>> Hello, I'm Donna.
>> I'm Sara.
>>This is Kelsey.
>> Hi.
>> We have got an unforgettable episode of
LessCodeMorePower today because we have cookies.
If you want to know more about those cookies, you need to tune it.
>> Yes.
>> See you.
[MUSIC]
>> Hello.
We are back with LessCodeMorePower. I'm Donna.
>> I'm Sara.
>> Today we have a probably of most fair guest in the whole world,
Kelsey Bloomquist, because she brought us some very special gift.
She brought cookies for Power Platform.
>> Look at this.
>> Look at that.
>> How cute are these?
She even brought us LessCodeMorePower cookies.
She not only brought us these lovely display pieces,
but she brought individual ones for us. How lucky are we?
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> I'm so happy to be here today.
I'm just so excited.
I've always wanted to do something like this and showcase
my wonderful Power Platform cookies that I'm
totally geeking out, creating.
>> So tell us about you.
Tell us everything about you.
How did you end up in Power Platform?
What do you work on right now?
>> Sure. Well, I actually started at Microsoft right out of
college and I went to the CRM team as a developer.
Two years ago, we merged with PowerApps and then
we expanded to Power BI and Power Automate.
I started using those applications as well and I loved them all.
I was like, "How can I use all of these applications?".
>> Amazing.
>> So I started venturing out and looking and I found
this new position on
the ISV Engagement team under Stephen Guggenheim.
>> Tell us what ISV is.
>> ISV is an independent solution vendor.
So there are partners who build solutions on top of
our platform and then they sell them out to their own customers.
So we're here to help them technically
and in business so that they can be
successful in their application creations.
>> I love it. So you are helping all these devs be super
successful so they can go and help millions of companies.
>> Yes, exactly.
>> So powerful.
>> We help each other. It's mutual benefits.
>> I love it. So that's what you work on.
What is your day-to-day look like?
>> My day-to-day? Well, I have a lot of
hobbies like I love Power Platform, I love work,
but I also have a lot of things I enjoy outside of
work whether that's traveling or
music and art or even
sports like just snow-boarding in
the winter and hiking in the summer.
But I also really love to bake.
>> I see.
>> We're appreciative of that.
>> We like this hobby.
If all of you who also
are bakers want to come on the show, that's cool too.
We'll find a spot for you.
>> So over Thanksgiving Break,
I had a little downtime since I was here
and we had just finished touring
the world after we had our ISP Connect program launch.
So we're teaching our partner ecosystem about
the new platform and PowerApps and CDS and how they all
fit together and why we've made these platform changes
so that it's easier for them to build and create their solutions.
As a part of this,
I was doing presentations.
They're kept coming up this slide
that would make me smile every time
because they have all four logos of our Power Platform,
and I love the colors and I just love the symmetry.
It was something I loved and I
wanted to bring those logos into my personal life somehow.
>> I love that.
>> I didn't want to just have
the laptop stickers that everyone else has,
although I love those.
I wanted to do something different.
So I was in the mood to bake.
I had a lot of time to make cookies and I
decided to make Power Platform cookies.
>> This is so cool.
I just love, like I've never seen this before,
but I just thought how much energy you've
got around just what you do.
The fact that you truly believe
in spreading the message to partners from
nice fee perspective because the platform is
huge and there's a lot of
opportunity out there for partners as well.
But you've actually taken this into your personal life,
in such a delicious way.
>> Thank you. They're all different flavors.
So it's just amazing.
>> Your attention to details that you have is amazing.
>> Its amazing because
the detailed stenciling on these is off the hook.
It's absolutely wild.
>> So it's awesome you bring that up.
So the original cookies I made are
these layered cookies where I've
baked separate pieces and frosted them,
and then I've pieced them together after the fact.
>> Amazing.
>> I used royal icing so it stays wet.
But then once I place them,
it'll hard and really solid and have that nice smooth look.
I featured all four of the Power Platform applications here.
>> I love it.
>> But the second round,
because you guys asked me to come on here,
I wanted to do something,
different variations, something even more exciting.
That slide that I bring up,
they all show in circles and they have the logos in the center.
So I was like, "Hey, circles are really easy to make,
why can't I just get a logo on there?"
But piping that logo would be so difficult,
over and over and over again.
So I decided to create
a stencil for which I actually bought a dye cutting machine.
>> API stencils.
>> That's amazing.
>> I made these Power Platform stencils.
So I've got one for each logo.
It's probably difficult to see because they're clear.
But then I also created one for that Less Code, More Power.
>> Oh my gosh, I love that.
>> In order to showcase your show here today.
>> That's is cool. This is that stencil.
>> That's so cool.
>> There's a little laptop that we're
cutting down right now and are Less Code, More Power.
>> I love that.
>> That is so cool. Love that.
>> That is so cool. Talk about creativity.
You've got such an interesting eye for
how to showcase things in a very different,
cool, creative, interesting way. That's wonderful.
>> Well, thank you. I love to bring
creativity in both my personal and my work life.
What's awesome is this was able to help me
bridge that gap in my baking and work.
When I made these stencils,
it's amazing because they're reusable.
I can use them at anything. I can use them at baking,
but now I can also use them in other projects.
>> That's right.
>> What's great about reusable components is that we actually
feature something like that within
our application, within our PowerApp.
>> Reusable components, tell us.
>> Yes. So as I mentioned,
I was a developer for seven years in CRM previously
and I was on the PowerApps Component Framework team.
>> Wow, I'm seeing this story. This is great.
>> I love this. This is some storytelling right here.
>> Yeah. This is unfolding.
>> What you're watching is master story telling.
Go on, tell us more.
>> You ask what's PCF?
>> Yes.
>> Now, this is one unified framework that brings
together our model-driven apps and our canvas apps.
>> What does PCF stand for? For the audience.
>> PowerApps Component Framework.
>> It's the framework that allows you to make
components to embed in your PowerApps.
>> I see. Very cool.
>> So Microsoft makes our own components,
but we also allow third party developers to create theirs.
So they can code those app and then they can
import it into the system and to
the environment and use those controls.
What's amazing is, once you create it,
you can reuse them in any application.
>> I love that.
>> So like the stencils,
they are reusable across all of the application.
>> Think about the time that that saves.
It's so cool because that's very much from an ISV perspective.
What you said, literally,
what they're doing and what partner is going to be doing,
it's going to be reusable.
But also from a time effort perspective,
the partners and customers,
so that the partners can just go and
build something like the stencil,
go ahead and sell that out,
but then also it's saving the customers' time.
It's like pay-it-forward.
>> Exactly.
Huge saving in time and energy.
>> Love that.
>> Because this would have probably taken me
four times the amount of time.
>> Oh easily.
>> I would have to start weeks ago and by now they'd be stale.
>> I would still be doing them now.
Yeah, that's amazing.
So what is your favorite part about working
with ISVs that sounds insanely fun?
>> My favorite part about working with ISVs is understanding
their point of view and getting to know their businesses better.
>> Yeah.
>> Because before when I was a developer
in PowerApps Component Framework,
you have work items, you're in
your little silo, concentrating on that.
But I didn't know how the application
is being used with the outside world.
Now, when them coming and
asking questions about how do I connect here,
how do I use this part of the application,
I'm truly seeing how you're utilizing it and how
we can make the application better for them to use.
>> That's right. You see the end to end.
>> Yeah.
>> When you make the thing to how
they use it, to changes you make.
>> Right, and I really understand the importance of
that extensibility part now for our partners.
>> The direct customer engagement, which is so cool.
>> Yeah. I love directly connecting with them.
I have a ball, they're all great
and I love that personal interaction,
which I didn't get when I was a developer.
>> I love it. So ISVs out there,
if you need to choose a dev to work with, choose her.
>> Yeah. Look at the attention to detail.
>> Yeah, it's a lot of attention to detail.
>> That's cool stuff.
>> I am quite detail oriented.
>> I love it.
>> That's so cool.
>> We hear you've got something interesting to show us.
>> Yes.
>> I do. So while I was talking about the reusable components,
I thought I would showcase some PCF components for you today.
>> Yes. That will be wonderful.
>> True.
>> Yeah. So you ask, what is PCF?
>> Yes, that's what I want to know.
>> Well, it's a way that our
first-party, Microsoft and third-party,
vendors can create their own components
and embed them in a PowerApp,
and they are reusable and they are unified
between both the model-driven and the Canvas application.
>> That's amazing. So just for the audience,
I really want to emphasize the fact that this is something that
brings the two different types of applications together.
This isn't just something in the Canvas app world,
this isn't just something in the model-driven world.
This is something that's available across both of them.
>> I love that.
>> Awesome. So in order to start a project,
I would want to go ahead and install the PowerApps command line.
This is awesome because it just GA'd the end of last year.
But it's a way that you can spin up
skeleton files for your PowerApp,
so that you can understand what files you need to
fill out and what lifecycle methods you will need
to put in code for in order
for that component to do what it
needs to do within the application.
>> So it really helps out.
It helps scaffold what you're trying to do it.
>> Definitely.
>> That's right. Perfect.
>> Yeah, and so I have
here a command prompt and I've gone and I've
installed the PowerApps command prompt or command line interface.
I'm go go ahead and write pac, pcf.
in it. This is how I initialize a PCF control.
It's telling me I'm missing arguments
because you need to define the namespace, name and template.
For time's sake, I'm not going to go and create this but
I could go ahead and I would do pac,
pcf in it and then I could just do the namespace.
So what control do I want to make?
For my PowerApp, I'm going to create a system and allows me to
track my cookie orders and
I'm going to call it Kelsey's cookie kitchen.
>> Very cool.
>> This is epic. This is amazing.
>> Because after I've created all these cookies,
I have literally gotten calls for orders from everywhere.
>> That's going to happen today too.
>> I think Donna and I are going to
probably be some of those big customers.
>> Love it.
>> Yes.
>> So I want to go ahead and create
a map control so that I can
see where all of my deliveries are going to be this weekend.
>> I love that.
>> So I would go ahead and define
a namespace and I would have some name,
whether that's like a cookie map or something more
generic because we want it to be a reusable component.
Then, I would make this a dataset because it's
going to be multiple records,
not just a single field.
That's how I would go ahead and define it.
But I've already spun up a control for you guys.
I've created a map, actually
the PM of PCF created it. He's awesome.
He loves, in his downtime, to go and
create these PowerApps components,
he is very passionate about it, that's very exciting.
>> He can be very useful for us later.
>> So I've gone ahead and imported that map into my system.
>> How cool does that look.
>> Here, I have a model-driven app of Kelsey's cookie kitchen.
>> Wow.
>> I have all my contacts and this is showing
where all of those contacts live, okay.
I'm going to visit my father this weekend and he lives in Florida.
So all of them I'm doing
this weekend are going to be in Orlando, Florida.
>> Wow, that's where Kelsey's cookies are at this moment.
>> At this moment.
>> How cool does that look. That actually looks really wicked now.
>> This is an Azure map and,
it's a component that we've created,
we've defined what to show here and
it's using APIs to connect what
it needs to and then it's visualizing the dataset as this map.
If I want to go ahead and see the grid view,
I can go ahead and look at that,
"Read-only Grid" and see what I'll have in here.
These are all my active contacts that I have for these orders.
I have Cookie Monster, Little Miss Muffin,
Peter Piping Frosting, and the Sweet Tooth Fairy.
>> I love that.
>> Those are the four deliveries I have this week.
>> That is fantastic.
>> So I'm going to go ahead and switch back to that map view.
This is really helpful. I'm a very visual person.
I want to be able to understand, "Okay,
how much time is it going to take me to do these deliveries?"
Right now it's just showing them as pinpoints,
but if I wanted to go add different capabilities to this app,
add a route or something like that,
I can go and create that in the component,
upgrade the version and then go import that back into this system
and add whatever functionality I want because I own that control.
>> I love that. That this is so freaking cool,
Kelsey. I love this.
>> Thank you.
>> Before we let you go,
what is a call to action you have for the audience?
A piece of homework you'd like them to go do today.
>> Sure. Well, what I want you guys to do,
is you can go spin up your own controls, which is awesome.
But if you don't really know how to get started,
you can go to PCF gallery, really easy, pcf.gallery.
>> PCF gallery.
>> We have a lot of third parties who have gone and created
their own custom controls for you to use.
So you can come here and you can take a look at what you need.
You can look by category if you want it for a specific control.
If you want it for the model app they have the little icon there,
if you want it for the Canvas app they have
a little art thing to show you what it's available on.
You can go ahead and download that and
import it into your PowerApps environments.
>> PCF Snowflakes.
>> So what I want you guys to do,
is go to pcf.gallery,
pick a control that you love, download it,
and import it into your PowerApps environment today.
>> I love that. That is so different and unique.
>> What an amazing call to action but I think
we should go a little bit step further.
So you need to do that but then you need to
tag us in a Tweet when you've done that.
>> That's right.
>> So we know.
>> So we know you did it.
>> Yeah.
>> Also, I'm going to assign Sara
the homework of putting all the user groups on that map.
>> That's is literally what we want to do is.
The cool thing and just to unpack this for a moment,
is think about the capabilities and the possibilities,
both from a partner perspective and an ISV perspective,
which is what you was talking about at the beginning,
and the fact that you make one control.
Like the stencils, it's
just you can then go ahead and keep reusing that.
>> I love it.
>> It's really cool.
>> Perfect,.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Thank you for being here with us. Thank you for tuning in
and we're going to go and enjoy our delicious Kelsey's cookies.
>> Yes, can't wait to make more Power Platform cookies.
>> All right, thank you. We'll see you soon.
>> Thanks.
>> Less code.
>> More power.
[MUSIC]