I recently joined Rory Neary on his “Power Platform 101” podcast to talk about what I’ve learned over nearly 20 years working with Microsoft’s business applications and, more broadly, low-code platforms. We covered how organizations can get practical value from Power Platform without over-engineering the first steps.
You can watch the full show on YouTube:
For audio only podcasts, you can find Rory on these services: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and many more.
In the discussion we dug into why some apps should be “throwaway” (think PowerPoint to canvas app) and why governance/licensing must come first when the platform empowers everyone to build inside the organization. We also debated AI’s role in app creation (such as Generative Pages) and why classic platform features like Advanced Find still matter to the power users needing to effectively manage CRM data.
The episode starts with my own origin story. What led me from a marketing professional working with the process side of CRM into a tech specialist and later an evangelist of low-code application platforms. You can find an earlier post I’ve written in my personal blog about my career retrospective 2000-2020.
At 2020, it was the moment I saw the time was right to go all-in with low-code. I co-founded the first Power Plaform consulting company in Finland and put away my “CRM hat”. This opened up a brand new perspective for looking at the familiar technology and solving novel challenges that were stopping customers from getting benefits from tools like Power Apps, Power Automate and Dataverse. Which lead to plenty of discussions around governance and licensing that still remain key topics in my advisory work.
Today, with an incredibly versatile set of tools bundled under the Microsoft business applications cloud, knowing what tool to use where is perhaps the biggest solution architecture challenge to overcome. Rory’s Power Platform 101 podcast series is aimed to help people without years worth of MS BizApps experience put things into perspective. We touch upon this dilemma and try to explain how even (former) Microsoft MVPs like Rory and I have faced difficulties in knowing where to dive deep and how to still maintain broad platform knowledge.
Regarding the tools and products we mentioned, I wanted to promote the recently updated Level Up browser extension that’s essential for all Power Platform developers and admins. (Having said that, be cautious of malware that can be spread by lesser known extensions and plugins).
For commerical Microsoft partner solutions, given my interest with all things related to licensing, I’ve been excited about what the new Inaus Guard provides for ISVs that want to protect their IPR with products built on the Power Platform. And speaking of such products, I of course had to mention how proud I am of the FinModeler SaaS app that we launched this Summer for delivering reliable financial models in Excel, generated with pure Power Platform tooling.
