>> Hello. Welcome to Less Code,
More Power. I'm Dona.
>> I'm Sarah.
>> It's Benitez here.
>> We've got a very special guest
all the way from New Zealand. Stay tuned.
[MUSIC]
>> Hello. Welcome back to Less Code,
More Power. I'm Dona.
>> I'm Sarah.
>> Today we've got a very special guest
all the way from New Zealand.
>> Elaiza Benitez.
You may know Elaiza from the Flow.
She has an amazing YouTube channel where she does so much stuff.
She is an international speaker.
She spoke at Microsoft Ignite last year as well,
and she's a general all-around awesome person.
So Elaiza, can you introduce yourself?
>> Yeah. Cool. Hey everyone.
My name is Elaiza, and as you heard,
I am based in Wellington in New Zealand.
I used to live in Melbourne,
Australia for six-and-a-half years,
but then decided to move back home to New Zealand.
But before I moved back home to New Zealand,
I traveled the world for three-and-a-half months,
and I met the Microsoft Community along the way.
I was blown away by everyone
who came and made the effort to meet me,
especially in Singapore, that was pretty special.
I didn't realize the type of impact that I had on people.
They were very warming and friendly, and they showed us around.
I really loved it.
But yeah, as Sarah mentioned,
I do have a YouTube series called WTF with the Flow.
The reason why I created the series was,
that was my way of sharing my knowledge of Power Automate,
so formally it was called Microsoft Flow.
The story behind it was,
there was a conference in Melbourne,
so this is known as the Annual Dynamics 365 Saturday event.
I wanted to use Power Automate,
but I didn't have enough time.
But then New Zealand, Wellington,
they had their Dynamics 365 Saturday later in the year.
So I gave myself two months to
learn Power Automate and see whether I could convert
my Dynamics 365 classic workflows into Power Automate.
As part of that journey,
there were a lot of ups and downs because it was
learning how Power Automate
works in terms of the different techniques.
What I found was, in Dynamics 365 classic workflows,
what you'll see today can be done in Power Automate,
but just merely through
a different technique and in a different thought pattern.
So after those two months, I thought, "Hey,
there's probably going to be other people in
the Dynamics 365 Community that want to pick up Power Automate
and have a go at replicating
what they've been doing in Dynamics 365 classic workflows."
So that's why WTF was born,
basically, because I wanted to share
what I learned with the community.
Then over time, it started to
branch out to cool, creative solutions,
and that's something I'll be showing you later on today.
Yeah. That's all I have to say for now.
>> That's so cool. I think that's absolutely fascinating.
So Elaiza and I had a chance to do
a very, very short sit-down session
in Auckland just a few weeks ago.
Elaiza, one thing I thought was
fascinating was that you went around the world and
visited all these local communities of
Microsoft customers and MVPs in so many different cities,
in so many different countries.
Can you share with us some of
the interesting learnings you had around?
What it takes to form a local community?
and what it takes to get that local community
to gather and actually do things together?
>> Yeah. Sure.
So I'll talk about Singapore because for me Singapore was
a special place because there's so many people in this city.
The cool thing is that they all loved each other,
and when I say loved each other, friendship type.
>> Yeah.
>> It was so clear because the people there, Deepesh.
Well, he used to live there, he has now moved back to India,
and [inaudible] who's now at Microsoft MVP.
There's people like Geetha and Manav.
You could clearly see that they were a good bunch of friends.
The fact that we could joke and they could take
us out to sightseeing as well as seeing the annual,
sorry, no the evening fire lights display around the Marina Caret.
I hope I got that right. But it was cool.
One of the questions that I kept
asking in each city that I went to was,
what are challenges that you face when you work with customers.
There's common issues.
Well, I don't want to use the term issues,
but there's common scenarios across each country in terms of
there's the desire to learn as well as help educate customers.
Not only on Dynamic 365,
but the Power Platform as well,
and that's because the Power Platform has become something that
is part of our ecosystem that we no longer,
well, I wouldn't say no longer can live with that,
but it makes our solutions so
much better when we incorporate the Power Platform,
whether it's Power BI,
PowerApps, or Power Automate.
I think that is true
because a lot of the people in our community today,
and I'm going to mention one person,
even though I should be talking about myself that it
was better to learn more about
Dynamics 365 or CDS
when they combine it with something like Power Automate.
That person is Ryan Maclean,
and I might have pronounce his name wrong,
based in Edinburgh in Scotland.
He's picked up Power Automate.
He's recently shown how you can make SharePoint and
Dynamics 365 work better instead of using
the standard native connector for
SharePoint and Dynamics 365 to share
a document management. I rambled on.
>> Yeah. This is awesome.
The show is all about you and stuff.
So Ryan is an amazing guy.
We'll have to get Ryan on the show at some point.
But yeah, that was really good.
I really loved how you especially brought together
Dynamics and the Power Platform because
of your experiences in Dynamics.
>> Right.
>> Yes.
>> Elaiza, can you share like
that whole journey when the Power Platform came about?
Because a lot of the Power Platform is
built on a lot of the stuff that came from Dynamics,
and I know that we're in a new world now.
But just share how
you used that change because a lot of people are scared of change,
especially from a technological perspective.
>> Yeah.
>> So much. People have had to adapt.
Like how have you adopted?
I know that you've got the show and stuff.
How do you know if people in
the community how have they adapted as well?
>> Yes. So I can definitely start from the beginning.
So I still remember where I was when I came across Power Automate,
which was then called Microsoft Flow.
So I was in an office that I used to work in back in Melbourne,
and I saw different posts about it on Twitter.
So I had a look.
It intrigued me because when I saw it back then,
it was boxes that you've liked, and you click it at expressions.
At first, I was like,
"Oh, I don't know if this is for me."
But then once I started seeing
all these other blog posts on things like Microsoft SharePoint,
or Office 365, I was thinking, "Oh,
well, no one's really covered it in Dynamics 365."
So I thought, "Okay, well."
I know it's some type of
Cloud Workflow Engine. That's how I [inaudible]
>> You're like Cloud things, so yeah.
>> I was thinking, I do
a web resource already today in Dynamics 365,
so not as classic workflows.
So I said, why not?
Let me challenge myself because I want to learn something
new and Power Automate stood out to me because I also did,
there's an EDX course for the Power platform.
So that included canvas apps, model-driven apps,
Power Automate, and a little bit of Power BI and there was one
that Yang was facilitating through EDX.
So when I did that course,
Power Automate was the one that I felt
I got intimate with because it
really stood out for me more
than canvas apps and maybe it's just the way I operate,
the way my brain thinks.
So that's when I decided to give myself a challenge.
The New Zealand conference is two months away,
let me see if I can learn Power Automate.
If it doesn't work out,
then I still have classic workflows to fall back on.
But it did work out, and that's why I
shared it. As part of the world tour,
everywhere I went, people asked about how to do
certain things in Power Automate and I was
more than happy to show them that.
Yeah. That's my spiel around it.
It's something that I definitely do want to keep
learning because there's so much that
you can do with it and I feel like I've only started to scratch
the surface because you'll see in
my next WTF episodes that are lined up for the next,
I think, 2-3 months.
The solutions are way different than what I did last year,
so I'm really excited.
So when I say solution,
that's things that you can use at the enterprise level.
>> That's amazing.
>> That's wonderful. So one thing we ask all of
our guests is to bring something to show everyone,
and you've got some sort of an interesting demo video show thing.
>> Yeah. I do.
I need to share my screen.
>> All right. Perfect.
>> I'm excited. This is going to be amazing.
>> Yeah.
>> So what you're seeing in front of the screen right
now is my mobile phone.
So what I'm about to demonstrate is the use of a Flic button.
What I've done in this solution is that
it's in the use case of a remote worker.
Now, that could be someone who works in the agriculture industry,
which this is based on,
but it could be anyone that works out in the field.
So this is actually inspired by my own father.
So my father used to work in the oil and gas industry,
and he would drive to the oil rigs out in
the Middle East and during that time or many years ago,
they would use a compass because
that's how they would navigate in the desert.
But eventually as technology evolved,
they were given mobile phones and then that became smartphones,
so they were able to look where they were
going as well as send a distress signal
when emergency services need to be dispatched.
So this solution that I'm showing you is how you can utilize
a Flic button to help
notify your team where you
are so that if something
critical has happened and you're out and about,
emergency services can be dispatched.
So the solution that I'm showing is the Flic button.
It is going to incorporate Power Automate and then,
it's also going to incorporate Microsoft Teams.
So I'm going to play it now.
>> That's cool.
>> Amazing. I love this.
This is so useful for any search and rescue thing.
That's just fantastic.
>> You use it by the holding
the Flic button and what's going to happen
is [inaudible] and in
that channel we will see
[inaudible] in that part,
it's going to show the details of the employee,
and the latitude and longitude coordinates,
and then you can share that with dispatching but you
can also check on a button so that it will bring up Google Maps,
so that you know where your colleague is as well.
>> That is fantastic. I love that.
>> Very cool.
>> I love this for just so many scenario like your dad's scenario,
anyone who is working in construction,
anyone who is working on a rig, anything like that.
Like, help get over here. Even in this building.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Get me in the parking garage.
>> [inaudible]
>> Exactly.
>> The thing is as well as like the interface,
we're not just as much
as we love the platform and stuff like that
and we love our laptops,
but it's changing the interface of how we
communicate and that's what I love about this kind of stuff.
>> Yeah. It actually changes the way people do jobs.
>> Yeah.
>> Whether that's a job like us,
fancy ones with laptops or people
in the field who've never had a computer.
>> Yeah.
>> Eliza, I don't know if your dad
actually uses a computer at all at
work or he went from compass to mobile phone,
the cell phone, and that is his one
technology device that he's got,
and we know so many people like that.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, firstline workers.
It's a huge audience, firstline workers.
>> Yeah. I like that. Because it has to be mobile, right?
>> That's right.
>> The stuff like you can't have this chunky thing.
>> No, you can't carry this around with you.
>> So I love that. That is fantastic.
So how long did that take you to put together?
>> Well, there is a cool story behind this.
That video that I just showed you was actually filmed in
Philadelphia by the Benjamin Franklin Bridge
and before I was in Philadelphia.
So this was part of my world tour last year.
I was in New York City and I was staying out
in Jersey and I was like, okay,
I really need to get
this solution working because I'm going to be
presenting at Washington DC,
Dynamics 365 Saturday in three weeks time,
so here we go.
So I viewed the Flic button.
It captures the latitude and longitude coordinates based
on the location of your mobile phone,
so it's a permission that you have to enable on your mobile phone.
So then I worked out, okay,
what is something that I can use that will show
the coordinates or the location of
that person in the form of the map?
An app that is available today on most mobile phones,
I hope, is Google Maps.
So I was like, "Okay, perfect."
So all I need to do is work out the URL for
Google Maps and how to incorporate
that latitude and longitude URL.
So I think it took me like 2-3 hours to get the minimum working,
and then another hour to polish it up
and looking all snazzy dazzle.
>> I love that you just said hours.
So me and Dona just looks, are you sure?
>> I know, like hours.
I was going to say weeks.
>> Yeah. Definitely. That's easy for you're an optimist.
>> Exactly.
>> When you said hours, I looked at Dona and I was like, "Yes."
>> We had this long debate today about C++
and C# development compared to this. That would take weeks.
>> Yeah.
>> Actual weeks.
>> Yeah. It definitely would not take hours.
>> No. It definitely would not take hours. That's amazing.
>> The reason why I think it took hours,
because for me, the game changer was Adaptive Cards.
This is something that I spoke about both at
the Washington Dynamics 365 Saturday and recently,
Microsoft Ignite, the tour in Sydney,
was Adaptive Cards.
It's so quick and easy to create an adaptive card,
which is like a card user interface that's authored in JSON.
You're going to apply that across any type
of platform or application such as Microsoft Teams.
You literally don't need to know much about
the JSON payload because it
has things called elements, card elements,
and you can select and choose,
and then you can change how you
want the information to be displayed at a certain extent.
Basically, every time we add a card element,
they are something in the window at
the bottom of your screen where it's automatically going
to create the JSON payload that you can
then use in something like Power Automate.
It's literally just a copy and
paste, and then reference your dynamic content
from any actions in your Power Automate, such as the trigger,
which is what I did in my Power Automate.
Yeah, I love it.
>> I love how you're being so cool.
>> Like this is so easy.
>> I envied you. Fine. I just put this
program into my Power Automate [inaudible].
>> That's amazing. We're going to have you again
on the show for another episode to show Adaptive Cards.
>> That's right.
>> I think people would really want to know more about that.
>> That's something new and interesting for people,
I don't think a lot of people quite know how to use them.
Yeah. All right. So on every show,
we close up with homework.
>> Yes.
>> Because our audience knows
this is not just a watching show, it's a doing show.
So Eliza, what would you like everyone to go and try today?
Not a week, not in three years, but today.
>> Right now.
>> Well, there's a couple of things, and they
feed off onto each other.
So the first thing is try a meat-free Monday.
So I am plant-based.
I've been vegan for the last two years, and I think it's something
nice to do once a week in compassion
for animals that live in this world with us.
The second thing is to help with your meat-free Monday,
you can either build something like a fun app that will help
motivate you in terms of eating more veggies
and fruit and non-animal based products,
or you could do something like a Power Automate that is
automatically looking at an RSS feed for a plant-based website.
>> That's cool.
>> So that way, every time they post
articles or blog posts or recipes,
you can get that notification and it can help
motivate your meat-free Monday for, hopefully,
three months or a month or six months. Yeah.
>> I love that. That's amazing.
Using technologies to actually
help and help you in your own personal life as well.
>> I actually started doing meat-free Mondays and since then,
I've become a full-time vegan and that was six months ago.
So who knows? All right,
we're out of time for today,
but tune in next time to Less Code, More Power. I'm Dona.
>> I'm Sarah.
>> See you soon.
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