now and I actually love that. You know no AI shame, because there's so much AI shame involved and I see blog posts where they go. Some of this has been created with AI and you see, in the release notes you always have to kind of put in if you use AI for something, and of course we all do so. I'm just kind of asking, when does it become ubiquitous, where we don't have to say that anymore because everything is AI at some point?
Nick:so well, interesting yeah, it is interesting because I know I did a. I was on a webinar a month or two ago that was put on by Donna Sarkar and she said something about. Someone asked that very question like at what point do we, you know, or should we actually say this is AI generated or not AI generated? And you see both those tags and she said, yeah, but do you put in a document? Oh, by the way, I use spellcheck on this document. You don't right, it's just assumed that you'll use it and I think we also are assuming that we're using AI for a lot of things. Now, that's interesting.
Nick:You talk about like a no AI shame, which is great, but if I look at like one of Femke's posts and I have it right up here in front of me it's very readable. You could tell she's curated or it's actually being written in her voice or the voice that she is very consistent with on LinkedIn, and I have met her in person and it is consistent from my impression of her and just chatting with her one-on-one. So it doesn't have that. I think there's something that we have to watch out for. It's lazy AI and you see this on LinkedIn all the time and that stuff drives me crazy. Well, you can tell someone is just put in a prompt into Copilot or ChatGPT, it spit out something, cut paste, post, walk away. You look at me, I posted something, that stuff. You can tell that stuff drives me crazy.
Nick:It's yes, use AI properly, which I think she's doing. She has a format, she has a voice, she has a skill, she's consistent. That takes effort to use AI as a tool properly, versus the just let AI regurgitate or spit out stuff. So I think there's a subtle, not even a subtle difference properly versus the just let AI regurgitate or spit out stuff. So I think there's a subtle, not even a subtle difference. There's definitely a difference there. So I think I like that. No AI shame. But also it's like there should be no, also no lazy AI, I guess.
Ulrikke:Yeah, no, I agree, and that was the premise of her post as well. So she taught you know what, if Copilot can capture my style of voice, how can Copilot help structure my scattered thoughts, and what can I get inspired by without losing my authenticity? So I think you know, asking those kinds of questions is very smart as well. And then that separates you from the other thing, and I love that. What you just said that you got from from um, from Donna's webinar uh, Donna and Jeremiah, because, yeah, if you put something that is just AI out there, then that's one thing, but you always make sure you read through it, right, cause it's your words, you're publishing it as your own. Then is it Copilot anymore? I don't know. Yeah, no, I agree. Uh, let's. Uh, I like that. No, zero AI, shame. Let's go for it, come on.
Nick:Yeah, and no lazy AI, but zero shame.
Ulrikke:No lazy AI, no lazy AI. Okay, I think we found our episode title Yep. So, moving on to other things, data versus platform, alm platform I can't even write platform.
Nick:Matthew Devaney, I'll check, if one don't exist.
Ulrikke:Sorry, let me just fix that. I'll just hover over it and platform. There you go, Funny, funny, Okay. So Matthew Devaney is really diving into ALM now and it's fantastic. He has one blog post which is the Complete Power Platform Pipelines ALM Setup Guide. It is kind of it is probably exactly the same thing as Benedict's book, I don't know but I love that. It's a comprehensive guide. You can download the PDF and he has a whole series of blog posts and it's still in the works.
Ulrikke:So he has a few blog posts to go before it's complete. But one of them is platform pipelines delegated using a service principle, which is something I've been diving into this year as well and it's very powerful and it's also a best practice. When you're moving solutions from environment to environment, make sure they have a service principle that is running the pipeline, but that you also share your connection references with it. That you share your connections with it and that you're actually making it a cohesive thing means you're not reliant on any service users no developer, user access. So it's definitely a good place to start in a good practice to have. And then Matthew Devaney's blog post is a great place to start if you want to look into it, so definitely worth checking out.
Nick:Yeah, and I think he's continuing to build on it, because I saw that he had another post this morning. I'm on his newsletter emails and there was another post coming through. So, like everything, this content continues to evolve and, yeah, it's great, it's um power platform pipelines. I have a love hate relationship, as you know, with them. Um, we've been using them a lot and, yeah, when they, when their work, they're great. When they they don't, then it's kind of like pulling my hair out a little bit. It's like I hate. You know, like even over the weekend I ran, ran it and it kind of gave me big error, like oh, it failed. And then I look at the solution history and like, no, it and it kind of gave me a big error, like, oh, it failed. And then I look at the solution history and like no, it imported fine. Just, you know little things. But again, this is it will evolve, right.
Ulrikke:So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's new as well. I know we didn't see that last year and it's new, so it's evolving in kind of the wrong direction a little bit, but it to manage it. Now it's okay. And I wanted just to say something that I forgot. I was supposed to put a link in here.
Ulrikke:I saw and this is a tangent, but I saw from linkedin we get the the uh kind of the who's who our competitors are on linkedin. And then I saw something called the power platform magazine, talk about your newsletters. And I was like, wow, there's a power platform magazine. How did I not know about that? And I go in and I say, well, it it's 80 newsletters already, wow. And I open it up and it's all in Spanish. And then I translate it and then I open up the different links because I thought surely you know there's information here that I've been losing out. There's so much content here, awesome content, but every single blog post is in Spanish and every single YouTube video is in Spanish.
Ulrikke:I don't speak Spanish, but then it suddenly occurred to me you know, the translation thing that you're using a lot in our project actually now unlocks a whole new universe for me. Actually, I can now get content from a newsletter that before I wouldn't never have been able to access and I absolutely love it. So next time I'm sure we're going to have some links from content that I've discovered in the Spanish, because it was fantastic, because you could actually see the same kind of personas that we have just in the Spanish world. Probably you could just take our whole community and it's just a complete replica in this in spanish world. It's not fantastic. I kind of had this matrix experience where I went there's yuka, then there's nick and there's matthew, there's all these crazy people just in the spanish realm fantastic so our spanish counterparts, yeah it just blew my mind.
Ulrikke:I was like where am I? Am I in here? Maybe I'll find myself just a spanish version of myself? It's not spanish, but spanish speaking. You know what I mean I'm probably offending a million people on this little tangent. I'm sorry, I don't mean any. I'm really a good person, I promise.
Nick:No, it's good because this is, this is about like exposing, like exposing the community, like it's funny, because I found when I went and spoke in Paris in the fall, it's like, oh, wow, there's a, like there's a whole other very thriving French community around power platform as well. Um, so, yeah, shut it down, like, um, chloe and Alan and our friends in the French community and everything you do too, it's it's amazing. Um, friends in the french community and everything you do too, it's it's amazing. Um, but we see the contents in french, which I can read a little bit, but it's just still.
Nick:It's uh, yeah, and and the great, with all these tools, it really makes the world more of a kind of a global village, in a sense, and how we can share this stuff. So, yeah, whatever language you produce content and don't. And I guess another thing to drill down on too is there's uh, you don't have to put content out in english if your first language is german, do german content. We know we have our friends matts and pauline and bjorn. We have there's a whole german community as well.
Ulrikke:Uh, out there, um, yeah, so, and norwegian, of course, and with the yeah, yeah, and with the translation capabilities who have now, because I remember having this discussion with a colleague of mine back in the day when I started blogging. I was like, so do I blog under my own name or my company, or Norwegian or English? What do I do? And he's like go on your own blog and write in English, because anything else is just narrowing down. You should be as open as reach as many people as you want, but of course today it's kind of unnecessary. Maybe it's now finally at the point where we can write in our native language and anyone can consume it, because the translation capabilities out there in the tools that we use have become so great. So, and I'm better at expressing myself in Norwegian than I am in English, of course, because of my native language. So that means I'm probably a better communicator if I can now write in Norwegian instead of English.
Ulrikke:And also I do have Norwegian content out there. So, for instance, I do a PowerPages-specific meetup every quarter called Portal Lunch, which is in Norwegian, it's not recorded and it's just live over lunch where we talk about the latest things. We have one upcoming in Norwegian. It's not recorded and it's for you know, it's just live over lunch where we talk about the latest things. We have one upcoming in May, so if that's for you and you speak Norwegian or you want to hang around and do the live translation in Teams, then you're welcome to join.
Nick:I should do that. I should do that next time to see how well.
Ulrikke:I can. Yeah, give it a go. Yeah for sure? Do you think it's going to translate? Can you translate your voice back? So if you speak English, I'm just going to translate. I can't wait to hear what you sound like in Norwegian.
Nick:That would be so much fun. Yeah, well, I know that they showed stuff I don't know. I think we talked about this before. At Ignite they showed Teams where they had a Teams meeting, where they were doing the live translation. At Ignite, they showed Teams where they had a Teams meeting, where they were doing the live translation. That to me, was a little too deepfake. That may be a little uncomfortable, but if it's something where again, if we know it's AI, if I speak and if I say something that comes across in Norwegian, yeah, you never know.
Ulrikke:Oh, please, it's going to be so much fun, we're going to record it and I'm just going to record it. Um and um, I'm just gonna check. Yeah, so next item we don't have. We don't have a lot of time left. I want to talk about the powerful devs hack. How's it going? Because you're a judge, have you seen anything awesome yet?
Nick:oh, I saw it. Oh, tons of awesome things. Uh, so it's actually it's done. Uh, there's, there's. Sessions have been submitted. The judging ended last week. They are announcing, on March 25th, I believe, who the winners are. And I have no idea who the winners are. I just know I was given a chunk of different things to evaluate and I went through and a couple and actually we're going to put the link in the show notes. It's to a GitHub so you can see the submissions, you can download the code, you can watch the videos of the demonstrations and the participants explaining what they built.
Nick:There were some things that I saw that were like, okay, I'm not sure I would have submitted that in the end, but there was a lot of amazing things that I saw, and again, I don't want to. I mean there's literally, I didn't see them all. I saw the chunk that I was supposed Um, and again I don't want to. I mean there's, there's, literally, I didn't see them all. I saw the chunk that I was supposed to judge, plus a few others, but there's just so many great ones there.
Nick:One that really stood out to me was using which I, which I thought was a really great idea. It was using co-pilot to help with food banks. So we all know in Canada it's a big deal, um, where you know you, you know there's always holidays to do a food bank drive or in the grocery stores to donate to the food bank. But of course, you have no idea what these food banks are saying Well, we need this or we need that, we need certain items. At the end of the day, actually donating money to a lot of food banks helps as well, because they can actually aggregate, buy and everything like that. But this co-pilot went out saying, hey, I want to donate to a food bank. It would go out, ask, prompt you for a postal code and then you would find all the local food banks and then it would begin to summarize from the local food banks what items they're really looking for, what they're in most need of. So that kind of helps you. If you want to give, what you can plan, and then even it would generate a shopping list for you uh, how much these items are going to cost things like that.
Nick:So to me this was like yeah, this is, um, these are the types of things this is using ai for good. It's helping people out. So there was a few other examples of using ai for good. Uh, that wasn't part of the criteria of the hackathon, but it was still.
Nick:I think these are the types of things if you're submitting to a hackathon have it relate to, to real things, um and uh, that that's sort of uh, yeah, um, and I know that, uh, like you know with, uh, there's other hackathons out there as well uh, that you do, like you know, acdc, of course. And I would sort of say, if you have the opportunity to participate in a hackathon, go for it. Just from a learning perspective, I'm, I'm, I need to learn with a project. Hackathon gives you a good project and for me I would like. Last year, not this past year at ACDC, the year before, I dove deep into canvas apps. It was a new thing for me in power effects and I just learned so much over the course of those two days or three days, whatever it was.
Ulrikke:So again, yeah, exciting stuff yeah and uh you're getting a tattoo yeah, yeah, speaking of um, charity events and workshops, uh, color challenge, oh sorry, oh sorry. Um the the ColourCloud colour challenge. Last year we all got our hair coloured and a lot of people are doing that this year as well. And, of course, last year I promised Mats that I would get the ColourCloud tattoo. So of course now I'm part of the colour challenge for the charity event and if we raise enough money, I'm going to get the color cloud tattoo. So a logo as a tattoo. So I'm going to share some links to that in the show notes and please go in and donate. Like last time, all the participants have chosen their own specific charity that they want to raise money for and there's a certain threshold that they want to raise money for and there's a certain threshold that you want to get in order to get those um, the money, um donated for that charity. So please go in and donate if you can go into a good cause and it's a lot of fun.
Ulrikke:You get to see a lot of colorful heads at color cloud in Hamburg in April. Um, and also there's a we missed the news item Um, the powerat tools. I just want to mention it because it was one of those things where you read something and you go AI-generated solution documentation.
Nick:Yes, yes please.
Ulrikke:When can I have it? Yes, yes, yes, yes, please. So the PowerCat tools had a refresh and now you get code review, ai-generated solution documentation, risk management, api playground and plugin monitoring and all that jazz. If this is something that you're interested in and I can't believe if you're not then go check out the new PowerCat tools.
Nick:We put links in the show notes for that I'm going to definitely be running that AI solution documentation very soon on some things. Just give it a good run yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so fun.
Ulrikke:And also we have some sad news. Yeah, um, if that's a bummer, I know I know. So a few months back I went on the zero at the spring zero podcast with john and mike and we had a blast. It was so much fun. We tried on different hats. Darth and we had a blast. It was so much fun. We tried on different hats. Darth Vader we had a visit from Darth Vader. It was just, we were just goofing around but also talking about a lot of deep stuff and also a lot of techie stuff.
Ulrikke:So if you're, if you want some easy listening while you're doing something else gardening, for instance and you're finished with this episode, then go on over to Sprint Zero and check out our conversation that we had there. And then they released that episode and they kind of yeah, we're doing the video thing now, it's going to be so much fun. And then they told us that they're going to not continue to do the Sprint Zero podcast anymore. That was a bummer, but we uh, but we know we appreciate how hard it is to find time sometimes to do a podcast and it is uh, it is hard work, uh, and you've had so many amazing episodes, already talked to so many great people, and from the conversations you've had, I've learned to know um the people in our community better. So, john and mike, thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts for all the hard work you did so far and looking forward to your next. Uh, seeing what you're gonna be up to next and uh, yeah, uh, thank you yeah for sure.
Nick:uh, I mean it was, I was, I listened to your episode while I was at the gym, actually just rolling my eyes, giggling, whatever else, um, and then, but yeah, then I heard they were like, yeah, and I was on like last year at some point with those guys and I mean they're a riot, I mean two great guys and they know, no matter podcast or not, great guys regardless. Um, and yeah, sad to see that, but I totally get it, especially trying to organize, um, organize, uh, guests and stuff like that. That's the reason why we don't do it, because just to get our schedules to light up, sometimes it's crazy. Yep, so I totally get the hard work. Thanks for what you've done. I mean your back catalog, I think, is still great for posterity. It's still going to be available. So definitely listen through, get to know the people in the community and, yeah, and, like I said, good luck and I'm sure you guys will do amazing things. Just keep going, whatever.
Ulrikke:Yeah, definitely. Do you want to do a quick run of the events that we're doing, because you have a big one coming up this weekend, don't you?
Nick:Yeah, so Canadian Power Platform Summit. So I think we're releasing this on Wednesday. Today's the day to register, because we have to have those names in because it's at a Microsoft office, so ppboost15.
Ulrikke:Look at your face, so stern, it's like really telling people off. If you want to get in, you have to get your ticket. No.
Nick:I had to escort someone out last year because they didn't have a ticket, yeah, so it's max capacity. Yeah, it is what it is, of course, uh, and then, yeah, so there's that, uh, and then at the end of, and then after that, it's mvp summit, which we can't really talk about, uh, too much um no, but we're gonna be busy, but you know, um, the boost will still roll as usual.
Ulrikke:Uh, color cloud. In the end of April I'm doing my workshop and my session with Andy Wingate. It's going to be a lot of fun.
Nick:And then you have In mid-May, so DynamicsCon happening in Chicago. I have two sessions. One's a crash course in Power Platform Pipelines, so, matthew, I'm probably going to steal some of your content for that, incorporate, of course, my own Talk about the good and the bad about pipelines. I do also have a session with had it really with Angeliki, but she's actually not coming anymore, so I think I might have a surprise guest who's helping me out on that. We're finalizing that on model-driven apps and power pages. And then, following that, power Summit in the UK. Are you coming to that? Or we haven't decided yet, or you know yet?
Ulrikke:oh yeah, yeah, I'm coming. It's just when I saw that I thought, yeah, so which session is it that I'm doing and I can't remember okay, so that's may 24th in london, um, and that's just. Oh, yeah, that's my birthday actually, so London and that's just sort of oh yeah, that's my birthday actually, so I can't wait. I'm going to spend the day my birthday in London with all you guys, you crazy, crazy guys, and it's going to be a lot of fun. And I think it's the Styling Power Pages one, actually, that I'm doing.
Nick:Yeah, I think so as well. Yeah, that should be fun. Yeah, dynamics, minds, uh, happening may. The week after that, that's in slovenia I have a session on burnout, powerlifting and mental health. Would be interesting because there'll be the week before I will be at the world bench press championship, so hopefully I'll have happy news at that. Um, yes, yes, yes, portals cage match with matt and george. And then, uh, three weeks, two weeks later, after that european power platform conference, uh, again doing the top gun thing with you and victor. Um, and we're doing our, our top 10 tips and tricks, as well as a session. And I'm also doing my power pages. Crash, crash course, the co-pilot edition. So how, using power pages to create sites and things like that? Crash course, the co-pilot edition. So how, using PowerPages to create sites and things like that?
Ulrikke:You probably have a discount code as well, but I found mine. Mine's Nick10 for a 10% discount. Wow, good for you. It's always an internal competition who gets the most discounts? So let's just push all of it to you and I hope you win. Usually, it's Vlad who wins it. Well, vlad or Matthew is one of the two. So let's just everyone just pour everything they have and use Nick10 for 10% discount at EPPC. That's 16th to 18th of June. Yeah, and maybe, if stars align, we can do the 10 top tips and tricks as a podcast episode. How about that?
Nick:Oh yeah, That'd be awesome.
Ulrikke:And then we can distribute the bingo chart to everyone, and then we'll see um, let's, let's, let's hope. Yeah, that's a good idea oh, okay and then and now I just wanted to say something, because last year we said we're going to dial it down and now you, I, I hear that you're exhausted. Just by tell, by reading what you're going to do. I know, yeah, because you'd go, ah, hmm, by reading your own things. And it's just a list. You haven't even done any of this.
Nick:I know.
Ulrikke:It's not sustainable.
Nick:No, I know.
Ulrikke:And then because on the other side of summer we already have a lot of things going on. We don't need to talk about it right now, but we want to plug Collab Days, finland, nordic Summit, ppcc in Vegas. Let's go, people, but let's do that when we're getting there.
Nick:There's plenty of time before all that happens.
Ulrikke:Plenty of time. Next episode is going to be April 2nd and until then, stay healthy. Eat your zinc things that Nick has you don't get a cold, stay away from public transportation, small kids and shopping malls and have a lovely time, and I'll catch you when we catch you.
Nick:Yeah, don't lick doorknobs or handrails.
Ulrikke:And don't eat yellow snow Alright, thanks Bye. And don't eat yellow snow, no, all right. All right, okay, thanks bye. Bye. Thanks for listening and if you like 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 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 Dahlman, and see you next time.
