Rubber Ducks

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nick (00:00):
sometimes he would just call me in a team's meeting and
like Nick Nick, I need you tolook at something Like okay,
donovan, sure, and we'd hop on ateam's call.
I'm doing this code, I'm doingthis, I'm doing this, okay, I
need to move this.
Like, oh man, that's notworking Okay.
And then boom, oh, it's working.
Thanks so much, and I'm likeDon, you're a perfect rubber

(00:28):
duck.

Ulrikke (00:50):
And of course, it goes back to coding about talking
your problems or talking throughyourself when you're actually
talking to a rubber duck.
Hello everyone and welcome tothe Power Platform Boost podcast
, your timely source of PowerPlatform news and updates, with
your hosts Nick Doelman andUlrikke Akerbeck.

Nick (01:01):
Good morning.

Ulrikke (01:03):
Good morning.
Good morning for both of us.

Nick (01:06):
Yeah.

Ulrikke (01:07):
Yeah, because you're here or not here, here, but
they're here.

Nick (01:13):
Yes, I'm in the same time zone.
I'm actually in Oslo today,yeah.
After a week of vacation andthen before that, dynamics Minds
.
So yeah, a week week ofvacation and then before that,
dynamics mind.
So yeah, it's uh.
Well, you wake up some morningsand you're like where, where am
I again?

Ulrikke (01:33):
so we've been in the same time zone for like a month
already, or something aboutthree weeks probably, more or
less yeah, that's really cool.
And then this week I'm gonna seeyou a little bit and then we're
going off to Vienna next week.
So I'm going to see a lot thenext few weeks.
I'm so excited about that.
Very good.

(01:54):
So tell us about a little bit,about Dynamics Minds and your
trip, because Dynamics Minds islike for those of you who don't
know, I've never been andeveryone's like, oh, it's the
event, right, you just I can'tbelieve you have it.
If you want to prioritizeanything, you have to go to
dynamics mind.
So tell me why.

(02:15):
What is so special about it?

Nick (02:17):
yeah, it's, it's strange, right, because it's like I went
for the first time last year andI went again this year and
again, nothing against the otheruser groups and community
conferences and everything else.
They're great.
There's just something aboutthis one and if I was, actually,
if I had to pick and it'd be avery hard choice, but I would
actually if I had to pick justone to go to, this would be the

(02:40):
one I would go to, and I thinkit's because there's a couple
reasons which makes it special.
First off, it's in terms of acarpet.
It's bigger than your typicalSaturday user group but it's not
massive like a like a powerplatform community conference in
Vegas where there's like 10,000people.
I think they have 1000 to 1200people, if I were to guess, in

(03:04):
terms of attendees, of course, alot of speakers there.
So of course, the content isgreat.
I think, as much as the contentis very similar to what you see
, they also try to put a specialspin on it.
There is a whole theme aroundit, kind of a Tim Burton-ish
kind of wizard theme around thatas well.
The keynote, which is usuallythey open a conference at a

(03:27):
keynote.
They do the keynote at the endof the opening day and it was
really interesting.
It's more than just youraverage Microsoft VP coming out
and telling everybody here drinkthe Kool-Aid.
It's awesome.
They had this whole littledramatic play thing.
It's hard to describe, uh, I'llcall it a, a theater piece of

(03:49):
sorts.
And last year it was.
It was all about co-pilots,right.
So they had one uh actor comeup.
She was the co-pilot and shegathered her other co-pilot
friends and they were a musiciangroup and they kind of did a
band and they kind of themedaround that this year she's not
a co-pilot, she was an agent andthey talked about the.
They kind of did a band andthey kind of themed around that
this year she's not a co-pilot,she was an agent and they talked
about the um kind of factory orwarehouse of the future.

(04:11):
And of course it had all theseuh people sort of dressed up in
kind of worker factory clothes,but they were agents and they
were doing different themes anddifferent little like numbers
like that and of course, andthen, um, it was donna sarkar
and Chris Huntingford.
They were kind of the, the, themain people at the keynote.
So they, they talked to theirs,they kind of worked their way

(04:31):
around through this whole scene.
I really can't do it justice toexplain it, so I'm just telling
you you have to go and seethese things.

Ulrikke (04:39):
Yeah, it's one of those things that you had to be there
, kind of experiences, right.

Nick (04:43):
Absolutely so.
In terms of keynote, it'sdefinitely there's nothing like
it.
So, in terms of the conferenceitself, a couple of things, I
think you have going for it.
The social events is it's allyour first off, you're in a
hotel in Porto Ros in Sloveniawhich you can't just fly into,
and 20 minutes later you'rethere at the venue.
You have to fly into somesurrounding cities and it's

(05:10):
about a two-hour shuttle ride toget to the actual venue.
So it's hard a little bitthere's.
I would say it's hard, it's not.
It's not hard to get there,it's just you have to plan to
get there and you have to planto go home.
Around that, and the organizers,in terms of the speakers, are
really good at organizing theshuttles and if, if you're an
attendee, they have a lot ofgreat information how to get in,
how to get out, and then, ofcourse, you're in the hotel.
There's two or three big hotelssort of attached to each other,

(05:32):
so everybody's there on siteand then they have the big
social events down by the beach.
They have these every night,with lots of food, lots of
entertainment, and it gives youan opportunity to interact and
chat with everybody and justsort of get to know everybody a
lot better.
One of Donna's sort of you know, donna gives homework all the
time in the conferences.

(05:53):
She sort of said, okay, makenew friends this week and
definitely I definitely madebrand new friends and
strengthened some otherfriendships as well.
So in that respect it wasreally good.
And and then, yeah, justoverall, it has more of a
festival feel to it than maybelike a corporate conference or
some of these other conferences.
Um, and then at the end of theday, of course, everybody as

(06:14):
opposed to everybody scatteringdoing their own thing everybody
instead gathers, uh at these, atsort of these beach parties and
sort of kind of you know,reflects on the day of course,
celebrates and related thatwhere.
So I think that really helps aswell.
And then, yeah, just in termsof the venue, all the rooms are,
all the breakout rooms, more orless, are close to each other,
with a couple of exceptions, ofcourse.

(06:34):
Those are just venue things.
But yeah, I absolutely, trulyenjoyed myself.
Definitely I'm going to go backagain next year.
It doesn't conflict with anypower lifting things, although
it's happening before the, the,the next year's bench press
championship, like the weekbefore, so that might make

(06:55):
things a little bit moreinteresting.
We'll see, let's.
Let's revisit that in a year tosee where I'm at.
But anyways, yeah, I wouldhighly recommend, if you have
the opportunity, to go toDynamic Spine.
It's definitely worth the money.
Like I said, not taking awayfrom any of the other events
that we go to, but this one tome is there's something special
about it.

Ulrikke (07:13):
So did you check out the gym this year so that you
know that you'll be able to gobefore the next?
They have a good gym.

Nick (07:20):
Oh no, they don't.
Oh, okay, we didn't, yeah, sowe'll have to.
We'll have to figure out a fewthings around there.
So, like again, that's a,that's a whole lot of it.
Lots can happen between now andthen.
But they did but they didannounce that they were having
it again.
They did announce the dates,which I don't have in front of

(07:41):
me, but it's roughly about thesame time next year, I think,
around May 26th, 27th week.
So definitely put that on yourcalendars and come check that
out.

Ulrikke (07:53):
I'm actually going to check because I asked a few
friends who were there to sendme.
If they announce the dates,send it to me so that I can put
it in my calendar right away.
And they said May 25th to 27ththe 2026.
And that's of course, the dayafter my birthday.
So that's going to be um samething as as this year.
I'm going to go, I put it in mycalendar already and I'm going

(08:14):
to make sure not to miss it.
And I think also, if you talkto Mira, she may, she's able to
fix absolutely anything.
So if you ask her to kind oframp up the gym facilities, I'm
sure she can handle that.
But I recognize the same thing,as you said, because you know,
acdc is one of those eventswhere there is really no place
to go right.
So everyone's at the same place, at the same hotel for a few

(08:36):
days in a row and it's so faraway from the Oslo city center
that no one really goes to thecity.
Everyone stays at the sameplace.
And I think that's one of thekey things that has made that
event so popular is that itcreates a very intimate feeling
because you know that everyone'sgoing to be at the same place
for for a consecutive number ofdays.
It creates a special vibe thatI think you don't get anywhere

(09:00):
else.
So it's going to be veryinteresting to see if that kind
of creates, if it's kind of thesame mechanisms at play, and I'm
really looking forward to goingnext year.
So that's, uh, yeah, definitelycool, all right.
So, uh, you had a refreshingweek and then, because you had a
few sessions, um, and then youwent on holiday and now we're

(09:21):
ready for a week of work andthen a week of EPBC.
So that's going to be fun.
Yep, you want to dive into thenews?
The first news item here is you, and a good friend of ours has
repurposed old content in newways.

Nick (09:41):
Yeah, but it's interesting because Steve was at Dynam, at
dynamics mind, so he had achance to chat with him a little
bit here and there.
Um, steve's steve's a good like, he's one of my favorite people
just in terms of his attitudeand it's sort of like just it's
really refreshing, like it'sbrutally honest, um, but in a
good way.
And him and mark smith andgeorge Dubinsky and Yuka Njernan

(10:04):
did a panel and it was fourbold guys talking shit and I was
in a front row seat youactually had to be because you
just didn't know what was goingto come up and it was
interesting them talking andagreeing and disagreeing those
types of things.
And Steve did mention that.
He said oh, he says I have havea followup blog post to my

(10:26):
mountain of shitty little appsthat he did last year.
He said a mountain of shittylittle agents.
And, um, basically talkingabout, uh, again, where
everybody's building apps lastyear and, of course, how many
were used, and talk about thecitizen developer.
Well now, the citizen developer?
Well, now we're saying you know, the pitch from Microsoft is
anybody can build an agent, sopeople are going through

(10:47):
building all of these agents.
Now, if you build an app andyou don't use it or you use it
for yourself and it screws up afew things.
That's one thing.
But then, all of a sudden, now,if you have everybody building
agents going out, automating,doing things, what kind of chaos
is this going to cause?
So, I think, in terms of thisnew era of AI and agentification

(11:10):
and everything, governance isgoing to be such an important
aspect to this in the guardrails, and this is what a lot of
people are working through.
But basically, steve is verypro-AI.
He actually is developing code,believe it or not.
He's vibe coding.
He says he's not necessarilybuilding enterprise apps, but

(11:30):
he's still building apps forhimself, but also recognizes
that we do need someprofessional.
Again, this is businesssoftware.
It does need some guardrailsand things like that.
So, read through his post.
He talks about the differentthings and, of course, as Steve
can do it, he's been posting alot in terms of different things
around ai, a lot of stirringthe pot.

(11:51):
That's what steve does, but Ithink also he does a very good
job at creating conversationsthat we all should be having as
we go through this.
This, this whole ai process um,that I've been you and I have
been talking about, I've beentalking about with other people
as well, how we're trying tofigure, figure all of this stuff
out.
So it's good to keep thesethese types of conversations

(12:12):
going, yeah.

Ulrikke (12:14):
And I think he's poking at something that is not talked
about enough is that wheneveryone creates their own
little cause, we're taught.
This is what we're taught inthe the future you're going to
be surrounded by your colleaguesis going to be agents.
They're all going to beautonomous and then um, and then
you're going to have theorchestrator kind of that is
your interface in into theworkforce of agents.

(12:37):
But how does that then workwith my set of agents?
Work with your set of agents?
Are they the same?
Do we have the same job?
Did they kind of stumble intoeach other saying how many
overlapping agents do we havewith the same knowledge?
How many?
How do you?
There's so many questions hereand you know how do you do
environment and solutionstrategy around this.

(12:58):
What is production really?
And there are so many questionsnow that we haven't really kind
of gotten our heads wrappedaround yet.
So I think the traditionalsense of all this is production
and this is our pipeline andthese I don't know.
It seems to me like it's goingto be more of an organic

(13:19):
environment where you have yourenvironment and, of course, you
have to draw on the same data,but because these agents are
autonomous and they can connectto anything, it doesn't really
matter where the production datais.
So maybe we're in a solutionwhere we have production
environment in terms of data, orwe have different production
instances of data scatteredaround and then all the agents
simply have access to thoseproduction environments, data

(13:42):
sources and pull into myenvironment and for you to your
environment.
But then, looking at so I mean,I think we have to rethink what
that looks like in terms of ourlinear production line type
thinking won't, probably won'twork in the future.
So who then has the insight andthe kind of the, of the, the

(14:05):
privilege or the you know,permissions enough to see all of
this holistically right?

Nick (14:10):
yeah, well, yeah, that's interesting because this is
where we start talking about mcpservers like agents talking to
others, things like that.
Now, one analogy that I sort ofI came up with and I talked
about and I don't think I talkedabout it in the last episode,
but I know I talked to a fewpeople at Dynamics Minds about
this concept Um, and if you've Idon't know if you've ever read

(14:31):
the book the seven habits ofhighly effective people by
Stephen Covey, one of the habitsis, um, begin with the end in
mind.
So when we were transitioningservers on-prem servers to the
cloud 10 years ago roughly, weknew what the end in mind was.
The end in mind was basicallythat we're going to be using

(14:52):
software but we're going toaccess it through the internet
on our computers.
We're not going to have serversanymore, the server will be in
the cloud.
It's almost like the same thing, but it's just sort of.
This was our end in mind.
We got it, we totallyunderstood that was our end goal
, end in mind.
And then, when we talk about thecitizen developer, powerapps,
low code solutions, again weknew what the end in mind was.

(15:12):
We figured, and maybe we didn'tquite get there in terms of the
whole concept.
But Bob off the street, whodoes Excel very well, should be
able to go in and create his ownbusiness app and deploy that,
whether to himself or to histeam, and then that was our end
in mind.
With citizen developers, yes,they can build apps, or they can
build apps to a certain point.

(15:33):
Did we get to that point?
Not really.
Are we using low-code tools?
Absolutely, we use those everyday.
So, in terms of that end inmind of being able, we, as
makers and developers, evenlow-code or or pro code or even
just developers in general usingthat, we knew what the end in
mind was.
We were creating software, weknew what it was going to look
like, we knew what was going toget there.

(15:54):
Now we're in the term of AI andAI agents.
What does it mean to bebuilding AI agents?
What does that mean To me?
I have ideas, I use agents forcertain things, but it's still a
little fuzzy and it's still alittle unclear from where we are
today in terms of interactingwith software to where we'll be

(16:14):
with agents.
I mean, I have an app, a powerapp, that used to be on-prem and
I moved it to the cloud just totrack my weekly time as a
consultant.
It's still an app and I'mtrying to figure how would this
be an agent?
Am I going to have a chat botasking me what projects I worked
on this week and me just givingit some details and it going
and compiling that informationand creating my invoicing?

(16:35):
Or is it just still going to?
But to me, the app just worksbetter than that experience.
So, yeah, maybe there's agentsin the background.
Maybe there's an agent that'sdoing the currency conversion,
like a blog post I did a fewweeks ago, or how I'm going to
interact with it.
To me, I'm still typing innumbers and pressing buttons
because it's easy.
Maybe I'll talk to it, maybethat'll be a user interface and

(16:56):
maybe that's where we're going.
So I don't know.
That's what I think is part ofit.
This is a phase where we don'tknow what the end in mind really
is.
Everybody has different ideas.
There is no clear vision.
This is what an agent will be,this is how it will look, this
is what it will do, and maybe itmight mean a hundred different
things, and maybe that's part ofthe issue as well.

Ulrikke (17:15):
I don't know just my mind can kind of fire it off in
10 different directions just bythat one little comment.
I just five of the things I'mgoing to talk about in the show
notes relate to what you justsaid, and I have my own little
kind of comment on how thisworks.
But I just want to say we'regoing to go into so many of the

(17:38):
the kind of the strings that youpulled up just there, but for
me it's also one of those thingswhere I think we need to just
embrace the fact that we don.
So in terms of your app, ifit's easy for you to type that
in, then keep typing it in.
I think, if anything, let's youknow.

(17:59):
Next blog post on the listLouise Freeze.
Can we just get off the hypealready?

Nick (18:06):
If it's a flow.

Ulrikke (18:07):
It's a flow.
If it's an app, it's an app.
If it works, if you'recomfortable with it, it doesn't
have to be an agent.
Can we just kind of just take astep back and just go?
Oh okay, well, off the hype,stop thinking to Kool-Aid and
actually look at what it is andwhat it can be used for in a
more sensible way, because Ithink we're all just riding the
wave and, like she talks aboutLinkedIn and how it's just a big

(18:29):
rah-rah kind of echo chamber atthe moment, and I absolutely
subscribe to that.
Now, also, one of the thingsthat I saw this week was um,
then I can, I can kind of justplug that in right here.
It's from um.
Oh, where is it?
It's from, uh, from reza, uh,dorani, where he shows uh, no,

(18:50):
sorry, another one.
Yeah, andrew, hess shows voiceto text with Power Apps using
ChatGPT, whisperer, which isexactly what you said.
So you have a Canvas app, butyou won't be able to talk to it
and you send what.
You use the microphonecomponent and then you control
and then Power Automate willtranscribe it using Whisperer

(19:12):
and then it will give it back tothe Power App and that may be a
way for you to enable voice onyour Power App.
Powermate will transcribe itusing Whisper and then it'll
give it back to the PowerApp andthat may be a way for you to
enable voice on your PowerAppand actually being able to.
If you also then have an agentthat goes and monitors your
Outlook and then you're a bitmore diligent in what you put
into Outlook, maybe it's able tokind of scrape your calendar
and give you kind of a roughdraft of this is what your week

(19:34):
looks like, and then you canmaybe adjust it and maybe you
can talk to it and get it togive you some insights.
But probably doesn't have to bemore complicated than that.
But back to my point.
If it works for you, louis,that it is today, you're going
to just spin your wheels tryingto add smack AI on top of it,
and I think a lot of us do thatright now.

(19:55):
So let's talk about LouiseFries' blog post, because it's
perfect to where we're at now.
It's your entry.

Nick (20:07):
Yeah, I saw this yesterday .
I think she posted a few daysago, but the title of the blog
post is Tired of the AI HypeMachine, where she kind of talks
about like all we're sort oftalking about now, about how
people are.
Basically, people are just sortof making these bold statements
about AI will reinvent yourentire industry.
The companies that don't adaptwill die.

(20:28):
And here's how I use AI 10times my thinking.
And then you also see, you knowthe comments of people just
replying AI comments back andthen basically, it's just sort
of like people are just sort ofarguing and you see these AI
experts, you know they'll kindof take it on.
And she has one statement therethat just jumped out at me the

(20:48):
AI theater is exhausting, and Itotally agree.
And I think this is what'sstressing people out too.
It's like, okay, I should beusing this thing.
Um, yes, I have my timetracking app.
I should be using AI, becauseeverybody's telling me to use AI
and I'm like, but how is AIgoing to make this better?
Yeah, I can talk to it.
Okay, that might be a little bitof an improvement, but I know,

(21:09):
if I start talking to my phonejust sort of randomly about
different things.
I don't know people look at meweird, or or my family kind of
says what are you?
Who are you talking to my phone, just sort of randomly about
different things.
I don't know People look at meweird, or or my family kind of
says what are you?
Who are you talking to?
What did you want?
Like no, no, I'm talking to my,I'm talking to my phone, I'm
talking to my, not talking toyou.
So you know, this causes allthese things.

(21:29):
So I, I and again, she's intoAI as well.
Right, like this is, she's verymuch a proponent, but she even
said something like stop solvingimaginary problems.
And again, this is, I think,what we're into now.
It's like, okay, I need to useit, but what can I use it for?
And always, apps have alwaysbeen driven by I need to do this

(21:50):
.
So how could I I'm going towrite an app to do this as
opposed to I need something formy app to do.
And I think this is where weand there are definitely things
like you know, yeah To gettingan email and having it.
You know, update my exchangerates.
That's something that makessense to me and that was
something I used AI builder for.
But it's so like but you know,again, we're still yeah.

(22:13):
Anyways, I could go on.
But, great post, I love it,read it and, yeah, help.
I think everybody, if we couldwork to tone down the AI feeder,
tell the, celebrate our wins, Ithink, definitely share what
we're building, but just sort ofthis other kind of hype about

(22:34):
you're going to lose your joband this and that let's take the
panic out of this.
That's my partially takeawayfrom this too.

Ulrikke (22:39):
Yeah, yeah, no, I 100% agree, and I think apps also was
one of those.
Well, we need apps over data,right.
So it was access to data to seeit, structure it, handle it,
fiddle with it.
Right.
To see it structure it, handleit, fiddle with it right Now.
Ai if you slap AI onto stuffthat it's not meant to solve,
then you have a.
You know it doesn't add value,but what I do see adding value

(23:02):
is something like Project Sophia, for instance.
Right.
So I've had two customerpresentations last week where I
talked about Project Sophia andit blows their minds.
It's one of those products andI've talked about it before, and
then it kind of went away for alittle while and now it's
really coming back up.
So, if you need or if you'relooking for something new to

(23:23):
dive into, project Sophia isreally hot right now, and so
what it is?
It's in an application whereyou upload your data set.
It could be Dataverse, it couldbe SharePoint, it could be
uploading an Excel file and thenProject Sophia will go in and
it will look through your dataset and it will give you an

(23:45):
interface based on the data thatit sees.
So if you update your data set,it will be different every time
and they'll visualize your datafor you and give you kind of an
abstract or a summary, anarrative around it, and then
you can also use the ai cursorto to dive more into the
specific um kind ofvisualizations that it gives you

(24:05):
um.
So there was a linkedin post byum, by anna, who kind of just
went through because she's nowusing Project Sophia all over
the place and it was kind of alittle video about how she's
using it and it was really goodand it kind of put it back on my
radar.
And we now have two customersasking us to help them set this

(24:27):
up and kind of also have kind ofan exploratory workshop.
Because now the question says,okay, you can upload a dataset,
but then you have to add aprompt to it.
What is it you're actuallylooking for?
And this is a very good usecase for ai, I think, because
you upload a humongous data setand then you have questions.
Okay, so you have a factoryline.
What is my weak spot?
Where do we see problems where?

(24:48):
Where do you see this going?
Can you predict something?
You have to have questionstowards your data.
It's one of those exploratoryworkshops where you're just
looking at what kind ofquestions we have and also what
the data set is, project Sophiais really worth looking into.
And then I see we havesomething called New Interface

(25:11):
for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
So this is the Microsoft 365one.

Nick (25:18):
Yeah, so this is something Lisa Lisa Crosby in her video
that we mentioned, I think, onour last episode.
This is sort of the buildannouncements and actually I
basically loaded up Microsoft365 Copilot and it had
everything, all the apps movedover to the left-hand side and
it kind of looks like and thisis sort of what Microsoft does.

(25:38):
It kind of looks a lot morelike chat GPT now, but it has
interesting things.
We have now the analyst agent,which is pretty cool.
I actually went through andmade it so with the analyst
agent.
It can go through and kind ofinterpret data.
So actually I used one of thesample prompts just to play with
it about creating a table withthe volume of planets and add a

(25:59):
column to show volume andmultiple of Earths.
Then you know again, nothingI'm really a need to present or
show to anybody.
I just really wanted to seewhat it could do and it actually
created the table.
That did Python code of how itextracted the data and it showed
all of this information inorganized format.
So if you actually againtalking about, you can actually
have it, look at your own filesand look at different things.

(26:21):
I don't think this is you know,kind of on the same lines of
Project Sophia, but probably alittle bit more ad hoc to your
data to analyze.
This Researcher was pretty cool.
Researcher I'm actually.
I have a business idea thatI've been working with and I'm
actually been using chat GPT towork on this particular project.
I actually took my initialprompt, dumped it in a

(26:42):
researcher and it asked me abunch of questions because that
was part of my prompt, to kindof interview me a little bit.
But it created this actuallyfull business plan around my
idea, because it even asked mequestions that I didn't think of
like, oh, you know, that's kindof good, like we talked about
before, it being sort of athought partner.
Um, yeah, did it do itperfectly?

(27:04):
Would I present this businessplan to a bank?
Probably not.
I would go through andfine-tune it a little bit more,
but it did open up a lot of new,new things.
And then, of course, there'svisual creator as well, which
has sort of been around beforein terms of creating images.
It does have the ability tocreate videos.
Now, I haven't tried that outyet.
Like I said, it just showed upthe last day or two, so

(27:25):
everything is constantlyevolving.
For anybody creating content,it's almost like yeah, you can't
because it keeps changing allthe time.
But anyways, if you do have alicense to the Microsoft 365
Copilot, next time you fire itup, don't be surprised.

(27:45):
The interface has changed.
I find the interface is a lotmore usable to me.
It has this concept callednotebooks, which I'll probably
dive into, because, because youand I were big fans of one note,
I've been using one note foryears.
Um, I don't think this is.
I don't know, is this going toreplace my one note?
I'm not 100 sure, uh, but it issomething you know.

(28:06):
It is sort of to work betterwith copilot and sort of keep
track of my information.
So we'll see how that evolvesas well.
So, yeah, take a look at that.
And and maybe now people aregoing to get more value out of
that license, which is pretty,still pretty pricey.
It's about $30 per user permonth, so again, it's.

(28:28):
But yeah, maybe now I think thelicensing might've changed as
well.
So, yeah, check, check outthose new changes that they
announced that build, and yougotta be able to try these for
yourself yeah, 100% it's.

Ulrikke (28:42):
It's evolving so fast and I've heard people that have
had private preview access tothis being so blown away by the
researcher, especially.
That has been kind of a gamechanger in terms of, yeah,
especially that has been kind ofa game changer in terms of, uh,
yeah, Prepping for meetings orkind of getting more knowledge
into something.
Um, it's really interesting.
So, um, moving on to um, yeah,so this is the um content from

(29:06):
Reza Durrani that I, uh that Imentioned.
He made a video about agentflows in corporate studio and
how agent flows and agents kindof people are a bit confused
about the differences.
So what he shows is a reallygood use case of how to use it,
how to set it up and also whatthe differences are.
So if you think about agentbeing autonomous and
non-deterministic meaning yougive it a task, you give it

(29:29):
resources and you give it a goaland how it kind of goes about
finding out what to do is up tothe agent.
Agent flows is more like ouritem flows for you.
It's deterministic, right, soit's.
You do this in this in acertain sequence and you can
fire off prompts if you want.
You can fire off other services, but you know the order of

(29:50):
which it will perform its tasks,so it's a very good video, I
think, and you know very, verywell-structured Reza.
There's a new video every weekand his tutorials is also really
easy to follow, so a very goodvideo, for sure.

Nick (30:08):
Yeah, I'll probably dive into that just to.
I keep liking these littletutorials and stuff to, kind of
sometimes yeah, yeah, it'ssomething material I've already
covered but to go back becausethings have changed, then you
always pick up a new littletidbits.
So just because you'vecompleted a tour tutorial six
months ago, sometimes it's worthyour time to to take a step

(30:28):
back.
It's kind of a two-step forward, one step back approach, kind
of like we're talking, we'relearning, we're trying to figure
all of this stuff out.
I've been beginning to refer tomyself as an AI pilgrim on a
spiritual quest to getenlightenment.
So on this pilgrimage, kind ofgoing back and checking out new
things like that, yeah, and alsoyeah, things just kind of sink

(30:53):
in a little bit as well.

Ulrikke (30:54):
I think, when all of this stuff is happening so fast
and there's so many new thingsevery week, just when some kind
of letting things just kind ofsink in a little bit and then
revisiting something, I findthen I understand it better,
then it gives me another context, maybe have a new few, a few
hooks that they put things on.
Then I understand it better.
So, yeah, that's reallyvaluable for me, I think.

Nick (31:18):
Yeah, and I know I don't have it on the list here, but
we're talking about tutorialsand stuff.
I did go through DanielLakovic's MCP tutorial,
dataverse tutorial, for the mostpart.
There is a portion where youconnect basically dataverse to
cloud, cloud AI.
I didn't do that because Ineeded to long story.
I needed to use it, have an SMScode to activate my cloud

(31:41):
account and I'm I have a dataplan that doesn't allow us to
Smith's on traveling, so Iskipped over that part but got
it working with visual studiocode and, wow, like again, it
was just one of these thingsthat, yeah, it's a little clunky
right now because you need apreview environment, everything,
but I was just sort of like,wait a minute, if I can do this.

(32:01):
This means this, this and thisin terms of we talked about last
time in terms of power pages,development, where we're, you
know, ask it to create a fetchxml statement and we have to
know the, the table values.
Well, now the mcp server willactually it knows that because
you can actually ask it what arethe schema names for this table
from a development standpoint.

(32:22):
But also, you can like what wewere talking about with using
playwright in terms of data.
We can get an mcp server tocreate test data, um, which is
pretty interesting.
And again I'm thinkingintegration scenarios.
I'm thinking of tying Dataversenow to other systems.
Again, it's going to depend onhow the licensing is going to
pan out, how much resources it'sgoing to take, or is this again

(32:44):
okay?
Yeah, that's great, but wecould use a data flow or
something for that.
But anyways, it is again one ofthese.
If you're into some of these,the new stuff, and need to
understand how MCP servers workand working with Dataverse, that
actually is a really goodtutorial.
Just to go through those stepsand get a good taste, get to a
hello world situation with MCPtutorial or the MCP servers for

(33:09):
Dataverse.

Ulrikke (33:10):
So yeah, yeah Right, very good.
And then we have moving on onto some alm stuff.
Actually, uh, there's a blogpost of um by how dang on
service accounts versus serviceprinciples and how dang do we
know about, I think, the lasttwo, two years?

(33:31):
This has been a crazy ride forus.
So this is a good blog post ora linkedin post, or kind of
summarizes the differences, thesimilarities, when to use what
yeah, yeah, and this, this isn'ta new thing, this is, this is,
this has been around.

Nick (33:48):
But I like, I like houdini , who goes and he keeps, he
keeps giving these reminders ofthese things like, oh yeah, we
need to know.
Or because our you know, newpeople coming into the power
platform are asking thesequestions like what's the
difference between a serviceaccount and a service principal?
And you have to think about,okay, which is which is which?
Again, and why would you useone versus another?

(34:09):
And again he talks about, yeah,using service principle as much
.
As what he doesn't talk aboutso much about the service
account, but it kind of leadsinto this is the Outlook
connector, which also I saw apost and I don't have the link
here, but it looks like theOutlook connector got a bunch of
new features, but what itdoesn't have yet is the ability
to use a service principle withthe Outlook connector, which is

(34:31):
a royal pain in the butt,especially when you start
factoring MFA and all of thisother fun stuff.
So, um, but again, who didn't?
I love these posts Actually.
Uh, I, I have a plan to chatwith who didn't a little bit
later this week.
Um, so I'm always lookingforward to that piece.
It's great to have aconversation with uh so great
posts and keep these.

(34:51):
Keep these reminders and thisstuff coming along.
It's a great resource forpeople both starting out and for
people that have been aroundthe block and keep forgetting
certain things.
It's good.

Ulrikke (35:02):
Yeah, and also I mean in terms of the service.
So the service account thinghas been very top of mind for us
this week because we have nowMicrosoft now enforcing MFA on
service users as well.
So a couple of new customershas come back to saying, okay,
we need to enable MFA for these,because usually when we're in
development phase all the stuffis on secured environments

(35:24):
anyway, so we haven't had MFAwhile we've been multiple people
working on something.
Now MFA is enforced and thenthey're like okay, so who's
going to connect it?
And I'm like well, you canconnect one service service
accounts mfa to differentdeveloper phones, because we now
have the authenticator app andthat seems to be something that
not a lot of people know about.
So you can have I don't knowhow many, but I know you can

(35:47):
have.
You know, I think we have threeor five now connected to one
account so that you know bothyou and me can have our phones
and our authenticator appconnected through mfa to the
same service account, meaningthat you can still have mfa
enabled on those, becauseusually I think a lot of them
don't, just because so manypeople use them right.

(36:07):
So that's kind of just onelittle tip from from our side
that it's um.
Especially if you use um, themicrosoft enter id, that's um.
Yeah, and also just a littleplug, I uh had a little chat
with how done a couple of weeksago.
Um and uh on his podcast, whichwhere he goes in and interviews

(36:28):
people in the platform space.
Uh, that was really goodconversation, really like um up
with Houdang.
He was also in my workshop atColorCloud, so I'm really loving
getting to know him better, andthat episode is released this
week, I think.
So if we can get our hands onthat link, we'll put it in the
show notes for sure and checkout all the other conversations

(36:48):
on his podcast as well.
He's so calm and easy to talkto, creates a really safe space.
I really love the way that hekind of goes about his
interviews and is soknowledgeable about the people
that he interviews and there'sreally good conversations.

Nick (37:05):
I really like that yeah, I'm looking forward to my chat
with him as well, um to be forthe podcast, which probably will
be a few weeks, because I knowhe batches these things as a way
to do it.
Yep.

Ulrikke (37:20):
But there are other news in terms of ALM, not just
the service account and theservice principal stuff.
There is a new announcement, orthe new default pipeline rules
are now out of preview.
So what does this mean?

Nick (37:38):
Well, did I post this?
I'm not sure, because I have a.

Ulrikke (37:42):
So there's the one.
There's the two things, right?
So there's one link in herethat is an announcement blog
post by Microsoft, which isscale ALM org-wide with
deployment hub, ga and the newdefault pipeline rule.
And then also Matt Cullen-Jonespublished a blog post about the
same default pipeline rules.
So what it means is that you cannow, as an admin, go in and set

(38:05):
default pipeline rules forenvironment groups, meaning, if
you're a developer and you're inone of the environment, an
environment group, you will havea pipeline set up by default.
That is not the one that comesout of the box, which is not a
private one, but is a defaultone that someone set up.
So it will be a pipeline.
And what colin, what matt, saysis that, um, he wishes you

(38:29):
could actually set an um, uh,kind of a host, not just a
pipeline.
That's another thing.
So this is just the beginning.
This is probably going toevolve, but this is a way for
you, as an admin or yeah, tokind of set some rules and and
create some defaults for people.
Uh, so you'll have kind ofspecific rules that that kind of
applies to all the environmentsin that group and it was also

(38:51):
really automatic.
So what he really liked that hepoints out is that I only gave
it access to one of myenvironments and it set
everything up for me so youdon't have to go in and kind of
manually set everything up likeyou have to in the custom
pipelines or custom suddenly theregular pipelines, pipelines,

(39:12):
but yeah, so a bit moreautomatic.
It's nice to have these rulesso if you have new developer
environments coming in, forinstance, they will
automatically be assigned to agroup and that group will
automatically have thosepipeline rules.
That makes it a little biteasier to manage and govern.

Nick (39:29):
Yeah, yeah, and it's just sort of also in terms of the
deployment.
The deployment hub is, you know, you're trying to find what did
a particular pipeline run, whendid it run from?
You know, see the run historyand those types of things, and
that's that's also a pretty coolfeature, as opposed to trying
to dive in and find the, themodel driven app that it's sort

(40:00):
of.
Again, it's a separate, youknow, it is sort of an admin
thing, uh to do deployments.
So again, it's just kind ofconsolidating everything that
the new power platform admincenter.
I, every time I go into the newpower platform admin center I'm
discovering new little things.
Uh, I'm absolutely reallyenjoying.
I think they've done a greatjob.
Um, I really I probably shouldgo and do proper reading up on

(40:23):
it to find out everything.
But it is kind of neat thatthey're going through and giving
you recommendations and actionsand, of course, managing that.
And and this is one of thosethings where a lot of times, if
a new interface comes out,you're constantly flipping the
switch to go back to aparticular, the classic version,
this one, I haven't really,I've turned it on and in most

(40:44):
cases I haven't had to go backto the old one.
I've been able to find eitherthe same feature or something
better within the new powerplatform of mid center.
Again, other people might havedifferent experiences,
definitely share those with us,but overall definitely liking it
.
And again that ties in, likethe deployments, for example, we
can actually monitor thedeployments and see what's

(41:05):
failed and what's passed andwhat's going on.

Ulrikke (41:08):
Yeah, yeah, very good insights.
And I'm with you that new PowerPlatform Admin Center is just
so.
It's awesome in every way.
But I'm also one of thosepeople who, as soon as there's a
new interface, toggle, I'm onit.
You feel it's crap?
I, I just use the old one.
I'm like dude, come on, ifyou're working with our automate

(41:41):
these days and you're not usingthe new interface, you're
losing out and your productivity, even though it's buggy, is
probably lacking, so just get onthe new one come on to.

Nick (41:51):
To be fair, I'm more of the.
I will try, as soon assomething's new I'll turn it on
and then probably in about twominutes, like where who moved my
cheese back to the old one.
But for the power automate one,I do find that I am trying to.
Actually I'm using the new one,the new one, the new, the new
one.
It's definitely improved quitea bit over the last few months
and it's definitely improvedquite a bit over the last few

(42:13):
months and it's actually, um,I'm kind of into that camp now,
but I do find that a lot ofplaces, when you're trying to do
the entry points, it still willshow the old interface.
So you find yourself in that oldinterface if you kind of
navigate through solution,through the power app solutions.
So you got to remind yourselfokay, I need to actually go to
the power automate environmentto order to get the new
interface.

(42:33):
So, just out of habit, becauseI spend most of my time in the
Power Apps environment, I'll endup in the classic interface.
So that would be something interms of an improvement to give
me at least the toggle, theswitch, that I can always
default to the new interfacebecause it does have new
features and things thatactually are very helpful for

(42:55):
the most part over the old one.
I think it's still a few littlethings which will, everything
in the fullness of time, oh,just get better.

Ulrikke (43:03):
Yeah, 100%.
And also it's a reminder to usethe right tool for the right
job and go through the rightinterface for the right things.
If you're working with powerapps, use power apps.
If you're working with power,automate things.
If you're working with PowerApps, use Power Apps.
If you're working with PowerAutomate, I suggest you use the
beepin' Power Automate interface.
What?

Nick (43:17):
if you create tables for Power Pages, what interface do
you go through for that?

Ulrikke (43:22):
Oh, tables, that's Power Apps Done.
It doesn't have anything to dowith Power Pages whatsoever.
So use Power Apps for any datamodeling Done, done.
Oh Jesus, don't push my buttonsRight, okay, moving on to
something that is going to pushyour buttons, because it's

(43:43):
fucking time zones, lynn, whichwe love.
Hi, lynn Created two or, firstof all, something that caught my
eye and that was Power Automateconvert time zones using an
expression.
This is power FX land, thecoding, the mystery of time zone
names and through the blogposts, in true Lynn style.

(44:05):
And this is funny becauseLynn's blog post is one of those
notes to self blogs where hesimply just create blog posts
just so that he remembers thenext time.
So, and he's written it likehe's written it to himself.
It's just a completely.
It's one of those things youget to see inside someone else's
mind worlds and it'smagnificent.

(44:26):
So when he dived into this cause, he was kind of struggling with
time zones, as we all are, andhe thought you know what?
I'm just going to double down,I'm going to figure this out for
good.
And what he discovered is thatthe names of time zones is
completely bunkers.
For instance, you have two timezones for Australia, which is
in it's.
It is the same time zone butone adheres to daylight savings

(44:49):
and one does not Mind blown, whydo you have to make it so hard?
And so he figured it out.
And then he lost me halfwaybecause it's Flynn.
But if you struggle with timezones and time zone names and
trying to understand how itworks, then he has a solution
for you.
So there you go.
And also, when I scrolled downto the end of that and looked at

(45:11):
the conclusion and everything,there you go.
And also, when I scroll down tothe end of that and looked at
the conclusion and everything,he has three other blog posts,
related kind of things.
And then I saw Base64 andbinary file content types in
Power Automate blog posts, whichsaved my ass, because I'm
working with a customer rightnow where I have to convert
images to PDFs through HTMLpages and then Base64 enc code

(45:35):
them for them to show up and thepreview thing at another system
, and it's like and so, and Isaw that and I was like, oh,
that's why I haven't been ableto get it to work.
And then it figured it out.
So then save my ass.

Nick (45:48):
Yeah, and that was a and that's a five-year-old blog post
as well.
So it goes.
It goes to show that the olderstuff is still relevant.
I still get comments on stuffI've written like in 2020 or
before, right.
So yeah, just because thecontent's old doesn't mean it's
wrong.
Some of the stuff is timeless.

Ulrikke (46:07):
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
It's an old platform, so, yeah,100%.
And talking about oldtechnology, um, power pages has
had a few announcements thisweek.
Uh, it's now in my head, barpages as is.
He's kind of completely legacyand I don't think I'll ever put
another list component on thepage.
What do you think?

Nick (46:28):
uh, yeah, for for, for demos or for understanding, for
stuff like this.
But uh, this, this newannouncement for me.
When I looked at it first itwas like part of me was,
couldn't we always do this?
And then I read deeper into itand I'm like, oh yeah, no, not
the way that they're describing.

(46:49):
So this opens up a lot of newpossibilities in terms of
building custom user interfaces.
And again it really goes toshow power pages is is becoming,
is what I like about powerpages versus power apps or some
of these other things.
It is very developer friendly.
It really opens up rips,because you're you know, when

(47:11):
someone talks about power appslike, oh, now you can see the
source code in power apps, likewe can see the source code in
Power Apps.
Like we could see the sourcecode and not the source code,
but the code behind the pages inPower Pages for a long time now
.
This opens up a whole new thingin terms of being able to
create.

Ulrikke (47:26):
Yeah we need to slow down and talk what it actually
is, yeah.

Nick (47:30):
We forgot to say what that ?

Ulrikke (47:31):
yeah, so the announcement is you can now
create and deploy a single pageapplication in PowerPages.
It's now in preview and what itactually means is that you use
PowerPages more as a scaffolding, as the blob thing, and you
just put your React code insideit and it works like a one-page
application.
Now backtrack what?

(47:53):
10 years now or something.
When I first met you, you didthis.
So this was when we talkedabout power pages the first time
.
I remember you saying actually,for for most project that we do,
we use all the benefits of theauthentication, the security,
the governance, everythingthat's good in power pages, but
what?
What you actually interact withon the page is usually custom

(48:15):
code, because we just use it asa placeholder and we kind of
inject our companion React orAngular app that is hosted in
Azure somewhere into thePowerPages site to do what we
wanted to do.
So actually, when I saw this, Iwas like wait Inception,
because I was just suddenly backthere and I thought, yeah, now

(48:36):
that we can vibe code and we canuse vision studio code and we
can get a co-pilot, this isprobably the way to go forward
with power pages.
And then we had an internaldiscussion between us in the
group where we went just ah,what should I learn?
React, oh, should I not.
And what do we do?
And is this good or is it bad?

Nick (48:59):
What's your take?
You know it's funny because itdoes go back to the days of the
old ADX, the classic ADX Studioproduct, where it was deployed
on IIS.
And, yeah, we did use the listand form components where it
made sense.
But in more times the clienthad particular requirements

(49:19):
where we needed to create customASPX pages that interface with
Dataverse.
Sometimes, I know the questionsometimes came up well, why
bother using Power or, at thattime, adx2 portals at all?
Why don't we just buildstraight up NET web applications
?
Well, the reason why youwouldn't do that time MediaX
Studio portals at all, why don'twe just build straight up NET
web applications?
Well, the reason why youwouldn't do that is because and
it's the same argument today ofwell, why not just build a

(49:41):
single page application anddeploy it to an Azure website?
Well, what we're getting is,for instance, authentication, so
we can actually use the regularPowerPages authentication for
our single page web app.
That saves days ofconfiguration time in terms of
building a single pageapplication, in terms of the

(50:14):
security, because you can usethe PowerPages web API, so you
don't have to worry about all ofthose the token passing.
Everything else it's all takingcare of you, taking care for
you so you can interact withdataverse through your spa as
well, using the power pages webapi.
So this does it definitelyopens up a lot of new
possibilities.
It does provide that good yeah,that framework.
Um, I still think there's stilla, there's still um, there's
still a mode or market forbuilding the pages and using

(50:34):
those components for veryfunctional web applications and
things like that, if you don'thave those specific user
requirements.
But if you're in a case wherethe user interface is important,
how things interact with theuser interface is very important
.
This is going to open up a lotof new doors and also allow more
of Fusion, allow to increasebetter that fusion team

(50:56):
development of the reactdevelopers and the power pages
features and stuff that we allknow.
In terms of, yeah, the vibecoding and stuff too, it's like
again, yes, we'll be able to.
We, I think still what I'm kindof been in my experiences with
vibe coding lately, um, it's youstill need to have some of that

(51:18):
foundational knowledge in orderto make sure things work right.
But again, the vibe coding tome, you can start vibe coding
knowing nothing.
But even if you're vibe codingtrue, they say true, vibe coding
you shouldn't even need to lookat the code.
I'm saying, yes, vibe coding.
Look at the code.
I'm saying, yes, vibe coding.
Look at the code.
Learn from the code.
See what it's generating, seewhy it's generating it.

(51:39):
Ask it questions Is this secure, is this efficient?
You, as a developer, are justgoing to become better because
you're actually now working with, I would say, like someone
who's tutoring you through thisprocess, even though it's still
your own ideas and businessprocesses.
So the next time you want to gocreate code, first off, you
know what prompts to run, butyou also can understand a little

(52:02):
bit better what's happening.
So, again, this opens up.
So should we learn React?
I think it's not the fact thatwe're going to sit down and
learn React.
I think we're going to learnsome of the whether it's React
or some of these othertechniques or frameworks that's
just going to come to us,because we're going to be in a
situation where we're going toask GitHub, copilot, I need to
do this, and it's going togenerate code and we're going to

(52:23):
look at it.
We're going to go, yes, thatmakes sense to me or no, but I
accidentally learned it alongthe way.

Ulrikke (52:34):
Yeah, but I have a problem with that, and that is
when I tried to learn somethingthat complex.
I'm not very good at it.
So I recognize even now when Ilook at the React developers
that are on my team and howefficient and how well they do
things, and I look at my codeand I'm like, okay, this is

(52:55):
completely new, because it isthat foundational development
mentality and that youunderstand how this works and
how to create efficient code andall the different mechanisms
you learn as a professionaldeveloper.
I don't think that vibe codingis going to get to that.
Also, I don't think I canunderstand what the code is when
I don't think that Vibe Codingis going to get to that.
Also, I don't think I canunderstand what the code is when

(53:16):
I don't have that foundation.
So when you have thatdiscussion, I'm at the other end
.
I go.
How many professional Reactdevelopers are there in the
world?
Quite a lot.
How many people know PowerPagesand Power Platform as well as
we do?
Not a lot of people.
If you know power pages todayand you're looking at what

(53:36):
direction to go go in, don't godown the react route.
Keep on your lane and just divein and know the and get to know
the platform even better,understand the mechanisms around
and on the back and the thingssurrounding power pages, dive
into the security part, diveinto the authentication part,
dive into copilot studio andlearn that as best as you can,

(53:58):
because you can always get areact developer to come in and
help you with the code stuff.
That's not where you're gonna,kind of you, just find your
niche, find your little thingthat you're really good at.
That sets you apart, andnourish that part.
So it's interesting that we comeat this from different angles
and I love that.
We can kind of just talk openlyabout it and we kind of

(54:20):
disagree and it's completelyfine and then you just do what
you want to do.
But for sure it is veryinteresting because I see these
pop up so a lot of places and ifyou look at the conversations
I've had with people this lastweek about AI, the underlying
worry and anxiety comes in froma place where where do I fit

(54:43):
into all of this?
What am I going to do?
What is my work going to looklike the next five years?
What do I need to learn?
What is the skill that I needto develop in order to survive
and to have a job in the nextfive years, and I think that is
probably the underlying anxietyin this conversation, as well as
PowerPages people, now thatPowerPages suddenly is a

(55:06):
placeholder for React code.
If you look at it from theextreme, what do I do with my
skills?
And I'll always come at it fromthe perspective of what are you
passionate about?
What is the thing that sets youapart?
What is it that you know thatnot a lot of other people know?
And if that's something thatyou are passionate about, that's

(55:26):
the direction you go in, anddon't be scared about kind of,
because you always need peoplewith that kind of key knowledge.
Um, so yeah, yeah and it.

Nick (55:39):
I like that.
It's funny because we've talkedabout this before in terms of
career paths and what to learn.
Um you like, I know for myself.
I didn't choose portals.
I didn't sit down one day going.
I want to learn.
I want to learn how power pagesworks.
I want to learn how PowerPagesworks, or I want to learn how
ADX Studio Portals work.
It was more of a case of no.

(55:59):
You need to learn this becausethis is a project, this is where
you need to go, and I thinkthis is some of the AI things
too.
It's sort of like, okay, well,I need to learn this, but I need
a project to focus on and tolearn that.
And finally, a few of thesethings are popping up, forcing
me to go down different roadswith that.
So, um, yeah, so it's a.
It's like the harry potterthing right, the wizard doesn't

(56:21):
choose the wand, the wandchooses the wizard.
So we're going to see this.
So, again, but also, be open,be curious, be, um, be open for
the wand to choose you.
Whatever that technology stackwill be, and I think we, because
of our whatever that technologystack will be, and I think we
because of our experience andthings like that, we're still
going to be able to provide alot of value.
But I will agree, it is goingto be.
We're going to have thisconversation in two or three

(56:42):
years.
Our jobs are going to beradically different and, I think
I hope in a really good way.
But cause?
But the thing is also, when wetalk about this thing, about the
single page applications, onething it doesn't do, which both
you and I are good at, is liquid.
And it brings us to the segue,to the next post that you put

(57:03):
from Callum Harrison.
You want to chat about that?

Ulrikke (57:06):
Sure, no, it's actually just how to learn liquid for
power pages, kind of documentthing on LinkedIn that he
created because he was divinginto it and learning it.
So it's a really good resource.
But I also think that it's kindof becoming a bit obsolete now
that we have web API read accessand stuff.
I'm looking into some of theold things, for instance, how we
used to use the AJAX method toread data from Dataverse and

(57:31):
then put it into customdropdowns, for instance.
I'm implementing somethingsimilar now for a customer and
then suddenly I found I think itwas Oliver Rigger's blog post
where he uses the web API to dothe fetching and I'm like, ah,
that saves me two web templatesone page template and one web
page.
That's fantastic and I don'thave to use Liquid that much.

(57:52):
So it's I don't know, um, I'mlooking at this and going it's
probably yesterday's news andlooking forward.
Maybe we don't have to use itas much, but it's uh, but it's
still.
If you're going to work intraditional power pages site
implementations, liquid isabsolutely valuable to learn.
So check out Callum's post.

Nick (58:13):
Yeah, and I feel I still think liquid is very elegant for
certain situations as well.
Much and much more lessoverhead, like in some cases yes
, like the description you justsaid about dropdowns, for sure,
but in other cases it is youcould basically write a lot less
liquid code, do a lot lesssetup to get what you want,

(58:33):
versus doing the read in the webapi.
So the right tool for the rightjob and also the load on on.

Ulrikke (58:40):
I mean just to fetch something or to use liquid to
get entity, to get data fromrelated entities.
It's a lot less load on thesystem than to go to grab it
before and then.
Yeah, in terms of that, if youknow how to use it, it's really
good.
In the interest of time, let'swrap it up with the EPBC, the

(59:04):
conference that we're doing nextweek, you and me, and Victor
Dantas, has a workshop on Mondayabout PowerPages.
Top Gun is coming back, soyou're going to have to get into
that little suit of yours andthe Top Gun Ray-Bans are coming
on for that workshop.
Boost your site developmentskills and become a pro pilot
with PowerPages.

(59:25):
And then you and me are doingPowerPages Top Tips and Tricks,
which we are now reinventing aswe speak, because, oh my Lord,
there's been some advancementssince we did that session last
time.
And also you have a PowerPagesCrash Course Co-Pilot Edition

(59:45):
session.
And then I'm also on a panel.
Andrew Beebe asked me to be ona panel with Joe Griffin, sarah
Largus, scott juro and me.
Um, I think that was it, sothat's going to be interesting.
Um, and yeah, then.
And if you don't have yourticket yet, which I hope

(01:00:05):
everyone has.
You can use nick 10 for 10 offoff your ticket and if you go we
have some absolutely amazingswag for you.
So your wife Bridge brought avery interesting little package
to when she came to see you andgo on holiday last week.
I'm imagining people at theairport scanning those luggages

(01:00:30):
went look, can we look at thatagain?
Did I see what I think I saw?
And just zoop, zoop, yes, it is100 rubber ducks.

Nick (01:00:44):
Oh, you gave it away.

Ulrikke (01:00:46):
Do you want to show people what it is?

Nick (01:00:49):
You have one nearby, I do actually.

Ulrikke (01:00:52):
So if you see us at EPPC, make sure to come by, give
us a hug.
You'll get a sticker and maybewe'll give you one of those
little rubber duckies.
They're so cute.
You correct me if I love it,right?
So do you want to talk aboutwhy you ordered a bazillion
rubber ducks?

Nick (01:01:18):
Sure.

Ulrikke (01:01:19):
So what happened?
Happened what we talk about?
So when you're doing codingI'll see what happened by
accident, like yeah, so whathappened was what happened?

Nick (01:01:24):
no, no, no, yeah.
So I mean, we um like, so youdo development.
There's always this concept ofrubber ducking, right where you
actually talk to something, andI've had this, uh, when I was at
microsoft.
This, uh, donovan, good, who,donovan?
It's big shout out to donovan.
Uh, sometimes he would justcall me in a team's meeting and
like I need you to look atsomething, like, okay, donovan,

(01:01:46):
sure we hop on a team's call.
I'm doing this code, I'm doingthis and did you put you did it?
Okay, I need to move this.
Like, oh, man, that's notworking, okay.
And then, boom, you go, oh,it's working, thanks so much.
And I'm like donovan, I didn'tsay two words.
He goes, no, no, no, you're aperfect rubber duck.
And of course it goes back tocoding about talking your
problems or talking you'rethrough yourself when you're

(01:02:09):
actually talking to like arubber duck.
So I thought, hey, we shouldcreate rubber ducks.
I wanted to see, can we to arubber duck?
So I thought, hey, we shouldcreate rubber ducks.
I wanted to see, can we get arubber duck with the Boost logo
on it?
And sure enough, you can.

Ulrikke (01:02:19):
Yes, it turns out.
You can, and of course we dothis all the time and every
single week.
Of course we're on the sameproject together.
It makes sense, but also forother things.
We have rubber ducks.
That's kind of what we do.
I just need your eyes and head.
Can I borrow your head?
That's what I'll say, and I'lluse that as my rubber duck.
So does this mean I can't useyou as my rubber duck?

Nick (01:02:45):
Because, as much as fun as a rubber duck is, I kind of
want the in-person experience.
Yeah, oh, yeah, no, I'll stillbe rubber duckable.

Ulrikke (01:02:49):
Okay, rubber duckable, I love it, okay.
So what are you going to do nowis you're going to use AI and
you're going to have it, look atour videos, and then you're
going to turn us into rubberducks.

Nick (01:03:04):
So this whole episode is going to be you and me as rubber
ducks doing the episode, right,yeah, yeah, sure, I'll get
right on that.
I love it Like we don't have athousand other things to do
before next week, but sure.

Ulrikke (01:03:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no worries, yeah, cause we say for
everything, we have so much timeon our hands, right?

Nick (01:03:19):
Yeah, absolutely.

Ulrikke (01:03:21):
I wonder when that is going to kick in.
I'm looking forward to it.
You know when, when, when I'mgoing to get all that extra time
that I'm going to get when Iuse AI and agents and stuff,
because they keep telling methat it's going to give me so
much time back.

Nick (01:03:37):
Yeah, I haven't seen that yet either.

Ulrikke (01:03:39):
Yeah, no, okay, let me know if you see it, because it's
not, yeah, I can't really saythat I've, if anything, I have
more to do, yeah.

Nick (01:03:49):
I'm in the same boat, all right.

Ulrikke (01:03:52):
So anyone listening to this if you have found where we
can go get that extra time, that, they're talking about, then
let us know, sounds good.
Sounds perfect.
All right, have a wonderfulrest of your day.
It's sunny and calm and a bankholiday here in Norway, so I
know that you're going to havegoing to walk around, probably,

(01:04:15):
and see some stuff and have awonderful day.

Nick (01:04:20):
Probably trying to get caught up in work.
I've done a lot of walkingaround seeing stuff in the last
week, so now it's time to getback to work.

Ulrikke (01:04:29):
Okay, sounds good.
I'm going to celebrate mybirthday with my brother at my
mom's space today, so I'm goingto go bake some brownies and
some rhubarb tarts and we havethe best ice cream, and it's
going to be a lovely day withthe kids.
So I'm looking forward to thatand I'll catch you this week
Later.

Nick (01:04:47):
Right, all right, catch you later.

Ulrikke (01:04:48):
Sounds perfect, bye, bye, bye, perfect Bye-bye.

Nick (01:04:50):
Bye.
Thank you for listening.
If you liked this episode,please make sure you share it
with your friends and colleaguesin the community and be sure to
leave a rating or a review onyour favorite streaming service.
That makes it easier for othersto find us.
Follow us on social platformsand make sure you don't miss a
single episode.
Thank you for listening to thePower Platform Boost podcast

(01:05:13):
with your hosts, Luric Akebekand Nick Dolman.
See you next time.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Breakfast Club

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Rubber Ducks

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Breakfast Club

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

Rubber Ducks

On Purpose with Jay Shetty