Power Platform Boost Podcast

Feature Requests (#70)

• Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman • Season 1 • Episode 70

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SPEAKER_04:

How how often do uh how often have you created a site or something? Kind of what level are are you at? It's like I'm a fucking prof I'm a professional. Just let me pass the thing. Just ask me that in the beginning then, and then let me pass the first front experience. Okay. So now I'm I'm all greened out, and the mic is probably enough spiking and you know, grant of the beep beep beep beep. Yeah, and you have to put all the beeps in place. Yeah. Sorry. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_03:

Your timely source of power platform news and updates with your hosts, Nick Dolman and Ulrike Ackerbeck. Hey Nick. Hello. Morning.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, morning for both of us. Um separate countries. Um one-hour time difference.

SPEAKER_04:

But yeah, you realize that a bit too late.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. At least it wasn't like a three-hour difference or me not showing up. You calling me, like, where are you? So it's all good.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, that's usually the other way around. It's like you set a time and I go, Yeah, that's gonna be perfect. And then I'm like, I'm 10 minutes late, oh 15 minutes late, and you're just sitting there going, oh yeah. So yes uh usually it's afternoon for me, but you're used to doing this in the morning, so you look, you know, sharp and bright as ever. Morning ready. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01:

And got a coffee going the whole bit. It's this is almost like it normally is, but and not quite.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, so why are you in almost in my time zone then?

SPEAKER_01:

What almost? Why am I yeah, here basically, um, for those of you who don't know, I went and competed in the World Masters Powerlifting Championship last week in South Africa. So I was in Cape Town um for the and I I was I knew I was going to Cape Town. This this has been planned months in advance. I was training, I was working to, you know, to compete and everything like that. And then I'm looking at the travel, going, okay, I'm going all the way to South Africa. Then I was going to last Friday. My original plan was to fly back home. And I'm looking at the event calendar and I'm seeing, okay, cool, South Coast summits in the UK. And I know there's a lot of our friends in the community will be there, they'll be speaking or just going there. So I kind of like, oh, well, let me just see if I were to like hypothetically, if I were to change my flights, could I actually go from South Africa? Because I knew I was competing, I now knew I was competing earlier in the week. Way back when when I booked, I had no idea when in the week I would be competing. So I knew I wouldn't be able to go to South Coast Summit for you know for various reasons. But then I kind of looked at it and I'm like, oh, actually, to change the flights and everything was really not much bother at all. That um surprisingly, I flew with the United Airlines and their website was amazing. It was just sort of like, you know, change your flight? Yeah, I want to do this, this. And it came back within seconds. Oh, it's gonna cost you a little bit this, but really it was like next to nothing. And we'll just change the flights and do-do-do. And I'm like, cool. So it's almost on the way, right? It's just not really, it's a long way home.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay, I'm not very good with geography, so no, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I do know this. Um, yeah, so I get as opposed to going from this dot to this dot, I went from this dot to this dot before I go to this dot.

SPEAKER_04:

Ah, okay. Yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_01:

So uh yeah, I went and then so yeah, I went, I flew up to South Coast Summit, which was this past weekend, which I'm sure have seen a lot of you folks that are listening or watching uh now, which was amazing. It was so good to see so many people. There's a lot of surprises of people that I didn't realize were gonna be there. And then I know a lot of people didn't know that I was gonna be there. So um it was just it was just it was just good. It was a good community event, um, just in how everybody sort of gets together. And then the content itself was like next level, um, with you know, kind of across the boards for both technical and kind of the non-technical aspects. Um, in the middle of uh Franco Musso session, there was a fire alarm, which allowed all of us to get outside, get a breath of fresh air, meet up with some friends, get some selfies, and then be able to go back in and continue on with the conference.

SPEAKER_04:

Maybe that's something we should incorporate in all events. Why not? I mean, come on. Let's do it. Let's push the button.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Okay. So the next time a fire alarm goes off, uh, we know who to um whose fault it might have been.

SPEAKER_04:

But you know, you know, without us having this conversation, you would think it would meet be me anyways, and just a bit of a disclaimer, it's not it wouldn't be the first time I've done it.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I was a kid back then. Well, I'm still a kid, but you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. I thought I knew a lot about you, but there's every every week there's a new mystery that uh unfolds.

SPEAKER_04:

So many things. Okay, so other other than the the very well-timed fire alarm, it was a good uh conference because I have now blocked up my LinkedIn because of freaking FOMO. I haven't seen anything.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Very we should do that. We need the uh the FOMO filters on LinkedIn. It's like, oh, here's a here's a big conference coming up that I'm not gonna be attending. FOMO.

SPEAKER_02:

Block this hashtag block this, right? Yeah. Oh, can you please just feature feature requests?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes. Um, but yeah, definitely it's a good one. I know they do it, um, they alternate between um uh uh the Scottish Summit and South Coast Summit. Um I didn't hear any rumblings of the next South Coast Summit. I'm assuming it's gonna be in two years, or maybe they don't even know yet. I mean, that's fair. Um we know Scottish Summit is coming up next year. It will be in Edinburgh, so we know that's already.

SPEAKER_04:

October 3rd, because that's we talked about that last episode, right? Because they just announced it before the last episode. So October 3rd is gonna be Scottish Summit uh next year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And there's one or two events in between now and then that we'll talk about maybe at the end.

SPEAKER_04:

Just a few, which is a few.

SPEAKER_01:

Cool. But there was also, as always, news and updates or uh that came um that are coming through that we probably should talk about, maybe?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, definitely. So what was it like being attendee for once? Because the South Coast, you know, we didn't do anything, which just uh just an attendee.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, it was good. I mean, the I think this I mean, I think probably a good portion of our audience generally are just attendees, and we're always the ones we're speaking or were running uh mentoring sessions or keynotes or workshops. Um and I definitely enjoyed doing that, like that was a thing. Um, if Cookie even mentioned, he said, Oh, if anybody drops out, would you be willing to to jump in? I said, Absolutely, just just give me the word. But being an attendee, it's nice um because that way you can go through like but then the thing is even as attendee, you kind of run into the the same thing. There was a couple blocks where there are three sessions happening at the exact same time, and I want to go to all of them at the same time. And I just I can't I can't do the what they it was in Harry Potter or Hermanny had the time, the time tracker or the time changer. That would be fantastic that she could go to three different classes at the same time. But the the the cool thing is though, a lot of these um but I think what we're saying now, I've noticed with other attending and other events is oh, have you seen like we might just say, hey, I have you seen um uh like Daniel's session on MCP before? Like, no, he's doing it now, great. But then you're like, well, I know Daniel's going to present that same session at a later conference, so it kind of sticks in your radar, so you kind of know that okay, if I miss it this time, I should be able to catch it next time kind of thing. So there's less of that shoot of missing out kind of thing. I think that's the importance of also. Um, I I know I I know we live a privileged life where we get to go to multiple conferences throughout the year, and I do recognize that not everybody gets to do that. But the nice thing is some of these large conferences that you see where it's you have to travel to and you pay money to get into, a lot of these sessions come from local community events or local user groups, and they kind of get refined and done through the process. So if you see, if you you know can't go to an event or you can't get clearance to work or funding through work or whatever, I highly encourage check the local user groups and check the local community events that are free because chances are a lot of the same content will be there at these local user groups, or you might get to see the early versions of it as up and coming speakers or trying it that eventually will get to the bigger conferences as well. So, yeah, I I mean, you know me, I love going to conferences and just sitting down and learning and getting these new ideas, jotting down notes, seeing your URLs going up. Um, I try to download the presentations a little bit later if I can, and having those as resources that I can now add to a co-pilot notebook and be able to search for those things later on. Um, yeah, just the learning value at these conferences are just uh next level. So definitely highly recommend attending attending any type that you have the opportunity to um go for.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. So other than knowing kind of which speakers are going to present again at a later conference, do you have any kind of tips or tricks for how to choose if you're in that situation where you have three sessions you want to go to? How do you choose which to go to?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh well that's a that's a great question. I would say um I think a lot of it is like definitely that the topics. So there's different reasons why I go to sessions. First off, first and foremost, the the reason I would go to a session, the same as most people would go to a session, is I want to learn something brand new or something I don't know about. I know I'm not gonna be a master at that skill by attending a 45-minute session, but I'm gonna at least get pointed in the right direction. I'm gonna get some idea of resources, and not only that, I'm I might meet the speaker if I've not met this person before. There's another resource in the community that we could potentially call upon if we need help. So, for example, Matt Beard did a session on PCF controls and TypeScript. Um, things that you know, we've talked about this. This is on my to-do list for learning. So going to Matt's session, I got a lot of tips, I got a lot of directions. He talked a little bit about his own learning journey where he started. So I found that very valuable. So to me, that's sort of a if I'm ranking sessions, is this something new I'm gonna learn? Is this something I want to learn? Is this something that's already on my to-do list? Other times it's if it's new technology. Oh, I know nothing about MCP servers. What is MCP? What does this mean? Um, sounds really important. I hear buzzwords. Okay, I'm gonna go to Daniel's session because this is sort of this is new stuff. And then sometimes I will go to a session that I know nothing about. Like I've gone to Power BI sessions because I'm not, I'm not like I don't do Power BI stuff, but I know it's really important. But I also know I might have taken a Power BI, I might have attended a Power BI session maybe a couple years ago. What's new, what's changed? Um, maybe there's things that I'm not aware of. And of course, these little ideas stick in your mind. So then you get on a client project and someone asks you a question, you're like, okay, wait a minute. Yes, I did see that such and such did a session on Power BI and they talked about it. Let me get their deck, download it from that conference, and kind of evaluate what they did. Um, and then and then sometimes the other sessions, too, if there's something completely different. Uh, I attended a session by uh Keegan Chambers on neurodiversity, which I it was there's the reasons there's reasons why I went and attended that session for other upcoming events that we're planning. But I was like, okay, this um this is different. This is something I never thought about. After seeing that session, I'm like, this is almost, I would say, mandatory viewing for anybody working in our industry, um, just to kind of understand how our brains work and how we can interact with colleagues. If we have people reporting to us, how to accommodate them to make sure that they're utilizing their superpowers to the best of their ability and to everybody's advantage. Um so it's these are really hard choices to pick the sessions. But then the other part of attending a conference like this is it's always more than just attending the sessions, it's also talking to the sponsors because they have a lot of products and services that will could help you in your projects or your day-to-day. And of course, these sponsors, they're the ones that are, if it's a free event um, or even if it's a paid event, they're making sure that you don't have to pay as much to actually get into that event. Um, they're covering things like lunches, um, they're covering sometimes how helping the speaker, this getting the best speakers into those events. So definitely, you know, visiting those sponsors is very important. But the biggest thing to me about any of these conferences is just the conversations, like chatting in the hall about a particular technology or something you're working on, or even you know, talking to someone who did a session on something and talking about their topic and learning more and helping them giving you pointers, because I would say the biggest thing that I love about giving a session and like I think you're the same way, um, is when people come up and ask questions after. There's nothing, I don't know, I get a lot, I get a thrill out of it when people come up and ask questions after I gave a presentation, or they they follow you down the hall when you kind of go to the next thing and they're asking questions about what you spoke about. So having those types of conversations because the questions they ask could help you learn something as well, because they could say, Well, I'm working on a particular problem. How would you approach this? And of course, it gets your own creative juices thinking, and then you kind of get those good brainstorms going. Um, but then even just having the straight one-on-one conversations with somebody too, just making a connection. And I mean, you and I have talked about this, and this is something I've talked about in kind of other sessions, is as adults, we have such a hard time making new friends. This community um facilitates making friends as adults. And I had uh um, I think I can kind of call this out. I had a great conversation with Cheryl Nettley um yesterday. And uh hi, Cheryl, I hope you're listening. But we talked about her her camping trips and she has this roof tent on her car and the adventures that she's going in. And this is something that I want to do as well. So we had that, you know, that that conversation about that, and that was like really good. Um, me and Sean Asterkan were we're just sitting down and talking about a variety of things, and then we just kind of get in this whole Matthew McConaughey kind of conversation. We're both we're talking about accents and we're both kind of doing Matthew McConaughey impressions. And it was just, I don't know, these these are these little adventures, these little conversations that just make life so rich. Um, so that so these are the these are the so if anybody asks why why do I go to these conferences? It's it's the meeting the people. And it is about the people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. My my friends keep telling asking me, how come you work so much? And how come you you go off on weekends and spend the whole week working all the time? Isn't kind of work enough work for you? It's like, why would you bother? It's like, well, you don't get it. These are kind of this is one of my core friend groups, right? It's going around the world, meeting up with the same people and different people around the world. We're kind of a traveling circus at this point where you know we see the same people again and again. Yeah, but that's what it is, right? And then you know, different compilations of people in the group and then meeting new people and you know, it's it's such a great way to meet people and to to build a good group of friends and and we hang out in the free time as well. And it's not just community friends, it's becoming real friendships. And we met through a community event-ish. And you know, so I mean, it's building it's building real relationship. It's not it's not about work necessarily. I don't think people realize um that that's what it is. Yeah, but uh yeah, I I wholeheartedly agree. And also that great group of community friends, they came up with lots of new news and updates this uh these last few weeks. Uh so you want to dive into the list?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So um I think if we kind of go through the list almost by by by per like, you know, we always kind of organize it. Sometimes we organize it by topic, like whether it's power apps or copilot. Sometimes we organize it by.

SPEAKER_04:

When did we ever organize it?

SPEAKER_01:

You're right. Yeah, but I think if we almost could break this down a little bit by um by by actual community members. Big shout out to Eliza Benitez. And uh, I had a chat with Eliza um uh actually a few days ago because we're we're we're going to be at uh talk about traveling circus. We're gonna be in Vegas doing uh a session on uh PL900 and then also Plan Designer. But a few weeks ago, she had uh did a video on uh part of the Power Apps Pulse, which is a Microsoft uh kind of initiative, and talking about the new updates. Uh there's new Canvas app updates in terms of sizing and and boxes like that. But also the cool thing about Plan Designer, because Plan Designer is evolving so much, but talk about the reasoning capabilities in Plan Designer, which is pretty cool. Because now, as for those of you who played with Plan Designer or plans and power apps or whatever they're calling it right now, um, when you create something, it creates like you know, Canvas apps or agents or model-driven apps or PowerPages sites, but now it gives you the reasons, the reasons or the details why a particular technology was chosen to address a particular user requirement. So that helps. And maybe if you don't even agree with it, but then if not, you can look at it and then you could provide back into the prompt the context going, no, no, no, this needs to be a PowerPages site, not a Canvas app, because our licensing requirements, whatever, but at least you know why the machine itself decided on the particular uh object that it created. So that that was really cool. That's a great feature. That's something that's evolving. Um, so talk about plans in Power Apps. Again, going back to uh South Coast Summit, Mullen, um Martez, and Mark Christie did a joint presentation on plans in the Power Platform. And here's the quote for you. Mark Christie said, I actually like Plan Designer. Um what? Uh and he said, for me to say that, everybody knows that it must be not too bad.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow. Well, then if if no endorsement this far has made you look into Plan Designer, that should probably do it for you. And is it called Plan Designers though? Because I'm confused. Maybe planning power apps. Okay, so whatever one of those floats your boat. Okay. But that's awesome, really. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I I do love the the pulse updates, and uh Eliza did a very good job for from for September. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So speaking of Eliza, uh, the next one is yours. So you want to uh I've seen this as well, but you want to check, wanna talk about this?

SPEAKER_04:

I wanted to jump around, but okay, if you're insisting. So uh Eliza just no no no. Uh Eliza's part of the Cloud Abdicacy team, uh, which is also behind the new Agent Academy that we've kind of talked about since they launched it uh before summer. Um and now they have released the videos on a YouTube channel um for the next level. So the first one was recruit, and this is for operations. Um, so now the videos for that is live, and I know that the rest of the curriculum is around the corner. So if you can't wait uh and you wanna kind of check that out, um then you can always watch the videos. So I think yeah, kudos to the advocacy team for putting that together. So that would be April, Daniel, Scott, and Eliza. Very well done. 100%. Um, and then um just keeping on co-pilot studio because this is of course co-pilot um kind of specific and ages specific. Um, I also saw a new post from Matthew Devaney, and he's been really at it these last few weeks. Um, so you know, uh good job, Matthew. Um, he uh added uh created a post on how to set up the Microsoft authentication, uh authentication for a co-pilot agent. So and this is in the pretext of automated testing, which is really important, and I'm um diving more into that. So the blog post is so good. It's just you know, Matthew, he is just a star of blog posts and videos. He put this together very much step by step, and also the little small little corners of Azure that you probably haven't touched before if you're a power platform person. This makes a lot of sense to me. So uh this is one of those missing puzzle pieces that I didn't know was missing, uh, that I'll now uh you know use and set up uh for the for the new automated testing for co-pilots, and that's really good. Uh and also um Matthew, I think we're gonna have a new segment um for for Matthew because um where is that post? Where did I put it? Uh well or maybe it didn't make it in here, but he also had a kind of yeah, that there it is the feature request. Um that was just a LinkedIn post where he said, how about being able to add uh fetch XML kind of that you create a view in uh model ribbon app you can export the XML? How about being able to put that in as a knowledge source in a co-pilot you know studio knowledge choice? That would be fantastic. And and kind of on the same page as the other, there's been a lot of talk about kind of deterministic setup, setting up deterministic capabilities for for chat, because it is, you know, the the generative AI and the LLMs, and they're not really good at math, and there's so many kind of you don't never know what the answer is going to be. But to configure them in a way where the answers are gonna be consistent and gonna be data driven and gonna be the same every time is very important, especially with enterprise applications and enterprise kind of scenarios. So we've seen a lot of content around that lately. Um, and this is kind of on the same page as that. How about being able to actually then choose the the columns of the table that you want to show, for instance, and just narrow it down to that little specific uh filter or something along those lines would be good. So yeah, um plus one on that, Matthew, and uh keep the feature requests coming.

SPEAKER_01:

100%. That's just a common sense request, and it it almost is a what do you mean that doesn't exist yet kind of thing, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um so and and and speaking of other kind of uh new segment uh items, yeah. I saw a post from Yuca on LinkedIn and just is just one of those fun little things that Yuka does. But he called it talked about P Pac, which we all love acronym for Power Platform Admin Center, and we were called P PAC. It's like, how about you know P Pak or Tupac? And then uh just made the case. If anyone here, if anyone sees this who have the power to add new AKA links, how about adding uh two pack as an AKA link for a P Pak? Uh which I thought was funny. Uh guess guess guess what?

SPEAKER_01:

The link the the link now works. It will take you two pack will take you to I love it, I love it.

SPEAKER_04:

So thank you to whoever did that. That is fantastic. Oh, brilliant. Oh, I love this, right? So this is the power of the community, right? So you have someone asking something, add a link then for the for the world to see, and then suddenly that becomes reality. And like the same as uh Matthew did kind of future requests. This is what we want. And maybe, yeah. And and maybe that's also the background for the code app compare that we saw Magdalena Kaskova um shared as well, which is specifically for Canvas apps or code apps, sorry, not canvas apps, code apps, where you can now finally compare um the edits or the the code face uh on a code app, which is um something that we've ranted on about before is that yeah, sure you can make a code app, but then but then what? It's one of those Yeah. Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, yeah, no, this is this is really cool. I I met Magdalena in uh at Vaultic Summit. It was uh again meeting people for in face-to-face, uh going back to that conversation. Yeah. But this this looks really cool. I didn't realize that. Or these for the gen oh, these are was this is for the generative pages.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh yeah, not code apps, but generative uh pages. Ah, okay. I read that wrong and then yeah, of course. Gen AI pages not for Yeah, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

This was something we I think uh I think Reza did a video. We might have even talked about it, but still, this is a this is again, these are things that people miss because there's so much information. So thanks, Magdalena, for kind of highlighting this because you even said, like she said, PS, I didn't know why I didn't notice it before, but this is sometimes the day-to-day you're in something, you're like, wait a minute, is that button new? Or is this okay? I didn't realize it could do this anymore. Um, but yeah, that this is like I think getting generative pages on to like the next level of of um to the point where eventually um I know they're still in preview, but hopefully we get to a point where we can actually start using these in projects because this is just gonna change the game, I think. And the fact that we can go in and edit and tweak and see what's been changed and do some comparisons. Um, and again, yeah, now now it's all coming back to me going back to talk about feature requests. I want my VS Code button uh to do Visual Studio Code for the web. That would be great in charge of pages, but they did add a feature to VS Code for the web within the power platform, and I think we both got this.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, nice segue.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, nice segue there. So so of course, we I'm a big fan of, you know, um, I've done you've done power pages in the past, right? I think I've done a few projects here and there. Um, but what's really cool is what I love about the the design studio is yes, you can drag and drop and kind of draw your pages and well draw or put in the components, but you can open up there's a little button, which I would love to see in model-driven apps and everywhere in generative pages, it'd be great to have a little button where you can open it in VS Code for the web. So you get to see your source code behind it, the HTML, the CSS, the Liquid, and then you can make some kind of micro adjustments and then flip it back and take see what it's going to look like in the design studio. Now, that being said, VS Code Desktop takes it to the next level because then you can incorporate things like GitHub Copilot, um, you can get your source control going and a lot of these other things. But in order to do that in the past, you'd be like, okay, I need to actually close my VS Studio code for the web or just leave the tab open, open up my desktop, then download the code, and then take a look at it and that kind of thing. Now you're able, if you're in um VS Code for the web, you can click a button and it will open up desktop for you. It will ask you for a folder the first time and it'll download, it'll go through these steps automatically, saving you a lot of clips, clicks, and allow you to go directly into VS Code Desktop, which may sound like a little thing, but it let me tell you, as a PowerPages developer, it is a huge thing. So kudos on the team for adding these. Like this is, I think the rest of the Power Platform um developers can learn a lot from the PowerPages team because they're really good at giving uh enabling developers, making it easier, using the tools developers love, um, like VS Code Desktop, um, and all it can give you uh a lot easier with the power platform. All that being said, I'm still waiting for my uh skip first run experience. I keep asking for that, but that's a whole other thing.

SPEAKER_04:

This I know the title of this episode is gonna be a feature request, because I think that's number 10 on the list. Because yeah, yeah for and I have to now resort to my own blog post about how to fiddle with the URL to get past it every time I open up a new because we do a lot of work with this, and I do open up that as the first one a lot. It's like and also it and it bugs me when it asks you, you know, um, how how often how often have you created a site or something? Kind of what level are are you at? It's like I'm a fucking prof I'm a professional, just let me pass the thing, just ask me that in the beginning, then, and then let me pass the first front experience. Okay, so now I'm I'm all greened out, and the mic is probably enough spiking and you know, grant of the yeah, and you have to put all the beeps in place, yeah. Sorry. Oh shit. But yeah, definitely. But also, why is this such a huge thing? Well, it's about AI capabilities, right? Because even with Visual Studio Code in the browser, you had the GitHub extension that allowed you to use the app power pages, which is supposed to give you a kind of um co-pilot power pages specific help while you're coding, which I always just go away because it's useless, completely useless when you know that you have GitHub co-pilot at your fingertips at the next level. So kind of getting this down to the desktop app level where you can use your co-pilot studio uh chat and help and have that kind of code assisted development, sorry, AID-assisted development on with you working with PowerPages. It's not that it does anything that I'm not aware of, but it saves me time. That's what it does. Um, so instead of using, because that's what I'm doing now is I'm using Chat DPT on the side, having helping because I can understand the context, right? So your PowerPoint uh PowerPages developer understands everything and it's way it's it's equally good in my experience at least as the at PowerPages stuff. It's just it that doesn't break my code because then we can work on the code and I can implement it myself. But having that kind of interaction on the code base itself would just be amazing. So yes, thank you. Uh and I agree with you that it. It's worth kind of reiterating that the team behind PowerPages, I think they're above and beyond what we see in other platforms. And it's all fun and games that in Canvas app you can now set the maximum height and maximum width of uh responsive kind of blocks on the page. But I mean, come on, that's just and yeah, we now allow you to uh use the cursor to to rename stuff on the left side. I was like, what that's nothing. PowerPages team, they kind of just now opened up a whole whack of new tools for us to use AIS with well, PowerPages at just a completely different level. So yeah, thank you, team. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Okay, so that's uh leave us with um one new thing, which is also a bit outside of our um wheelhouse, so to speak. But you know, the biggest I hate to say that the biggest competition to power platform's always been Excel. Uh and now um I've had to fiddle with some CSV files and some data imports lately. I've been kind of using the the how you transform data on the way in and stuff. So when I saw this, I was like, Jesus, this is gonna have known about this, but which it's it just didn't register with me that you can now use that co-pilot functionality within Excel itself has become this powerful. This just blew my mind and it's been around for two months already. So just wanted to highlight for everyone out there like me using Excel, but not often enough to get these kind of updates front and center. You can now you when you you know when you have um a column, you use when you write a function like equal, da da da equal and then copilot, and then you can add a prompt. Uh there's a lady called Midra Tracy? Tre Tre Tracy? Is that Midra Tracy? I created a short kind of video on YouTube about the new copilot capabilities for Excel, which uh she shows an example where you have a list of expenses, and then you ask it, can you go in using the description, show me the different expense categories that you would use? And then it creates that list, and then it says, Okay, we'll just apply it to the roles, and then it does that, and then it just transforms your data. Um, she just shows how to extract uh postal codes from addresses, cleanup addresses. There's so many smart things you can do, and it's just so quick. And I was like, wow, this is yeah, this is cool. So um just wanted to highlight that, even though it has nothing to do with power platform specifically.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, uh, you say nothing to do with power platform. Um, everybody out there who works in a power platform who has used Excel for a for a data migration or something or anything, put your hands up. Like that's all of us.

SPEAKER_04:

I mean, yeah, that's so Excel, everything's a good thing. The world runs on Excel. That's we know that's true. 100%. That's true. Right. So um you want to talk about the sorry?

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, no, sorry.

SPEAKER_04:

No, I was just gonna go move on to uh something we were supposed to talk about, I think last episode because we skipped. Because our good friend, and yes, to everyone keeps sending Anna messages saying, Oh, we're gonna talk about Anna a lot in the podcast. That's because we're freaking Anna fans, okay? And who isn't? I mean, the girl, she just kind of she just knocks it out of the park these days. Come on, she deserves a bit of credit. So, Anna, we love you, and you did uh you made a book. I mean, yeah, I I don't do that, but I can do this. Um, but she wrote a freaking book and it's called Yeah uh the Microsoft AI Human Resources Handbook. Um and you know, I I know that your big dream has been to publish a book, a book on the bookshelf with Nick Dolman on it. That's one of your kind of lifelong checklists, bucket list things. Um, so I'm excited to see whenever that comes out. But then Anna did it, and that's fantastic. So I think so. In the description it says, you know, this book is the first to gather all the solutions across the Microsoft HR stack, which is a lot. There are so many HR features scattered around the Microsoft Tech Stack that you would not believe. And Anna knows about all of them. So she's been through all the small little dark corners of the tech stack and gathered them all in a handbook, putting it all together in a very cohesive way. So kudos to you, Anna, for uh job well done.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, 100%. Um and I think this is the type of book that will kind of it will, I think, stand the test of time. What worries me always about a technical book if it's it being out of date over time, but this is something that a it just it covers so many different things and how it all ties together. So I think this will still be very valuable for at least like a couple years. Um, and also talking about like, you know, talking into Viva Learning and LinkedIn and uh just the whole bit. So yeah, uh kudos to Anna for writing a book. Yes, it is on my bucket list. Um more to come on that aspect. Uh, but yeah, that that's uh we almost should have like a book review corner, I think, sometimes uh because I know we don't have on the list, but another book, um like Anna's book for sure. I need to get it because I love I I might not be doing um human resources, but I do like to collect books from folks in the community as well just to support them. But also it's kind of cool to have like not here, but on the on the shelf at home having I love seeing I'd love to see my own book there someday, but seeing books by people that I know that are friends. Um I don't know, it just it's just kind of cool, I think. Maybe it's just a a me thing.

SPEAKER_04:

No, no, no, I love it as well. Yeah, and I I probably put it in the office, like because room service.

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, no, no, no. But it was talking about books because I brought this book with me. This is Mark and Meg Smith's book. Um the uh the co-pilot adoption uh handbook. And again, this I haven't really dove too deep yet because I've been like busy with a lot of other things, but um, but it's talking about but building like what stuff that they've done, like building communities, like running hackathons. Um, it's really another another great book. Like obviously, we're highlighting Anna's book, but since we're talking books anyway, I wanted to highlight Mark and Meg's uh book as well. Um, definitely another one that um whether you get the digital version or you get the paper version, I think this is if you're doing anything, the M365 Copilot, in terms of trying to implement it in your own business or for your clients, this is another must book to get for sure. Um, we should uh do the boot the boost book review, baby. So many titles. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04:

So but uh we'll put links in the show notes to where you can go uh get these books. And and I'm fully with you. I also also have in the back of my mind kind of how soon will these be kind of out of date. But I think uh HR-related things like Anna talk about, the the kind of the ideas and the way you go about these things, uh not necessarily just a tech stack, but also the the how you work with it, the puzzle parts you need and how to set it up, that doesn't really change much, even though the tools we might use might change. And also I know that Anna, she has a very AI specific kind of approach to everything. So I'm guessing that's through and through of the book as well. I mean, Coped Adoption Handbook uh from from my um from the Smiths, it's also the the the way you go about it will not probably not change that much. So I think it's still very valuable. Um right, so but then let's we have a little bit of time left. So let's dive into the list of events that uh is coming up because you have uh well, I'll see you in Vegas next week. Um for Power Platform Community Conference, and you have uh a few things coming up.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so Power Platform Community Conference, if you still haven't got your ticket, I think there's still tickets available. Boost 100 saves you$100 off. I think all the early birds and stuff are gone. So this is the only way you'll save money. But it regardless of what you pay, it's totally worth it for everything that's happening. Um, along with part of my involvement with that, um, I'm teaming up with Eliza on a couple things. So we talked about her talked about her earlier. A PL 900, uh kind of fundamentals workshop. So talk about. So if you're new to the Power Platform and welcome to our podcast. Um if uh you're new and you're being sent to Las Vegas because they're like, hey, we're gonna be implementing some power platform features, or we need you to learn this, go to Vegas, learn as much as you can. If you just go into the conference, kind of not knowing anything, you're gonna be inundated. It's gonna be like co-pilot AI AI, and your brain is gonna. So by attending a workshop, like the fundamental, the power platform fundamentals workshop, you're gonna know the basics, things like what is this, what is Dataverse, what are power apps, what's power pages, how does you know co-pilot kind of fit into all this? So once you sort of have that, then you might be you could, if you want, you could write the PL900 exam, but more and more you'll have those that foundation that the rest of the week will make much more sense in terms of oh, what is this? How does this fit in? So that's just sort of my pitch for the workshop. And then we're also we're doing um the name of our again, because things the titles change, but basically the title of our session that I'm working with Eliza, it's creating an app, start with plan designer, build with copilot. So we talk about building apps using plan designer, but also other aspects of the power platform or even the Microsoft ecosystem. Like, you know, um I've talked before, I'm a big fan of my M365 notebooks and how I incorporate that into my app design and some other tools as well. And again, looking forward to like, you know, having Eliza's uh uh ideas on that too. And she'll take a lot of that information that she learns from the people attending that might be asking questions back to the team as well, because that's part of her job to advocate for the team, but also to collect information from the community. So that's um the Power Platform Community Conference. You're speaking of an attendee, you're just there as an attendee. So you're the one on easy street for that one.

SPEAKER_04:

Easy street, I find that's even harder. You know, being a speaker, you kind of have your thing to focus on, um, and you kind of that's kind of your your main focus. But then being an attendee, I know my mind is gonna explode. So I have to pick and choose the and also what I've learned is that if I go from one to the next, just I'll forget everything. So what I need to do is just make sure that I have time in between to actually sit down and and apply some of the things that I learned and make some notes and kind of maybe a small little post or something, just for my own sake. And like you said, download the deck and just kind of work through the material a little bit. Otherwise, it's just gonna kind of build up this huge little huge pressure in my head of new things, um, and also picking um what sessions to go to carefully. So uh, and also I I'm sure as always we'll do a little bit of a recap um episode as well from Vegas, um, which is gonna be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01:

100%.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, definitely. And then um just quickly going through the the next events on the list, we have uh Ignite, which is November 18th to 21st.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So I wasn't gonna go, but now I'm going.

SPEAKER_04:

Of course you are.

unknown:

Of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

No one really bought the story. I'm gonna slow down. I'm not gonna do all the events anyways, Nick. So it's uh it's all good and well. You're the last one to know about these things we know.

SPEAKER_00:

So we we knew you know me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so when I say these, like you know me. Like we like, yeah, like we uh yeah, even had a conversation yesterday, and I kind of said something, and you I just I could hear your eyes roll over the phone.

SPEAKER_04:

Um like, oh, when did you realize this? Because we've known them for a while, and you're like, oh, I'm always the last one to know about this exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

So definitely, yeah. If you if you're new. I'm going to ignite, I'll be on the expert spoof uh for a bit. I th I think I was on the on the Power Apps expert spooth. I hope. I I just know I'm doing I have expert booth duty, which I love because it gives me another opportunity to talk to people from the community and people that are new. The last I did it last year, and it was so cool because people go, Tell me about the power platform.

SPEAKER_00:

And like, how long do you have?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly, because I'm gonna tell you all about it. Um, so if you see me there, come say hi. Um, I don't know if we'll have any uh my plan is to get rid of the rest of the ducks for Vegas, but I think we have to get a new batch because so many people have been asking. Um, they're asking for autographs.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, autograph ducks. So that's fantastic. So then next time we get a batch, you're gonna have to sit down and actually autograph a hundred rubber ducks. All the ducks. Right, okay. And then I saw a post from Lisa about her duck, which has been traveling the world. I mean, that's so cool. Uh cute little duck traveling window for so long. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_01:

It's funny because when we got the ducks, there was a few people that I thought, I'm gonna send it. Like, believe me, I'm not sending like as much as I love our audience, I'm not sending you all a duck because it actually is uh surprisingly expensive to send. And it's like the the mail person at the post office was like, what is the commercial value of what you're sending? I said, it's a freaking rubber duck, it's like probably worth the buck. Like so I sent a few out, and then it was interesting because it was almost like it was almost like a I think we talked about this. It was almost like a duck race. Like, who's is gonna get there first? And of course, I think um, I know I uh sent like uh down uh one into the States, uh one into Germany, uh, one went to New Zealand, and then of course at least I at least I sent a message to Lisa. I was like, Did you ever get your duck? And she's like, No, no, not yet. I'm like, okay, it must have got lost, and then it disappeared. So I think the duck actually floated over the Pacific to Australia and swam when it got there, so it's all good.

SPEAKER_04:

And the adventures it had to tell when it arrived. Oh, I love that it did. It's been traveling the world.

SPEAKER_01:

Cool.

SPEAKER_04:

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so then we we move on to, you know, that's Ignite, I think, is the last one of the year. Although I know a lot of the people in the community will be going to Dublin for the European power uh for the um the the European SharePoint conference or the same folks that put on EPP.

SPEAKER_04:

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, SPC in Dublin. I won't be there. He Nick says now, but I don't plan on being there.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. And then you can stay until January if we're Artic Cloud Developer Challenge, which is which is January 22nd to 25th. Um so that's the hackathon that we throw every year. I know that there's gonna be a group of MVPs gonna be there like last year. Um, and then I hear you're making some plans to be there. And of course the Norwegian uh consulting companies all send their teams there, so it's gonna be a great show. We had about 80 people last year, and I'm sure we're gonna hit the same rates this year. Um we had a bit of a snag where Microsoft deleted our whole tenants. We lost kind of 10 years of documentation. Um yeah, so that's actually something we could talk about. So if you didn't know, what happened was we had non-for-profit licenses and then they expired. And of course, we're an event that's thrown every year. So during the summer, it's kind of quiet time for us. No one checks the email. No one really checks in with the tenant. And also we had an old admin email set up as the org global admin. So there had been emails sent to that account, which hasn't been logged into for years and years. Um, so of course it's bad admin on our part. But believe it or not, they give us 14 days to add new licenses to the tenant. If we don't, they delete the whole thing and there is no backup. Because we talk to senior admin people and they're like, no, no, no, it's 30 30, 30. So you'll have 30 days, they give you 30 more days, and then if nothing happens, they do keep it for 30 more days, even though they say they don't. So if you get support on the line, they'll be able to restart it from the backup. I've taught I had a whole weekend where I was on the phone with one of the support people, and he tied three times with the with the with the backup team, and they were not able to restore anything, and that was kind of what 30 days later, 24 days later. So just a bit, and I was like, Well, I understand this is kind of poor practice for non-for-profits and events that use the tenant and what that's way too short notice. I'm like, I get that it's different for the for the big you know corporations and stuff. He's like, no, no, this is the policy for any tenant. Coca-Cola loses their licenses, 14 days later, it's deleted and there's no backup. This is across the board, all tenants no matter what, which is kind of crazy in my book. But so at least we learned our lesson. Keep keep on top of your admin, keep on top of your licenses, and make sure you check in every 14 days. Um, and then do that, take that seriously. Um, and and and and do backups, make sure you have backups.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's good advice because I even know for the event uh that we're gonna be talking about Silly at the um Canadian Power Platform Summit. Like we don't actually have our we're actually managing on my my tenant, which is licensed, but I could see we don't talk or do much for a stretch of like six months where yeah, we wouldn't even log into our SharePoint or our OneNote or anything like that because we don't need to because it's just not happening. But yeah, good good advice. Uh good to know. So cool. Yeah, but moving okay, so ACDC, which is um one thing I think it's been announced. It's it's can I say that's the Minecraft theme?

SPEAKER_04:

Is the Minecraft theme. Office it's so awesome. Uh and we're also um working on a bit of a surprise for everyone. So um, yeah, make sure to to get with your kids when they play Minecraft so that you're learning. I'm my kids are now teaching me to do to play Minecraft because I've already wanted to play them the one block where you start with one block and you have to kind of survive on whatever it is that you get on the on the block. And my daughter was like, I think you need to practice in creative mode first, mom, because you kind of always die like within the first night. So oh, okay. So she's teaching me all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Um also speaking about being able to and sorry, I was about to say I have an in-house Minecraft expert as well, so I think I'm I'm well well positioned.

SPEAKER_04:

And also you have a costume, right? Because this is kind of the whenever there's a theme for ACDC and last year or the year before you dressed up the Super Mario. So of course you're gonna come because you have the Minecraft costume already.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, that's true.

SPEAKER_04:

Maybe you can bring Emma Michelle with you on the team.

SPEAKER_00:

Maybe, yeah. That could yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's gonna be kind of a dolman show. Cause you know, Bridge is gonna come because she can she knows the tag and she does work with us, and and then Michelle can come and she can be whoop whoop. Yeah, whoop, whoop. I'm super excited now. The dolmers are coming. Okay. So um I'm gonna talk to Brig Bridge about it next week. Don't you worry. I'm gonna I'm gonna make that happen. Right. So um uh is can we announce the other thing that's on the list, the next one?

SPEAKER_01:

The we're the cloud technology talent?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. No, maybe not.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. No, we're well I think the fact that we're speak we're speakers at Talon.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Right?

SPEAKER_02:

It's public.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So well because I don't keep it up with these things, but we're yeah. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I don't know, like in terms of our I well, I don't care. I'm doing a session on React at Cloud Technology Talent, if I'm not supposed to say it. Vivian in the Yaddock, sorry.

SPEAKER_04:

But we're gonna have to edit that out. And I'm doing a session on power platform pipelines and all the lessons I've learned so that you don't have to make the same mistakes. So if you're gonna dive into some project with pipelines, please come to my session. I'll save you so much time and grievance. So, yeah, that's that. And then you have Canadian Power Platform Coming uh Summit coming up in March. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

So this is this is gonna be the uh the business applications weekend. It's gonna be the unofficial kickoff to MVP summit. Um, but it's just it's I'm really excited this year. We we have the speakers chosen, we have our sessions chosen, we've nailed down our opening keynote or closing keynote. Um, not quite ready to announce everything yet. Um the but so there's that's gonna be happening on March 21st, uh a Saturday in Vancouver at the Microsoft Offices. On March 20th, we're gonna be having uh four workshops. They're gonna be at the other Microsoft office, which is also in Vancouver. It's about a block away. But if you want to learn about different things about the Power Platform, uh you'll skip, we'll get some information with those workshops out soon. But also on March 20th, on the Friday at the Microsoft Office, the DynamicsCon folks are doing a DynamicsCon regional. And so if you are interested in Dynamics 365, Business Central, FNO, or customer engagement, they're doing an event. We're sort of working, uh coordinating with them a little bit back and forth. Our event's still separate, theirs is a separate, but we're all kind of uh colluding on a few things, maybe some social events. And it's just gonna be great because if if you're more of a power platform person, you know, you're welcome to come to both, of course, but you know, the Saturdays for the Power Platform, the Fridays for the Dynamics 365, of course, we're all one big happy business apps family. It's just I'm really super excited about this whole weekend, and like I said, uh, and then there's gonna be a lot of MVPs on their way to MVP Summit that are gonna be either attending or speaking or helping out. Um, and so if you're in the Vancouver area or plan to be, or Vancouver in March is actually really nice, to be honest. Like everybody says it's cold, but it's actually quite pleasant. You can, you know, go biking and do a lot of other things, visit the mountains, uh, you know, visit the visit the ocean. Um maybe a little early for swimming for most people. I don't know. I I might. Um, and uh it's just gonna be one of those uh really great events. I'm really looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And then MVP Summit, of course, uh in Seattle, and then we have uh Color Cloud and Dynamics Minds and EPBC, and then yeah, a lot of other things going on. And it's um yeah, I had a post the other day about kind of how the people around me are more kind of preoccupied with oh, Halloween and Thanksgiving and it's Christmas soon. And I'm like, dude, I'm planning the summer of 2026, like the conference season, the whole spring and the whole shadang, because we're kind of living like six months ahead of and planning our calendars and this. I got a um an invite for a confirmation thing for one of our family friends, and it's like May 9th or something, and I had to check my calendar. I was like, ooh, you bought that's just barely cutting it because I have an engagement the the previous week. I'm like, oh, can I get back from that place to to come here for that? And I think I'm the only person in the group that actually I'm a bit worried nine months ahead of time. So, but yeah, that's kind of the world that we live in, right? And then of course plans change as we as we move through this. You know, you add a bit of travel here, a bit of a detour here, and then suddenly, yeah, yeah, yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

We are privileged. We really are, we have to say that. We know that we are. And this scares of course, this does that to me every time when I see this. Uh, next episode's gonna be November 5th, and that's um the Monday after Vegas.

SPEAKER_01:

So we'll do a recap episode before that, and then we'll see what we do with the with the maybe maybe we should just do the um we should do the episode at the tail end of Vegas and do what we did for Nordic Summit, kind of all tie it in.

SPEAKER_04:

That sounds like a good idea.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe. Maybe. Anyways, that's uh stay tuned. We can talk about that later. Yeah, stay tuned.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, we can.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome as always, chatting with you.

SPEAKER_04:

Ah, likewise. And happy travels back. Hope it's uh easy and non-frictional, and then uh I'll catch you on the other side.

SPEAKER_01:

Sounds good. See everybody.

SPEAKER_04:

See ya.

SPEAKER_01:

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

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Nick Doelman

Host
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Ulrikke Akerbæk

Host