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>> Hello, and welcome back.
I have here with me Senior Program Manager,
a Senior Program Manager for this segment,
I have Ryan and Hemant.
How are you doing, my friends?
>> Doing well.
>> The title is so fun.
It's "Waiter, there's some PowerApps in my Azure."
Who wrote that? That's awesome.
>> I think I did. I think I had
some Seattle's best brownies that morning.
>> I love it.
>> We only have coffee at the office.
>> That's true.
So let's talk a little about PowerApps
because, obviously, I heard PowerApps
in the previous segment,
and If I don't know anything about PowerApps,
will you describe what it is so we can get started here?
>> Of course, totally.
So with PowerApps, we have two goals, really.
Number 1 is to enable the next bajillion developers,
by making things that were very, very difficult,
that sometimes were out of reach of people
who couldn't code and make it easier for them.
The other thing that we're looking to do is for
people who are already professional developers.
How can we make it easy for them to be highly productive?
How can we take all of
the awesome things that Azure makes available,
as like building blocks or low-level details,
and how can we wire them up altogether that people
can build apps really quickly, easily, and efficiently?
>> You said a lot of nice things.
Is there specific products that align to that?
Tell us about that.
>> When we think about the lowest layer,
when you think about Common Data Service,
it's all about storing stuff at the store things.
So there's a broad set of
Azure storage services that we use to run,
build, and operate the Common Data Service.
So these are things like Azure SQL,
Azure Storage, Cosmos DB, Azure Search.
Then we use VM scale sets for all of our compute,
Service Fabric for orchestrating
all our workloads over the top of that.
So yeah, it's all sorts of stuff glued
up together in a nice little package.
>> So when I say PowerApps,
is that the same as Logic Apps?
>> Actually, yeah.
>> You see what I'm saying?
This is my confusions for me.
>> No, it's a great question.
When we think about the Power Platform family of products,
there's a couple of things in there.
One is Power BI, which is reporting,
analytics, so on and so forth.
I think we know what that one is.
Cross that one off the list.
The next one that we have is the Common Data Service.
That's really where we tried to bring structure to
business-critical data so that you can build
applications and processes over the top of that.
>> I see.
>> You then take PowerApps,
which is how do I actually build
my experiences over the top of that data,
and then I have Flows,
which is how do I build the business processes over that data.
So within the portfolio,
the closest thing between Logic Apps
and Power Platform would be Flows.
That's really like Logic Apps is meant for pro Devs,
while Flows is meant for Bob in accounting or Suzanne and finance.
>> I see. So it's a way for people that are adjacent to
developers also be able to do
stuff with the Common Data Service and then wrap stuff around it.
>> Exactly. Would you like me to show you?
>> I would love to see that.
I feel like if you showed me stuff, I'd know a little bit more.
>> Yes. So here's my example.
I'm not a developer,
you guys will be able to tell that when you see my code.
I'm going to show you how I have defined a little simple app.
It's about how my family and I can track the places that we've
been and tag photos with information about that stuff.
>> All right. So let's go to your screen.
>> Yes. First thing, simple app.
There are really only three pieces of data
that I care about. One is contacts.
These include me, my wife,
and my two little girls; they're awesome.
So the thing is, what's interesting here,
is this actually comes out of
the box from the Common Data Service.
I didn't have to define the structure of this.
>> Wait. So I'm looking at this,
and it looks like you've made a database
without making a database.
>> Exactly.
>> How did you do that? You just go to PowerApp?
Is it something in O 365?
I'm trying to figure out where I can go this too because this
feels like what I used to access for a long time ago, but better?
>> Yes, exactly.
You go to make.powerapps.com
and you whip up this stuff in the Common Data Service.
>> If you have an Office 365 account,
it's already a part of what you do
or is there something else you have to do?
>> It requires P1 or P2 PowerApps license.
>> Okay.
>> So it's above Office.
>> Cool.
>> Let's say I wanted to add a new thing called
"coolnewfield", I could do just that.
All of a sudden, it knows,
oh, based on the data type right here,
I need to store that in the relational store versus
the non-relational store versus some other place altogether.
>> I see.
>> When I click "Searchable", it's like, oh,
I need to dump that into Azure Search, so on and so forth.
All sorts of cool stuff.
>> This is the Common Data Service?
>> That's the Common Data Service, yeah.
What's really cool about this is everything that I click in here
exposes a bunch of APIs that I
can consume from the language of my choice.
We're running tight on time and
I'm not going to show you-all of this,
but I do have over here
simple application that consumes my WebAPI,
uses a ADAL for authentication, turns round,
and sends a bunch of "Get"s to get information,
posts to create new records,
so on and so forth,
and it just works.
It's super simple, it's super easy.
I'm not needing to go through and
create all those building blocks.
I just say, "Hey,
I want this data to be stored."
>> That's really cool.
You talked about it from a non-deve type side,
but you showed a little bit of a code,
but it's really cool how easy it is to
get started with the Common Data Service. That's amazing.
>> Yes.
>> Then you can access all this Common Data Service from
all the other PowerApps family of things.
>> That's exactly right.
So what we have is a way that you can consume all those OData or
those RESTful APIs from either model-driven apps in Canvas apps,
and those are built to have a set of
controls that we provide out of the box,
but what we've been able to do more recently is
expand that to a much broader audience.
Actually, I think that's where a lot of
people here will be super interested.
>> Cool. I think that brings us
to the next theme because you said,
"Seth asking about the PowerApps component framework."
So tell us all of that, Hemant.
>> Yeah. So PowerApps competent framework
we just released the preview a couple of weeks ago.
It's a very powerful framework which enables
the professional developers to build
the components which are well integrated within the PowerApps.
So not just out-of-box controls,
which today local developers can go and configure.
As a pro dev, you can create controls which are specific
to certain scenarios or you
really want to take the app to the next level.
>> Awesome. Do you have some to show us?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Let's do it. All right.
Let's go to your screen because I'm excited to
see because now the deve part
starts where we can actually do
some customization of some of the stuff in there, right?
>> Exactly.
>> All right. Let's go to your screen and see if we can get that.
>> Okay. So as I said we
just released the preview for PowerApps component framework.
We aspire to make this component
available both on Model and Canvas apps.
So these are two types of app which can be built on top of CDS,
and the core power
of the framework is that once you develop the component,
it can be used on both type of apps.
So once you develop a map control for example,
you can as a local developer,
just drag and drop it both on Canvas and Model apps.
>> Fantastic. All right. So let's get
his screen because I want to make sure everyone can
see him on the screen there so that we can get it up there.
What is it like to develop
something for the PowerApps component framework as a dev?
What am I actually building?
Is it a web thing?
Is it like some other special thing? Tell us about that.
>> Yeah, that's a good question.
So basically, PowerApps component framework
is a client-side framework to build the client controls,
but that doesn't mean that you are executing
using the clients and capabilities with
the offerings from the geo or you can use cognitive services
or other Azure services using
the rest endpoint and render the data into your control.
>> I see.
>> Also all the objects on the client side
like Azure Maps, for example,
you can bring it as a PowerApps components framework control
into the CDS model or canvas app.
Once you have the map object into your code,
you can access the mapping APIs and also the CDS APIs.
>> I see. So it's a way of mapping to other Azure services and
having them be able to be
consumed in the Common Data Service; is that right?
>> Exactly. That's one of the use case.
>> Okay. So what are the other use?
I understand that part, but I'm trying
to get a sense for what this done.
It sounds like a lot of amazing stuff.
>> Yeah, sure. So, for example,
if you have a beautiful regulation library
in JavaScript or TypeScript,
and you want to bring those controls
as PCF control into the Canvas app,
so what you can do is as a professional developer,
you can include those libraries into your control,
package them as a CDS solution,
and then these controls will be
available as configurable components for everyone.
>> I see. So it's a way of being able to get visualization?
>> Exactly.
>> So the developer can make them.
Let's just say you're Acme Corporation and
you sell TNT to Coyote, for example.
You might want to have your own visualization
of where these are all being bought for,
and then you can have that inside of
your Common Data Service among other things. All right.
So do we have his computer screen here
so we can take a look at it? Not yet.
Okay. So tell us a little bit
more about like if someone wants to get
started with using the PowerApps component framework,
what would they do to do that?
>> Okay. So we also released a powerful set
of CLI tool to get people started.
So with a single line of command using the CLI tools,
you will get the entire structure for
what it takes to build a custom control.
>> I see.
>> Then once you have the control,
you can write the logic on how to will fetch
the data from the CDS context and then light it up.
For example, taking Ryan's example,
if there is a end thing TDS which maps the images
and longitude and latitude to put the location of those items,
as a developer of the custom controls,
instead of showing this as a record in the grid,
what I can do is I can instead show it as a map.
So all these individual point show up at [inaudible].
>> So when you're doing something not as a developer
and you bring up a way of talking about like this data,
there's a different and alternative way of doing it.
That's pretty amazing.
So we've got about a minute and 30 seconds.
So hopefully as we talk about this,
we might get a screenshot there but if not,
we'll put screenshots of this afterwards
because it sounds amazing.
If people want to get started with this technology,
where can they go to learn about it?
>> So we released a blog on Power Apps Cloud.
So you can go there.
It has pointers to lots of sample controls.
It's just been couple of weeks
but we have seen lot of people building their own control-
>>That's amazing.
>> So and then there is
a forum for Power Apps Component Framework.
So just post a question and
my engineering team and me we are always monitoring. So-
>> Yeah.
>> -that's a great place to start.
>> We'll make sure to add links below so people can go to it.
It looks like you brought it up on your screen.
We have it up on his screen,
if we can put it up on the screen that does,
we do have, you can see the blog posts,
you can see all the amazing things.
So all right. So we have about 40 seconds left.
>> I think it's my screen-
>> We've got your screen now.
>> Okay. So I'll show you some of the cool stuff.
>> You have about 20 seconds.
>> Okay.
>> Show us the screen.
>> Okay. So as I said,
you can see the samples from Azure.
What I've done is brought those samples into
Dynamics as Dynamics controls.
So as you can see,
these things inherently are grids,
they're records on the CDS system,
but I've replaced them with data sets.
So now you can visualize them as map,
bubble charts, all the capabilities which Azure provides.
>> Awesome.
>> Similarly, if I go to account record,
you can see the core grid is now replaced by a map.
In the map, I can see my location being dropped as a pen,
and all the EPA's Azure is providing,
I can use them right from within the app.
>> Well, I'm glad we got the screen.
This is very exciting.
I'm excited to look at it myself,
a way to do stuff with my own family,
with my own wherever I work on at home,
at school because I have a lot of stuff to do at home.
>> Yes.
>> Thanks so much for spending some time with us.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'm pretty excited about this.
Hopefully, you are too.
My name is [inaudible]. See you next time.
>> Cool. Thanks for having us.
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