Harnessing the Power Platform: A Journey with Michael Roth

Today's guest is from Germany . He's the manager of experience design at Avernart . He's crazy about learning and his superpower is kindness . You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode . As always , welcome to the show , Michael

I'll let you riff on that .

This is a huge part of my life actually , and when I think about what I do for fun , I'm one of those crazy people who do what they do at work Also for fun , like closing down your work laptop , opening up your fun laptop and do the same thing over again .

But I realized , since I have kids , that I do have to have like a hard line , a hard cut , like there's work , there's work work , there's fun projects at work , but there are kids and they always come first . And so family this is a big F . It's a very important one actually . Yeah , food , actually that you mentioned it is another .

I was just talking with a co-worker today . Food is really important for me . I was talking with a co-worker today and we were talking about traveling , traveling the world like backpacking style . That's what we do , what we like and she was asking me how do you pick your countries where you want to travel to and I just said well , it's all about the food .

I travel for food and stay for the country and for the mentality and the people , but I go for the food . So I cook a lot at home and now I can combine two apps . Actually , I cook a lot with my girls . They're still small but I try to include them as much as I can like into the whole process of cooking food , preparing food and eating .

That is actually the huge parts of my life . And if you would just have asked me , what do you do in your free time , I wouldn't have thought about it , because do you know that when you ask somebody , even somebody asks you . So what do you do for fun ? Wait , who am I ? What's my name ? Again , what do I do ? Damn it .

But yeah , that's a great introduction . So food and family , that's a and those two things beside , work actually brings me fun . This is what I do for fun . I like it . I just realized I have a bunch of hobbies , but I have way too less time actually to fulfill them .

But I just get back into that because I took a break after the kids were born . I was like this is a dangerous hobby maybe , and I'm getting old now I have responsibilities for my kids , so maybe slow down a bit . But the kids are getting bigger now . This is more than three years already , so I can get back into that stuff .

But when I got there I met the people and I had some struggles because I don't speak Vietnamese or any related language and many of the people that I met there and as I mentioned earlier , I'm trying like a backpacking style you don't visit the big cities but you meet people from like the countryside .

They don't speak English or German , for that matter and then you have to communicate with hands and signs and gestures and something like that , and I really liked that and all the people met . They were so kind . They're inviting me , sharing the food and family , their stories and then just creating a good time and I enjoyed that so much .

That really stood out for me , like from all the countries I visited .

It's a long country , which like a lot of order , and I would really like to see that . And , as we are talking right now , I've never been to New Zealand , neither Australia , and that is something that's like an unknown world . You just realize what's in the internet , and the internet says everything in Australia wants to kill you , tries to kill you .

So this sounds adventurous and interesting , yeah .

Really they don't , you know , hang out at that kind of altitude . So that's the probably the reason I didn't really live in the suburbs or anything like that . So which is where you hear the stories come , you know people pulling their curtains back and there's a big huntsman spider which is as big as your hand .

But it's not that that , that that specific one won't kill you .

But then I remember talking to the guy from Microsoft and he was like , oh , he was just looking at the edge of the deck on his house and there was a big snake python snake living down there and I was just like you know , I couldn't have that , I couldn't live with snakes that close at all .

What are you , what are you going to ask ? What are you going to look for to understand where this customer is at now and where you kind of based on , perhaps , where they want to go ? Or often , you know , if I look at my experience , customers don't know where they want to go .

They've heard something about this could solve a lot of problems , and so a lot of what you're doing is is educating on the art of the possible . You know where you are now to where you'll be in 12 months , 24 , 36 months time with the technology . Tell us about your thinking process .

That is often what I hear from customers . And well , I think it's not about the tools and the techniques or like the shiny new things . It's about the business case really . And right now , where I come in is when my customers say , okay , we have this awesome idea and we are a Power Platform and let's do this .

So what would your Power Platform approach be to our business case ? And usually what I hear when I talk to customers , they talk to , like , people from sales and presales before and they were pitching ideas and I don't want to step on anyone's toes here .

But if somebody from sales tells me there's a customer there like this business case and we can solve this with Power Platform , please , michael , go in there and solve this with Power Platform , I usually start with , okay , let's pretend I don't know what this is all about .

I haven't listened to sales or what you said , so please can you explain what is your problem , and I don't want to hear your solution or what you think you might need or what the cool thing about Power Platform is . What is your problem really ? And then I have an approach that works really well , and that is something like a joke .

Do you know the difference between a doctor and a consultant ? When a doctor finds a spot that hurts , they usually stop pressing .

If a consultant finds a spot that hurts , they increase the pressure and really dig into that and that is something when a customer explains what their business case is , that's where they start and then it's okay , no , but what's your problem ? What do you want to solve ?

And if I find a spot that they say , yeah , I don't want to talk about that much , let's focus on the cool thing like Power Platform with shiny , it's new and stuff like that .

And I said , no , no , no , let's take back a step to that you don't want to talk about , because that's usually where the problem is and where the root cause is actually , and that is . I usually don't want to talk about the symptoms , but what's causing those symptoms , and dig a little bit deeper .

So from my background I do come from not from a technical background , but I come from organizational development , where I talk to people a lot and we talk about organizational structures and team structures and team setups , and this is where I usually start looking for problems , for things that annoy people for things that really annoy you in your typical work , in

your day-to-day work , because that is where I think Power Platform really shines . It's not the complicated business case , the critical business case , but it's the day-to-day work that really sucks sometime , like fill out that extra sheet , put it in the email , send it over to the next department . They get this number , so I'll put it into a different system .

Yada , yada , yada . That's where I usually start digging around .

Where do we go now from the platform perspective ? First of all , tell me typically or generically , however you want to do it what do you find when you first take a look at what's been going on inside the Power Platform ?

Tell me some of those stories that you tell about what you discover , what's been going on , and then I'm going to get you to talk about what's the path to structure , governance and things like that from that point .

And I don't like that because all the customers , they go all in hey , that's cool , that's new , everybody can do this . Now let's try it out . And I do like people who like , don't hesitate , don't overthink , but go into it and try things out . I do like that .

But then there's a point where I come in and they say , hey , we clicked a bit around and we tried it for a little bit and we thought , maybe we need a plan . We need to think what do we want to achieve with the platform ?

Well , not too many customers say that they're like now we think we need a plan and they say , okay , let's think first , what do you want to achieve ? What do you want to utilize the platform for ? And then I'm going to ask what have you done already ? What's going on in your tenant right now ? I say nothing too much . A few flows , maybe a canvass app .

That's what we tried . And I think , since Power Pages was announced , I'm like , okay , what do you have ? Do you have AI models , power Pages and portals or whatever ? And they usually say no , no , there's just a couple of people , five to six people clicked around a bit and nothing too fancy .

And then usually we install the CUE , just take a look under the hood and what's going on , and then we find like 20 Power Pages . There are dozens of AI models , so there's way more than they expect and it's like , okay , maybe we need to talk , maybe we need to think about what happened and how is your approach with the Power Platform ?

I know Microsoft says it's easy , everybody can do this , and that's the point everybody can and everybody will do this , because there are many people out there who are curious and if I see a shiny button , I click it . Many people are the same and they see the button . This is called Power Automate . What's that ? It's power in the name .

So I need to click that and try out what's happening there . So I can't blame anyone for trying things out and clicking around and see what happens . That's what I do usually . Let's try it out and find out .

But that's usually the point where it comes to well , let's say governance or let's say okay , like let's take a quick stop here , take a deep breath and think about what we want to achieve . Where do we want to go ? Because this is usually there's a fuss about new tools , about new tech . It's shiny , it's exciting , but it's all tech in the end and we stop .

I think we should stop thinking about features of tech and think about the business problem . What business model ? What do we do actually and what do we want to achieve ? As much as I like playing around with new toys , so yeah , that's usually what happens . And this is like the all time favorite story , like do you use PowerPages ? Nope , not at all .

Oh well , look at that , there are 212 in there . That was what happened , and I think in the last project I had something like they had around 30 makers , so not too , many and they're building as quite a huge company , actually a global enterprise , and I said , okay , this is not , this is just a reasonable amount .

If you just started out like 30 people playing around with it , that's fine . So I don't expect too many objects like apps and flows and whatnot . And we found over 700 canvas apps . I was like , okay , 30 maker and 700 canvas , that's a lot .

And then we looked into the details and there was one maker in particular and she was very busy because she made 600 of those apps . I was like , okay , what's going on here ? Wow , turned out she just made one app , but she wasn't aware of versioning , so she was saving a new version of the app , like a different file , over and over again 600 times .

That was really eating up storage capacity . Yeah yeah yeah , that are those stories that happen if you don't know what's going on in your tenant , and it's easy to miss what's going on because it's so easy and everybody can do that . We just go to the one end , but it can be like kind of fatal sometimes .

That's the point where I usually tend to slow down again and say , okay , before we do anything , we need a goal , a vision . Where do we want to go ? What do we want to achieve with the platform ? Because if we don't have a goal , we can't define any steps . That leads us toward this goal .

So , and I really like to and I don't know if it's mean , but sometimes I like to take this energy of this oh my God , what's happening in my tenant ? I didn't have a clue what's going on . I like to take that energy and to put that into the part that's not the technical part , but define a vision .

Let's talk about your mission and where you want to go with a platform like citizen developer approach , fusion teams or just like replace legacy applications , something like that . Let's talk about this for a moment before we get all technical again .

Yeah , sometimes I do have the idea that I slow down the customer again and again To say , okay , let's think before we act . Actually it's good . Yeah , I'm working well there , I'm having fun actually yeah .

What does that baseline look like for you that you want , from a platform perspective , in place ? What are the guardrails that you want in place ? What are the design patterns that you want in place ?

What are those things that you want to see that is now taken this organization and put it in a position that says , okay , you now have a platform that you can start meeting multiple of your business goals on .

We have a goal , then we clean it up and then we go . But this is usually like long process , right , because there is things going on and the platform is in usage right now usually , and so we can't stop on that , we can't put a hard stuff on that . So , but yeah , let's skip that part and let's say , okay , what's how to scale , how to go on ?

And I think that differs from customer to customer , from use case to use case , because there are large enterprises who say , okay , when we utilize the platform , we want this citizen developer movement and we want to support them with , for example , first level support .

But not every organization can deliver that kind of what you need for first level support for , let's say , even 50 makers . They do have questions , like every day , and when I remember back in my beginnings with Power Platform , when I designed my first Canvas ever , like , I had a question every five minutes and I can't raise a ticket any five minutes .

So the point is that I want the organization and , if I have a Power Platform administrator or , even better , a Power Platform administrator team , because I'm really like to quote from the Microsoft Governance White Paper this is a teamwork job .

Can you have an SLA or support in any kind of way ? So , yeah , we can do that . And we say , okay , now let's think about your 30 makers , now let's think about your 300 makers . Can you still deliver the support ? And it's like I don't know . I do have a job , because that's another issue .

Actually , most Power Platform admins that I know they've been in the wrong meeting at the wrong time and boom , suddenly they are Power Platform admins and this is like on top , on the day-to-day job . So it's kind of a difficult situation for Power Platform admins , but for them usually , because they struggle .

I like to give them an idea of something that I've been talking about this year a lot . This is called Power Platform the bare minimum . What is the bare minimum in terms of governance ? What you need to have done at least so that the tenant is secure . From there , you can build it up step by step and look what's your business case ?

How many makers do you have ? Citizen developer , few teams , what there is there so many options and possibilities to go with the platform . From there you can build up , but you need to have this baseline and maybe they will answer your question . What is this baseline ? What does it look like ?

I usually start with a bare minimum of tenant settings Like , for example , tenant isolation , self-service purchase . This is quite a sneaky one actually . Just think about do you want it enabled ?

Do you want to have a handle on it and to limit it to who is able to create new environments due to DLP , like who is really to be in the position to create how we want to use the platform , not how to work in the platform , but how to get set the rates in the platform .

That is just your team or everyone who is basically an administrator , for example . So kind of talent settings . From there we go to environment strategy . Like what would you be your talent to look like ? How do you want to shape it ? And it's absolutely okay to start with I don't know two or three environments .

Microsoft had this North Star architecture guideline somewhere where you have like multiple environments , all with DLP's and different security roles and it's really confusing and a lot to take in . And I always say it's okay just to start with two or three environments . You got your default . You got an environment for your I don't know your administrator crew .

That's the perfect place to start , so you don't have to come up with a full blown experience and you don't have to think it all through . Start at some point and then you can build up from that and with environments , there come the question about data loss prevention policies .

The more environments you have , sometimes a lot of customers thinks the more DLP's you need . But I think there's really one golden rule is that you need at least one tenant wide data loss prevention policy . So wherever your user gets a new environment from from a trial experience , from a community plan , whatever , they should be covered by at least one DLP .

So that you have an idea . Talking about DLP's , the Power Platform is growing rapidly . You know that .

So we have over 1,000 connectors right now and it feels like every week there's a new connector being published , very important , like set the default group for new connectors , maybe to blocked , so you have a chance to look into what's published so that you have a grip on what's going on right now .

So these are the tenant settings , environments , data loss prevention policies . This is like bare minimum . And from there I'd like to add on to say to talk early about security groups and roles , because this is something that many people often overlook and the power of that .

And they even meet customers who have like multiple environments and data loss prevention policies and they have the feeling like this is already going great . And then I get a guest account and I get a Power Platform license and I see 30 to 40 environments and like am I supposed to ? see all those or do ?

Should I act like I don't need to know basis , Like what's important for me ? Let's pretend I'm a citizen developer . I have 40 environments . I have no idea where to start . What am I going to do ? And I usually close with the most important topic , and this is something that I , at the beginning , said .

This is a secret topic , we don't have to talk about that yet , but it's the most important one , so we reveal it at the end , and this one is I just give the headline it's called documentation . Everybody knows what this is about , because everyone likes to read God's documentation , but nobody likes to write good documentation .

And as we were talking about things being on the internet , I said I've just read on the internet that every time you can't provide a document , a governance document , a kid dies . Once again , this is just something I read on the internet . I don't know if it's true , but I assume it is . So this is the harsh truth .

Actually , whatever you have , wherever you start , wherever you're at right now , write it down , because they are common people , they're starting people and you have , like you don't know who's going to be the next Power Platform administrator , who is the lucky person , but write down what you have and wherever you are .

It's no shame if you just start out we all start somewhere and some when but write it down and that makes it easier . And this is kind of the bare minimum settings that I often talk about .

So what I mean by a formalized way is that if you've got 300 makers , you would have potentially 300 different ways of writing documentation Absolutely , some being absolutely nothing to some being over the top . How do you standardize and publish in a consistent manner documentation ? Have you seen anything ?

Is anybody doing any tooling that does that effectively and consistently ?

I've seen a few tools one or two in GitHub that capture all the steps and actions that Flow contains , for example , and put that out as documentation , but this is more or less a technical documentation .

What I've done recently a lot is I talk to customers and they come with an organizational solution for that that every citizen developer has come to read the terms and conditions for part of the form .

And that includes that , yes , I have read and understood those terms , and that means every flow , every app needs at least a title that says what it does and the description that takes it further , so that , even if I'm another citizen developer and discovering a flow on app , or if I'm an administrator , I have to work with it , that at least I have a fair

chance to see what this does , and I don't want to see a flow that is more test one , two , three or something else .

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