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>> Hey everyone and welcome to
a live episode of the low code revolution.
We are here from the Microsoft Power
Platform Conference Center in Orlando, Florida.
My name is April Dunnam and I'm joined by one of
our community members, Scott Durow.
Thanks for coming on the show live here in person Scott.
>> Thank you April, it's great to be here.
>> You're going to proliferate us in
the community, you've been around for a while.
Can you just do a brief introduction for everyone
watching that might not be familiar with you.
>> I've been around for a while,
it's another way of saying that I'm old.
>> Not at all.
>> I've had a great privilege of growing up with
the platform that I think it's got a
little away from the early days of
SharePoint and CRM and bringing those together.
I've been involved with the community writing open source tools.
I am now in this position where I've got
a background in pro-code and development,
but I'm loving embracing the low code revolution.
It's just a great time to
be in this environment with the Power Platform.
>> Absolutely. You could tell that we have nearly 4,000 people,
in-person, in Orlando wanting to learn
more about the Power Platform so it's been amazing events.
One of the things on your Twitter profile I noticed that you have
is a hashtag ProCodeNoCodeUnite.
>> Yes.
>> I love that hashtag. Obviously you're
really passionate about pro-developers,
low-code developers working together so what would be some
of the things that you see in that relationship between pro-code,
no-code does maybe some pin points or maybe,
are they scared to embrace working together with low code?
What's your general feeling that you've noticed?
>> I've made that hashtag,
it was back Scottish Summit
a number of years ago with Sara Lagerquist,
and we were really looking at
the community and seeing a bit of a defensive,
as in them attitude.
From a pro code perspective,
it's not surprising really because when in
the past we've had a new languages because IT constantly,
you have to embrace change,
that's one certainty in IT.
It's never been quite the same as we have
today because there's never been
a new level of coding that has now
suddenly increased the audience,
the people who can be
software developers to literally everybody on the planet.
Naturally, I think
initially pro code has got little bit defensive.
Really it was about saying,
let's not get defensive because this is a good thing,
let's try and bring both sides together,
Let's unite and make great software together.
>> I love it. I don't think there's
any reasons to be defensive about it,
it's just extending your development team,
that's a great thing about it.
I love the stories that I've heard at
this conference about people switching careers,
it's not even in an IT career
and getting on to the Power Platform and
embracing it and now getting into
the IT field so it's just more room for everyone.
There's not going to be
no shortage of applications that need to be built,
that need both pro-code and
low-code developers for sure, so that message.
Now one of the things that I've heard a lot about when it
questions Power Platform from a pro dev standpoint,
I really embracing it, is really support
the ALM that we have with traditional development.
Can you touch on that a little bit.
>> ALM today is so different
to perhaps it has been in the past because in the past it
was very much a pro dev focused thing
and there was a lot of tools you had to do
and it's difficult to configure.
What we're seeing from Microsoft is making
ALM constantly easier and easier.
Now another focus is very much that ALM shouldn't be
something that's only achieved by Pro-Devs,
healthy ALM can be done from a makeup perspective as well.
The things I see a lot from Pro Dev teams is that,
that same thing we were talking about where people getting
defensive sometimes comes from, well,
I don't want somebody making changes in
my environment and then just suddenly deploying that,
who knows what's going to happen.
Healthy ALM from a Pro Dev perspective,
allows us to see exactly what's happening in our environment,
what changes are being made,
what screens have been updated in a Power App,
and having a safe space for domain expertise,
everybody in an organization.
I think is the key.
Having an environment where people can go and just make changes,
build stuff that satisfies their requirement,
and then merging that into that pipeline so that
then that functionality can be incorporated into
perhaps a larger suite of applications or
indeed a more of an enterprise ready application eventually.
>> Absolutely, and for those watching
that might not even know what ALM means,
that you're probably write down that acronym, just in case.
Application Lifecycle Management is really all that that's about.
Do you want to give a brief overview?
Not to put you on the spot,
but just so you don't want to assume that everyone
watching knows what ALM even is and why it is important.
>> Application Lifecycle Management as you say,
it's ultimately just the task of taking
something from a development environment into,
maybe a test environment,
maybe into an acceptance test environment,
all the way through into production
and controlling that process so
that's repeatable and so that there's going to be no surprises.
I think if there's ever
anything that I can persuade people to do ALM,
is because it's no surprises.
You should be able to press
a button and the outcome should be as you would expect it.
If you didn't want to deploy on a Friday night and
then go out and socialize with people,
you should be able to do that.
>> No one loves deployments on Fridays in Europe,
till 02:00 AM and ruins your whole Friday night. That's for sure.
We've touched on a little bit about the Pro Dev and
the integration and ProCodeNoCodeUnite and all that.
I love to know about what are your tips for productivity,
both from the maker side,
but then also from the Pro Dev side.
>> Yes, that's a really good question because
I think that when we move
into low code and software development for everyone,
it does fundamentally change the way that
we have to work together as a fusion teams.
I think probably a key tip
that I try to encourage pro-coders to do,
is to encourage the app makers,
whoever they may be.
They maybe domain expertise, the experts,
they maybe functional consultants and encourage them,
but also creates pro-code components
and I make those discoverable.
That may be through documentation,
it may be through just having a meeting and just saying, look,
there's these components that you can use that we
develop which solve this specific challenge.
Now, they create a kit,
which I've been working on with the Power CAT Team,
is a very good example of that.
It solves a very specific challenge,
which is how to make Canvas apps and
custom pages look like
model-driven apps or look like Office applications.
Encouraging people to use the pro-code components.
Then from that point onwards,
you just let them build and make great things.
>> I love that, and you've haven't checked out the creater kit,
great set of tools, Scott,
the Power CAT Team worked on not only does it have
Power Apps component framework controls which are a way for
pro-coders to be able to build
custom components for the Power Platform and for
Power Apps to be able to put
your model-driven and your Canvas applications
so you can use your pro code,
JavaScript and all those skills to build those.
But also includes, I believe,
some Canvas components as well.
>> It does yes, absolutely.
I think that's probably a second tip that I
have is that from a pro-code perspective,
pro-code doesn't necessarily mean you're writing TypeScript,
C-sharp, whatever language that you would care to pick.
Pro-code can mean writing low code,
because it's about using the tools that we have at our disposal.
Canvas components are a great example of that.
You may have a pro-code team writing Canvas components
and publishing those so they can be consumed by makers,
becoming a reusable assets,
a component that is used across multiple different applications.
>> Absolutely. I'm a huge fan of components,
both component framework and Canvas components as well.
Definitely check out that creater kits because it's going to
speed up your whole activity for sure in your app development.
Now what about from the Pro Dev side,
any other tips there that we should be
thinking about just to be more productive?
>> Well, I love the fact that over the last two years,
the investment that Microsoft has been making in
the Pro Dev side has been ramping up and up,
because there was a time
where the investment was all about getting
the pro-code applications in
line and that was needed to be done because,
there's a whole suite of applications to be
built and I can't imagine how difficult that must have been,
Canvas Apps and Power Fx and all of those great things.
But that was obviously a lot of,
a gap around the Pro Devs side of things.
But with the Pro Dev offering now,
my biggest tip would be if you've
not used it or if you've not looked at it recently,
look at the Power Platform CLI, the pack CLI.
>> Good tip.
>> Because if you go
down to the command line and you just type pack,
and if you've got the VS Code Power Platform extension installed,
you'll be amazed how many new verbs
pop up there in that command line utility,
it's almost every release there's a new verbal,
there's a new argument that you can provide.
What we're starting to see is all the things that were
difficult to do and quite time consuming.
Or maybe people use PowerShell.
They'd written their own commands to do it.
Suddenly they are all being put into
a single place with authentication handled,
you can then put it into your
DevOps pipelines and things like that,
all under the same umbrella.
Definitely, if you've not done it recently,
just type "Pack" see what's in that little magic box.
>> That's a great tip.
I can't even keep up with how many things are being added to
that on a daily basis and it's going to your one-stop shop,
just anything you need to do.
Create those Power Apps component framework controls,
unpack your Canvas solution, it's got so much stuff.
Like Scott said, type in PAC,
pack in there and see what you can do it that.
I believe there's a VS code extension as well.
>> Yes. That's right.
>> For that as well so it works on your Microsoft,
your surface devices, wherever,
your PC's and here your Mac.
>> Exactly cross-platform.
>> Cross-platform compatible and all of that.
Well, this has been amazing Scott.
I'm so happy that I can't take time to chat with
you and share some of your feedback and
experiences on the ProCodeNoCodeUnite
and how we can all work together better as fusion team.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
>> Thank you, April.
>> Thank you, and thank you so much and we'll see you next
time on the next episode of the low code revolution.
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