- Coming up, we're joined by Power Platform CVP,
Charles Lamanna to take a look at the latest updates
to the Power Platform that allow you to build intelligent,
low-code, cross-platform apps and see them in action.
So Charles, thanks so much for joining us
from your home today in Seattle.
- Thanks. It's great to be back on Mechanics.
Thank you for having me.
- Thank you.
So before we get started, just a quick primer
for those that are new to Power Platform.
It's a single low-code platform
that makes it possible to analyze you data with Power BI,
automate workflows and communications with Power Automate
and Power Virtual Agents, and then act on it
by building new experiences around your data and processes
using Power Apps.
Now it integrates seamlessly
with the broader Microsoft 365 cloud
and has hundreds of connectors
for you to bring in your own apps and services.
So Charles, last time you were on,
you introduced everyone to the Power Platform family
and really how it can help build enterprise great apps.
But what's new this time around?
- Lots of new stuff, but three things
I'm particularly excited about.
The first is the new robotic process automation capabilities
inside of Power Automate.
We have a bunch of big updates
since we last were on the show last November
to really make it easier than ever
to go record mouse clicks, keyboard inputs,
and Win32 application experiences
and then play them back in the background.
That way you can automate tasks, even if there's no API
and all you can go use is a Legacy application
or Legacy experience.
We also announced the acquisition of Softomotive,
which brings an additional set
of RPA capabilities to Power Automate.
The second one is Power Virtual Agent.
That's the newest addition to the Power Platform.
We've gone and really improved a whole bunch
of different experiences there,
things like additional channel support,
so you can work inside of Teams and WhatsApp,
as well as making it easier than ever to go integrate
with Azure Bot Framework or Azure Bot Framework Composer
to bring in additional codefirst skills
inside the Power Virtual Agent design surface area.
And lastly, we've really been focused about
how do we go make the Power Platform respond
to our new remote work reality,
which I'm sure if top-of-mind for everybody
and it's the reason I'm at home right now.
And we did that kind of in two big items.
The first is making it so that we have
much better Teams integration because people are spending
so much more time inside of Teams.
So Power Apps now has responsive app templates
that work on mobile, as well as desktops,
and better understanding of the context
that's hosting the application.
Additionally, we brought brand new
mixed reality capabilities, so Power Apps Mobile
can go visualize 3D assets in space,
all without having to be an expert in MR.
- So lots of really great updates.
I know you're not one to shy away
from some hands-on demonstrations,
so can you walk us through a few examples
of some of this tech in action?
- Of course, and as you know, I like to always show
the demos in the context of a real customer use case.
In this case, it's a mobile application built by GSK,
which is a global healthcare company,
and what this is application is focused on
is something called zero accident promotion or ZAPs.
And what ZAPs do, is they make it
so that the workers at GSK can record workplace hazards,
workplace safety risks, and get them pushed back
to corporate, as well as to go take actions
in response them.
So if I say click through and look
at all the different ZAPs in my area,
I get an incredibly different map experience.
And what this map experience lets me do
is visualize all the ZAPs that are in the facilities
around where I physically am located right now.
As I go click through all these different items,
we can see that geo-spacial awareness
is incredibly powerful, but I also have the standard list
or gallery on the bottom for all the different ZAPs.
If I click through into one of these ZAPs,
we can then see I get information
about what that workplace hazard is.
In this case, it's a slippery area in a hallway
where someone can fall if it's wet.
I then can go rate each of these individual ZAPs
based on a risk score, based on its severity,
as well as its likelihood of happening.
If you look at that risk score, pay attention to it
because it comes back later in the demo as really important.
Additionally, within GSK, the last item
is that you should always be taking actions
to mitigate risks and hazards in the workplace.
And that's kind of something really core
to the culture of GSK.
If you see something, do something.
And in this case, we can see I've updated in action
that I've taken to go mitigate this particular risk
and maybe I want to go put a cone or something like that
to prevent people from falling when it's wet.
But what's great is I can go use the brand new
mixed reality capabilities so that I can actually visualize
in 3D space things like the cone.
So if I can say drag and drop this cone around
and actually decide where I want to place it,
I can do that inside of the Power App
just using a completely native control
without having to be an MR expert.
And if I go pin it right there,
I can even go record that location in the future,
so when people can go scan and pan and see it.
You can see inside my kitchen.
It's slippery in front of my fridge,
because maybe some ice cubes fell.
So that's the mobile experience.
Now let me show you what that looks like inside of Teams.
So what I can do is I can go right into the Teams desktop
application experience and I can say,
"I want to manage my tasks."
And this is an easy way to have a conversational experience
on top of that same back end, behind the mobile application
using Power Virtual Agent.
It then comes back with a series of ZAPs that I can manage.
I can just go choose whatever ZAP that I want
to go take an action on and actually interact with it
entirely via conversations, so I'll just choose 120.
Based on that, I can then go take an action
to say, do something like resolve, reassign,
or escalate that item very easily, all inside of Teams.
And beyond Teams, Power BI can also be used to visualize
all that data being generated from the chatbot,
as well as the mobile application.
In this case, I use a decomposition tree control
inside of Power BI, so I can start to slice and dice
to understand what are the main drivers of risk and hazards
in all the different locations
across GSK's factory footprint.
And additionally, it's not just about viewing the data.
It's also down here in the bottom right.
I can take action on this data,
so I can go mitigate and resolve these issues
even from corporate or from the reporting experience.
And that's what's so special about the Power Platform.
Across Power Virtual Agents, Power BI, and Power Apps,
it's all wired up into a single low-code platform
to build solutions incredibly quickly.
- This is great. I loved the Power App.
I love the integration with the bot inside of Teams,
but can you walk us through how you built all of this?
- Yeah, so right over here, I'm inside of Power Apps Studio,
which if it looks like PowerPoint and Excel combined,
that's on purpose.
So we can see I have a great visual experience.
I can see the same mobile application
I was just running on my iPhone right inside of my browser.
I also am able to go use a formula bar
to go enter additional complex expressions.
Very easily integrated.
And now, if I go, want to add in additional capabilities,
I'll just drill through to that ZAP screen,
and we can see the map control is missing
that I was showing on my mobile phone demo.
And so, I can see all the same data in the gallery
and that type of thing.
So now if I go over and want to add a control
on the left hand side, I go to the code components
or custom section that I will go drag on the map control.
And the map control combined to data,
just like everything else inside of Power Apps.
In my case, I have Azure SQL databases
to go connect to and that's where the active ZAP list
is actually coming from.
I can wire up and connect to that directly
inside the Power Apps canvas.
And now, I just choose the active ZAPs collection
I've already pre-built,
and we can see it binds automatically
and gives me a view of all that data
coming from Azure SQL in real time on this map control
without having to go worry
about tons of different types of integrations.
And all of this is filtered based on the ZAPs
that are most relevant to me
and where I actually am physically located.
- You talked about augmented reality.
We saw the cone in your kitchen in front of your fridge.
How did you get all of that stuff wired up?
- So inside Power Apps Studio, we have a brand new control,
just easily drop on that will allow you to mix reality.
It's called the View in MR control
right over here on the left-hand side.
And I can just drag and drop that right onto the form
inside the mobile experience.
I'll unlock the data card real quick.
And this lets me go visualize on my mobile device
whatever 3D asset I want to.
And what's great is I can very easily bind
any type of 3D object to this object.
So if I go up here and say "Enter the data type,"
I'm going to go choose the output from the gallery
on this card to choose between a cone or a chevron or a box
or that type of thing.
And I just have to write a simple little expression up here
to take the selected object from that,
and what will happen is when I run this on the phone now,
whatever I select in that gallery,
will be what actually gets displayed in 3D space.
All wired up, very naturally and very easily
inside that Power Apps mobile player.
- You also mentioned this concept of a risk score
and that it's tied to a Legacy app,
and that you're actually entering data into that app.
How does that work?
- Yeah, in the background behind that mobile application,
there's an app that looks just like this,
something that hasn't been updated in 15, 20 years,
doesn't have any APIs,
doesn't make it easy to integrate with.
And this type of application is a perfect use case
for the UI flows or robotic process automation capabilities
inside of Power Automate.
So here inside the Power Automate visual designer,
we now can see that I have a trigger
that will fire whenever a ZAP is created
that has a risk score greater than eight.
This is listening to the same SQL database
that sits behind that Power Apps mobile application.
And this is what is used to go fire off
all of my automation in the background,
so when people to use a phone,
they're actually going to go trigger an event
to run on a server against that old UI.
And the way I've done that is with a UI flow.
You can see this UI flow took all the inputs
from the SQL database record,
so I can go flow that all the way down
to the UI automation.
And this is how I can easily go stitch together
between API or databased eventing
all the way through UI flows.
So if I go drop into the entity,
I can click through here and you can see
all the steps that I recorded before.
These are the UI visualizations of left clicks,
keyboard inputs, different texts,
and I'm able to go have these all stitched together
seamlessly as part of a UI automation.
And this can run unattended on a server in the background,
which is something new that we shipped a couple months ago.
And this is what makes it so powerful to go bridge the gap
between all of your new experiences
and all those Legacy applications that you have.
And one of my favorite parts
around this entire experience
is what can happen if something goes wrong.
Debugging, troubleshooting.
So if I look over here, I'm in the debug view
for Power Automate and I can actually expand
one of those runs that failed in the past.
And what's great is, I can see exactly which step
is ultimately what failed, as well as to go drill through
and see the GIF of the step that didn't work out.
And what's great about this GIF
is that I'm able to visualize in my browser
exactly what went wrong, and if I open this thing up here
and look at it, I can see it as the text fields
are being entered, as the keyboard inputs
are being run through.
I can see which text field or which text box
was responsible for the failure.
And this troubleshooting capability is what makes it
easy to have tens, hundreds, or thousands
of different bots running in an unattended mode,
but still be able to understand exactly what went wrong
if you have an error or a failure.
And all of this tied together across AI, API automation,
and UI automation is what makes Power Automate so special.
No matter where your data is or what your systems look like,
you can go automate it using Power Automate.
- You also showed a bot that was running in Teams earlier.
How are we able to build that out?
- So I built out that chatbot using Power Virtual Agent,
which is the newest addition to the Power Platform.
And we can see Power Virtual Agent has a low code experience
just like everything else.
And I can also go down here in the bottom left
and use something called tracing.
So when I enter text inputs,
I can actually see how the chatbot's brain
is responding to the inputs from the user.
And this makes it very easy to iterate, tune, and improve
my chatbot over time.
I can just drag and drop up around,
understand exactly which boxes were firing,
and this is what makes the Power Virtual Agent so fast
and so quick to build a chat-based experience.
But it's not just about that chat-based experience.
You of course want to also bring Power Apps inside of Teams.
So we have a new capability so it's a one-click,
easy experience to go bring all your apps
from inside of Power Apps to Teams.
So if I just go look at my app list I have here
inside of the Power Apps maker portal,
I can click on it, click on add to Teams,
and get a great simple dialogue which generates
a completely filled-out app manifest,
which I can just turn around and upload inside of Teams.
And this'll be converted to be completely API-native,
so you won't even have to upload the manifest
in just a month from now.
And all of this is wired up so that I can then turn around
and use this application across both a desktop
Teams experience as well as on a mobile experience.
So here we can see that Power App for crisis communication
to go respond to COVID-19 crisis inside of our company.
I can drag and expand the resolution
or the size of my Teams desktop client
and it just reflows in real time.
It's been one of the top requests from our customers
for Power Apps inside of Teams.
But it's not just about what you can do
on the desktop, of course.
Like I said, you can also go do this on a mobile device.
So if I go over to my mobile player,
we can see that we have a great little experience,
where I can have basically crisis communications application
there as well, and I can drill in
and see all the great functionality
and a complete responsive reflow-based view
on my mobile device.
So now you can build Power Apps
that target Teams as a destination,
just like you would've done for web or mobile in the past.
And it just works and feels very native
inside that remote work environment.
- These are going to be really excellent updates,
especially for delivering feature-rich,
intelligent low code, cross-platform apps.
Now, if someone watching at home
is new to the Power Platform,
where can they go to get started and learn more?
- So personally, I like to learn by doing,
so what I recommend is roll up your sleeves
and get your hands dirty.
And just by signing up in the morning,
you could have your first application in the afternoon,
so there's two places to go learn more.
The first is go aka.ms/lowcode.
That's a great place to go sign up and get started.
And the second is check out the Power Platform community.
There's over a million members who are incredibly engaged,
incredibly supportive and can help you on your journey.
And you can get there by going to
aka.ms/power-users.
Go to those two URLs, check it out.
Build your first app.
It shouldn't take very long.
- Good stuff.
Thanks for joining us today from home, Charles.
And of course, we're going to keep following the updates
to the Power Platform.
And by the way, if you haven't already,
don't forget to subscribe to Microsoft Mechanics.
That's all the time we have for this show.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see ya next time.
(air whooshes)
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