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- Hello and welcome to Microsoft Mechanics Live.
Coming up, we're joined by CVP Charles Lamanna
the leader of Microsoft's Power Platform
and we're gonna show you how you can use
the Power Platform to build low to zero code,
intelligent, scalable and automated cross-device apps
in a fraction of the time of what you normally do.
And also demonstrate the latest updates from AI Builder
to help you to easily infuse intelligence
into your apps and processes as well as
something brand new, Robotic Process Automation
for next-gen user interface automation
that uses machine learning to really modernize
how you can interact with your legacy apps.
So everyone please give a warm welcome
to Charles Lamanna, CVP of Power Platform.
- Thank you, glad to be here. - Alright.
(applause)
So it's awesome to have to you on the show,
big fan of your previous work
and now you work with Power Platform.
So, the term might not be familiar with everybody,
Power Platform, but can you tell us what it is?
- Yeah, so Power Platform is really
our family of low code, zero-code tools.
Power BI, Power Apps and now Power Automate.
These sit on top of the Common Data Service
which stores all of your structured business data
and makes it easy to secure it
and use it across all your different applications.
As well as going through traditional logic
that you wanna go to enrich that data.
And on top of the common data service we have
literally hundreds, over 280 different data connectors
out of the box so you can go connect
to all your existing systems without
having to write any code at all.
Whether it's a Microsoft service or a database
or something from one of the competitors.
And a big part of that is also,
you can go reach on-premise and that's something
you can do with what's called the on-premise data gateway
which makes it very easy to go connect to things
like a SQL server, or a share point server
that you have configured on premise
without having to necessarily move it to the cloud
you can start to transform it with something super modern,
innovative like the Power Platform.
And to add on to it, we wanted to go
round out the Power Platform family,
we introduced the brand new Power Virtual Agents
which make it easy, without having to write any code at all,
to create a really intelligent, AI fueled chat bot.
- Very cool stuff, so all these capabilities
then provide a powerful foundation then
for modern development, especially as you
layer on new experiences over the top of your data.
I know a lot of people might be familiar
with some of the individual components
things like Power BI, et cetera
but what's the value of using all this stuff together?
- So altogether the Power Platform
is better than the sum of its parts.
It makes it easy for you to analyze your data
with Power BI, act on that data
through web and mobile experiences
with Power Apps that you develop
or automate tasks in the background using Power Automate
and of course, the new capability,
you can go put chat bots on top of all that as well.
And these things start to flow together very naturally
and if you're able to use Power BI,
you can definitely go use Power Apps and vice versa.
The same set of skills work really consistently
across all the Power Platform
and that's because it's targets the same type of user.
That citizen developer, across all the
different platforms that we offer by Microsoft.
And the one big thing I'd call out is,
Dynamics 365 is built entirely on top of the Power Platform
and in the case of Office 365,
all of it's extensibility and enrichment is done
with the Power Platform as well.
So it allows you to go bring the goodness
of Power Platform to all the different parts
of Microsoft very easily with no code,
low code or even code in Azure.
- And we've seen some really great use cases
for people who have really automated
their everyday tasks in business, right?
- Yep, that's exactly right.
So one of my favorite examples
is a company called Autoglass.
Someone who worked in the dispatch center there,
not a professional developer historically,
built a great mobile app to go help people
repair and replace windshields with their customers.
And it reduced the time for inspection or repair
from 20 minutes to five minutes
and saved over one and a half million dollars
in the first year when rolled out in just one country.
Another great example that I really like
is Virgin Atlantic, they're a global airline
and they actually are a great example
of professional developers using the Power Platform
together with Azure to go build mobile first,
modern, cloud connected capabilities
so they can very easily improve their
maintenance and repairs and inventory management.
So that's a great example of DevOps
and Power Platform working together.
- Alright and the cool thing about Autoglass,
that example that we saw there,
is that the person who built, again,
happened to just be, he was a dispatcher, he wasn't a coder,
he wasn't a developer, this is really citizen dev.
- Yeah, that's exactly right and that's a new concept
we're really talking about a lot at Microsoft,
the citizen developer, people who are in the business
who historically didn't develop applications
or understand data, they can now start
to create beautiful experiences
on their own without having to write any code.
- Alright so, if you're a serious developer
you could also use it as well.
Now would something like this then work
if you say, had 100,000 seats in a larger organization?
- Absolutely, so we have entire organizations standardizing
from both citizen developer as well as
professional developer solutions on the Power Platform.
Companies like SNCF, which is the French National Railway,
Schlumberger, T-Mobile, there's a whole bunch more out there
and you can do all of that without
having to write a single line of code
because you can easily go build that UI
and that visual design surface
and pull in new UI components, logic
and integrate with those data connectors
to all your existing systems very naturally.
And a little stat I toss out is that Microsoft,
there's over 100,000 users who use Power BI
and over 70,000 users that use Power Apps
and just, all of Microsoft at this point
really runs on the Power Platform
for some pretty mission critical capabilities
and we do that, also by connecting
to all of our great Azure investments we have.
Kubernetes, Azure API Management, Azure Functions,
you can go drop all that in as well
to go really get that extra oomph
of an enterprise great application.
- I think the best way to prove all this out
is to see this in action, so can you
show us a few examples of a Power App.
- Yep, absolutely, demos are one of my favorite pieces
so on the phone here I have TruGreen's,
they work with local people to go out to homes
and help make their lawns look beautiful
and this is an application they can use
to go track appointments that are coming up.
So I can see my upcoming appointments,
when I go click into one of these things
I can see the details, what plan from TruGreen they have,
when their appointment is scheduled.
So if you look at this it's a pretty beautiful experience.
You don't normally think of something
like this for a low code application.
And one of my favorite capabilities is AI builder.
So, TruGreen actually trained an AI builder model
which they could do without running any Python,
any machine learning, just by uploading examples,
to identify common issues that
people will have with their lawn.
- In case you were wondering why this grass is watching us,
we're gonna take a photo of it
and see if it can identify what's going on there.
- Yes, exactly, because I'm not
an expert when it comes to lawns
but I can just snap one of these photos
and what this is doing is it's using that
AI builder capability up in the cloud
to identify exactly what's wrong with this lawn
and what's important about this is that
they can go make all their field agents
smarter and better at what they're doing
each and every day without having to worry
about educating them on all the different
types of issues that they'll face.
- And there we can see it's actually
come up with a determination what that is?
- Yep and it's identified it as a Necrotic Ring Spot
and you can see here we actually have
a whole bunch of different information
that pulls up from the TruGreen knowledge base
about what a Necrotic Ring Spot is.
And what's great is I can click on this live report
and this will go and actually connect
to a Power BI dashboard that I have
embedded in my application to tell me
all of the other examples where
I'm actually seeing the same type of issue.
And I can go record notes as well
inside the mobile application so I can say,
Mechanics live demo and say, record this
and what's special about this,
if we pull up the PC that I have right here as well,
we can see this will actually go and push out
to the brand new Power Automate capability on my computer.
But basically what this does is it goes
and it will trigger a Power Automate workflow
in the background, there we go.
- [Jeremy Chapman] Looks like it went out, yep.
- Yep and it will capture all the activity information
that the agent took in the Legacy ERP application
that's being used for contact management.
And what this is doing on the PC is,
it's using the new UI flow capabilities
from Robotic Process Automation and Power Automate
so I'm not pressing the mouse or keyboard
and this is actually entering information
from the account that I was just investigating,
switching to the activities tab
and recording information then clicking save.
And all of this happens just very rapidly in the backend
and that's what is really special
in terms of using the Power Platform,
because two big things are really happening here.
You're able to easily connect through
from the mobile application to all
the connectors on the backend but also
to go use these UI applications at the same time.
- Right, and the great thing here
you can tell it's actually real
because even with a network challenge
as it took a couple of times,
but that means it's actually real, it's a real demo.
This is a beautiful app and it really,
from a time to code perspective, it was pretty low code,
you got to kind of a great end result.
This case there's a lot going on
behind the scenes then in terms of process
but what's this all connecting to then?
- This is actually built entirely
via a whole bunch of different
capabilities already existing in TruGreen.
So they have our existing customer management system
on premise and they're able to go extract that
knowledge-base information into the common data service
and that way they can usually have
their field workers use that mobile device
to go connect with a mobile Power App
to all that different information
and that Power App can go then connect
to other different systems using things like
UI Flows from Power Automate to go record
the customer information as well as their history,
pull that back to the mobile app.
And all of that can be done in a way where it's
read, write, in both directions.
It's not just about seeing the
information on the mobile device
but also making it so you can capture
additional information when out there
and for the on site diagnostics that uses
that AI builder capabilities to identify the issue
and send it back down to the Power App
and once complete, that's done,
that's where the UI flow really starts to shine
because now it's able to go capture
all that relevant information
and go put it back in that Legacy 132 application
which doesn't have any APIs, doesn't have
any way to connect to it except through
the very thick 132 application.
So that's why RPA capabilities are so key
because you can go pull in all the different
information from the contact management system.
- So, it was really great that it was able
to actually write back so this is really based
on real-world implementation with TruGreen
but how do they go about then building an app like this?
- Yep, so you just do that right here in Power App studio.
For folks that are familiar, a good way to think about it
is PowerPoint combined with Excel.
So I can easily see all the same screens
that I just was using on the mobile app
are visible inside the browser.
I don't need to have a special device
and it works across Android and iOS for mobile players.
I can see all that same screen information
that I was just looking at is visible right here
and I can even see like the additional information
from the knowledge base is visible right in real time.
And to kind of show how easy it is,
one of my favorite things is I'll just go build
that AI Builder screen that I was showing from scratch,
it takes just a couple seconds.
So once I add on a new screen,
I can view something called a component
and what a component is, is a good way
to actually have reusable elements across applications.
- [Jeremy Chapman] Might use it for a header or a footer.
- Exactly, so TruGreen has a green header of course.
Matches very much their theming
and then I can go drop on one of those AI Builder controls.
So in my case I want to drop on
the object detector control, that's the thing
that allows me to use my camera on my mobile device
and AI to go identify issues and you can see
I've trained a model beforehand called concerns detection.
I just bind that, and just like that
I now have an AI powered mobile experience
and what's great is if I say, go over here
inside of AI Builder, we can see
that I trained this model beforehand
and it has 95% accuracy based on machine teaching.
Where I upload a few different images
and just highlight on those images
where the Necrotic Ring spots exist.
So now that I have that AI Builder control,
maybe I want to go bind to data.
And for that, that's one of my favorite parts of Power Apps
is just how easy it is to go bring
information into your experiences.
So say I go drop on a gallery with just a list of things,
we can see on the right hand side there's
a whole bunch of different data sources that show up.
In my case I'll just select something
from the Common Data Service because that's
my favorite data source in all of the Power Platforms.
- [Jeremy Chapman] Not that you're biased.
- Yes, not at all.
And I can see I have this little grid
here of all this information about
different contacts for the customer.
I can then easily change the layout,
say maybe I want a title and sub-title
and we can see it just refreshes in real time.
And what you can see here is this is why
it's really just like PowerPoint
to go build this application experience.
Citizen developer or pro dev, you can go really quick.
There's no build, there's no publish,
there's no compile, all of it can just be
worked together really naturally
inside of this design surface.
- Cool, so now for TruGreen you actually showed us
how it was able to connect to a legacy WPF based app,
that obviously in this case didn't have an API.
How were you able to get that connected
and kind of fill in all those different fields?
- Yep, so that's where our brand new
Robotic Process Automation capability,
or RPA capability inside of Power Automate comes in.
So I'm able to just go use a simple
visual design surface inside of Power Automate
where I can just launch a recorder
and what the recorder does is it captures
all the mouse clicks and keyboard inputs
that I do so that I can replay it back
as needed as part of my automation.
So in my example I'm gonna launch this application
again from scratch so it's recording the fact
that I launched the application.
I can go use inputs, in my case I want to
look up the contact whose house I'm currently visiting,
I can paste that contact information
inside the text box, click search
and all this is actually being recorded
inside the UI flow so it can be played back later
in the background with the mobile app.
Say switch to a different tab and then maybe
go take the notes that I entered there as well.
And you can see I have some sample notes
that I already put in there, click save.
And just like that I've now been able
to make my mobile application go
and use this Legacy 132 app very easily
and without having to be an expert
about integrating with those applications.
And the way you can see it in action is,
inside of the Power Automate visual designer.
So people who already use Flow will know this,
I can actually see the screen shots of,
hey I clicked on this text box
that's where I put the text in.
I can see I clicked on Search and maybe
I clicked on here to go enter the note information
and then I recorded the save button here.
All these pictures are automatically captured
and rendered inside the designer
so I have a very clear idea of how
all these different pieces fit together.
And the whole idea with all of this
is that it makes it possible to really
start to transform your business
and that's the two key takeaways
I hope everybody gets from Power Platform this week.
I said it on Monday I'll say it again which is,
you can build all of this without
writing any code in rapid time
and then you can do all of this to connect
and integrate with all of your existing systems
without huge integration efforts
or having to go replace your back office
or bizapp systems like your ERP.
- Okay so I have to ask because GUI automation isn't new,
there's a lot of x, y coordinate automation out there,
how does this actually get less brittle,
I guess, then those kind of tools?
- Yep, so we've actually spent a lot
of effort working with the Windows team
internally to go find the right approach
and we actually have three different types of rules
and advanced AI to go figure out
what's the best way to go select a control.
And we continue to add new layers to that logic over time.
You have two more that are coming the next couple of months.
So it's a lot of rich capabilities
to identify exactly the right control
even across DPI changes or resolution changes
or even subtle application updates.
- So, super exciting stuff.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Charles
and for actually giving us a better idea of the types of
things that you can do with the Power Platform
but where do you recommend people go to learn more?
- There's one place I'd say to go
which is powerplatform.microsoft.com
and that's a great way to learn about the Power Platform
but even better is just get started.
Really, if you start building an app right now
I bet you can have one done by the end of the day
and you can probably have some pretty impressive
Power Automation, flows, virtual agents
and apps built by the end of the week.
So, just give it a try, best way is to be hands on
and let the community know what you think about it.
- Awesome stuff and thank you again.
And of course, keep checking back
to Microsoft Mechanics for the latest updates
across Microsoft, that's all the time we have for this show.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.
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