>> Hi, I'm Dona.
>> I'm Sarah.
>> I'm Charles.
>> Today, we're going to be talking to Charles about why he
truly believes in this vision of less code, more power,
low code development for all,
and also, we're going to discuss why we have
sketchy looking doughnut with a bite on
it on the table. Stay tuned.
[MUSIC]
Hello. Welcome back to Less Code.
>> More Power.
>> I'm Dona.
>> I'm Sarah.
>> Today, we've got with us actually a very special guest.
Charles, please do introduce yourself.
>> Thank you. So Charles Lamanna,
I'm Corporate Vice President for Low Code Platforms at Microsoft,
so things like PowerApps,
Power Automate, Common Data Service, AI Builder,
all the most exciting,
Less Code, More Power products for Microsoft.
>> Amazing.
>> That is fun.
>> This is so cool, right?
>> We're extra excited because
we're going to now ask Charles a bunch of
questions that we can't ask
the other people because everyone else is like,
"I don't know if we're supposed to disclose that," but
Charles has to because he's on the camera with us.
>> Yeah, social pressure, right?
>> I know, exactly. So things are going to get real, real.
So tell us, Less Code, More Power,
this low code/ no code platform,
you're a huge believer in it, obviously.
>> Yes.
>> You've had a decent career in tech and you came
back to the company and you've been working on this from day 1.
So tell us about why do you believe in this so much?
>> Yeah. So what gets me really excited is,
so I've always worked in platform,
so professional developer platforms,
I worked in Azure for four years
after my company was acquired by Microsoft.
In that time, we were always focused on
enabling people who went to school for computer science,
studied for four years,
very, very note collection of people.
But low code has always been very exciting to me,
when I was an Azure, we started Azure Logic Apps.
>> Oh yeah, that's right.
>> Like soft low power automate in Power Apps because you start to
unlock a huge audience that never had access to technology before.
That's something that I care about a lot because
if you go look at typical technology innovation,
it only helps a very small chunk of the population.
>> Absolutely. Yeah.
>> But with low code where you
don't actually have to go to school for a long time
and be a computer science expert and
learn algorithm and data structures,
you can enable all these other people, tens of millions,
hundreds of millions of other people
to participate in that digital economy.
It's one of the hardest challenges
I've ever had to work with because you
have to make it be powerful but not required code,
which is easier said than done.
>> Absolutely.
>> So it's a great challenge and a really great cost, and for me,
that's what keeps me going every day is I go,
come in and do my best because we're actually doing
something that's changing millions of people's lives already.
>> Absolutely.
>> Wow.
>> One thing that I found extremely powerful, well,
two major things is when Satya talked about,
we're going to have a 500 million app gap
in the next five years or 10 years or something like that.
Is that real? That's real.
>> Yes, that's real.
Yes. I love this stuff because I use it all the time is that in
the next five years, there will be 500 million new apps,
which is more than all the apps
that are built in the last 40 years.
>> That's crazy.
>> Wow.
>> It's because of you-all that's why we have all these apps,
because you're going out and building them, so that's amazing.
What I found very interesting about that is that
demand is not coming from only tech,
it's coming from all these other traditional sectors like
retail and pharmaceuticals and government and such and such.
>> Yeah, that's another one of my favorite statistics out there
is that for the first time in the last year,
more developers are being
hired by non-tech companies and tech companies.
So it's retail, energy, transportation,
people not the Microsofts or Googles or Amazons,
it's the typical company out there .
That pivot point is going to be
a big deal for low code because if you
want to go have another 10 million companies
start being technology companies,
you need to go find the developers to do it.
>> That's right, because there's no way we're going to make more,
say, experienced developers by
sending more people to computer science school.
It's really, really hard to do
to have people go to four-year schools, boot camps.
>> Well, that's the thing as well and like, we have spoken
to so many people and we're going to be speaking to many people.
The thing is like, schools aren't always accessible for everyone.
>> That's right. Yeah.
>> They are expensive.
It's not something that everyone has the privilege of
even having the choice to go to.
So it's not just about changing that and enabling companies,
it's creating routes and careers and
jobs that don't exist today and for the future.
Really, that's what I love about us, I mean, yeah.
>> So accessible.
>> Let me be corny for a second because in Microsoft
our mission statement is like,
empower everyone and every organization.
It is why it's such a great example because there are
all these people who have complete career transformation.
I mean, a story after story,
people that you had on the show before, well, that's been
true, and you're also making companies more efficient,
more productive, and more competitive.
>> Yes. Now, that whole feeling
of am I going to get automated out of
a job goes away where we create people who create the automation.
It's been wild to see so many people in
our orgs who are really pushing the citizen devs academy.
There's so many companies that we've worked with were like, yeah,
we have a citizen devs academy where we grow citizen devs.
There are people who know how to use
like basic tools or Excel or whatever,
but now they're becoming app makers and app devs.
>> Yeah. Because if you go back 30,
40 years ago, everybody didn't have access to spreadsheets.
>> Absolutely.
>> There were people whose job
was to run spreadsheets for other people.
I think I read some said, there was a half million people like
that in the United States who would go just enter in spreadsheets.
>> Oh, my God.
>> Right. When you first empower everybody with Excel,
you get worried, oh my gosh,
all these jobs disappearing.
But there's all these great studies that even more jobs
were created to go use tools like Excel in accounting,
in finance, they were far larger than
these lower-paid manual data entry jobs.
>> That's right.
>> Then the same type of thing will happen with Power Platform.
Again, also, it would change their careers.
They maybe didn't do the same job they did before, but you have
a better job that pays more and you get to go create stuff,
be innovative as opposed to doing
just manual tasks over and over again.
>> It gets to have fun.
>> It's way more fun to.
>> Create a job, like, I think it's so important to be able to
wake up and look forward to go into your job.
I think that's where it's changed a lot of
people's roles and those people watching,
this could be you.
In terms of, if you don't want your job,
if you want something new,
the Power Platform and the technology all around it,
it's not just the Power Platform, it's like Azure,
it's like all of the supporting like
all the other technologies at Microsoft that
it works so well together, I mean, people can change that.
>> It really does hold together so
many of the other tech which I love.
>> Yeah.
>> We were at one of your team meetings and
you did a search on LinkedIn and
showed how many Power Platform citizen dev jobs there are.
That was the first time I've seen it, and I was so surprised.
>> Yeah. That's when you know
you're making a difference when people start to
identify as being Power Platform developer
because it becomes a valid career path.
What's funny is, someone was telling me that there
was a consultancy that's
looking to hire Power Platform developers.
They're messaging all the people on
my team looking for a Power Platform developer.
>> Yes, we saw that. Yeah. Do you know any?
Do you want to join our team?
>> Are you thinking about having a career change?
>> If anyone's looking for someone [inaudible]
>> Power Platform developer.
So we asked all of our guests to bring
something to show. What have you got to show us?
>> Yes. So every season or so,
every three months, I go get
a new demo that I use for customers and places where I show off.
>> Yeah.
>> The latest one is TruGreen demo that I have.
>> I love it.
>> I use it in a shorter version of this,
a Satya's keynote at Ignite.
So I just wanted to show some of that and some of
the additions that we've done since then.
>> Yeah.
>> Because I really like demos
and product that are based on real customer experience.
>> Yes, that's right.
>> So TruGreen is a company been around for 40 years.
They're the number one lawn care company in United States to
help customers go get beautiful, healthy lawns.
>> Amazing.
>> The way it used to work before for a customer journey is,
you go to their website, but you call a phone number, right?
There'd be people in a contact center that would
answer the phone and help work through it.
They wanted to go transform that.
Instead of calling a phone number, I can talk to
a chatbot, and I can actually do
a booking in their Legacy Contact Management System
and have an agent go out to the home.
>> I love it.
>> You can do that all end to end.
The way he did is embedded
a chatbot on their homepage, just like this.
>> Okay.
>> What's special about that is
how they built it. Of course, it's Power App.
>> Power Virtual Agent.
>> That's why I had to go show it.
Because they completely transformed this project ahead of
schedule at a much more reasonable budget
because you have to use low code.
>> This is quite new. They just did this recently.
>> Yes. I can come in and say with their chatbot,
I can say I have a lawn problem.
What's great is, this entire thing is wired up with the same type
of low code experienced that you
know and love from Power platform.
On the right-hand side, I can see what the chatbot is doing.
This is where I go, add new steps.
I can add new steps and see if I can stop right-clicking,
but I can add new steps right inside of this experience.
But also, as I go similarly on
the left-hand side with something called tracing,
I can see exactly how the bot is responding.
>> I love it.
>> This idea for low code,
one of the things that we learned is you can't have build,
compile, debug like you would have a developer,
it has to all be integrated in one environment.
>> Right.
>> We see that with PowerApps,
Power Automate, Power Virtual Agent, Power BI.
It's always feeling very alive.
>> Yes.
>> So as I go work through my chatbot,
we can see the bot that I built earlier,
start to go through all these different branches,
provide different options.
If I go here, it says,
do I want to schedule the service appointment?
I can click "Yes", "No".
That's the same options that are over here inside of that designer.
>> I love that.
>> As I go through this, what's special is
the Power Platform all wires
together because you don't want just build a chatbot,
I want to build a chatbot that can take action.
>> Right.
>> So in the case of TruGreen, they use Power Automate.
So this is a fully-integrated step
which calls out to Power Automate.
You can look at that red line on top of it.
>> I love it, very good.
>> That will go schedule an appointment with the customer,
and that's just by taking an e-mail address.
This whole thing is very
monitoring because their scheduling system is API enabled.
These are the API connectors.
But TruGreen is like a lot of our customers,
which is when they want to go make an appointment,
they use a Legacy Contact Management System, no APIs.
>> No APIs.
>> Yes. To show it,
we worked with them to get a version,
no real customer done,
but to show what the experience
looks like, it looks something like this is.
>> Fascinating, look at this.
>> Yes.
>> This is circa 1998.
>> Yes. So I want to say, it's before
Model-View-Controller which we've been calling, that's the term.
So data, logic, UI, all mixed together.
So how do I go record
a booking from the chatbot is something like this.
That's where the new UI flows capability,
which is one of my favorite teachers we
shipped in a while before the Power Platform comes in.
>> RPA is the future.
>> Yes.
>> So I'm in the Power Automate experience now,
and what I want to do is I want to record
a bunch of steps that will run
from the chatbot will trigger
this UI flow whenever I try to make an appointment.
>> I love that.
>> That's amazing. I think this is probably one of
the first instances where PVA is being connected with UI flows.
I know UI flows is the new thing,
and I'm sure that we'll totally deep dive in
another episode on this. This is epic.
>> I love this.
So do you want to talk to people a little bit about
RPA and why we're investing so much on it?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So RPA is really important for
Power Platform because what we realized is we
have all these great data connectors,
over 300 of them,
you can go build your own data connector.
But the truth on the ground is there's a lot of stuff on
typical company which doesn't have
an API for which we don't have a connector.
>> That's right.
>> What UI flows does is it completely changes the way it works.
If a human can use the app,
the UI flow bot can use the same app.
That literally means you can automate or build
an app over or build a chatbot over anything in the company.
>> Nice.
>> We always talk about this no clips idea in the Power Platform.
You never want to make it, so people feel boxed in.
This is the ultimate escape patch.
>> That's right.
>> If we can't connect to it,
if you can go do on your local machine,
you can record it and register as the UI flow.
>> I love it. So you're not saying step 1,
move to this new modern data store.
You're saying use whatever data store you've got.
You can use our tools on top of whatever you
have that must keep working for you because triggering,
you've been around 40 years.
You're not going to change your data store now.
>> Yes.
>> Think about the cost associated to that.
One of the barriers to this,
even whether you're a small organization, middle, or large,
that is such a huge overhead
to go ahead and change all of this stuff.
When someone comes into a company and say,
"This is an amazing platform.
You need to change your entire
enterprise structure", people don't want to do that.
>> They don't want to do that.
>> They just do money signs.
>> That's right. Now, I love this.
I think this is fantastic.
>> Can I show how [inaudible]?
>> Please do, yeah.
>> Which slide? We love this slide.
>> Sure, go for it.
>> Because this is my favorite part is because what's great is I
just then run the app the way I would always do it.
This is a great example where people who are normally in
the business who would maybe have their job automated away,
or the people who do the automation.
Because who do you want to automate this?
The person who uses the app everyday.
>> Absolutely.
>> So they're now, "Okay, I'm going to grab an e-mail address
and I'll say put it inside this text box."
That's the e-mail address that came from the chat experience, yes.
I may have missed a click right there.
There we go.
>> There we go.
>> Paste it in, click "Search" because how you look it.
Just found my information here,
I can switch over to activities.
What's great is I can create
a new note, and I can grab the information from
the chatbot experience and paste it
inside of the note and save it, and I'm done.
What's great now is whenever the chatbot helps someone,
the information is captured in the system because it's not like
the people on the other end of the phone line go away.
>> No.
>> So the majority of customers do like to make a phone call.
>> That's right.
>> But this allows us. So if you use a chatbot and then call,
you can see in the same system.
>> That's right.
>> So it's humans and bots working
together which is really interesting.
>> I love that, humans and bots working together.
>> Yeah.
>> Plus people still use the tools they are used to.
They're like, "I've done this job for 40 years."
It's just way easier now because the e-mail address is here.
If someone's down the first line rather than me answering
the call and working through the issue,
reducing maybe hours of time.
>> Yeah. Also, the thing is as well,
we were talking about jobs and you were talking
about people having their jobs automated away.
They become experts in this technology.
>> That's right.
>> The other ones that know it, the other ones that maintain it,
the other ones that make new flows and all that kind of stuff.
>> That becomes a job that they can do
forever in so many companies.
Because 500 million apps by 2025,
that's a lot more apps by 2030.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah, that was fantastic.
I love that. Thank you for showing us that.
>> Customer experience.
So this is amazing from a technology perspective.
So say, I was that person
was on the other end of that live virtual agent,
I get you talking to me,
giving me all the information I need,
having something scheduled for
me without even picking up the phone.
I don't know that that could be on my schedule as well.
It doesn't have to be these insane hours where
I'm at work and I don't have access to this stuff.
>> I love that. So one thing we ask of all our guests is to assign
a piece of homework to all of you
because this is not just a watching show, it's a doing show.
If you don't do your homework, we know.
So Charles, what homework do you have for our lovely audience?
>> So my request would be,
because I'm sure a lot of people have used
the Power Platform before,
is try something else
in the Power Platform you've never tried before.
>> That's a good one.
>> So if you used Power BI ,
try out Power Apps.
If you used PowerApps, try out Power Automate.
If you use Power Automate, try out Power BI.
Or if you've tried all three,
try out Power Virtual Agents.
If you haven't used any, just get started,
and really the whole thing is built so
that in a minute you can sign up and in five minutes,
you can have your first thing created.
I'd say give it a try.
It's a ton of fun and it can really be
transformative if you're looking to
go become a developer or create things.
>> We have got a global community of
three million plus people on so many countries around the world.
There's probably a user group near you,
if you'd prefer to meet people in person.
This community is probably the most inclusive,
friendly, welcoming group of people you've ever met.
We've been around text-based for a long time.
This group of us is so welcoming,
so kind, and you've got a secret mission of having a user group in.
>> Five hundred cities?
>> Five hundred cities.
>> That's my goal. It's really in
every major city, but I'll be a little conservative.
>> Don't be conservative, no.
>> You'll get every major city in the world.
>> Yes, every single major city
everywhere in the world, that's the goal.
>> So as you create these user groups in your cities, tell us
because we want to create this giant map of the world with all of
the cities and showcase
everywhere that we've got [inaudible] such as yourselves.
That's all the time we have for today.
Till next week. Less code.
>> More power.
>> Thank you.
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