Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform, 15 Mar 2023

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From YouTube: Microsoft Power Platform community call – March 2023

Description

Power Platform community call delivered on March 15th.

Latest updates and news on Power Platform including community events, training opportunities and the Monthly Community Tip.

Three demos delivered: From Epilepsy to MVP - Empowerment using the Power Platform, Igniting a Power Automate Revolution: What Happens When Salespeople like to Click Buttons? and Quality Assurance with Power Platform Pipelines using Power Apps.

Activities: 3 articles, 3 documents, 3 samples, 21 connectors, 6 Power Platform related video conversations recently delivered.

This call was hosted by David Warner II (Microsoft) | @DavidWarnerII and recorded on March 15, 2023. Questions addressed in chat throughout the call.

Agenda items
00:00 – Intro
01:33 – Power Platform News & Learn Updates – Daniel Laskewitz (Microsoft) | @laskewitz
03:04 – Latest Power Apps Samples – April Dunnam (Microsoft) | @aprildunnam
04:19 – Independent Publisher Connectors - Jocelyn Panchal (Microsoft) | @JocelynP_PM
08:22 – Power Platform Community Shows & Events - April Dunnam (Microsoft) | @aprildunnam & David Warner II (Microsoft) | @DavidWarnerII
11:33 – Together mode picture
12:42 – Demo - From Epilepsy to MVP - Empowerment using the Power Platform – Daniel Christian | @dchristian19
29:11 – Demo - Igniting a Power Automate Revolution: What Happens When Salespeople like to Click Buttons? – Gizzelle Akin | @gizzelleakin
43:44 – Demo - Quality Assurance with Power Platform Pipelines using Power Apps – Nati Turtledove (Cloud2) | @NatiTurts
55:21 – Resources
56:41 – Closing

Learn more
• See the full blog post for this call in the Microsoft 365 platform community blog - https://aka.ms/community/blog
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/community/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/community/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - http://aka.ms/community/home

A

B

With the community, this is the Microsoft Power, Platform monthly Community call it is March already we are going to spring into spring. It is March 15th and we are super excited to cover all things: Power Platform together today, let's take a look at our agenda. We're going to get the latest updates on news in the Power Platform with Daniel, then we're going to have some group picture times uh cover a lot of things.

B

We have Community call conversations, but of course we are going to get into our demos with all of our amazing Community presenters, Daniel, Giselle and Nadia will be covering a variety of topics today that we are so excited about, but let's give a little attention to some news and updates first. So the first thing to keep in mind is that this is your community call. We absolutely want you to be empowered to present on it. It is not reserved for just MVPs or Microsoft speakers. It is reserved for everyone- and that includes you.

B

So if you have a demo, a tip a trick, a solution, a technical pattern, anything that you'd like to share with the community. You are welcome to do so, and we've even made it easy on you. All. All you need to do is fill in a little form that you can find at AK, dot, Ms, slash, Community, slash, request, slash demo. We will get back to you and we've got a couple of community calls in which you can present on we've got this monthly one.

B

We've also got a bi-weekly Dev call that is focused on Microsoft, 365 and Power Platform, so don't hesitate to fill it out. We absolutely want to see what you're, building and creating, and we want to see you share it with the world, so definitely get involved there. We want to see what you're building now, let's kick it over to the news desk uh and we will hand it over to Daniel laskowitz to get us updated on the latest news.

C

Okay, hi everyone, and today we had a a bunch of new uh news and Microsoft learn updates. uh The first news item that I wanted to talk about is Building Solutions faster with a Microsoft Power Platform and Next Generation AI. There have been some really cool new uh features, and you will also see them inside of the Microsoft learn part, because two of the features are already available. That's the Boost conversations feature for power, virtual agents and to create text with GPT model in AI Builder feature. Those are both highlighted in the first news item.

C

The second one is about pipelines in Power Platform, that's now generally available. So you can now use that without any support issues or something like that.

C

The next one is about easily designing and automatically sending actionable data-driven cards in teams, and that's all about powerapps cards, uh and uh there were some really cool new features, so make sure to try that out as well on the Microsoft learn part, there was also a documentation page on sending a card automatically with flow and that's one of the features that is also highlighted in the blog about the cards. So with that I'll pass it over to April.

D

Thank you Daniel, so we have a few new Power Platform samples. So actually now he is here today to show the quality assurance assessment solution. Powerapp canvas application there, so I won't go too much into that one, really cool application that we have, that we'll be seeing a little bit more on later. Today.

D

We also have power happening from Wilmar and Ben, which is a really great example of converge, applications, so custom Pages, canvas, apps, embedded inside of a model driven app scenario using all kinds of things like the Creator kit, the drag and drop component from Scott Duro, all kinds of great things going on in this particular sample here so definitely check it out. So you can see the intersection of model driven canvas, apps and PCF controls, and all that and we have an updated sample from Lindsay on the name pronunciation recorder.

D

So another great update there from Lindsay on the PowerApp canvas app. Is there as well? So so many great samples? If you have samples you want to share, just go to aka.ms4, slash, Power Platform, Dash samples.

B

Awesome, thank you, April. That is really fantastic and everybody we love these samples. Please don't hesitate to keep giving them to the repos and definitely reach out. If you have any questions, we've got more sharing is caring sessions coming up in April, it's been a little busy for us at Microsoft, so we're trying really hard to get more of those scheduled uh so that you can be empowered. So thank you for everything, you're doing everybody all right. Let's kick it over to Jocelyn to talk about Microsoft, Power, Platform, connectors, hello,.

E

Everyone we are now at 969, total Power Platform connectors, which is 21 more than we were at last month. This includes more independent publisher, connectors than first party connectors and, as a reminder, independent publisher connectors are connectors made by community members such as yourselves that leverage open source apis. We are barreling towards our goal of hitting a thousand I'm super excited, I'm planning on throwing a little party or something for my team, and you guys can help contribute to that by visiting our GitHub.

E

The link for the top connector us is there at the bottom of the screen. If you guys love of connectors- and you want to learn more about how to get involved in our community, how to integrate these connectors into various types of Power Platform Solutions, please scan that QR code I host a once a month hour-long session non-nda recorded for YouTube called The, Power, Platform, Integrations and Labs call All, About connectors, as well as other Power. Platform topics scan the QR code and you'll get an invite, also keep an eye out for your credly badge.

E

If you are an independent publisher as well as I mentioned. Last time that we had an open, AI, independent publisher, connector made by Robin rosengren and since last time we actually recorded a low code, Revolution episode with myself, April and Robin, so keep an eye out for that as well. Thank you all.

B

Awesome, thank you. Josh excellent work, everybody all right, let's hand it over to the one and only Hugo Bernier.

A

Wonderful, thank you David. So if you want to get started in the open source Community, we know it can be scary.

F

A

Because we have to deal with things like GitHub, pull, requests, forks and branch and blames, and things like that I know. It's certainly scared me when I, when I wanted to get involved in the community, but luckily we have some sessions for you where we can help. You learn these things, so we have a Power Platform samples contributor coming soon in uh April, I, think, yes, and where you can actually attend. It's never recorded it's a safe space. It's a small group and you get Hands-On.

A

You actually get to do your first pull request or you get to write your first documentation on on docs.microsoft.com or any of the other sessions that we have here. So we welcome you to to join. You can go to ak.ms.

A

Sharing Dash is Dash caring and we can't wait to have you there and if anybody has been on any of the sharing his gang sessions, we'd appreciate you if you can put it in the chat and tell us how your experience was now on the next slide.

A

Once you have contributed to the community through an open source or you've spoken or you've created the cool, uh independent publisher connector, you will get a badge, and this is a great way to show people that you have actually really been doing your contributions that that you can share that on your resume. You can share that on your LinkedIn.

A

You can, you know, have a big printout and have a decal on your car if you want to- and you can do that by joining the community recognition program now, this is powered by credly the same people who do the certification, badges for Microsoft certifications, and it's at no cost to you. We take care of all the costs. All you have to do is to go to AK, LMS, Community, slash, recognition and you'll, give us your your GitHub username and your email address and we'll take it from there.

A

All you have to do, then, is to do a contribution and you'll receive the badges, and that's it for me back to you, David awesome.

B

Thanks you go, you know you mentioned wrapping the car uh the first time Hugo described it. He talked about a tattoo. I fell for that and got it in 2022. It was painful, come 2023, so definitely wrap your car. Don't get the tattoo as much as we love it all right. Let's talk about some Power Platform, Community shows and events. So, first things up low code. Revolution will invite April back up to tell us a little bit about this.

D

Thanks David, we have tons of new content going on in the low code Revolution, so many great episodes as Jocelyn mentioned earlier. We have an episode on open AI capabilities for a Power Platform solution showing off Robin's independent publisher connector for openai. We have continuing the series on the Power Platform CLI, so we have power pipelines for a Power Platform with Daniel and prabat.

D

We have a few new episodes as well on the Azure open AI service with AI Builder new to adjust was released uh like what a week or so ago, where Daniel and as she's walked through that, and we have one on integrating iot, so Raspberry, Pi's, plus powerapps plus Azure functions with Tim hanowicz showing how to do some home automation. So a good mix of tons of content that you can consume there for low code Revolution.

D

If you want to be a guest, we have links up there, aka.ms forward, slash low code, Revolution guests and to catch the shows, go to aka.ms4 low code. Revolution show.

B

Awesome thanks April and we're gonna have a challenge later. Everybody for who can say it. The fastest Power Platform pipeline I see I, did I didn't do it right, Power, Platform power pipelines so say that and you'll get a do a badge for that right. If you do it all right, three times fast. Okay, let's talk about some other events that are coming up this year. We are excited for the European Power Platform conference. uh They are having a special uh I said leprechaun day and St Patrick's Day uh special.

B

That is going to be only available until March 17th save 17 on all tickets. So uh you can get that at SharePoint, uh europe.com European dash power, Dash platform, Dash conference. Don't forget the dashes book. Now it's going to be an awesome event, there's going to be a ton of people there and we are excited about that. Staying in the land of Europe.

B

We also have the European collaboration Summit coming up here soon and there you can get 15 off with the uh code Power Platform rocks, so I think we all feel good about typing that and saying that. So that's coming up here in the next couple of months, so definitely take advantage of this opportunity. If you are looking to attend that, it's also going to be awesome. A number of members of Microsoft and the team will be there and we want to see you there as well come Stateside on the United States North American soil.

B

We've got the educon series, so we've got the Microsoft 365 conference. Educon 365, coming up in DC in June in Seattle gonna have a combined educon of 365 and power uh in August, and then in Chicago we're going to have another 365 educon in October to November. You can use the code Community to save 25 off any pass. So definitely take advantage of these These are sort of exclusive to the community.

B

Definitely want to make sure that we provide you all opportunities to attend these events and, of course, we've got a number of other community days. Events Dynamics con virtual uh is uh coming up uh today. In fact, and then you've got Microsoft community in Denver, Azure, Mobile, Pay, modern workplace conference, Dynamics power, Israel, so lots of opportunities.

B

You can access all these events and add your own by the way, if you go to Community Day, so definitely take advantage of exposing and amplifying your event to the World by using that opportunity at that website all right, what time is it everybody? It is picture time so turn on those cameras and we will kick into food and I will bring that into the screen. Here. Let me turn off the chat, blah blah blah there. We go it's technical term, blah blah blah and then uh let me kick on recording all right.

B

There we go. Let's get those fantastic faces. Look at you all! Looking awesome! All right! We got a few more chairs, come on everybody. We got a few more chairs if you'd like to uh I.

A

Like how we have a bald row.

B

Well, Daniel's, like wait a second. What are you talking about all right? Okay, all right! Let's kick this recording off. Let's see, give us uh all right, let's start waving to the camera, everybody you are fantastic! There we go get some waving going on looking great, all right, fantastic, okay, all right! Let me stop that move this over here and with that we will move to our presenters our All-Stars of the day, so we're gonna, kick it off with Daniel.

B

Christian topic is from epilepsy to MVP empowerment using the Power Platform So Daniel feel free to take on over my man.

G

Okay, all right sure.

B

Looks good thank.

G

You um so I mean this is definitely outside my comfort zone, um so I just want to call it out I'm more of a technical guy, but I'll be actually sharing some of my uh personal information.

G

um So that's something that basically something which will just help give you some ideas and encouragement as well, um so the concept was is from epilepsy to MVP and I'd like to break this down, based on the chapters of My Life. um So I basically had these four chapters um born and had seizures, A New Beginning got married and found a cure and then became an MVP. These are literally the chapters of my life from the beginning till what I am right now, um so it's it's not just a fairy tale.

G

This is something that happened to me. So, let's start with the chapter one uh born and had my first seizure. um So that's a picture of me. I was I, think about a year and a half two years old and as you can see, I was just a normal kid. uh I was very intrigued with what is this thing in the back of the dog and it keeps wagging it. It's obviously your tail, uh but but you know just had a normal delivery honestly, nothing, nothing very fancy about that.

G

uh However, uh something changed at the age of three. um In fact, everything changed for me at the age of three. uh What I did was I started, getting some seizures and the first seizure was actually a pretty complex one and then, after that, what I kept having was what the uh the medical term is called complex, partial seizures, uh and so basically these are basically what happened to me is that my seizures uh were in the temporal lobe on the sides and it disrupted speech causes.

G

um You know, you know some kind of automatic and repetitive moments of chewing was one of them, as it was chewing um it altered. Basically, Consciousness I would just stare. Blankly um I would have this afraid, look speaking King gibberish and then the seizure as a whole would last for about two minutes after which I would be really exhausted and it usually took about a day to recover.

G

So these were basically things that just happened for almost you know anywhere from about a month, um and then it would get triggered too on an average I was getting about once a month and any time I had any nervousness. uh But if I was you know down from a health standpoint that would trigger even more seizures. So this was basically um you know just the whole concept having this one section, the temporal lobe. This is a very important piece of your brain honestly. It affects hearing learning memory, speech, feelings.

G

uh These were all that was coming from that side and that's usually when I was getting um all my speeds as seizures. So um we tried a few things for my cure. Standpoint uh tried both conventional and homeopathic medicine. uh Medical tests include a lot of eegs, basically testing your electrical firing uh in your brain.

G

Lots of MRIs, basically, sometimes I just feel like I- have got so much of this done in me that they just know my brains really well, um but then, even even at that time cure simply wasn't available, so they basically focused on either the triggers or basically the symptoms. That's what they focused on. So we couldn't find a cure, let's at least focus on what was the triggers, which was allergies.

G

For me, I was I, was very I, had some severe allergies from a dust specific Capital standpoint, and so they were trying to cure that it helped to some extent, uh but but back then I I lived in a country where cleanliness wasn't a priority, so controlling dust allergies was really hard to maintain. So all in all, basically seizures just became a new normal of my life. It was just something that I had to deal with, but it did not stop me.

F

From having a normal life.

G

I was very active in my school, and I did fairly well. I really enjoyed traveling, so at a young age, I was able to travel quite a few places around the world got to do some great things too know see some events that I've never been able to do point being is that even at that young age, my parents really never stopped me from enjoying as a normal life and sure every once in a while. Things will be a little interesting. Well, you know just have to deal with some of these tough days.

G

um Medications definitely drained me. I was on very high medication at that time uh had to at least get nine to ten hours of sleep at that night, because I would just be heavily drained with these medications, um and then there was there were situations where I even would be prepared um for taking a test like at school I'll, be preparing a test, I'd be a little nervous. I'll, never forget that there was a time. I was pretty I.

G

Think I was the thing the 10th or in high school, or something all prepared for a test um to take the test and then um was nervous, so I actually had the seizure. I literally forgot everything that I had learned to take the test, but that was fine, because I was able to go and talk to this. You know the the school Headmaster and they said that's fine.

G

We understand that retoo fascinated fairly well, so I made the most of the good days and then you know took it easy on the bad days, uh but what it did was it forced me to mature quickly and take good care of myself and I stayed away from nonsense. You know, even at a very young age, I knew taking drugs, uh alcohol abuse and everything was just the wrong thing. So I had to mature, really fast on stuff like that, because I was already taking medication that was affecting me.

G

I didn't want to go ahead and have any other craziness. That would affect me as well, um and then you know all of these were very important life lessons that I had to adapt at a very early age. Like I said you know, I'm, not sure of that. So chapter two was a new beginning, my family. We immigrated to the us back in 1999, but even at that time we exhausted a lot of medical options, both when I lived in Texas and in Kansas.

G

So once again, I was told at that time that cure was just not available um so switching over to different medication times helped a little bit from a control standpoint, but it really didn't do much of it difference, so it just continued in their whole lifestyle all over again um and so I was in college.

G

In fact, this motivated me to uh it's, because if the medicine and the treatment at that time did not have the Cure where I pursued medicine at that time, uh my in my college I went and actually um did my whole pre-med and I was also doing double majoring in pre-med, as well as in computer engineering. But you know what God had other plans for me. um In fact, uh uh I did have a better understanding of my seizures purely from a neural standpoint as well, seeing where it's coming from and all of that.

G

But, but you know, all in all, I still could not find a very good uh cure for that, but I kept moving forward. um One of the things I'll give you is the Side Story of mine is um I refused to take a loan when I was in college. I did not want to start my life in debt, so I worked my way through college I had a full-time job and I went and took at least the 12 to 14 credits.

G

That's how it was at that time, because I worked my way through college, so I mean that that time it took me about four, almost five years to finish my undergrad, but I I literally worked my way through college on that and I was all very hard at that time. For me uh working my way to college having those medications which were draining me, I mean I literally had no time for any fun whatsoever, uh but but you know what it all basically paid off. um So chapter three got married and found a cure.

G

This is the love of my wife. uh We got married on June 2006, uh that's my wife Rosanna Christian, um and it was. It was an amazing marriage and it's you know a wedding day, and you know we've been married now for 17 some years um and what we found out, because after all these years, technology had grown. um In fact, the whole MRI system had heavily evolved, um and so we were able to find out that there was and I got the picture over there.

G

This is uh um that there was actually a dip in my skull where some of my existing brain actually seeped in and that irritation was causing the seizures, which was very interesting because uh it's not a hereditary thing. Nobody in my family, even few Generations. Nobody had these seizures, but I did we finally found out the root cause of it um and the amount that is there is if this is a large size egg.

G

If you have a full lawn sized egg and then it's actually the two-thirds of the size of that egg, that much of a brain was actually seeped in and was causing these irritations. So all in all, then the seizure I mean the uh the um two-phase surgery was done. uh They literally took out that much of my brain, which makes you think right like how much of our brains do we actually use for thinking, uh but that's basically what they had to do, um and so all in all uh I after the surgery actually happened.

G

That is one of the sections of your brain, which really helps you with the speech like what is in your thoughts, helps you translate over to speech, communicating that so I did have to go through a whole speech. Therapy. I'll give you an example. uh One of the things that it did was I could tell like I'm looking at it. I can tell what it is. That's a feature it will record me. It'll put it up on the internet on YouTube in my brain I could not tell you the name that this is a webcam.

G

The term webcam would not come to me because there was a a gap after the surgery. There was a gap between my speech and long-term memory, so I had to go through this therapy, basically to rewire my brain, so I could do this and it was a full six week therapy, which was pretty successful. We were able to change my medications altogether.

G

I remember at one phase of my life, I was taking three medications, I was drained, I was sleepy, I was oh, my brain was always foggy and then the surgery was so successful that we went ahead and changed my medications in fact down to one um and even on that and the lowest dose. What that you could be in fact, there's already discussions.

G

um We might have to completely stop that, because I haven't had any seizures for over 10 years now um and then so you know we started having like I said this. You know first month, then seizure free uh after that we just going ahead and kept tapering up. This is what I said is that uh we switched over from three medications down to one and kept tapering it down um and then, after a few months, I got my driver's license back again, because that is something that I had to basically keep track of.

G

Is that if you go through a surgery like that, you are legally not allowed to drive for six months, so I, you know, went fully seizure, free and I got my driver's license back again, but something important happened um after that. My first son, my first child, was born on November, 19 uh 2020 uh and then that's basically my wife and I. We were very tired, uh but we had our first family picture together, because I was that was Gabriel born over there. um So all in all, I had one very simple prayer.

G

Some of you who know me know: I am a believer.

G

um I I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ uh and I had a very strong prayer uh that whatever happens, I do not want my children to see me have a seizure and he answered that prayer I had to wait 26 years for that prayer to get answered, but it happened.

G

um So all in all, I just want to call out with I became an MVP. So what does this? All? You know mean about becoming an MVP. The key thing is when I was having these seizures. I had to take a lot of notes, so I won't forget. I had to work twice as hard to learn something make the most of my good days and then others, people's disabilities didn't affect me and I never gave up like that was basically how my lifestyle was when I was in the seizures loan.

G

So once I got cured, I became 100 seizure free the whole concept never changed for me, because I took a lot of notes, so I won't forget. Well that helped me became really good at blogging, because my blogging is step-by-step process.

G

The same process I used to do for myself to make sure that I wouldn't forget it I had to work twice as hard to learn something uh well I continued doing twice as hard, but now that my brain was a lot more cleared up, uh I learned so much more like I'm, something which is self-motivated and I love to learn uh made the most of my good days at that time. Well, now, every day counts. It is very important. You may have some bad days, but still you know thank God that you have that day.

G

um Other people's disabilities didn't affect me well, one of the things that I do is I make sure everyone got an opportunity to learn, because remember I was that one guy uh who was a little slow took a little extra time to learn. um So when there is other people out there where it does take them a little extra time to learn. I can completely relate to that, and so I made sure everybody has an opportunity to learn and then from the never giving up.

G

Well, I won't stop until I have learned something good enough to teach it, because that's basically, my passion over here so I just want to basically say that you know I, started, learning and use the groups uh speaking at user groups. uh Eventually at larger events um started me speaking at paid events started volunteering at local user groups and events I then I got nominated by two speakers for two separate speakers. One of them was a Microsoft person and that's became how I became an MVP back in 2016..

G

You see how the path has basically grown, so all in all never give up finding a cure. Don't let someone else's limitations or your limitations? Stop you don't have autism motives, like don't plan to become you know, do all these things, so you become an MVP. Mvp is becoming a byproduct, continue to have your passion to serve the community. After that you know, other things will fall in place and then hard work and perseverance will always pay off.

G

Trust me when I say that for someone who was hiring seizures for 26 years, um your perseverance will pay off. So how does this all fit in? With the Power Platform well, one of the things about the Power Platform is it is so easy to adopt and I want to show these three things over here. So on the left side, you don't even need the ability to start coding, adding controllers and formulas to at least even build the canvas design.

G

You can now upload an image directly whether you've hand-drawn it or you already have a template of some kind. That is what helps you mix the whole image, the design of the app describe it to design it same thing for the power automate flows. You basically go into the power automate, you give it a good idea, or at least it's close enough to what you're looking for and it will help you build your entire flow on the right. This is fairly new. The usage of building a chatbot.

G

You know, instead of you, building an entire chatbot and putting the entire logic to go and sort something you go ahead and put in your website, like you know, wikipedia.com or something like that, and then it will go and basically build that entire bot and pull information for you. Building chat, Bots is so much more easier. So all in all examples like these ability to go ahead and build.

G

You know simple flows, ability to even go and change your format date so that you just tell it what those data examples are and you can build it. So I hope that this leaves you with a little bit of confidence that you don't have to be perfect to actually be good. You could be someone like me going through all of these. You know trials and tribulations, uh but hang in there hang in there and you don't have to be perfect to be successful push through and it will pay off.

G

Trust me when I say I've been through that for 26 years it will pay off just hang in there and keep fighting that's what I got David.

B

Awesome thank thank you, Daniel, uh really, really great stuff. um You know, friends, I, think it's it's important to highlight that you're. Maybe thinking this, this wasn't really a technical demo. uh Is this call meant for a technical demo?

B

um It's it's meant to inspire uh folks to to be able to learn more and do more um and so I think if you're wondering was this appropriate for the call absolutely because we want folks to feel inspired, Without, Limits and I.

B

Think Daniel is showing that there's an opportunity here for all of us to not have boundaries or restrictions by way of Desiring and loving a technology uh that we want to do more in what I would recommend you all to do given uh the story of Daniel is collaborate Reach Out reach out to Daniel reach out to anyone else, who's a leader in the community and tell them you'd like to do more and be willing to share uh and open up with one another?

B

So uh aside from that, thank you Daniel, absolutely uh good information, and we appreciate you taking the time to share that personal story. Now, as we transition a little bit more into the technical side, we're going to invite Giselle to the stage a little bit of a story as well igniting a power automate Revolution. What happens when sales people like to click buttons, tell us how you got started and the story yeah.

F

Absolutely hello- everyone very excited to be here today on the community call and quick introduction, I'm Gisele and I work in sales and I like to click buttons and that typically terrifies most I.T organizations, but today I'm going to tell you how it had the potential to create kind of a Power, Platform Revolution and the journey that I've kind of gone through through this particular adventure of learning Power Platform.

F

So everyone has like the favorite thing, they've ever built their pride and joy, and this is that for me and it's a bit of a spaghetti mess on this on the screen. But we're gonna walk through this and kind of how it came to life. But in order to do that, it's really important to go back to the beginning and the beginning has kind of been my development Journey, the lessons learned and why sales was key in bringing that particular Flow, To Life so prior to getting into the technology industry.

F

um I worked at my family's donut shop, so started there when I was about 14. I worked at an apartment, management, company, leasing, apartments and I sold clothes at Nordstrom. So not really a technical background at all, but everything that I've done has always been tied to commission. So you know any of the different things. The more I sold the more money I made.

F

So that was a real motivator for me, and there was also the sense of accomplishment that I was able to have these quick wins that were able to say that hey I was good at my job, so I did everything that I could to maximize my success and I was actually really good at it. So the secrets to some of my success other than being in Aries and being naturally competitive, is to actually learn the products and actually learn the products that I'm selling.

F

So when I got into the technology industry, my my last company was a Microsoft gold partner. So I was like okay, I need to learn more about what Microsoft has and what their offerings are and what I can tell my customers about. So I was always just kind of taking my time in my evenings and weekends or anything to be able to educate myself on the different products and very shortly thereafter. I stumbled across this Microsoft flow online conference in 2019 on YouTube, and it was a great format.

F

You know kind of Started from the beginning of people who don't know anything and kind of got more complex throughout the day. So I watched quite a bit of it and there's a couple things that really stuck with me about how easy it was to build these automation flows and how impactful they can really be for a particular organization. So I was thoroughly impressed and thought it was the coolest thing ever and went back to my company the next day and said pretty. Please can I have this? Can we do this?

F

Can we have it for myself or for my customers and was told that we didn't have the skill set to execute those features, so wouldn't be deploying them so not to tell my customers about it.

F

So, as a salesperson, I said well, if I can't sell it, then I'll kind of forget that it even exists, but as my career progressed and I left that company and went to another company, more and more of these manual processes in the sales world would come in and really kind of impact and take away my ability to sell and my ability to produce for the company. So I really thought well, like I can do this.

F

Like I watched the YouTube video in 2019 like why can't I really take a look at this and build these automation flows myself. So I went back to YouTube. That was my source of information and searched for more detail around this flow thing, which I Learned was now called Power automate years later and within two days had written my first flow and it was super simple, but one of the use cases that we had was our marketing team needs to get contact information from our customers.

F

So what we would do is we would get emails from our customers and we would go manually enter threat into a CRM system somewhere and for the most part, I never did that, because it was boring and took too much time.

F

So I created this power automate flow where, when a new email arrived to my inbox, if the domain matched my customer domain, then I stored the information to SharePoint list and we literally went from tracking, maybe like a dozen contacts in a particular quarter to getting like 400 plus contacts in a quarter because it was automatically happening. So it was really exciting to see the value that we got from being able to have such a simple flow implemented for my customer base.

F

So, of course, being a seller and what sellers do is sell. Things is I, really started running around and telling everyone about how amazing this was and how this flow that I, as a non-technical person built, had such an impact for our organization and I thought it was pretty much the coolest person ever to be able to do that. So I ran around kind of telling everyone at the company. Well, you need power automate, you need power, automate and I showed my peers.

F

What I could do taught them how easy it was help them implement it for themselves and they started kind of coming back to me saying: well, that's cool that you can get their email address, but can you get their first and last name? Can you track more than one customer? Can it track meetings? Can it put away?

F

My laundry like you know all of these different things and I really took it as kind of like a challenge to say well, I'm going to learn more about this and I want to accomplish all these requests that are coming in from my team and make this even more impactful than it ever could be that I ever imagined, so I really built the this ecosystem of flows, where let me focus on the part of the job that I loved so started.

F

Really you know, studying and diving in and getting involved in the community and different user groups, and we started being able to develop some flows that we're starting to be able to use by some of our Global teams, like 200 plus people, we're now starting to install these flows, and it became the birth of that most complex flow that I ever built, showing you at the beginning.

F

So the way that we look at that particular one is that most organizations have prospecting days so days where their sales teams go out and they call customers and try to generate new business and people are incentivized with like points and prizes and recognition for building and bringing in potential business. But the thing about them is they usually require a lot of manual work. So tracking your calls tracking your emails tracking your opportunities entering all that stuff in to get to get points.

F

So the first time that I did that you know via first event, event one perform an activity and then manually enter it into the CRM and that took forever so I said. Well, they have the next event the next six months later I was like. Why don't you figure out a better way to do this? So I performed all the individual activities at like 700 different things in a day, and then I got a group of my friends and we entered them all at the same time. That also didn't work.

F

So by the time event, three came through I said: well, I'm learning all this stuff about power, automate like why can't we just automate on so took the steps for it where um I wanted to be able to say well, I want to send a lot of emails to these customers, because, if I get a point for each email that I send I can build a power automate flow to send custom emails to those contacts in a short period of time. So I was able to build.

F

This automation flow manually triggered to be able to send up to like 3 000 emails in a day. So before like if somebody was got like 700 points, it was huge. So now I was able to get people to get like 3 000 points with a click of a button, and it was able to massively increase our productivity.

F

So then I was like well. How do I track all of these different points, so I was able to create a Office 365 group email address that I cc'd on all of these different activities, initialize a bunch of variables, but then be able to say anytime. Something arrives like an email arrived or a meeting arrived to that group's email address to parse out all the information get all of the things that I needed and have it automatically put those into the points leaderboard and assign user points.

F

So it was really like a huge huge benefit to all of our day-to-days to be able to get all of that stuff automatically tracked. So what that kind of ended up happening is me going through and selling the solution. So I was like I've built all of this stuff.

F

Now leadership like we need to take a look at this and bonus points to anyone who actually knows what video game this is from, because it's my favorite of all time and I've been trying to beat it since 1995., but back to the story, um so I sold the organization or organizers of the event on trying my automation flow for a couple hundred people within the company and pretty much spent the whole rest of the preparation time.

F

Trying to solidify the automation flow to make sure that it worked and the video game is actually dungeon master 2 Legends of school keep so any guesses. On kind of what happened from the particular uh the particular day of the event, I was going through and trying to say, hey. This is how you're going to benefit. This is how you're going to benefit. This is how you're going to benefit and said. Okay. Well now, I have to like actually make that happen and shock everyone into like success and learned through it.

F

That failure is a really important part of this scientific Endeavor, because we ended up running into some pretty significant challenges. One is that um you know the flow to send the thousands of emails with a click of a button plus the Office 365 groups. Mail connector, didn't end up working because that connector could only handle up to 100 requests every 60 seconds. So a lot of people that were taking advantage of the automation or weren't able to see success in those particular Point activities.

F

So, but what I really found out is, like you know, user experience is key, so I would just freeze up almost cry whenever people were coming up with it, I would turn off the Frozen flow duplicate. A new flow figuring out those time stamps manually.

F

Add the activities, because I wanted to make sure that everyone was excited about Automation and it was going to work the way that I told them it was going to and with that, we were able to like kind of celebrate, because even though I was scrambling on the back end to make it work, everyone else's user experience definitely improved through that, and they were excited about what that power automate was able to bring to them. So at that point, I was like well.

F

We need to really move forward with this and get more people excited about Automation and for myself, I needed to really kind of learn and grow and figure out. You know how can I make this better, so I ended up doing a V2 of the track. All the points thing where we were able to kind of use an HTTP get connection. Instead of The Office 365 groups, connector, we were able to auto tag a bunch of different information.

F

We were able to get more detail and create a power bi dashboard that was able to provide live updates on all of this for everyone. So it was really this whole thing where I was able to kind of create Journeys based on the user feedback and really kind of benefit from everything and again this is kind of what that ended up.

F

Turning into and there's still some different challenges in it like if there's double quotes in the subject lines that ended up failing the run, you know something that I wouldn't have thought because, like really who puts double quotes in their subject lines, but that was something that I learned and had to fix for or doing an Excel lookup of the domain's cause performance lag, so you know kind of slowly. Moving these things forward, and you know rv3 will probably have those things solved for so continuing to kind of move forward on all of those.

F

So what I really learned is that you know these big type of achievements come one step at a time one day at a time and that anyone really has the power to solve the problems and take control of their own productivity and get hundreds of people excited about it, just based on their user experience and solving these problems. So realistically things to kind of remember is that every role is a sales role. You know you need to sell people on the solutions that you're building users want to learn and be part of the solution.

F

Like I got 200 people to install their very first automation flow just by a crazy idea that I had and don't let perfect get in the way of the good of good. You know these incremental changes that we have to flows they're going to happen over time, so get something out there and you can always fix it along the way and that anyone, even a salesperson like myself, can make a giant impact within an organization so give everything a try and um yeah. So pretty much.

F

That's it and thank you all so much for listening to the story of me being a salesperson that likes to click buttons.

B

Awesome thanks Giselle uh keep up that slide for a moment, but I just wanted to highlight the value of this you're saying we're doing a kind of a progression of of stories today we're going to get into a technical one with Maddie in a moment, but the value here friends is that as passionate as we all are around the tech and the features.

B

uh If our leadership doesn't understand the value of it, it could cure cancer, but if they don't understand that, then they're not going to empower you to do more with the features and functionalities and the technology that you love so I. Think what we're learning here with this presentation is how to sell that to your leadership, how to empower them to understand the value that's brought with embracing Technologies and allowing you to do more with the Power Platform.

B

So it's important that we consider all aspects of that on uh calls like this, to ensure that everyone has an understanding and is equipped to be able to do more with the Power Platform uh and the technology they love. So Giselle.

B

Thank you for sharing that uh story and the steps you took, because those are practical and implementable and encourage you all to go back and watch the recording when it's available, maybe take some notes and see where you might be able to put that into action in your organization, because it's very empowering so thank you. Giselle all right. Let's get into our last demo, uh Natty turtle, dove quality assurance with Power Platform pipelines using power apps take.

H

It away awesome. Thank you so much time for having me super excited to be part of the community. Today, so I'm going to be demoing a solution, I built a QA assessment tool using powerapps that was built on top of the Power Platform pipeline.

H

Before we get into like just a bit about me, my name is Annette I actually live in Cape, Town and I've, been developing in the power collectible for first six years now and I've got a true passion for the Microsoft power Gap from stack and I, just love, making Solutions and helping out uh communities and establishments uh better their processes through the platform, but specifically about the the project that I worked on the idea.

H

Qa assessments, the idea came from the alien accelerator by the power cat team and, if you've ever used, the alien accelerator you'd know that when you deploy your solutions to your various environments, you've got the ability to identify what environments you better use for the solution based on their profile and the issue I had with that is: okay, so I'm deploying from my Dev environment to QA and then to uat.

H

But how can I validate my solution during that QA phase to make sure that it's ready to go to that uat, because in that uat stage we're not actually deploying the solution? We're just simply merging a pull request. So I wanted to focus specifically on these three phases, from Dev to QA, to uat and following our Dev environment. I wanted to ensure that we can get to our QA environment in a stable manner, using either the alien accelerator or the deployment pipelines.

H

But I wanted to hold the solution there to make sure that it was ready to go through to uat when the wind developer was ready and that's where I wanted to stop a solution in place in that QA stage to ensure that when we're ready, we can go through to a successful u80 environment.

H

And that's where we have the QA assessment tool and, as you can see, it looks very very similar to the am accelerator. That's because the idea came from the NM accelerator. However, I like to think of David and Hugo said at the beginning. The first issue I had when an idea came to mind, and this was inspired by attending those uh first contributor sessions- is how do I share this with the community? How can I make sure everyone can use it if I build the solution in the alien accelerator itself?

H

Hey it's difficult to share with everyone and B when releases are updates, are released. How do I manage recreating it and embedding it into the solution? So I've started decided to start a bit quicker over a bit simpler and work with Power Platform pipelines, because it will be coming available very very soon and the reason I tackled it from this perspective was because the Power Platform pipeline solution is built on database tables.

H

Specifically the deployment stage runs table and when we create our pipelines in in the solution itself, we have to identify all our developer environments, such as our development environment, our QA uat and our product environment and we're using our environmental IDs in the solution. So I thought. Okay, if I can retrieve those IDs from the Power, Platform pipelines, database tables and then reference that to its state runs.

H

Maybe we can actually work something out and Link the two together and show what Solutions are sitting in that QA stage and that's exactly what I did I was able to reference those tables and bring all the solutions that were deployed to a QA stage into a canvas app and then allow us to create a QA session um with all the current versioning, the the deployed developers, the deployed dates and times and and all that information, alongside of it so I'm going to quickly do a demo on this version as well and before diving into the actual solution itself, we're going to deploy a brand new solution to our QA environment using the Pipelines there.

H

We go okay, awesome, so we're going to deploy it to our accurate environment. I'll take a couple of seconds, but we're going to enter our variable collapse purpose and we're going to deploy version one.

H

So, while that's deploying let's head over to our assessment app, so it's a simple canvas app and, as you can see, we've got all our solutions that are sitting within a QA stage, either currently within QA, where I've at least gone past. The QA stage itself and we've got quite if you've got a budget, clock components Etc and within each app we can see what version is currently sitting on. Okay, it's the latest version when it was deployed to QA and who created as well now for existing solutions that have undergone um our QA assessment.

H

We can also identify what consistence has been complete, what haven't been complete and what needed to undergo a a new solution assessment as well, but in order to create this Edition, we need some sort of categorized items to to describe solution again. So if we head over to our manage items, we've got a pre-built list of all the checks we're going to apply the solution, ranging from different categories such as power, apps power, app cards, power, bi and in each Cadet.

H

We've got a set of topics that we want to look into: I.E accessibility, standards, um naming conventions that we applied monitoring, performance reviews and if you want to edit all these items, we can add descriptions that can be big and this all looks different dataverse. We can delete them as well and then create can create new items into existing categories or new categories and manage those categories going forward as well. So we can always reuse the same assessment items.

H

So, let's see if our solution has deployed, it is still deploying, while still deploying we're going to look at a existing solution. So if we go to our kpi management, uh we can see our previous assessments that we launched in there. So if we click on the look um history icon there, it will take us to previous assessments, hosted on our kpi managed door, and you can see we've done it for version 2 and version three.

H

And if you look carefully back at our home screen, we've got version four, actually ready for a new review and at the same time we can actually see when the review was complete uh at status as well and who the reviewer was so right. Now, I'm, the one that previewed and I was developer as well, and the results of our assessment was we completed it and our total score from the solution was 86.

H

So it was a pause, whereas with version 1.0.0.3, it was at five and if we want to go to the specific details, we can even expand on every single individual item and review that outcome from that assessment on an item level, so one Constitution is still deploying there. We go to the deployed success screen I'm just going to quickly refresh because I had a few issues yeah, but our solution should make its way into our QA environment now and it's listed in our app.

H

So you can see our pnb demo Solutions over here sitting at version one and it was deployed today if I am quite far ahead of you guys. But if you go and say create a new review, we can actually select the specific categories that we want to review um our assessment against. So, for instance, this is a simple camera step with a few database tables, we'll select our dataverse powerapps and it's in a solution as well. We can type in any additional notes.

H

It can be assign a review date and we can even assign it to other developers as well. So if we enter any usernames, we can add them there, and this will then go ahead and create the solution assessment for our specific solution. Now, when we're in our solution, oh that seems to be a slight little bug.

H

Let's get back into it, we can see all our categories, for the assessment have come up as well. We can view them by all specific category and actually search them as well, and when conducting the assessment uh per category item, we can provide any feedback related from a one to three one being bad three being terrible.

H

If you want to pause an individual item, we can do as well and if we want to add additional items to the specific category that we don't really want in our general item list, we can add them over here as well and scroll them accordingly and remove them as well. If you need be now, we can submit, we can save the assessment for future references as well, if you're not ready uh to submit it yet, but when you are ready to submit it, we can then create our solution now.

H

The way it works is because we've got a score ranging from one to three. We are summing up the total amount of items in this assessment and multiplying it by three to get an overall score so because we've got 34 checklist items within this assessment we are creating our solution against the total score of 122 points. So right now, based on the score I've given for one item, we've listed it at a two.

H

If I try to submit my total score, points is sending it to giving it a 1.97 rating, which is not so great, but if I were to say put it at 95, we can see it sets it to 93. We can say pass and give additional feedback if need be, and when ready, we can submit the QA as well, and this will close off our uh QA session for our specific solution, allowing us to now deploy to our uat environment, and we can see it says the previous version now complete.

H

If you go into our history, we can see that it was completed by myself and I was a developer with our score rates and our individual items over here for that specific solution.

H

So that counter covers the solution itself, but what's to come so because I kind of preemptively made this decision based on an alien accelerator, I want to also accommodate the ability to have multiple QA environments and that being said, with Power Platform pythons as well.

H

If you want to have quite a few uh pipelines, you may have various QA environments, so I wanted to have that choice, to be able to filter to various environments and apply um these assessments based on these environments and also want to include some automation to notify assessors when they've been assigned a qas to notify developers when it's been complete, Etc and add additional security.

H

So only specific individuals can see related assessment details or can submit the sessions going forward now, because this was inspired by the accelerator that the Aon accelerates are and pushing really hard to try getting an Alm accelerator version out as well, which will hopefully be coming into the coming weeks and, alongside with the new announcement of PPP and the PowerPoint python, it's just so much easier to say that way.

H

um Coming into GA they're, quite a new. Quite some new features coming to power plant from pipelines that I wish to integrate with the solutions, such as having preemptive approvals to Auto, deploy the solution when, uh when we either progressed a QA assessment as a successful assessment to then go through to uit and ensuring the extensibility features uh to have after actions and before actions during our deployment phases with the QA assessment.

H

So if you want to give the assessment a download it's sitting on the Microsoft adoption sample site, as well as the Microsoft um pkmp Community GitHub, repo and I'll, leave that on for a few seconds for everyone to scan if need be, but other than that. That's been me. If you want to reach out a live Invasion with the community, you can scan my QR code over there. That will take you to my LinkedIn to my website, to my blog and anything else, so yeah. Thank you so much for letting me present to you guys.

B

Awesome, thank you, Nettie, that's fantastic stuff. Let me go ahead and share the rest of the slides and we will get the call going again. All right. Well, uh really, really wonderful, stuff. There's some questions in the chat for you and, of course, we're gonna have an opportunity for everyone to engage a little bit more on communicating and collaborating with our amazing presenters, but just want to have a thank you. uh You all did awesome, really appreciate all of you, as well as everyone in the community for joining.

B

There are plenty of resources, as we look to close up the call here for you to take advantage of the first one is we are starting a uh or we have started. I should say a new opportunity for you to continue. Those conversations called Community calls conversations uh their dedicated space on the power users Forum site, specifically for each demo. It allows you to go, engage with the presenters ask questions.

B

We know that after the call-ins, it's really not an opportunity for us to continue using the chat, because so many people have it in their teams. We want to respect that, but we do want to provide a opportunity and space for you all to be able to chat and collaborate and work with our amazing presenters. So we've got dedicated space here.

B

You can see The aka.ms Links at the bottom, as well as the QR codes for each of our amazing presenters today go engage even if you just say thank you by the way, that's absolutely acceptable and we would love to be able to do that start. Giving more credit to one another for giving back to the community and ask some questions and and get more involved collaborate. Ask him to work with you on stuff, so don't hesitate. We have a number of other resources that are available to you.

B

Things such as our community front door, the videos, the samples uh each of the products have their own dedicated community. So you can take advantage of learning more there. Please don't hesitate to do and get involved in those areas. If you like, the community calls, we have Community calls. So uh each Tuesday is the Microsoft 365 and Power Platform Microsoft speakers call. This is dedicated to only Microsoft speakers. It is on Tuesdays at 8. A.M. Definitely take advantage of this uh you're only going to get it from Microsoft speakers on that call.

B

So it's a great opportunity to see kind of what some of the new features and functionality top of Mind things are trying to get more uh more involved there so definitely put that on your calendar.

B

We've also got the Microsoft identity platform, office, add-ins and, of course the Power Platform call you are on and we got the bi-weekly siblings, Microsoft 365, Empower platform development, Focus call, which is tomorrow by the way uh and we've got the Viva connections, the SharePoint framework, uh which is the bi-weekly uh opposite of that you can get to all the recurrent invites at aka.ms Community calls. uh This recording will be available within 24 hours at the Microsoft 365 Community uh YouTube channel.

B

You can access that by going to AK dot, Ms, slash, Community videos, you will not be able to download it, even though it may say it in the chat that it's ready for download. That's really only available for um Microsoft employees so uh definitely go to those YouTube channels. Power Platform, as well as the Microsoft 365 and Power Platform Community YouTube channel subscribe to them. You will get alerts as soon as the new videos are dropped and published. Follow us on Twitter at microsoft365 Dev at m365pnp. Our next call April 19th 2023 same bad time.

B

Same bat Channel. You can access all of the calls at ak.ms, Power, Platform, Community, Dash, calls or download this specific invite, AK dot, Ms, slash, Power, Platform community call. Thank you. Everybody have a fantastic rest of your week and a wonderful weekend. Thank you for being uh amazing. Community contributors, foreign.