Power Platform Boost Podcast

ACDC 2026 Hack (#77)

• Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman • Season 1 • Episode 77

Share episode
Nick:

And I'm going to be kind of blunt. If you're too cheap to buy Jonas a beer for using FetchXML toolbox, like give your head a shake. Um, so I'm throwing it out there. So welcome everyone to the Power Platform Boost Podcast, your weekly source of news and updates from the world of the Power Platform and the Microsoft community with your host, Nick Dolman and Litika Akabek.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so we're live from live. From from Oslo. Yep. Soria Maria Hotel and Oslo at A C D C. Yep. Everything just uh people are clearing out. So usually that's what we do always. We're like in the area where suddenly there's a guy with a cooper that comes in and just making or moving chairs or something.

Nick:

And the crane and the whole bit.

SPEAKER_01:

And then someone's taking our photo.

Nick:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. So um you were a participant this year. Yes. I'm in the organizing committee. So, first of all, so ACDC, Art Tikhal Developer Developer Challenge is a three-day hackathon here in Oslo. Yes. Uh runs every year. And you've been a judge and uh participant. Yes. We talked about this before. So the people that listen to our podcast.

Nick:

And I think I think there should be a new rule that judges have to be participants at some point.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I think yeah, I agree with that. And also maybe they should be a participant first.

Nick:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And then a judge so that they know what they're getting themselves into.

Nick:

Absolutely, 100%. Because I came in as a judge first and thinking, oh, this should be fun, should be easy. That's what's back in 2023. And it is being a judge is hard. Yeah. It's a lot harder. And but being a participant is also quite hard.

SPEAKER_01:

A different kind of hard, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've had we I haven't had a SQL judge that didn't want to come back. Uh so that's a good thing. But also we've had judges come back as participants, and that's a good thing as well. Yeah. Now, um, right, so you were tell us about the solution that you made. What did you play around with for these last three days?

Nick:

Yeah, so basically uh was with the team with uh Relio, um, which is a company here in uh Norway, kind of got you know, the logistics change. Of course, you try to organize a team, and this is I think probably the challenge everybody has. Hey, we're gonna have a team, it's gonna be great, and then it all kind of falls apart.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, then there's a customer thing, and yeah, yeah.

Nick:

But the cool thing is um with everybody else, uh the the organizing organizing committee was really good at trying to make sure teams get up to capacity, fill in the blanks, there's smaller teams, merging teams, the whole bit. I I'm guessing there's a lot of logistics going on in the background. So, anyways, I got part of a team with uh Marius Borensen, who I've worked with before. He was actually he was one of my participants in the first time I ever visited Norway years ago in one of the training courses I did. So it was really cool. Um, so basically the whole theme was Minecraft. And of course, with these themes with the Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge or a lot of these hackathons, it really just the theme is very loose in terms of what's supposed to be done, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So the assignment, the the theme is set, but also that it's an open assignment. You can make whatever you want, which is harder than you might think. Because the more about the more barriers to put around a task, the easier it is to kind of keep within the bound. But we say, you know what, make whatever you want, use whatever tech you want.

Nick:

Um, and then we have kind of badges that are part of the task, and then we have categories for you guys to yeah, and you'll be able to check what the links in the show notes so you can check out those if you want to kind of organize your own hackathon, get get inspired by that, or come next year. Be uh oh, yeah. Um, and you know, so you do have a vision or something, you want to hit the categories in terms of business value and a whole bunch of different things using different technology. So there is as much as it's kind of free form, you do want to make sure you're collecting the points from the judges and the badges and kind of aligning to that. So that adds a certain amount of pressure, and then of course, you only have really two and a half days when you all kind of factor it in. Although I was up till about one o'clock last night working on this, um, trying to get things going. So this are the parameters on the hackathon. What we worked on, because Minecraft was a theme, plus we wanted we want to integrate with Microsoft technologies and Microsoft Power Platform. I said, I want somehow to build something where the power platform is talking to Minecraft or even vice versa. So I had a you know a few different ideas and we met with a team and we're kind of brainstorming things, and so basically we decided to build an app where you can sit down, put out the specs for your dream home or your cabin or your however you want to you know describe your building, and then describe that in a power app within Dataverse, and then have that go and build it in Minecraft.

SPEAKER_01:

That's cool.

Nick:

So I thought this shouldn't be too hard. There's a a lot of community content on integrating with Minecraft, the APIs, the whole bit. And I thought this shouldn't be too bad. Well, yeah, actually getting it working on my local laptop, that was easy. I had that working on Thursday. Um, being able to give a description using uh Claude, the Claude desktop client. It would talk through an MCP server, it would talk to Minecraft, everything was cool. My local machine, it was great. Okay, now we need to move it into the cloud. So I think I mentioned last episode, I spent a few hours a couple weeks ago getting a Minecraft server running on Linux. That worked pretty well, got that going, but then trying to get these tools to talk to it, like that's next level because the community content's really, really good until you're talking going online, you're going out of the sandbox or off the grid, and then the community content turns into complete Wild West, half-baked GitHub repositories, some you know, weird little things, um, you know, Discord messages all over the place. So that where I spent a lot of time. So the whole vision there was um somehow to get we wanted to be a completely cloud-based solution as well. So, okay, how do we get, you know, how would we get these tools talking to Minecraft in the cloud? A lot of challenges there, networking challenges, getting Azure, ports opened, making certain still secure because governance is a thing that you know the judges are looking for. So, long story short, over the course of three days, a lot of challenges. We pivoted yesterday in terms of the protocol in which we talked to Minecraft because there's some bugs in the open source software that I found.

SPEAKER_01:

Did you use that to get the dough badge though?

Nick:

No, I I here's what I did to get the dough badge trying to get some of the networking things that certain parts was not working yesterday. I kept getting network errors and like I'm using the same IP, I'm using the same ports as the client. That's working. Why is my own scripts not working? Why is it not connecting? Going doing a hundred different things, downloading um telnet on Windows to get like old school technology.

SPEAKER_01:

You got the hipster badge as well.

Nick:

Like trying to get that working and then realizing, yeah, the digits on the IP address, I was one digit off. No way in the very first segment. And once I got that going, of course, everything kind of lit up and worked. And I'm like, seriously, that's like happy that I solved the problem, frustrated that I spent hours working.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but that's what the dough badge is for. So for those of you who had never been here before, we have like 30 badges, and all the badges have 10 points each, except for one, which is a dough badge, which gives you minus 10 points. And so you need to claim the dough badge, telling the judges about a mistake you made, and you'll get minus 10 points. But the point is, if you're here hacking for three days and don't make a single mistake, that's not gonna happen, right? So if everyone just owns up to their mistake, everyone gets minus 10 points, it all evens out and creates psychological safety, right?

Nick:

I'm not sure if you knew this, but um we uh because we're like, why would you take 10 points away? But then Sarah came along and said, Yeah, if you guys don't claim the dough badge, I am going to assign more negative points. So there's a penalty for not taking the dough badge.

SPEAKER_01:

It is because everyone makes stupid mistakes like that, right? And then you hit your bashy head against the wall for three days, you made some stupid error, own up to it and share it with the world, and that's something to take back into your real life. Because as a team, we all make mistakes. Even on customer time, we make mistakes. But you be upfront about it and tell the world about it, and then that creates a space where other people can share their mistakes, and then we get honesty, we get these bugs up quicker, and then we can solve it together. So that's why, and they're kind of joking we should call it the Ulrika badge because this is something that's really important to me. Uh and I'm not letting you go. And I love the sort of just own it, it's like I'm gonna push a penalty on you if you don't do it.

Nick:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right, so all in all you at the end of the day, final solution, and I'll I'll probably post the video somewhere. But basically, uh, you could log into a power app, you put in your specs, you can upload a picture, it kind of extrapolates all your building, you give it some information, and then it takes it and basically takes all that information, converts it into Minecraft commands, and then and it's all stored in Dataverse. I've been using prompt columns. I was surprised prompt columns and told it to go create Minecraft commands and see, and it sure enough, just did it all out. Then basically use Power Automate, kind of parse that JSON, shoot it through an Azure function, and that Azure function talking to the Minecraft server. So basically you get this process going, log into Minecraft just as an observer character, and then all of a sudden you see poof that building that you described in the power app just if displays in Minecraft.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's so cool.

Nick:

I was and we finally got that. We were able to get the end-to-end process working around lunchtime today. Ooh, that's about three or four hours. But we actually got the the bridge the communication working around midnight last night to actually talk the power apps to to Minecraft. Like we were also like, okay, plan B would be we'll get it to generate the prompt, and then we'd have to cut and paste the prompt into something that's going to generate it in Minecraft. And I really wasn't comfortable about that. Like that's kind of and then to even to the point like Power Automate Desktop came into the conversation at one point, too. And like or computer use or something like that. Yeah, yeah, we're all like, oh, that's kind of so, anyways, super happy that at the end of the day, Mike, we may not have the biggest or the best flashiest thing, but we have working software. The vision of what I described, we we described as a team on Thursday, we delivered by the end of day Saturday.

SPEAKER_01:

That's well done. So, how would you translate the things that you've learned across you know the for these three days? Is there anything you've learned or the way that you worked or the tools that you use that you're gonna be applied to real customer uh project?

Nick:

Absolutely Monday? Yes, absolutely. In terms of using prompt columns, I have a whole new appreciation. It's still in preview, like you know, a lot of these things, but I have a new appreciation for that. Of course, um uh code apps. Now, I I wasn't, it was one of the other team members that put the code app together. That was sort of part of my mindset coming into this. This is something I want to spend more time in, but I ended up more in the Minecraft side, but also understanding um about the information resources that our community puts together compared to the Minecraft people. Our stuff is very complete and precise. Like the folks that the stuff that we report on every two weeks, you guys are amazing. Where in the Minecraft world, um, it's a lot of hackers and kids, and no offense, some are amazing, some are really good, but there's a lot of crap out there that you have to sort through. And I realize we have a bit of crap with on the on the Microsoft community side as well, but overall, it's just sort of like you get we're getting spoiled by really good blogs and videos that the community does compared to some of the things.

SPEAKER_01:

Keep the good work up and keep producing content because it does matter uh and it makes it easier to play around with and adopt these things down the road, right? So, yeah, just do our us all a favor and keep doing the good work that you do.

Nick:

Yeah, and definitely some stuff on like in terms of like setting up the Linux box and things like that. Stuff I've done a little bit in the past, but I think that that definitely is going to, you know, into my toolbox of stuff, that's definitely gonna come into uh probably at some point as I'm gonna need that or have a better understanding of that as well. You know, like um, you know, I have a new appreciation in terms of like for cost savings and things like that. Linux box compared to the Windows box, what Azure was gonna tell me to run a Windows box in the cloud versus the Linux box. It was like I was kind of shocked at the price differences. Um there's definitely some user loads or workflow loads that I think um uh Linux would have. So it's gonna be interesting. It was a little bit not quite what I had planned to learn, but I definitely learned a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

Um but it's not just a thing with tech, right? It does it chooses you, it chooses you 100%.

Nick:

So yeah, it was definitely good. I highly recommend anybody do this at least once. You may be in a like right now, like if someone's asked me, if someone put a sign-up form for me in front of me right now for next year, it'd be like, you just hold on to that right now. I'm just like um we'll see. But anyways, yeah, so it was really good. And uh yeah, looking uh looking forward to seeing the results later tonight. Oh yeah. I know we're not like I don't expect I have no aspirations of getting into first place because I've seen what some of these other kids are putting together, uh, but I didn't want to end up in the bottom of the barrel either. So like have happy in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But I think that goes for a lot of people. And we've seen so many cool things. We've seen people with QR codes that you can kind of you can scan and then you can claim or you can hack or you can uh mine for things. We've seen people having uh Raspberry Pis with sensors and cameras that will detect in a box where you put different boxes and they will match what you put in the box in Minecraft. That's also really cool. And I've seen so many different things, and I think this year we've seen more adoption of the wider range of the tech stack, especially with Microsoft, as it it is called you know the cloud developer challenge, but it's generally been first it started off as SharePoint challenge, now it's been more power platform related. But I see that the tack the stack that people are using is broadening, which is a good thing, and it also keeps with the general kind of that's where we all we're all doing that, right? So it kind of keeps up with it.

Nick:

Yeah, and of course, so the AI tools vibe coding, right? I mean, that's something that two like two years ago just didn't even exist. Like even last year, I think it's just like yeah, doing AI assisted coding and things like that, it's just coming into play. So it's interesting to see how that's a factor. I think again, like we talked about last time, it is opening the doors for new people. Absolutely um, so people are being more comfortable diving into stuff because they can actually vibe code it. Um I did a bit of vibe coding uh as part of this as well, trying to debug stuff or whatever, and then also realizing you do need some base knowledge because doing some of this node stuff, and it just kept getting okay. I'm getting deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, we need to take a step back.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, yeah, but also I mean the speed of things, right? So um, and this has been so this is the 16th year that we've done A C D C right, and every year, without fail, it's been more and more. So it started off with people just doing dashboards, that's kind of the realm of where we would go, and then in terms of what you could build, that's always been extended every every year. And I saw last year is probably the biggest shift where we did so much more than we did the previous year, and today, or this year, before we even got started, I talked to some people and they're like, Yeah, I predict that we'll be able to do so much this year compared to other years just because of AI and vibe coding and all that. That so it kind of proves that yeah, you do save time, it goes quicker, you'll get to the end quicker. Uh, and it is an enabler for sure. So this is cool, very cool. All right, so um, we uh did discover some uh news and updates from um power platform community as well. Yeah, so we will actually talk about one of two of these because there are some new important things that you should know about.

Nick:

Yeah, and I think one of the biggest, like there's always news and updates coming, and we'll we'll get back to the regular schedule in two weeks. But I think the biggest one um to me, which I thought was pretty huge, was the new it's called so of course everybody knows about the X from Toolbox. Uh I've been using it for years, so I'm sure you have too. It's like anybody like we have new people coming on, like you know, the juniors coming on, that's the very first thing. Install this. Yeah, this is a lifesaver.

SPEAKER_01:

But it doesn't work on Mac, it's very Windows-based, and it's kind of a little bit old and clunky. So sorry, Tangy, it's still a little bit in you know, 1990s in terms of interface. It could be updated, but then someone took it upon themselves to do something.

Nick:

So Dinesh Nagular, which we know he's uh he's an MVP. I think he's based in the US somewhere. Um, so Dinesh and a few others, like we know the cookie, and uh I think they had the names here. Yeah, Matt Berg, Carl Cookson, Motion Mizra, Michael Ox, Mike, uh good to you know that's he Mike's involved. That's awesome. Uh Lars Hildenbrandt, Oliver Flint, and Alexander Olashin. Uh, some of the names that are involved putting this together. So it's not just somebody in their basement thinking, oh, I'm gonna build a replacement for the XRM toolbox. We've seen some of these come and go before. Someone's basically they'll go in LinkedIn announcing they're building the the XRM Toolbox killer, and you never hear from them again. So that these guys behind it already, and I know that Jonas has been involved a little bit as well, Tangy's given his blessing. So this is coming along. So basically, it's like XRM Toolbox, it's called the Power Platform Toolbox, but it's on it's be it's written in React, it's on modern modern platform, it can run on uh Windows, Mac, Linux. Um, at this point, the tools, there's only a handful of tools compared to XRM Toolbox. So don't uninstall XRM Toolbox yet. It's still gonna be for the next couple years, you're still gonna get it. But I think more and more you're gonna see people release tools for both Power Platform Toolbox and XRM Toolbox, and we'll eventually see the shift move over. Um, but there's a few things. There's a fetch XML builder in there that I know Jonas, it's not I know Jonas uh assisted on it. Um, there's a few other things like the Environment Explorer. I think Cookie uh released something this morning I saw. So there's all these bits and pieces, and then that that's gonna expand. And of course, if you're a developer, of course, it's an open source, so you can contribute, you can start building your own tools. And I think this is gonna be pretty widely adopted. So I'm pretty excited. We're gonna put the link in the show notes so you can download it and try it yourself, and then let us know what you think and uh what what you're excited about, what you hope the developers rebuild, or what you're building uh for this new platform.

SPEAKER_01:

And also what you're missing, right? So we saw Matt Collin Jones last time. He built and he shared in a blog post the the tools he made and how he went back uh went on uh kind of tackled creating a new tool for the XRM toolbox. Um and I'm I guess you know, just uh if you have an idea of what you need, some tool you want to see, or you uh build something for the new PowerPlatform toolbox, then let us know how you did it and put it into a blog post and share it with everyone. Um and also, like you said, Tangy's given his blessing and he's kind of part of the thing. And I'm thinking he's a bit happy to because it is it takes a lot of time and effort to keep it going, and so happy to see someone pick it up and and kind of take that next level.

Nick:

Yeah, and I think what I'm gonna like in uh because we have like in terms of this up, it's kind of a special episode and talk about community. So I'm gonna take a little bit of a segue, it's not on here, but talk about community tools because they are free. This new tool you can download for free, you don't have to pay anything. Every so often you see a little bit of controversy on uh LinkedIn or some of the other social medias about the little donate box that pops up. People say, Well, that's really annoying. But you think about it. I think it's important that these folks get supported as well. I wrote a blog on this years ago. Same thing kind of came up like, oh, these developers are just begging for money or they're doing it for the MVP points.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh wow.

Nick:

Like, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

You should know the time that can time he spends just going through emails that he gets, right?

Nick:

Yeah, or you know, in the GitHub issues and everything like that. And then it takes time volunteer work. I asked some of the developers, it's like, what it like what would you launch out of it? And they're not looking for the money, they have day jobs. Like the money's nice if it shows up in the buy my, you know, buy my beer account or whatever, like it's appreciated. But more and more, what they're looking for, feedback.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

Nick:

Um, looking for pull requests if you're you know helping with that. What are features you're looking for? These are the types of things because they're just at the end of the day, they're building these tools to solve their own problems and sharing that free of charge, but spending hours to kind of get accused of, well, you're just looking for money. If they were looking for money, they would have Guess what? If they wanted Fetcher to me, something like Fetcher X Fetcher XML Fetch XML Builder to me is a tool that easily a company should be paying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month for the amount of efficiencies and times that it solves. So if if if and I'm gonna be kind of blunt, if you're too cheap to buy Jonas a beer for using Fetch XML Toolbox, like give your head a shake. Um so I'm throwing it out there. So yeah, I mean I realize I'm talking about a very small percentage across the entire community. But even if you're a part in the community and um and you're using these tools, like just donate a little bit. It doesn't really, it doesn't cost you any well, it costs you a few dollars, but compared to what you might be buying, like for the same amount of you buying a coffee or even a sandwich or whatever. And exactly I also think in projects, and this is to you business owners, you project managers, I think there should be a line item for community tools on every proposal, uh whether it's a small percentage or even if it's a few hundred dollars or something, uh it's kind of symbolic, but it also shows to the client how many hours you're gonna be saving by using some of these community tools as well. Because if you could not use Fetch XML build or you couldn't use some of these tools, literally, how long would it take you to do the exact same thing by hand? Like definitely expensive hours to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

So when we get involved in a new customer or a new project, they always ask us kind of what what kind of licenses do you require? And then adding XM toolbox to the list or one of these um these uh kind of buy me beer stuff on the onto the list as a license requirement is also uh something that you could do. So yeah, I definitely yeah, yeah, and there's so many so many people doing so much community stuff, and it's all for free, right? So, this is you know, we talk about doing volunteer work. Well, this is kind of our way of doing volunteer work. Uh putting together something like this is a nonprofit organization. We do it on weekends and night times, and we don't get a penny out of it, but we do it because we see the kind of how people come together, they work as a team, there's a lot of kind of team building and an exercise like this. We get to hang out with all the cool kids, and and you know, it's it's we do it because it's fun and because we see the impact that it has on each and every one of the teams and the people, and that's worth all the minutes spending in meetings and and uh kind of putting this together.

Nick:

So it's absolutely so this is cool live episode. We hardly get to do these uh lately. So side by side.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly.

Nick:

Yeah in real life, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I love it. And now we are gonna grab a shower and then have a little bit of a snooze, and then we're gonna go off to the award dinner to see who wins the Shindeg. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Nick:

I might go to the sauna though. I think that could be good just to chill and sweat it out a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Maybe a dip in the pool. Who knows? Yeah, yes. All right, so we will check in in a few weeks uh with another episode. It's jam-packed with community stuff.

Nick:

Yes, yes, that's happening.

SPEAKER_01:

And then we're also going to a few conferences between now and then. So maybe a little bit of a recap. We'll see. Yep. Okay.

Nick:

See what happens.

SPEAKER_01:

Sounds awesome. Now, um, if you want to, please go in and check out the blog posts that these teams made. So all the 12 teams, they created a bazillion blog posts this weekend just to showcase what they've done. And it's all open at acdc.blog. Make sure to go in and check it out. Uh, and if you want to be a participant next year or a judge or be part of the community, just send me a message wherever you can find me and let's talk.

Nick:

Cool.

SPEAKER_01:

And then until next time, peace out. Have fun. Bye, folks. 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 of your favorite streaming service and makes it easier for others to find us. Follow us on the social media platforms and make sure you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening to the Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, Ulrich Auckerbeck and Nick Dolman. And see you next time for your timely boost of Par Platform News.

Head Shot

Nick Doelman

Host
Head Shot

Ulrikke Akerbæk

Host