Power Platform Boost Podcast

One of those (#57)

• Ulrikke Akerbæk and Nick Doelman • Season 1 • Episode 57

Share episode




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

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

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

Ulrikke:

Is our podcast, the transcription, a part of Copilot? Or the big, what is it called now? Models now.

Nick:

Oh, it probably is. So that's what's going to throw AI off. That's why we're good with. Our jobs are safe, because the Boost podcast is feeding into these models with all sorts of wacky information and F-bombs. So we're good. 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. Hello.

Ulrikke:

Hey, how are you?

Nick:

I'm doing good. Thanks. It's election day here in Canada, so after we're done recording, I have to go and vote.

Ulrikke:

Oh wow, Do you know where you're going to vote for?

Nick:

Yep, I'm not going to say because that could be contentious, but no one's going to ask you.

Nick:

What's really interesting, though, is this time. I typically do some research on things. I usually have a pretty good idea where I'm leaning towards, but this time I use well, I use ChatGPT and other AI tools to kind of, more than anything, dispel a lot of stuff that people were saying, including the news, saying, well, they said this and they said that. And what I ended up doing was the two main political parties here in Canada. I took their websites and I fed them into chat GPT and I said do research on both of these and give me unbiased opinions on what their policies are and how they compare and contrast. And it was really cool because, with the co-pilot the research it comes back and ask some clarifying questions, saying, oh, do you want to do this, do you want to focus on this? And I answered I know this and yes to this and whatever, and a little bit of back and forth, and said okay, and then, 15 minutes later, it gave me this whole big report, basically based on the campaign promises, of what each party was doing, how they compared, how they contrasted and things like that, which study was quite a bit different than how the news reports certain things.

Nick:

So I did find that this is pretty interesting and pretty enlightening, and I did post on Facebook. Just I didn't actually get the results or anything, but I just sort of reminded people. We have other tools. That's not just reading the news or listening to your crazy uncle of who to vote or not vote for. We have ways to get sort of unbiased information. So, anyways, that was that's a little aside of me. You know, embracing AI and using it in sort of something. That I think is something that's pretty relevant to a lot of people.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, wow, sort of something. That I think is something that's pretty relevant to a lot of people yeah, wow. So yeah, I find it both refreshing and also very scary Because, at the same time, if that bot is then grounded in data that is biased towards one or the other, you see there's a big right-wing movement blowing through Europe and Elon Musk is very much playing into the right-wing parties of Europe, and then so maybe your Tesla car will start feeding you right-wing information at the top of the newsfeed or emphasize things. I don't know what the car can do, but I mean those kinds of things. So I get a bit skeptical when I look at technology and politics and how much it mixes and also how vulnerable we are to the you know, unbiased. What does that actually mean? But it's nice that you explore that.

Nick:

Yeah, and I totally, I totally understand what you're meaning. Because that's the thing. If I had just asked ChatGPT just give me who should I wait up, give me, yeah, well, not who should I vote for, but just sort of give me the straight up goods, then for sure it's gonna go and it's gonna like, and again, chat tpt in theory, in theory, doesn't care about by like, it really doesn't care about all this stuff, it just processes data right. But of course, if this data is kind of leaning towards one direction or the other and that kind of thing, that's one thing. So that's why I basically gave it. Here is both.

Nick:

Like political parties here is their website. Use that as information to do this deep research to compare the two, because in that way I, yeah, political parties make promises all the time that they can't keep. So these promises sometimes are worth. I'd say worth the paper they're written on, but worth the digit, worth the characters that are on the web page. But at least there the idea was I was telling it to ground itself Like don't look outside.

Nick:

Because it even asked me do you want to kind of research other news sources and reports? No, no, just focus on their websites and their platforms only like what is published and give me the sources and things like that. So I totally get you, and this is it is dangerous to use these tools as well. I totally get that, but it is. You know, there is something I would see on Facebook Well, such and such said this, and then I would kind of like, yes, because the data is six months old. It's hard to get that, but there are ways to kind of okay, is this really true or what's, what's the opposing? And then you find out that a lot of these things are blatantly not true or blatantly they're perceived or reinterpreted a different way as well. So, again, maybe it makes things more confusing, but in other ways, using some of these tools that aren't yeah, anyways, we could probably talk.

Ulrikke:

we could probably make a whole podcast episode on this, Because what my mind triggered when you said this was the thing we talked about, the video that I sent you a few weeks ago that talked about really good AI to say if you were going to take over the world, what would you do?

Ulrikke:

And then in that post on LinkedIn or that video, he you know the AI says you're I would. Then you could hold your petty little elections, but I would be essentially running everything. You know what happened when Trump was elected a few years ago. The rumors that was that social media was maliciously trying to move the public in one direction or another. You know, have that in the mix.

Ulrikke:

But then what you did is you actually just ask it to help you summarize the data out there, and you don't ask it to make a decision or to weigh the things one way or the other. There's a give me the information and I'll be the human in the loop, I'll decide what I'll do with it, and so that's how you have to approach these things. I think your approach is really good and I think that's kind of what we need to remember when we use AI tools. Yes, prompt me, give me ideas and let's iterate and brainstorm on session ideas, for instance, but the second, you just take that and copy and put it into session submission. It's no longer yours. It's someone else's voice, so just making sure that there's a human in the loop.

Ulrikke:

I like it definitely. Keep going.

Nick:

Yeah, and there was a few other things too, because I even like it's funny you ask that because I even chat GPT like going how does social media affect election results, and it went through and again this could have been biased but it gave point, saying, well, sort of some of the strategies that people have used social media to affect and things like reposting something that looks like from a real person but it's actually not a real person, it's more put on by an organization.

Nick:

And I see this, I still see this in Facebook. I see friends posting. It looks like they're posting something from a person, but then you realize that person's not a person. It's actually a special interest group that made it look like a person and that's what the danger is with all of this. So again, it's sort of like. Again I asked ai so if, if you were to trick people, how would you trick people? Or you know, or how are people tricked by this? And it's just sort of an awareness of like anything you've said this before almost don't believe anything you see online these days.

Ulrikke:

it could be generated somehow and yeah, this is the other thing, and to your point, actually we are those people as well. Because what are we? We are individual mbps that speak of product and we um talk about things within the Microsoft stack and platform that we think is good, and we we kind of rah-rah about those types of products. So in a sense, we are we're not fake accounts but we are kind of part of that as well, that individualization. So now listen to Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast where he talks with people that don't understand where business is going, and so you can look at the history now.

Ulrikke:

For the last 10 years there's been a shift from you subscribe to a brand to you subscribe to an individual. That's why we know the names of the leaders of OpenAI. That's what we know. Satya Nadella that's what we know. Bill Gates he's what we know. Satya Nadella, that's what we know. Bill Gates he's seen that change. It's been the tech companies leading that change for it to not be about the brand anymore but about the person, and you can see that on the fake accounts as well, because brands have less of a value now than they used to have and personality and individuals hold more power, and so it's easier to subscribe to that. So it's part of the change, I think.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, so speaking about rah-rah, all this stuff, you were like, before we started recording, you were like, yeah, because I'm a bit short on time, because I have to go pick up my son in about half an hour. So you're like, yeah, let's get going, let's dive in. And then, 10 minutes later, well, this is us right, this is what we do.

Nick:

Yeah. So in terms of interesting things and I'm going to jump around a little bit because there's been a lot of stuff, of course, over the last two weeks but our friend, Lisa Crosby, posted a video this morning about all the new Microsoft 365 co-pilots changes that are coming and it's funny because it's sort of you know, you see, like yeah, there's release plans every month or you know there's release plans every quarter or every sorry, every half year, but then things get released every month and she went through and gave it's really an interesting video because she gave a very high level summary of all the Microsoft 365 co-pilot things are coming out. A lot of these things we've seen before in other competing products, specifically like notebooks, the ability to create a podcast from from a document. We've seen that. We talked about that quite a few months ago already from Google Notebook but these are things that are now coming into Microsoft 365 Copilot. So it's not. What's cool about this is it's not so much Microsoft playing catch up. It's basically taking these things but incorporating into your own business data so you can create a notebook but then you're bringing in stuff from your business data.

Nick:

She went through like you just watched the video because she just there's so many things or it kind of blew me away. But even you know, getting AI to create drafts, instead of going into Word or PowerPoint, you basically can say create a draft and then from there go towards the tool of your choice, the navigation, doing the deep research, the reasoning. So we're now going beyond of just looking at just kind of data and stuff, but reasoning behind that data. So check out that video, it kind of it. I I didn't I didn't think I'd be blown away, but I actually kind of was of all the news, the stuff that's coming, and immediately I could see how I could apply that um to my day-to-day stuff. So that that's that's pretty cool uh stuff. So thanks lisa for doing that video. Yeah, and I think this ties into one of the the to my day-to-day stuff. So that's pretty cool stuff.

Ulrikke:

So thanks, lisa, for doing that video. Yeah, and I think this ties into one of the links that I have in the show notes as well, where Femke Cornelissen shares a post on LinkedIn where she talks about the Copilot waves waves that are coming a spring release right from Microsoft 365 Copilot it's the same thing, where she kind of details out the different points of when things is coming out and what it's going to do. So and the multilingual Copilot in Teams that can automatically translate between what you speak. You speak French and I hear Norwegian. That would be fantastic.

Ulrikke:

And also the people skills. Did you see that? It says find the expert in your org without asking around? Copilot knows who knows what I mean. Come on, how many organizations in the world has a skills database that's trying to get competence? It's up to date and is outdated by miles and is also now the source of the CVs, because we're you know, we're consultancy. We do that. That's our core business. I'm just. That is just going to first of all put a few people out of work and then also going to kind of get that CV base finally up to scratch. It's going to be the salespeople's best friend.

Nick:

Yeah, I saw that too and it reminded me. I used to work for a big company where the managers just okay, everybody fill in your skills matrix. So basically it was ranking one to five, and then all the Dynamics 365 modules. And how good are you at Power Automate? How good are you at this?

Ulrikke:

And just even keeping that metrics up to date. I mean, every time we go into that forum, I'm like, I'm sorry, but you're missing like three years of evolution on this platform right here. So, no, we do no longer call it CRM4. No, it's no longer called Flow. And yes, can you please update this before I'm able to put it in? And also, right, this also wanted to kind of segue into, because you said we were going to jump around. So now I'm really going to jump around, because I saw something else from Steve Mordew this week that I thought was amazing, because now Salesforce is coming out and the CEO of Salesforce is coming out and actually putting the finger on something that Microsoft and other people kind of danced around a little bit, which is the digital workforce. Right, so from Microsoft's marketing perspective, it's no, no, no, no one's going to lose their jobs. You're just your best friend at work. It's going to be an enable. You're going to save so much time, and then everyone's going and it's going to replace people, um, and so finally now someone's in sales first kind of getting out there saying, no, no, it's gonna. Managers are not no longer just going to manage your, manage people, it's managing also the digital workforce that you have, and that's, of course, the autonomous agents they're talking about.

Ulrikke:

And then someone in the comments section went like I think people have been managing other things other than humans for a while. And one of my old colleagues are like, yeah, you put a horse in front of a plow. Isn't that kind of the same thing? Just like decades ago, so kind of having that wide discussion about what is a workforce and management and all that. But also someone kind of honed it in and talked about applications, how UIs are no longer needed, how CRM is obsolete.

Ulrikke:

Why would you need a CRM system? Actually, what you do need is you need backends talking to backends, and then you need an agent frontend for you to interact with. Who cares? Because the CRM system in the back is just populated with data that the AI sources as needed and it talks to other databases. So maybe integration is where everything's happening. Right, that's the important layer. And you look at the news from last week with the MCT servers and you're like, well, they solved it, so now everything can talk to anything. Anyways, interaction, or integration, suddenly just became unlocked. Like all right, let's just plug it in.

Nick:

Done. Yeah, the same as we do connectors, but to the next level, basically.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, definitely next level. So I thought yeah, it's. And then, of course, steve is in the comments. It's Steve's post. I just love following Steve. He has the most crazy brain. I love it. And then people are lashing on in the comment section, but Steve's very good at kind of honing it. It goes on a tangent. Every now and again he adults people, but then he'll also bring it back and he goes actually talking about serum systems being obsolete and that AI copilates the UI for AI.

Ulrikke:

99% of the world is outside of our little bubble. This is just 1% of the world. We still have customers that are on-prem. Hello, just reality check people. It's not going to happen overnight. There's still people in the world that deploy plow and horses, even though it's kind of evolved beyond that. Yeah, sure, in big farms in the US it has, but there are still farmers in Asia that do horse and plow. So I mean you'll always have everything. It's not going to just replace all of the workers or digital workers overnight. It's going to, but of course, in our world, a lot of our jobs aren't going to be replaced and I like the fact that someone's actually now starting to talk about it and being honest and actually talking about moments yeah, it's a scary, but also it's a good, yeah, to stay on top of it and it's funny.

Nick:

Funny because, yeah, views it. It wasn't this particular post, but Steve had posted something else about telling IT departments to embrace this or companies to embrace AI and things like that. And it reminded me you talk about on-prem. I remember working for a company where they were implementing, you know, still on the on-prem, their sales department, without asking anybody, went and bought Salesforce licenses and so there's the concept of shadow it, there's shadow ai going on.

Nick:

This past week I've talked to different people like even outside of our industry. There's one, one lady I know, who has to kind of write up assessments for different um like caseworker kind of thing with social, like social services. She's doing her reports now in ai, like getting chat, gpt or one of these tools to generate the report. Of course she goes through it and corrects it and makes sure, but she said she is saving so much time doing this now and the way I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but it kind of looked like her bosses didn't even know she's doing it now because it's these tools are so available. It's scary and this is where companies need to be on board because you want those governance, those data controls in place. So the data is not being used in tools outside of the organization, used in tools outside of the organization, and that's the yeah because how does she know?

Ulrikke:

Because even people I talk about in our industry are going like no, no, no, I just use a free account thing, because then they can't use my data. I'm like no, no, no, dude, it's the other way around. And then they go what it's like yes, you need to pay for it for not to spread your things around they. I'm like what it's like oh shit, and my daughter is so proud of herself because she has an AI app. She's like no, no, no, don't worry, mom, I did not create an account. It does not know my name. I'm not logging in, I'm just feeding it things. I'm like oh, no, no, oh, because she thinks she's doing it the right way, because we have all the other apps, like Don't see your birthday, don't tell them where you live, because she has a very unique name in a very small country, you know. So she thinks she's doing it right. So, yeah, and I also talked on that topic, talked to a teacher, teacher at a high school and he's like yeah, so I use AI all the time because I can't be bothered reading all those reports anymore. So I'm just so happy you have AI, I could just throw it in there.

Ulrikke:

And then they also continued the conversation to say how they're now blocking students from taking exams using AI. So they've now stopped the ability to copy and paste on the computers that they're doing their exams on, because then they can't use. Okay, sure, you can use copilot if you want to, but you have to transcribe it with your own by writing it right? So then that's their way of ensuring that it's their words. Sure, um, but I find it fascinating that that person can say this is my, my job. I'm using AI for my job, but then we're going to prohibit the students from learning the skills with this new tool.

Ulrikke:

It's like I can use, you know, the nail guns, but the apprentice has to nail it down with a club, right? Why don't we just teach them how to use the phone? Oh, sorry, I can't stand that. You have to beep it out, and then you know, and then everyone's more happy, right? Why don't you just teach the students how to use AI instead of making software that's prohibiting them from copy and pasting? Come on, it's so backwards. I'm just oh, yeah, sorry. Oh, this is going to be one of those episodes, isn't it? Yeah, no, okay, we said we weren't gonna do this anymore. We're not hating on ai, though we're kind of looking at the freaking fine line. That is now the balance we have to be on to get this right.

Nick:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, Okay. So let's go something completely not AI related for the next one, just for something different.

Ulrikke:

Is there anything left that is not AI?

Nick:

Probably not Okay show me. Show you, Tell me what's on the list.

Ulrikke:

That doesn't have anything to do with AI.

Nick:

All the PowerPages, stuff, but yeah, sure do it.

Ulrikke:

We have, uh, okay, power pages, stuff. Yes, oh, I love this.

Ulrikke:

It has nothing to do with the ai you're right the jquery one yeah, this is, uh, you know, you know, when you read blog posts and you just scan right, and then you, because you start reading and then you lose interest and then you scan the rest. This is the first blog post that I've read word for word, from start to finish, and I can't tell you how long Because it's so short and it's so to the point, and I've been down that rabbit hole before and I just love that. I learned a lot. So thank you to the other, nick from Canada that does power pages. Yes, so Nick K Duke. To the other.

Nick:

Nick from Canada that does power pages. Yes, so yeah, nick K Duke, I hope you're outvoting today as well, fellow Canadian. But yeah, great, like it's about the custom lookup and it's one of these little subtle niche things that if you're not aware of, you could probably spend hours trying to figure it out and mess with it and everything. This particular post, you're right, it's probably going to save a lot of people like I wouldn't say hundreds, but it's probably going to save quite a few people hours and hours of researching and work trying to fix all this um and not realizing, you know, oh, shoot, like this isn't being loaded anymore the jquery library, if we're doing these little drop downs, basically, um, so, without getting too technical, it's it's really about fixing a custom lookup, which is something I think anybody working on a power pages project has probably run into at some point and getting client-side console errors, comparing about the particular uh built-in plugin, uh, not working anymore because there's a particular library that needs to be referenced.

Ulrikke:

So little thing, big impact the order of which things are loaded, and I didn't know this. But so jQuery is loaded with Power Pages, but it's loaded at the far bottom of the page, meaning that actually your header and your head of your DOM will be loaded. Before that do so, you inject some jQuery at the top of your page. That's going to be a little bit before the jQuery library, and also you can't find the jQuery reference because it's bundled in a bigger JavaScript file or on a CDN somewhere. So it's one of those cases where he had someone testing the application Some people it worked, some people it didn't work, and actually it was the administrator role that was a drift differentiator, which makes no sense whatsoever, but that's how he figured this out.

Ulrikke:

So it's one of those pretty niche, pretty deep things, and also it's funny because I think they spent a lot of time before they brought Nick into the picture and then suddenly he just does it and he finds it out, and it's fantastic to also see how he reasons to get to the uh, because it also shares a bit of the path he followed to figure this out, which I also like when people do that in blog post is not. This is a solution, but also gives you an idea of what I had to do to find the way down this rabbit hole, to find that little solution, because that is also a workflow and a process that everyone else can adopt, because we're all troubleshooting. So I really like, I appreciate that blog post, nicholas.

Nick:

Yes, and then the AI can read this and add it to its reasoning model later, so you can think like Nick.

Ulrikke:

Really, is our podcast, the transcription, a part of Copilot, or the big, what is it called now? Models now.

Nick:

Oh, it probably is. So that's what's going to throw AI off. That's why we're good. Our jobs are safe, because the Boost podcast is feeding into these models with all sorts of wacky information and F-bombs, so we're good.

Ulrikke:

And also another Nick from Canada that does Power Pages posted something very nice this week. I loved your video and your blog post about the new Visual Studio Code the custom actions or not custom actions sorry.

Nick:

Actions. Yeah, it's funny because it's another one of those I'd say, fairly you'd think low impact, but actually it is a little thing. Little thing but high impact, but what impact? But actually it is a little thing, that the little thing but high impact. But what's really cool about it is like I think all of us are.

Nick:

For anyone developing PowerPages using Visual Studio Code for desktop, it's great. You download the code, you make your changes and then, because it's in Visual Studio Code for Desktop, you have access. There is the PowerPages Copilot that they've created a little over a year ago. But using Visual Studio Code for Desktop, you can use GitHub Copilot like the actual GitHub Copilot using the App PowerPages kind of chat experience, and I've been playing so. So, anyways, all that being said, the tool the actions that the team released allows you to basically very easily upload and download the um. The website allows you to preview it and when you preview, it actually clears the cache for you, and then you even have some shortcuts into the power pages design studio or the power pages management app. So it allows you to switch environments pretty easily without having to learn all those pack commands.

Nick:

Now I I've, you know I anytime I go on the pack commands I'm very much. I go pack page, it power pages or pack pages now and then I'll hit enter just to see the commands, to get reminded of what they are all the time. And I used to feel a little embarrassed. But I was actually on a call with someone very prominent in our community, that's very well known in ALM circles, who may or may not have written a book about ALM, and he was doing the pack commands and he was making mistakes and I'm like, ok, I don't feel so bad anymore. He's like, oh, I forgot the pack commands and he was making mistakes. And I'm like, okay, I don't feel so bad anymore. He's like, oh, I, I forgot, I forgot how this, I forgot the parameter for this one, and do, do, do, do, like still anyways.

Nick:

So these little shortcuts and these tools make it a lot easier. And, of course, using the github copilot, um, again this one I said we said we weren't going to talk about ai and then here we are again, um, but using that to create code and fix code and stuff like that. I am going to. I have a video formulating in my head of using that and it's just, it's amazing of how that works and how it can fit, and I actually it saved me hours this week developing some power pages code, so all within the visual studio code for desktop and being able to upload and preview all that, so it's pretty cool. So, yeah, check out my blog and video and give me any kind of feedback or questions.

Ulrikke:

So shameless self-promotion no no, no, this is all good. I mean, I've used the Visual Studio in the browser for a while and the fact that I can't create new templates and new files and new content snippets means that I'm constantly moving back and forth. And also, I feel so the preview one right. So you preview the PowerPages site in the past, when you've downloaded your portal to your local machine, you haven't seen because it hasn't loaded the PowerPages context. Does it do that now? So it's actually representative of what you see. Because I find this has been the reason why I haven't used it in Plinter now, because I have to upload the code and see it in the rendered PowerPages site to see what I'm actually building, because I'm styling PowerPages. I can't look at that half-assed. Maybe this is what it looks like, kind of preview. It doesn't help.

Nick:

Yeah, no, you still need to hit that upload button, but at least now it's just basically a click upload, and then, like a few seconds later, it is uploaded and then when you hit the preview, it will pull it from Dataverse. So there's that step of uploading to Dataverse. If you don't do that, then your preview is still stale.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, right. So for me, because I have a cheat sheet where I have all the CLI commands already so I'm just copying and pasting and I just click up two times and then upload and I click up another time and then I download. So I mean, for me the new actions is like so underwhelming, I must say it's like, oh, so underwhelming. I must say it's like, oh, so you made a low-code way for coders to upload and download your site. It's like I'm underwhelmed. So I was actually annoyed when I saw that and I was like, oh, this was the freaking RAROS about. Give me something that actually helps. And then I also saw a little comment going oh and by the way, this isn't the preview thing doesn't work for for customs themed sites. Show me a PowerPages site in production that is using default out of the box theming. Show me one and I'll. Probably there will be more. But I mean, come on, so yeah, ok, I'm done, thank you.

Nick:

OK, yeah.

Ulrikke:

Okay, I'm done, thank you, okay. So now I want to see that where I can actually preview the whole thing so that I can work on my local machine fast and snappy, just saving it already in the preview so that I can work quickly, so that it saves me time and I can really get kind of warmed up with it. I can use GitHub Copilot and I can use all of that because the upload, download, the kill cache and the preview that has to change for me to be able to use the local version the local dev tools right yeah.

Nick:

Yeah. No, it's fair For me it was. It did save me a bit of time or just got me in a better flow of things. But yeah, I do. Yeah, it's still without. I'd still love to be able to give me a proper preview versus a yeah.

Ulrikke:

But, of course, using Power Pages and GitHub Copilot to create a module, right, You're creating a form, so you're working with that form in isolation and you can see that preview. That works right, because that was going to be a good representation of what it is, that it's going to be when it's live. So in that scenario it's quickening things up right. So it's for me, just because I work in the styling and branding space so much it doesn't help for me, but I see for all other use cases it's great.

Ulrikke:

And speaking of kind of GitHub and co-pilots and stuff, I saw that now the GitHub integration is now finally generally available. That is where Power Platform, yes, is GA. But also I saw that the Visual Studio for the browser for Power Pages is still in preview. I did not know that. So it says do not use in production, which we have been for the last, I don't know, one and a half years or something. Yeah, so that's awesome. Oh well, we're not coding directly in production, which we have been for the last I don't know, one and a half years or something.

Ulrikke:

That's awesome. We're not coding directly in production, we're using it in dev and removing the code to production. I can't really see why that wouldn't be production ready. That's not.

Nick:

There's two different things. There's a preview tool and then there's a preview feature. So Visual Studio Code for the web, it's a preview feature. So Visual Studio Code for the web, it's a preview tool, but we're building production supported code, right? So a feature, something like the, you know, something that's built into Model Driven Power Pages, like I'm just trying to think like the doc or the Stripe integration, for example, that's a feature that's in preview. You can't even use it in production because it's not even pointing to a production stripe. But that's something no, don't use. That Support will stop you where. I think, if you're, like you know, using XRM toolbox tools, like, in the grand scheme of things, most of these would be preview, because whoever developed it is still, you know, tinkering with it, whatever. So, yeah, that's it Tools versus features.

Ulrikke:

Yes. That's why I'm giving my yes, perfect, all right. Ok, let's move on to something else. Do you want to kind of still jump around, jump around.

Nick:

No, I was going to pop into Amy Holden anything but code and all about her recent blog pass post, which is all about code, or it looks like code.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, 100%. I think she's now being renamed to Amy all about code, so we can do that search for Amy.

Nick:

Yeah, amy Holden pro coder. That's what your business card should say from here on in, amy, Because look at this post, go ahead.

Ulrikke:

No, tell me about the post.

Nick:

Oh, the post is all about, you know, the setting regarding to an eligible table and a single update action, and I mean we've all run into this before.

Nick:

And she shows the screenshot and I'm like I feel called out because I see some of my flows here with the little sad face with the band-aid on it. I'm like, yeah, I've done that. And then kind of the after, with the, the kind of shortened down, and I'm looking at this going yeah, that's very cody, code centric, but but in a good way though, right, yeah, about kind of summarizing all of this and again showing the, you know, creating the activity row and all that kind of other stuff. And she, like Amy's amazing in terms of her screenshots, how she draws and relates to things. She's showing the, actually showing the bits of code and how it's working of all the power or sorry, power automate expressions, networking. Of all the power or sorry, power automate expressions, um, and she even has the code, the sample code, that you can cut and paste for yourself. So, amy, keep the code coming yes, keep the code coming.

Ulrikke:

Actually, I had an opportunity to see amy this week at color cloud. The both both amy holden and megan walker was at color cloud in Hamburg. I ran past Amy like three times thinking, oh, I'm going to catch up with you. And then she was gone and I never got the chance to. And she lives in Australia. I'm so, oh. So next time I'm going to just grab Amy by both shoulders and go.

Ulrikke:

We need to sit down and talk, and talking about the two of them just reminded me that we need to share something's really important um, for those of you who aren't aware, uh, on um outbound, the old way of working with marketing dynamics, usually by marketing outbound marketing that was um is going away. So they're going to actually deprecate it and they're going to remove the whole thing and it's blowing up across the board because a lot of customers aren't ready and it's a huge shift for a lot of what is now called customer insights. Of course, customers to shift to real time. They've had their time. I mean, come on, it's been years and years, but of course some of these big ones need a bit of time to adjust.

Ulrikke:

So what Amy and Megan has done is to create a kind of a webinar. Open webinars set up a few opportunities for people to come on a call and ask their questions. So they'll talk about what's going on. They'll talk about the transition and their best practices and give people a general idea of what to do, and then they'll take questions. They've had two already.

Ulrikke:

There was one at the time when this is released on Wednesday. They already had one in the morning at 7 am. There's another one at 4. So if this is of interest to you, you have a few hours to find that through the link in our show notes and sign up and also just calm down. There's going to be another one on May 7th and another one a few weeks after that. So it's not the latest chance.

Ulrikke:

It's not the last chance yet, but make sure that, if this applies to you, that you go on one of those webinars and also they've recorded all of them. The recordings are available. So if you have questions, go back and kind of go through those recordings before you go on the webinar, if you have time, so you don't kind of repeat the same questions over and over. But you'll get a good sense of what's going on if you look back on those recordings and also, I mean this goes to show how important community is for both Amy and Megan, and we know this because we know these lovely ladies. But I mean they are putting this, they're essentially just grabbing all across the world and Megan says we can't help you all individually, we don't, we, we cannot. So we try to help everyone by just opening up and allowing that. So this is their way to give back.

Ulrikke:

And I just want to give a huge homage to them for like going okay, how can we reach as many people as possible? But it's good quality, because we can't be consultants and go in and save your assets or everywhere, right? So how do we reach as many people as possible? Uh, to help as many people as possible, all right. It's huge respect. You guys do an amazing job yes, absolutely.

Nick:

Saving keystrokes is that's I mean, I love it. I. This is amazing, putting that together, helping tons of people out, because I know this is a big thing, uh, great, it's like. I think a lot of people in the community this is I like answering questions by pointing back to a blog post or a video, whether it's one of my own or one of my other friends. This a couple times this week going, hey, I'm really stuck, I don't know how to do this. Blah, blah, blah. I said, oh, here's a video I did on it three months ago and then getting the response back perfect, that's exactly what I needed. That, yeah, that's the cool feeling.

Ulrikke:

So I have the same feeling in my workshop that I did at color cloud as well, because I had a full day of end-to-end power pages and I enlisted help from some friends you among some, some other people and then I had someone ask the question. I was like, yes, what if? Yes, exactly that, and I don't even know the answer to that. But I fortunately for you I had a conversation with a friend and then we could kind of talk about the things that I got help with in terms of security and accessibility and all those things. So I mean cause none of us can know everything about everything in this community. It's grown so big that's impossible. So just having that network of friends to rely on when you need help, and also, of course, your past self, like you always tell me right.

Ulrikke:

Write love letters to your future self in documentation, in descriptions when you configure things, but also in blog posts. Right, I saw this today. I'm going to help myself six months from now because I have a goldfish memory. So when I Google something, I'm going to find my own blog post and so many people in the community have the same story. That's what we do. So, yeah, it's a long way of saying that. Yeah, contribute because it will benefit everyone. We're just as smart as the collective knowledge we accumulate, or something.

Nick:

Yes.

Ulrikke:

All right, customer insights there's a lot of things in here. So Dynamics 365, customer insights, journeys, marketing and power platform is that also, amy, because it doesn't have a? That's also Amy. That's the one we just talked about. And then this is from Pauline Claude, which I also saw this week one form to rule them all reuse marketing forms across pages with JavaScript. So this is yours, I believe.

Nick:

Yeah, and this is another one of these things that under the heading Nick doesn't know much about, but it did catch my eye because it was sort of like. I mean, for me not knowing a lot about customer insights and journeys, but seeing, what do you mean? You can't do one form, you have to set up multiple forms, like to me. If I was new coming in, they'd be like, well, why can't I do this? But apparently you can't.

Nick:

But of course, polina, she's an amazing person, super smart. I love her presentations, the way she presents and carries herself and everything. A very interesting person to talk to as well. But in her blog post as well again, very much like like Amy and those others very clearly goes through step by step. She's got step, how you know. Gives a good intro, talks about the different marketing forms, adding the JavaScript to a marketing form. So there's JavaScript there, which I love, and the code is there. We can cut and paste it, how to embed the form into your website and how to check it all out and things like that, and then basically how it all works and how to incorporate that into the marketing journey. So, again, another great resource and if you're into customer insights and journeys or in a project. Um pauline is another one of these people that you need to bookmark her website because she has a lot of amazing content on that.

Ulrikke:

so, yes, good work, love it all right, fantastic, um, and then there's another one here. So so now we're diving into the co-pilot stuff, and I saw announcing new computer use in Microsoft's co-pilot studio for UI automation. This is one of the articles from Taras Limana, corporate vice president of business and industry co-pilot, which is now called which I find is interesting. Yes, yeah, so did you have a chance to read up on this?

Nick:

A little bit. So, basically, the idea of computer use is, I think, an industry-recognized term of actually and I think to oversimplifying it is an AI-agentic, power-ic, power automate desktop type of system where you're able to use to incorporate the ability to actually read screens or read computers, stuff that does not have necessarily have an AI. The idea there is you can do that. So it's kind of like when I first looked at that, it's like oh, this is just power automate desktop with, you know, some co-pilot steroids added to it, um, but basically, and it and it is really, at the end of the day, um, but it is kind of going, I think, to look at it from another aspect.

Nick:

This is power automate desktop also. This is different from power automate desktop, but it's the same kind of concept and, of course, showing how we can begin to use like ai agents. Of course we have have the MCP servers now and we can talk to a lot of different things, but if there is something that doesn't have a proper AI or sorry, a proper API, that doesn't exclude it from doing these agents, things like that. So immediately I can think of a few use cases that I was thinking of using Power Automate Desktop for, but I might actually, when this actually is released or in a preview mode that I can use.

Nick:

I might try using this feature instead. So and again, like everything, we're continually learning more and more, but to me this was significant enough to have its own big blog announcement and because, and then looking more into more third party AI stuff, computer use is a thing across the board, even outside of the Microsoft ecosystem.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, and I liked how it was also kind of you could, you can record what it is that you wanted to do. But also, even if the UI changes, the agent will still know what to do. He won't break, because it's smart enough to recognize objects, even though it moves around on the screen, for instance, or kind of reason over UI, to understand what's really going on, whereas an RPA would just, yeah, the button moved or changed its name. It's like, oh, I don't know what to do, oh, a button gone, I don't know. But this actually is smart enough to recognize the changes and still be able to run.

Nick:

So that was kind of cool yep, yeah, all right time, cop, or are you good, or?

Ulrikke:

no, no, I'm good, keep going all right.

Nick:

But speaking of, it's funny because with um, uh, anna, who posted an article of at least a couple of weeks ago, but still it was really interesting talking about, ok, computer use and power automate desktop or creating agents. She had a great post on automate, agentify or nothing. And this is the big question that keeps coming up Do we automate it or do we write an agent for it? And this is going to be, I think, a big question going forward as we do agents, because a lot of the use cases I see, uh, for using agents like, oh, we could do an agent for this, you do an agent for that. I'm like, couldn't we just do a power automate to do the same thing?

Nick:

Um, and even within power automate itself, um, I have a video blog post I'm going to probably post and either later this week or next week, where I'm using AI builder within a power automate flow, but to me it's still more of an automation using AI features, but it's not an agent and it probably could be an agent. But what's the where's the delineation? So at least Anna goes through and she has a good post and she's talking about, she has a whole flow chart of and it's called automate, agentify or nothing, and it's. It's great because it's like, is this test done more than three times per month? And then yes, and there's a structured process yes or no, and then it goes through and it helps you decide whether you should be. This should be an agent or an automation, or just do it manually.

Ulrikke:

Um, so it's great, I love it yeah, me too, and I love the visuals and I just because I'm such a graphical nerd just the new um graphical identity of anna's whole digital appearance is so freaking cool, so I just wanted to give a little shout out to Anna for that as well. And this speaks directly to what we've been saying so long. Right, maybe it's simply just a part of my flow and for me, using agents is the autonomous thing, right? An agent should be able to go off and reason and do things on its own, but not all use cases are fit for that, and some things actually, it's way better to just have, like I said, an old approval flow. She talks about the never-ending travel request or whatever. It is right, it's just. Yeah, do you have an existing process for it? Then just continue using it. It's fine, you don't have to AI it, just to do it, right, yeah, fantastic. And we also have a blog post from Karsten which is revolutionizing digital workflows traditional automation via AI-powered agent Isn't this kind of the same thing?

Nick:

Yeah, same topic.

Ulrikke:

Side-by-side comparison.

Nick:

Yeah, he has a good chart, Carson, of course, we know he works for Microsoft he used to be an MVP back in the day but again he does the same. Like I said, this is a conversation a lot of us are going to be having. So, where he is, he doesn't have a flow chart. He has a table. We're comparing the different automation traditional automation, AI-powered automation, AI-powered agents pros and cons. So it's a pros and cons list for all you. How I Met your Mother fans where Ted gets out his yellow pad and does his pro cons list.

Nick:

Carson has done it for AI agents versus traditional automation. So check that out. It's it's. There's a ton of information here. It's really good. And again, there's another one of these great tools and resources as we're, as we're navigating our way and figuring out all of this stuff and also helping advisor clients where they might be all about, but we need to build all these agents and you kind of hold back. Well, do you, you know, or will an automation work? Or maybe, yeah, maybe, an agent would work. So, again, tons of this is a. I think we're going to see probably more information on this because, like everything, it depends and there's also differing opinions and different approaches and things like that.

Ulrikke:

So it really helps with the whole learning as well. Yeah, absolutely 100%. Do you want to move on to the database platform, alm stuff, because I see something here about self-service disaster recovery. This sounds like something we talked about a few weeks ago in the release waves. Remember that. We're like oh so it's going to fix itself. Yeah, maybe not.

Nick:

Yeah, this is Andrew Lee from Andrew's in Australia. He's a good guy, I've talked to him a few times, but basically he's really going through the whole self-service disaster recovery platform. It is still in preview, so this is one of those preview features that play with it but don't deploy it. Maybe we should do a flowchart of preview feature, use it or not use it. So, anyways, going through this, this we have different environment types talks about the, the billing process, talks about the fact that uh, fno, uh things are not supported um enabling, how to enable the disaster recovery. So turning that on and how it will all work. So, if you're interested in this or if it's something that you're um, and also it shows here, to do a disaster recovery drill. So that's something I find with disaster recovery people don't necessarily do. They have a disaster recovery plan but they don't actually run through the disaster recovery.

Nick:

So this reminds me of a horror story going way back in the early days of my career, where I still had a full head of hair and I was a systems administrator and basically the company I was working for had retail stores and they had a core server that would and this is back in the day before virtual private networks and everything. Now I'm really dating myself. But basically the server would call up the retail stores through a modem Modem is what we used to talk through the telephone lines to get information and it would upload all the data from those retail stores into a core server so they could do reporting and things like that and ordering and all that. I wasn't in charge of the software on the server, but part of my daily routine was to swap out the backup tapes. So every day I would go remove the backup tape, put the other one in. There was someone else who was managing that server, um, and then what happened? Once the server blew up, it crashed, the hard drive failed. No problem, we have backup tapes.

Nick:

We had someone come in. It was a unix system. I was more of the windows nt administrator, so we had to get a unix guy come in. He came in basically one couple hours later, rebuilt the server, rebuilt the you know, restored from the backup, launched the console. Yep, you're back up and running, the tape's been restored, all good.

Nick:

And then we talked to the person who was in charge of the retail stores. Yet the server's back up, all. And then he gives me a call. About half hour later he goes we don't have the last six months worth of data, everything works, but the data has gone from. I was like, oh what, that can't be.

Nick:

We took a look and, yeah, the backup tape, the backups, had failed, the backup job had failed, but the job that would eject the tapes kept working. So every day I would see the tape was ejected and swap it out and put in the new one, and all it would do it would take the tape in and eject it. It wouldn't do the backups. So they're able to recreate the data because they had to re-upload from all the retail stores. But there was a case of we never bothered to actually look even at what was stored on those backup tapes and never did a disaster recovery test run.

Nick:

Of course now, with the days of the cloud and other environments, we should be able to do that. So, yeah, run. You know it's great to have a plan, but execute the plan. It's why in school I'm not sure if they do this in Norway, they do this in Canada but every couple months they have a fire drill, fire alarm goes off, everybody in line, everybody lines up and goes outside to their designated spot. You need to do the same for your systems, even if they're in the cloud. Do disaster recovery drills and make sure you can recover and everything's in place.

Ulrikke:

And if I ever tire of my job and PowerPages and Power Platform, can you just please remind me that there is a job where your job is to take down servers just to see if it works, if the backup works. I want that job. Can you imagine that being your job? I'm going to, she's going to oh, that's good, let's see what happens. Oh, does it work? No, every two months I'm going to just pull out the plug and see what happens. Oh, I'm going to pull this random plug right here. Oh, is this a server plug? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, let's see how many disaster recovery is, can you imagine?

Ulrikke:

And then the second thing I'm thinking that, yeah, I think this goes back to something we said just a couple of months ago when we talked with someone or there was a blog post about that exact thing. You need to test it. You actually need to go in and mess with it to see if it works, because in theory it should work. But also, doesn't this speak to how I mean your story? It kind of grounds me when I'm fussing about connection references not being what I wanted to be in ALM with Power Platform Pipelines. I mean, then it's kind of sobering what you just said, because I should just shut the beep up because it's pretty damn good compared to what we used to have just a few decades ago. So it's like it's so sobering. So thank you for that little history lesson.

Nick:

Yeah, no problem, I was there.

Ulrikke:

Cool, I think the line on the list that's not been talked about is yours yeah, and I think it's actually a good segue and kind of have to wrap up everything because, um, there's been, there's a new power platform and copay studio architecture center for architects and they have all. It's a collection Power Platform and Copilot Studio Architecture Center for architects and it's a collection of the white papers and the well-architected documentation and it also shows you how there's a difference between Power Platform and Copilot architecture and we have people now coming into the platform that is raw, raw Copilot. And what is this Power Platform thing?

Ulrikke:

Because, there are people now coming into the platform that is raw, raw co-pilot. And what is this platform thing, you know? Because there are people now coming into the platform through co-pilot um, so it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves. But this, because in this also, like they put it it is both power platform and co-pilot studio architecture center I think that is kind of showing you also that there is a difference or there is a kind of a I don't know, it just caught my eye. But also, this is a good place to be if you are an architect, like we are for a pilot platform. There's a lot of good resources here.

Ulrikke:

So, yeah, check that out, cool, and I think that kind of summarizes everything. I think we're at the end. Yeah, because we've jumped around so much, I tried to kind of mark the stuff that we talked about and I think we got all of it, yeah, yeah. So now just a quick reminder the Customer Insights webinar is in a few hours. Check out Megan Walker and Amy Holden's blog post to find links and our show notes as well, for where you can find that online. You have Dynamics Con coming up in May 13th to 16th. If there are still tickets at this point. Please make sure to get your tickets.

Nick:

Oh, yeah, there's still tickets. Yeah, get your tickets. Yeah, I do have some sessions there as well, so, yeah, check that out. And then, yeah, we are into full-on conference season.

Ulrikke:

Oh yeah, and it's just. There's so much stuff going on. I will be. We'll both be in London at the Power Summit, power Platform Developer Community Boot Camp. You are doing Dynamics Minds in Slovenia, slovenia, slovakia.

Nick:

Slovenia, yep.

Ulrikke:

Yep, and we're all and we're both doing and this is I'm so excited about this you me and Frank, you me and Victor are doing the European Power Platform Conference, the Top Gun Power Pages workshops. If you missed us in Vegas and if you missed us in Oslo for Nordic Summit, you have another chance at EPBC. Join the Top Gun pilots and get all ramped up on Power Pages at the workshop we're doing at EPBC. I'm so excited and we haven't done the three of us together, so I've done it with Victor and Manco Victor and Vanco Franco.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, Victor and Manco Franco, victor and Vanko Franco yeah, victor and Vanko Franco and Victor and we you, me and Franco did it without Victor at Nordic Summit, so you, me and Victor haven't done that yet. So it's going to be a lot of fun to see how that evolves, and it's different every time because we all bring different perspectives into the mix, and so, yeah, and things have changed as well since the last time.

Nick:

Things have changed as well since the last time.

Ulrikke:

Things have changed Now. I've done my workshop on my own. You've done your workshop on your own. We're going to bring all that collectivity together and it's going to be infused by so much AI people. So if you're looking to because I'm all about PowerPages and AI now it's blowing up. So if you need to know the latest and greatest of PowerPages and AI, just yeah, get to that workshop for sure. Do we have some giveaway ticket? 10% discount. Use Nick10 at checkout.

Nick:

Yes, yeah, cuckoo.

Ulrikke:

Cuckoo. Next episode is on May 14th.

Nick:

Yeah, yeah, wow, yeah I did, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, wow, yeah I didn't mean 14th, isn't it?

Ulrikke:

Wow, blows my mind. I say that every time, though Time flies yeah.

Nick:

Oh, I know, and it's, it's, it's scary because May is approaching very quick. Um, and yeah, like I, I'm two, three weeks out from competing. Um, I'm two, three weeks out from competing. I know I don't talk about this much on this particular platform, but I am deep into bench press training right now. It's going well, touch wood, nothing's hurting, everything is on track. Spoke with the team coaches earlier this week, so, put in a play, it was kind of cool because I was telling them all about Norway and how to get around and make sure you buy your beer before eight o'clock in the stores, and how the trains work and everything like that. So I'm, I, I think I'm, I'm the official team local expert on norway, uh, for the event.

Ulrikke:

So oh, that's great, yeah, because there are a few gotchas um about norway, so that's good that you have that. You can kind of casual them around a little bit. I can't wait because I'm bringing the kids. We're going to create ponpons and be all whoop whoop because I know that there's not a lot of that, so we're going to have so much fun cheering for you.

Nick:

Awesome. Looking forward to it.

Ulrikke:

Awesome. Yeah, I'll see you before then, so that's all good. Have a fantastic rest of your day, everyone, and we'll catch you on the next one. 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 media platforms and make sure you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening to the Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, ulrika Akerbeck and Nick Dahlman, and see you next time.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nick Doelman

Host
Head Shot

Ulrikke Akerbæk

Host