Speaker 1: 0:10

Hello everyone, welcome to Microsoft Community Insights Podcast, where we share insights from community experts to stay up to date in Microsoft. I'm Nicholas. I'll be your host today In this podcast. We will dive into Power Platform, but before we get started I want to remind you to follow us on social media so you never miss an episode. So it helps us reach more amazing people like yourself. So today we have a special guest called Keith Atherton. Can you please introduce yourself please?

Speaker 2: 0:40

Yeah, thanks, nick. Hi everyone, I'm Keith Atherton. I'm a Power Platform Solution Architect with ANS Group. I'm also, like Nick, a Microsoft MVP and a Microsoft Certified Trainer as well, and I've been in the industry for just over 20 years, mostly as a professional developer, mostly with NET development and SQL Server and other technologies, but for the last few years I've been using the Power Platform.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Thanks. So before we get started, can you tell us a brief overview of what's Power Platform and why is it used for?

Speaker 2: 1:16

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, the Power Platform it's Microsoft's suite of low-code and no-code tools and services, so there's really five main products in use for the Power Platform. So we've got Power BI, which is mostly used for reports, dashboards, analytics and so on. We've got Power Apps, and this is as it sounds. You're able to create apps that run in the browser. They could be ran on mobile as well, and there's a few different types of Power Apps, and really that was my entry point as an app developer using NET.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Moving to the Power Platform, you've also got Power Automate, which is where you can automate different processes to make things efficient or automate things or have things like approvals and things.

Speaker 2: 2:03

So often this doesn't have a UI itself, it just runs things behind the scenes by calling APIs, sending emails, creating notifications and things like that. You've also got Power Pages, and this is really a low-code way of building external-facing websites, but websites where people can log in, authenticate and actually see their own information, their own account information, on the website as well. And lastly, we've got Copilot Studio. This used to be called something called Power Virtual Agents, which is really chatbots. That's the short version for Copilot Studio, but Copilot Studio stands by itself as well. But it's also part of the Power Platform because, like most of the other tools, you can use drag and drop and lots of clicking and lots of easy ways of building these tools, almost like putting Lego blocks together. So it's kind of a way that you don't need a technical background to get started, but you may do for some of the more advanced features of it to get started, but you may do for some of the more advanced features of it.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Okay, so, before we dive into more power platforms. So how do you keep get started power platform when you, when you're new to it? So how do you start your journey?

Speaker 2: 3:17

yeah, that's a great question. So, uh, yeah, a couple of jobs ago I was, um, doing NET development. That was the day-to-day for me, and then really the entry point for me was we needed some charts and some visuals and reports that were a bit more advanced than the ones we were using. So the ones that we were using before were things like Telerik reports. These are things embedded within NET applications. But we became aware, where I was working, of Microsoft Power BI and really that BI had a lot more power to the tools. There was a lot more ways you could slice and filter and you could create visuals quite easily as well. So there was a lot of opportunity using Power BI.

Speaker 2: 4:04

So my first point was using Power BI just to a beginner, medium level. I didn't really take it too far. It was just another tool in the toolbox at the time. Then, when I moved, I joined a Microsoft partner, a Microsoft Gold partner as a developer, and really it was a general developer. I was bouncing around between NET, azure and a few other tech stacks as well.

Speaker 2: 4:29

But there was a project that came up where they needed some legacy InfoPath apps modernized into Power Apps, and that decision had already been made before I joined. So really it was a case of I had to learn this Power Apps thing pretty quickly to be able to use. It was a case of I had to learn this Power Apps thing pretty quickly to be able to use it on a customer project, and it was something where when I started and I learned it was low code, slash, no code, and I thought, okay, it's lots of drag and drop, it's maybe it appeared maybe a bit limiting when I first started to use it and only knew the basics, and then, the more I got to learn it and realize that you can actually customize it and extend it using the languages as well JavaScript and NET in many cases then I realized that was a lot more power to it. You could dig a bit deeper if you needed to. So that was my starting point.

Speaker 1: 5:21

Because, since Power Platform is like low code and dragon job, I take it it's more of non-technical users, so anyone can with a technical mind, it can just pick him up to a good job yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2: 5:34

You know, I find it quite intuitive and easy and I think again, that was something that stood out to me when I started to use it, and again as a as a NET developer for many years, who's used to the full power of an object-oriented language or using solid techniques, even doing game development and writing simulations I did at first glance think, well, it's drag and drop, I'm using these formulas that look like excel formulas. Is it a bit basic, a bit limited? But really, just the more I learned and opened my eyes to it, the more I realized there was actually a lot more power to it than I realized. But you're exactly right, nick, there's a lot of people in my team at the moment who do come from an end user background or from a less technical background, and they've actually skilled up the more they've learned about the platform themselves.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Okay, so I take it. It's very fast, easy to learn it. Get to speed with the platform. If someone does not take, it, minded.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Yeah, I think so too. There's some really good tutorials out there, lots of good documentation on Microsoft Learn as well. Microsoft do offer things like app in a day or different in a day kind of programs where you can actually scale up by following some guidance, Say, OK, here's how you create your data model, you create the tables, here's we'll create the app. Next, We'll create some some power automate flows next, which again perform lots of work behind the scenes. So luckily, there's some really good programs out there and perform lots of work behind the scenes. So luckily, there's some really good programs out there Also for any career switchers, anyone who's maybe not technical now, who wants to get into use it or upskill using it, who maybe only know the basics. Microsoft have got a program called the Power Up program as well. So there is, if you search for that online, Microsoft Power Up. It's not something I've taken, but I've heard very good things about it. You can get mentoring and guidance to actually skill up using the Power Platform as well.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Okay, so, as a power platform, users like yourself that use it in your everyday, how do you, in your opinion, what do you? How do you think power platform can help organization, like with this skill, with their digital workload than actual like, like DevOps, like.

Speaker 2: 7:55

DevOps. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I think it was the business case that really got me more interested in it as well, because previously, certainly when I was younger, I was more of a developer who liked to code from the ground up. I liked to solve problems, as you say, and that approach is still valid and it's something you can combine with the Power Platform. Sometimes we refer to it as fusion development because we fuse that professional development with the low-code development as well. So I have kind of both strings to my bow. I'm always learning all the time. I don't know it all, no one does, but I'm able to sort of combine those two, which is useful.

Speaker 2: 8:39

However, the main business case that drew me in was certainly for a lot of basic apps. You want forms, you want grids, you want those kind of basic essentials that many line of business applications have. As you say, it's very fast to develop things. Whether it be a prototype or a POC or an MVP, you can actually put things together very, very quickly. Or a POC or an MVP, you can actually put things together very, very quickly. And again, unless you want any kind of heavy customization or complexity, which you can do with a power platform, you can actually get many small to medium solutions created much, much faster than if I was to build it using NET code or a JavaScript framework from scratch. So I think it's the speed to development is really key to a lot of organizations, and that's what helps us sell it to other organizations where I work at the moment as well.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Yeah, as well, as you can integrate Power Platform as well to other services like Microsoft services. So can you speak about some examples of UKs that you can integrate Power Platforms like Azure, office 365?

Speaker 2: 9:40

Yeah, absolutely so. Some of the main ways that you can integrate with them is really one of the big parts is really the Power Automate service, that product that I mentioned earlier, so one of the five big products. That's one of them. And with Power Automate, and I guess with many systems, when you're going to connect to them you might use an API. You might go through there. You've got to authenticate. Then you see what kind of methods you've got available to perform different actions, whether you're doing CRUD operations, inserting records, sending notifications or emails.

Speaker 2: 10:15

So really a big part of the power with the Power Automate and other parts is that we've got this concept called connectors. There's over a thousand connectors at the moment out there that we can use, and this list is growing all the time. And just a bit of background, a connector really is just a wrapper around an API. So let's say we've got our own NET app or something else. We might actually do that API connection ourselves. We build up the JSON, payloads, the headers, the bodies, whatever we need, how we handle the authentication.

Speaker 2: 10:49

This concept of the connectors in the Power Platform is really kind of a nice easy wrapper that sits around the API. It's really kind of a nice, easy wrapper that sits around the API so that, again, non-technical people as well as technical people can use this connector just by plugging into Microsoft Outlook or to Salesforce or to Dropbox or whatever the service may be. It's not just Microsoft services, but also other companies like those I mentioned, google services, or even if you had your own website or you was a vendor yourself, you can actually create an offer this connector. So really, I'd say that the first thing is really those connectors help you connect with these other systems. That's probably the first obvious integration that we have.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Do you create your own custom connector?

Speaker 2: 11:36

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I think it was last year for the Festive Tech Calendar, so you and I know some of the organizers there. Nick, I'd actually created a video as part of last year's Festive Tech Calendar I think it was only about 20 minutes long where I actually created a custom connector. So I then had a power app. I created a custom connector to an existing api not one that I created. It's one that gave, uh, like dad jokes, like really bad jokes, um, so I I'd use this free api, didn't need to authenticate, it's just anonymous access created a custom connector and then brought these bad jokes back into the power app so people could see them. So, yeah, you've any. Any maker has got the ability to create custom connectors if they need okay, so it's not very that complex.

Speaker 1: 12:26

It's quite easy to create it okay.

Speaker 2: 12:29

I think so. I think in the demo I did for a basic one, it took just a few minutes of a almost like a wizard, next, next, next. But you can actually create them from, you know, uh, different collections as well, like a well used to be able to do it from a postman collection or from swagger documents. You know, there's different ways you can actually build it as well in your opinion?

Speaker 1: 12:49

what are some of the challenges faced when you're using face, when you're using or learning about or using Power Platform.

Speaker 2: 12:58

Yeah, that's a good point, because I came from, again, a NET developer background where I was used to pretty much the full power on anything I needed. And I think when I moved to the language that we have certainly in Power Apps, we've got a language there called power fx, which it's um, it's a declarative language, so you just say what you want it to do and it does the work. Excuse me, but with with NET being an imperative language, kind of used to the full power of I want interfaces here and loops there and and so on and so on. So for me, the challenge from my personal background was I didn't have that full power of the language when I first moved into it and it was then almost like a bit of a logic puzzle to say, well, how can I achieve these things without that previous power that I had access to? So that was one of the main challenges for me.

Speaker 2: 13:53

I think another challenge as well that me and some other non-technical people might have is when you use Dataverse, I should say as well. Dataverse is really using Azure SQL database under the bonnet for the relational tables. So all of I should say as well all of Power Platform is really abstracted on top of Azure. They're using Azure services behind the scenes. So when you use Power Automate and you get a visual flow diagram that's based on Logic Apps, when you use Dataverse you can see that list of tables. It's using Azure SQL Database and you can use Cosmos DB tables behind there as well for elastic tables for good performance. One good thing with that is it's very easy to use add new table, add new column.

Speaker 2: 14:43

But one of the main challenges for me was being a sql server developer for many years. I'm used to, uh, manual performance tuning. You're doing that fine tuning with indexes and foreign keys or user-defined functions and various other features. But when I moved to Dataverse it's got auto-tuning. You can't tap to that level. So for me, if I designed a complex data model and I really over-normalized everything, I found that the performance could suffer. So sometimes on the data model I had to almost have a compromise and meet in the middle where the normalization was and something that's a bit more basic. I would say.

Speaker 1: 15:21

Okay, thanks, frank. What are some of the amazing features? Amazing, you like I don't mention this again amazing use case or POC, that you develop using power platform for your clients or so yeah, that's a good question, you feel that's something that you feel the proud of, that you've done something that's that's really, really good yeah, yeah, that's a great one.

Speaker 2: 15:50

I think for me, a lot of them can be when I see the technologies used for a good cause.

Speaker 2: 15:55

So you know, recently I worked on a project for a really good customer in the healthcare system.

Speaker 2: 16:03

It was actually mental healthcare and it was actually able to track when different observations were needed for the patients. It actually meant that they could be seen on time. The staff received notifications or alerts to say you need to check on this patient. Next, it brought all the patient information to the screen very easily and it's something that was previously done on paper, or sometimes not all the information on paper was in one place or it wasn't at hand. So it's really kind of made that process more efficient for them. It's digitized it. But also it means for me, the important thing is that the kind of the not the boring bit, but the bit of keeping track of the appointments is now taken care of so they can use all their important, powerful skills that they have of looking after patients and giving them the best care. That's really meaningful to me because it means that they can use the skills they actually bring to their job more, because all the admin is now taken care of because of this app, so I really love solutions like that.

Speaker 1: 17:09

Okay and I take it those like solution that you mentioned is one of the reasons Power Platform you're so passionate about Power Platform and impacted your career so far.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yeah, I think so. I think there's many more examples. And again, because the speed to market it can be so fast with the Power Platform, particularly for a basic to middle solution. If you need an advanced or complex or an enterprise scale solution, particularly for a basic to middle solution, if you need an advanced or a complex or an enterprise scale solution, then we might need to tap into those Azure services directly, which we can. That's another level of integration we can do to say, hey, I want to reach out to Azure Functions and spin some custom code there. Or I might actually want to go to Azure SQL Database because the customer is using it already or there's high storage amounts that we can deal with there. So, yeah, I think the main thing with the speed to market is that we can see more of these solutions come to life so you can actually help more people quicker and get through more solutions and actually learn on every time we go through a solution as well. So that really appeals to me.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Yeah thanks, so we've through a solution as well. So that really appeals to me. Yeah thanks, so we've got a question from one of our viewers. So which part of power platform is your favorite and how do you find what do you find interesting?

Speaker 2: 18:25

yeah, that's okay. Good, good, great question, great question. Um, they've all got their value, they're all really good and I imagine in future things like co-pilot studio might might you know get more focus for me, but at the moment it's still power apps. I think, being an app developer for most of my career and being able to, you know, create uis and create solutions that are useful to people, that they can use on a mobile device, use on a pc, in a browser, I think really excuse me, yeah, I think really there's a lot of power in that. And there are people in the community and at Microsoft who've taken these apps further, where they've actually built games or even 3D games that you can run in Power Apps to show it doesn't just have to be basic buttons and grids, you can actually take it to further levels if you need. So I think there's a wealth of opportunity within the app space. So I'd say Power Apps for me.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Okay, so you would like to do something like that in the future? Create something creative, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:27

I think so. I think almost every solution I've worked on so far has involved at least one Power App. Of course, not all solutions need an app. It might be a wear. Almost every solution I've worked on so far is involved at least one PowerApp. Of course, not all solutions need an app. It might be a wearable device, it might be something without a UI, it might just be an automation. But yeah, for now most things do revolve around apps. So yeah, that's my favorite.

Speaker 1: 19:45

Yeah, yes, okay. So, based on the demo you provided, there's a lot of functionality features and it's quite a lot to get a hand around. So what exciting future updates do you expect to see regarding the Power Platform in the future?

Speaker 2: 20:05

Yeah, there's been a lot of updates recently and I do find the Power Platform does develop very, very quickly, which is great because we can see the investment, we can see new things, new toys to play with, um. But it's also very busy to keep up to date with everything because you've got those five products and all five change fast. So microsoft have got some really good release planners. It's like Azure, constantly changing new services.

Speaker 2: 20:34

There's always something, but I think, keeping track of things that are coming, there's more and more Copilot and AI integration. Now, this is great. With Power Apps, you can actually ask it, almost like GitHub Copilot you can ask it to write the code for you, or you can insert a comment or something. Code for you, yeah, or you. You can insert a comment or something or say explain this code. Actually, give you a comment to explain that code.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Yeah so check it out there, this interview. So what other resources or training would you recommend someone to to for someone to get started in power platform?

Speaker 2: 21:26

yeah, there's so many out there. So microsoft learn. I've got some really good learning paths. You know anyone who's new to Azure security. You know we're probably used to those learning paths. There's a lot of good things.

Speaker 2: 21:38

I mentioned App in a Day and the Power Up program earlier. They're both very, very good resources to get started as well. All of those products as well. They do have free trials as well Last time I checked. So anyone who wants to have a go, it may be that you work for an organization that's got E5 licenses or something similar and you've actually got standard Power Apps licenses included with that, so you might actually be able to use them already. One last thing I've mentioned as well is certainly for the Power Apps side of things. There's something called the Power Apps Developer Plan as well. So that is essentially a free trial where you get access to power apps, dataverse and power automate and there's there's no time limit to the free trial. So if you want to have a go there and you get hooked or you need a few months to really understand it and give it a go, it's something you can't use in production but you can use to learn and upskill and experiment with. So the Power Apps developer plan. I'd highly recommend that.

Speaker 1: 22:36

Yeah, thanks. So as we're wrapping up on this episode, so is there any community events like user group for people to get more involved in Power Platform?

Speaker 2: 22:49

Yeah, yeah, there's actually a lot of really good ones. There's some throughout the UK. Sometimes, with Power Platform, it gets connected closely with Dynamics 365. That's why they've got that umbrella term of business applications. One of the reasons for that is really that they're closely linked in that they both can use Dataverse as the data platform and Dynamics really came first. I believe as well, it was before my time, but, yeah, they're very closely linked. So some of these user groups they might say Dynamics 365 and Power Platform user group there's a really good one up here in Scotland called the Scottish Power Platform user group. They tend to have roughly once a month. They alternate between virtual and in-person events and they've always been top-notch. They've always been really good. And in terms of bigger events, there are conferences as well, like Dynamics Minds and actually upcoming next month in Las Vegas. We've got the Power Platform Community Conference, or PPCC, which I'm lucky enough to be one of the speakers at that event. That's really the flagship event. So I'm going to do a session on power-up optimization making them performant.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Okay, and you said that date is next month in Vegas.

Speaker 2: 24:05

Yeah, it's going to be 18th to the 20th of September, I believe, in Las Vegas. So yeah, hopefully you can make it.

Speaker 1: 24:12

Yeah, you're quite lucky you're going to Vegas?

Speaker 2: 24:15

yeah, I am, actually. I'm really. I went to it last year as well and it was a blast. Really good people, really good community as well.

Speaker 1: 24:23

That's great yeah, so how can to wrap it up? So how can people get in touch with you? We got any question we got in part of platform or any question we're discussing this episode. Yeah, I'm always happy to help out if you've got any questions regarding platform or any question we discussed in this episode yeah, I'm always happy to help out if anyone's got questions or want to get started.

Speaker 2: 24:39

Um, so, if you just search for my name, keith atherton, it's pretty unique. Um, not a very common name, as me and nick were saying before we hit record as well yeah um, but yeah, I'm on x or twitter as mr keith atherton, or just search for me on linkedin. I'm active on both of those platforms okay, thank you, uh.

Speaker 1: 25:01

Thanks a lot for joining us. Episode keith.