Hi and welcome to Dynamics Update. Today is one of those interview episodes again and with me as usual is of course Gustav SundbladHello Gustav. Hello Johan. How are you this evening?I am fine this evening. It's a bit cold for being Swedish summer. It's been very warm a couple of days and now it's really, really cold. Now it's really summer. Yeah, so that's. Yeah, exactly. So that's why it's a bit fitting to to get to talk to someone today who is actually somewhere where it's a lot
warmer than than in Sweden. So Aria, welcome to the podcast once again. Thank you, Johan, and thank you, Gustav. Thanks for inviting me again. And you wouldn't believe it, but it's not sunny for the past few days and it's not warm. OK, when you say it's not warm, what does that mean?And then like degrees? Yeah, of course. So it's like 2324. Yeah, it's been quite rainy. I think we have 15 right now here or something like that. So it's it's like and we have had like 25
degrees this weekend. So it was really warm and now it's really cold. Yeah, I had to abort my youngest daughter's football practice yesterday due to hail coming down and so. So, but it's getting better. I hope we'll see. But no better time to to sit inside and and talk about dynamics, right. So Adria, I mean the reason you're here is not only because you're fantastic, it's also because you you you wrote a book, right?
Yes. So somebody proposed me, do you want to write a book about Power Platform and if I know and I accept it. And then I immediately, you know, yeah, yeah, of course. But how long ago was it?When did you start? So I first started drafting the first outcome of the book in March 2023. So I made an index of. The chapters it would have and then the sections of each chapter and that's the starting point before writing the book itself.
And that was March and I delivered the last first draft of the final chapter in December 2023. Wow, that's pretty fast, yes. Well, I mean, I have nothing to compare against, but I I've looked, I've read the book and it's a lot of content and it has a lot of, I mean it's not a thin, it's not like a manual. It's a very large book. It has a lot of sections and covers. I mean the topic, is that something you you thought of or was it like a it's something that is close to heart for you. It was
totally casual. So an editor at Pact contacted me about. They had an idea about writing a book about power platform, outstanding financial operations with the power platform, but they had no content or so that's why I had to write first the the I forgot it the the index of of of the book and when they proposed it, I I thought, I mean it's a good idea. It's like it's what it's looking like for us. No, it's more Power Platform on the side
and try to extend it with. I thought it was a good opportunity and that's why I accepted. So yeah, after 8-9 months, a book was born. The book was more yeah but I think the the most I mean the the title of the book is is as you said it's Extending Dynamics 365. It's a mouthful Extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps with Power Platform.
And it is a long time but it is what it is and I think it's the the most amazing thing for me with this is it's from an F&O perspective because you you come from the F&O side right. Because in all we've been discussing this for a couple of years now. I mean how important it is with the convergence and then the. Dataverse and moving to P pack and a lot of stuff that's covered in the book. But like you, you can't be just AX or FNO anymore. That's if you do, you're going to be run over by
by content in Dataverse. So it's very interesting to see a lot of these topics like Power Automate, all the tools and components available in Dataverse, but from an FNO perspective, because they are tools well within their own, you can do a lot of stuff. Without F&O of course, but this is and it just correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all these segments here are from from an F&O perspective of course. I think that's the most interesting part for me coming from an F&O side. But
have you was that hard?I mean did you did you spend more time trying out all the things in the book or did you spend more time? I have to say that it was quite a from from my. Point of view, it was quite straightforward because I wrote the chapters while I was testing things. So I I also the book has a lot of images because, well, I I found it hard to describe things without the screen captures and that's why it has a lot of them. So I just started preparing the examples or the
scenarios like so. For example, deploying an environment that's connected to Dataverse and I took the screenshot then edited the word. It was not first do the things done right, it was both at the same time. So that's that's what I really like as well is that that you are you do a very good job in actually illustrating the things that you write about that there are there are like step by step guides for examples that you can
do. Which is I think is really good because I mean if you come from an FNO perspective, you might not be that familiar with how Power Platform works. So I I think it's a it's a really, really good point. And I would also like to say that one of the things that I really realized is that because I mean the question you get when you start talking about Power Platform and FNO is like, OK, so X plus plus, I'm not going to do that anymore, right. But The
thing is. Which which you highlight very well in the book as well is that there are some things that are very well and easily done by X plus plus, but there are also things that are very much it's it's better to do them in power platform because power platform, I mean underneath FNO is still AX, it's still a a fairly old platform, it's it's I mean it looks, it's look looks flashy new and there are new things coming in, but I mean one of the examples you have is is the approvals
workflow. I mean we have a work workflow engines, we can build approvals in the workflow engine in FNO, but I would say that having them sent to teams and e-mail is probably better than having them in the FNO client, yes. And especially if you are waiting for an approval from somebody that maybe is not getting inside the UI of FNO, because that's the
case. I mean especially in big companies where they have to elaborate in my opinion workflows with many levels of approvals, especially when the amount of purchases or or whatever is really high. There are some users that are not logging in into the UI, so it's easier for them if they just get an e-mail or a message on teams. But well, you know, we still need the workflow framework because
sometimes I've been asked oh. The this example with the workflows on Power Automate, it's really useful, but can we somehow get rid of the workflow framework on on the F&O side?And my answer is always no because otherwise you would be building a new framework from scratch on on Power platform because in the end all the resources that. Are used in and in the book there's there's a specific example of of workflows and with moving part of the workflow into Power
Automate. Not the workflows but triggering the workflows in in Power Automate through business events and sending emails and and teams messages. But still those are using the workflow framework in in a funnel and it would be a lot of work to replicate that or. Create something from scratch and all the approvals and it's not worth it. So yeah, and I mean that for my part, one thing I also take away from from the book and learning to embrace Power Platform and Dataverse in the last few years is is
that like where does it fit in?And you have a lot of useful scenarios and examples in the book. I'm going to come to AI Builder soon because that's one of my favourites, but it's all about like finding that specific use case where you can. Either enhance efficiency within workflow as a good example, because you still need maybe the rigidness of the workflow within FNO to handle approval limits and to handle because you have your hierarchies within
FNO. So it makes kind of legal sense to to put it there, but you can handle all the other stuff like communication and routing the messages outside. You don't need to do that within FNO kind of. Interfacing to the modern workplace using power platform as it's a good use case as well. Another one that I just thought of with AI because from my perspective coming from F&O it's always been like you could do a lot of cool demos, you could build like an inventory counting app and
you could do like an AI builder. I've had some some cases before where you you could train AI builder from to. Take pictures or use pictures to enhance master data. Perhaps you could do measurements or you could do stuff to enhance, but it's not. It's not doing a critical business process, it's just helping out in that critical business process that still lives within the RP. So that's where the where I've seen it so
far. But looking at your book now, I see a lot of examples where you can actually like embed the power apps. Using X++ back to X++, but you can use X++ to embed it properly, like without having to click click all the buttons etcetera. So you can really use those things. You don't need to build all the business logic in X++, but you can still rely on it to kind of interface to the more complex ERP components.
Yes, and for me the problem with for example embedding power apps in the phone always finding. Good use case. That's the hardest thing for me. As you said, it's really nice to make a proof of concept or a small demo where you have a embedded power up. But maybe it's because so I'm good at solving problems, but not at creating the use cases or scenarios for demos. Maybe I mean. Maybe the problem is mine because I don't know which use cases we could have, but
that's the hard part. But the integration is there and we can use it even without X plus plus. There's you know that you can embed them even as a workspace. But I think you I think you touched on a very good thing before because I I I usually joke that. That the fewer people who need to log in to FNO the better it is because it is. I mean objectively it is a fairly complex UI. You need to know how it works. You need to understand where things are with the search bar. It's it's easier but it's
still. I mean it's there is still a like this wall of squares when you get in and you need to understand which is which and where. So using Power Platform and especially Power Apps as a UI for. FNO functionality where as you said, people who don't need to be in FNO but they need to do like one or two small things that is that is the perfect scenario for
this. And when it comes to embedding things within FNO, the power apps within FNO for data that isn't native to FNO, say CRM data for instance, that's the obvious one because. You don't have to be in two different applications. If you usually do your work in FNO, then you can see the CRM data in FNO. And if you if you usually do your work in CRM then you can see FNO data in CRM because you can embed that way as well.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the use cases will will come, as you say, Andrea, the the use cases are there in the millions out there. I think a lot of people, I mean I share your sentiment there. Usually Yuan and I, we see the problems because they come like we need to do this now. But the use cases are out there and I think that's the the main distinction with our platform that it's not meant for technical developers, stuff like people like us. It's more for the power users out there and God
knows that they have use cases. I I think the problem is that you are you guys are used to X++. That means that X++ for you is the hammer and and that way everything is a nail. And in some cases it isn't the nail, but you treat it as one because that's where you're more comfortable doing changes than in Power Platform or in some other place.
Yes, and The thing is I I also see another limitation with Power Platform or extending F1O with Power Platform and it's that it relies so much on eventing that either you start or you attach the Power Platform before a process starts or after it ends and everything in between you have to do it with X plus plus. And what you said, I'm an X plus plus developer and but I I I find it hard. So
it's an ERP. We are posting ledger things and sales orders and transactions and doing things with the power platform in between the transactions. We can't do that. That's the biggest limitation I see but. For example, it's very useful if you want to create a power up for what you were saying, Johan. People that don't need to get into the UIA salesperson with a power up that shows, I don't know, the open sales orders of a customer or whatever. That's really useful,
but. When it comes to posting the sales order, leave it to X plus, leave it to X plus. Yeah, exactly. But that's that's really it like with dual, right. And you can offset, you can even often you can do with virtual tables of course as you also described. And there are some like the problem before when we were only X plus plus developers where where we were, we only had our hammer, that's that's what we had, right. So that was the the solution to all our problems. Now
it's kind of switched around. Now we have like 10 different tools to solve any particular problem. So we need to know about the tools and we need to know about how they fit in. And I I think there are like a ton of ways to do that specifically like well what you mentioned already data capture and data like enhancement or enrichment. Those are scenarios where you really can can save
a lot of performance as well. If you if you do it right you you don't necessarily need to to have the data in real time in FNO. You could do a lot of stuff there with the power platform and just. Just linking those environments, which is also a segment in your book, which is so and and now I I don't have any. I would like to see statistics from Microsoft how many environments are not yet linked to dataverse. I think the majority need to be at this point. They should
be at least. That's a very like that's the first baby step that you have to take to start using all of these. All of these things, even if you're not using CE, you still need to embrace the Power Platform. Yes, continue please. So it's it's what Gustav just said that you're not using CE, but now we have so. Some functionalities on the Dataverse side. So the new sign ups link goes through Dataverse, this invoice capture apps or the BPA that new workspace. It's also a
model driven app. So they are in Dataverse. So it's not important if you don't have CRM. No. And then we haven't even mentioned the the platform P pack moved to P pack as well. That's another segment in your book like. We say that, OK, this is for business people, it's for controllers for it's not because we need to also understand how solutions work. We need to understand how environments are maintained because that's where we poor LCS embracers need to
move. And I'm just kidding, I I personally enjoy and look forward to moving to feedback. But that's another step. You don't need to know how a Power App works, but you need to understand how the Power Platform admin center works. Yes, and you know, it's on one side. I'm really looking forward to that and having everything on feedback. On the other hand, the book became almost obsolete when it was published. It's only one segment, right?That's that's something else. You need to you need to
do a like a version 2. Yeah, yeahSecond revision, yeah. But that has to be really complicated writing technical books on in in Azure like in anything where it's an ever moving target, right. A X 2009 you published, you're done and that's that's it. But now it's a it's a moving target all the time. But I think a lot of these things that you that you write about like Power Automate as long as they don't rebrand it from Power Platform to. I don't know, mega power platform or
something. Then you should be safe. Well, that's also a thing. So I don't know if you remember last year during Dynamics Minds 2023, it was at the same time as Build where all the copilers were released. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yes. And I was writing the book and I wrote up the the chapter on. Whatever. Now this has a copilot. Should I rewrite the chapter? And it was like this for the nine months that I was writing and one of the technical reviewers that Cesar Garibaldo, he works at Microsoft.
So technical reviewers go through the chapter and just start some comments and recommendations and he. He added the same to all the chapters. So there's a copilot that does this and that and I think it could be a good idea if you added this to the chapter. It was like I'm not reading what's wrong with my eyes. I don't see that word because that if I had done that, I I don't think I would have published the book yet because I would still be in. Rewriting hell,
yeah, especially with Copilot. They're adding it to everything and there will be a lot of content on Copilot anyway. So I mean it's pretty much the same story. Now not to like summarize Copilot here in one word, but it's also like in efficiency enhancement, like it's helping you do your work and it's the same I I look at a lot with FNO. Power App, specifically in Power Automate, it's like it's not replacing X plus plus or it's not replacing ERP in any way. It's not going to take all of
your workloads away from you. It's looking at things and trying to do it like automate tasks that you do. Tedious. I've seen so many processes that rely on a poor person clicking on the same button for two hours like the same day. It's like I've always done this every Monday. I do this for four hours. It's like that's where you really can go in with a. Surgical precision with the power tool like power automate, power it doesn't matter and streamline. And I think that's the same with copilot in
many in a lot of senses as well. It it's some it helps you work more efficiently. It doesn't necessarily change dramatically what you do, it just changes how you do it. There's that that famous demo about a copilot for finance. I think it's the one on Excel. I think we are mad with the names Copilot for finance in finance. So it's the Excel one and the demo that Microsoft always does is I really like that copilot because what they
show is really useful. So they load data from open invoices and payments from a customer or a vendor. I don't remember they match them and find. If there is any missing or why this year you had the four start over and this kind of thing. So that's really useful. But yeah, absolutely other other other copilot, I'm not going to say anything. Not yet. Oh,
but again it's a helpful tool. I think one of the key takeaways from from takeaways from your book and specifically what you mentioned in the beginning as well, just doing the index like all of those topics, power automate, power apps, all of the topics. This is like a a checklist of things that any FNO developer, functional consultant, anyone working within the realm of finance and
operations need to be aware of this. They don't need to be experts on any of these subjects at all, but they just need to understand how it fits in and what it can do. Otherwise we might still be trying to hit those nails with the hammer for many, many years, Johan, and I think that makes us kind of obsolete. So it's about using the platform. And its capabilities to to the best that it can like go to the other end of the spectrum as
well. And as you said, let's not try to rebuild the workflow framework because we already have one. We can just make it communicate a little better. It's not like replacing stuff, it's enhancing them with with the tools that are available. Yes. And there there is also one thing that you mentioned in the book
is is also around. The the the concept of decoupling, so being able to offload some of the development from the the FNO project because because that is a complex one in itself and also I would say that Power Platform and and Power Automate is not as affected by Microsoft changes as. Things within FNO, because things within FNO directly affect our code. When we build things in Power Automate or in Power Platform, that's a that's a developer platform that where we
don't. I mean, of course Microsoft can make changes to Power Platform that affect our code, but the whole point of the Power Platform is to run our code on it. So I think it's less likely for them to do major changes that breaks our code. But if if you look at FNO then they have code as well. So they of course prioritize their code within FNO because it that's they think that's more important. So if if that breaks our changes, our customizations, I
think it's also an an important part. So using it to to keep the the number of customizations down I think is also an important part. It's a very good use case. Yes. And you know, in the end it's just not decoupling, but also less downtime to deploy the tiniest change because you forgot that letter on a label which that has happened. No, never. No, of course, no. But that's another question I had as well. We had a segment on the on the ALM side because that's
that's always been kind of. In the beginning of Power Apps as well, how do, how do we, how do we deploy it?Is there a deployment cycle or do we have dev test prod?And to be fair, I mean from the beginning of Power Apps that wasn't really clear. We had the lot of different tools, but now it's become much better, right, with the whole environment setup. What is your experience working with coming from an FNO side where it's very rigid with dev test, SIT, UAT, et cetera. How do you, how do we
work with that in in Power Platform?So I remember the first time as I did anything with the Power Platform and you know in in Dataverse you've got this default environment which Microsoft then says don't use it, it's just it has to be there. It's like the dot company, right. And I did everything on the default environment because. It's there. That's where I end up
without doing anything. So you know on that environment I would, I would create power automates that were connecting to UAT, to production, to develop an environment and then you know then somebody from the CRM side came and said OK, stop, stop doing things and
well. The the LAM part on the book is a bit it's quite manual because there are pipelines right now for Power Platform that can help automate things and in my case because I haven't created very complex solutions, what I usually do is have a solution on the UA2 development environment of of of dataverse where I Add all the components. Power Apps or power automates whatever and then move that into the UAT and production
environment. But I haven't yet experienced with the pipelines and I think well because I, you know, I love the pipelines. I never know. I love it's not I love the pipelines, it's I love being able to automate things and. What the ALM solution that I present on the book is not very automated. It's quite manual, but it's the basis for automation later. Maybe. So if I do a second addition, I'm not very sure about that. Maybe I should add it. I mean, I mean it's it's pretty funny because I mean.
We have not historically been known for our our ALM in in AX. So when when I was looking at what's what's new and coming with the pipelines and stuff in in Power Platform, I was like we are finally ahead of someone in the entire world. It's not, it's not due to our own. Because Microsoft dragged us kicking and screaming into something that we didn't want to do first of all, but but it it ended up fairly well. We ended up in a situation where we have an ALM situation that I
think is a good one. It's it's it's rigid enough so that we can force people to work in a certain way. I I like that as well. So, so now when you see something that doesn't have that that rigidity to it, then then you realise that, OK, so maybe we have it fairly well where we're at at the moment. I I remember, so I started working with AX in 2010, but my first contact was in 2008 at in the university. Well, so it was a summer course on Accepta and until the year 2016
I think. So in in eight years I saw not a single project using source control on dynamics. A source control were comments and I remember being at the training for. Upgrade to FNO for developers. Source control thing. What's this?What do you mean?We are not doing comments anymore. It was it was like upgrading myself also as a software developer because yeah, you know, the source control that's for GitHub people that do whatever. Who needs it?
But on the other hand, ARP has always been like it's it needs to be rigid because it's so like production critical, right. So it's strange that it's taken so long to get to that point from the code base perspective, but from a deployment perspective it's always been critical and rigid at least in in in a well run project I would say. So that's another
aspect to the to exactly. There are many not well run products of course, but but that's another aspect to take into account in the ALM here that you need to coordinate these things with the CE team in case you run the CE because they also run their operations in the same environment that you deploy. If you have any any connection to FNO that is, you need to make sure that you have a connection to the same CE. So it just
requires. You and me, you and speaking with Dynamics Minds 2023, we had this slide with ERP plus CRM equals heart because you need to kind of bridge the teams together regardless if you do CE or just Power Platform. They you can't work in silos, you need to be Co working as a team.
Yeah, yeah, I I I thought it was a bit fascinating when I started with with FNO and AXI came from the infrastructure side where everyone started doing PowerShell scripts and things and andThe the last rage was to have everything in in GitHub because that's how everything everyone did it, even though you were just one person who did things. And I came to the AX side and we they were like, no, we don't do source control
unless we're like 20 developers. And I'm always fascinated when one side of the fence says this is absolutely right and the other side of the fence says the other way is absolutely right. Because I, I, I someone has misunderstood something here and and I would I I'm fascinated in trying to figure out how and who and what. Never a better time to to embrace those things than now
with all the tools that we have. Now we just need to we just need to move do that final push into PPEC and then we're all in the same place together and now we just need to learn to to sing along and work along together. Co-exist. But I mean, it's all about, yeah, exactly. And to understand each other's strengths from a platform perspective, I I mean, of course. Yep. So. So The thing is, I I'm not sure, but I think we didn't even mention the the title of the book in the
beginning. Yeah, we did. But let me mention it again. I think it's it's extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations apps with Power Platform. It's and the subtitle is to how to integrate Power Platform solutions to maximize the efficiency of your finance and operations projects. And it's out now on Pact Publishing that's on Amazon I think as well. I think you can order it on from any online publisher I would imagine. No, it's oh, it's it's that's a bit
interesting. I mean from my point of view, the book is actually printed on demand. So if you buy a copy in, for example, the first copy from the book that I got, I bought it on Amazon in Spain and was printed in France. Then I got the author copies that were printed in the UKI know people from the United States that. Got the the books printed in Texas. So cool. All right. So that's interesting to learn. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Publishing outlets. Very cool. But it's it was a pleasure to have you here,
Andrea. And it's a very fascinating book and it's at least as I said, it's a very good checkbook checklist to go through of all the topics that you need to be aware of. And if you find something that you really want to deep dive into, the tools are available to know. Yep. All right. So thanks, Adria, and hope to see you back at the podcast again. Sure. I will be here if you ask. Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you, Adria. Pleasure, Patty. Bye, bye. Bye, bye.