>> Hello. On this week's Less Code, More Power,
you're going to meet Matthew Perren who built
a book to manage his home library.
Not kidding. Join us.
[MUSIC]
Hello and welcome back to Less Code, More Power.
I'm your host Dona Sarkar,
and my lovely co-host is.
>> Sarah Critchley. Hi, everyone.
>> Today we have a very unique guest.
His name is Matthew Perren,
and he solved a global problem that
you're going to recognize using the Power Platform. Hi Matthew.
>> Hello.
>> How are you?
>> I'm very well. Thank you. Yes, I'm good.
Knee deep in snow in Scotland here.
>> I love it. Less talk of snow here, end of days.
Tell us a little bit about you, your job,
what you do, and tell us about
this amazing project you've created
that you're going to give us a preview of today.
>> I am a Business Central Consultant working for
Kick ICT who are Glasgow-based consultancy firm.
I've come a wonky way into tech
because I'm a theater studies graduate who
is too scared to perform so I
got a job working in a bookshop back in 1985.
I stayed working in bookshops for
30 years and went all over the country
opening new bookshops in
Shrewsbury, Preston, Newcastle, Edinburgh.
I got to Edinburgh and just stuck.
So I've been here for a very long time and ended
up running a huge bookshop in Princes Street in Edinburgh.
Then going off and
working for the Scottish Library Association for
a bit and then
working in another bookshop in another part of the city.
Then a friend of mine runs a book wholesale business and needed
somebody to help out so I ended up
running that for them for 12 years.
Then made a hop into doing
consultancy for Business Central because we'd
installed that as one of our systems that we ran.
Used to be a pig farmer when I was a teenager.
>> I knew you was amazing.
Oh my God, the fact that you just said you
managed 100 bookstores as well,
I was like, "This is meant to be, clearly."
>> The reason I did that was because I've always loved reading.
It was the one thing that I felt I was actually good at,
and no one ever criticizes you for being bad at reading when
you want to learn how to do it and you're doing it in your head.
No one sits and then goes, "You pronounced that wrong."
Because it's all in here.
When the pandemic came and we went into lockdown in Scotland,
we started up a WhatsApp group on our street,
and it's been brilliant,
it's been absolutely fantastic.
We all got to know each other much better than we had
and if there's a positive to come out of all this it's that,
that the community's really got together.
One of the things that people wanted to do was to be able
to swap books because
they weren't able to get out and do anything else.
I'd had harbored a secret ambition for
years and years to have a little library on the fence of my house.
A free library that people can just open
the door of and go in and borrow books.
I've got loads and loads of books here.
That's a small fraction behind me,
a tiny fraction behind me.
I've probably given away to charity
more books than I currently own,
but we had this plan for the library.
I'd been meaning to do this for years and I thought,
well, this is a great opportunity.
I got everyone to give me timber from their gardens and stuff,
and I built a library,
fixed it to the fence, filled it with a whole bunch of my books.
The whole thing kicked off and pretty soon
it was bulging and there was far too many books in there.
So I thought, well, I need to work out how to get stuff out.
I thought, well you can't just go in and go and I'll
just take this out because I don't like it.
I thought, well what I need to do is I need to,
old bookseller here, going I need to know what's working best.
What are the things that people are
borrowing and bringing back all the time and
what are the things that are just sat there doing nothing at all?
I thought what I need is I need to build myself an app.
So I need an app with
a barcode scanner so I can quickly go in every day and go bleep,
and then be able to go and analyze that data in Power BI and
make some decisions about what goes and what stays.
So I've been fiddling around building apps during lockdown.
My daughters are 13 and 15,
and my 13-year-old daughter,
when we went into lockdown was in
17 teams from school
and she couldn't keep track of
what she was >> [inaudible] exactly.
>> Seventeen teams?
>> Seventeen. I know. It's mandatory.
>> I guess she's enthusiastic, I guess.
>> No. The subjects that she
was taking [inaudible] said she had to do.
>> Oh [inaudible] mandatory. Oh my gosh.
>> They're all postings. This is first year of secondary school.
>> It's just cruel and unusual, oh my God.
>> [inaudible] the teachers are all posting things,
and they're sticking stuff in files,
and they're posting stuff in the posts,
and they're putting things in assignments and she can't work
on where she is what she's doing, what everything is.
So I bought her an app using
Power Apps and a couple of SharePoint lists.
We worked our way of going,
"I've got to do this piece of work in
this subject and it's doing on this day.
She had that on her phone,
and she could go into Teams and she could
work out where everything was on there,
and then she's got her list of things she needs to do.
>> That's amazing.
>> I've done that. What I need to do now is work out another app.
I'll need to work out another app and
the library thing came along at the same time.
So I thought, well this is a really good idea.
I was talking to a friend of mine,
and I basically told her that I'd already done
it just to try to impress her a bit.
Then she said, "That's great. I should see it."
>> [inaudible] It's already done. Except for [inaudible]
>> It's Alison Mulligan who I think is now MVP.
So I told Alison I had already
built it trying to impress her. She goes, "Oh. That sounds great."
and I thought, "Oh Christ.
I've got to build the bloody thing now.".
>> I love that. That's like brutal accountability, isn't it?
>> That's what comes of being gobby and overconfident, I think.
So what I did was I put two SharePoint lists together.
I've got a list of all the books
that are in the library and then another list,
which is just an accumulating list of those books every day.
I go and scan them and I save it to the second list,
and it just goes this book,
this day, and then the next day it goes the same book, this day.
Then I've got some Power BI
that has taken me ages to work out how to make it work properly.
That's [inaudible] these books have
been around for ages and they're really dull,
no one wants them, get rid of it.
I can then clear out those books.
I've basically added functionality to the app a bit at a time,
started off just being a scanning app
just to see if I could do it.
Then I managed to add in the patching it into a second list.
>> Quick question Matthew. Based on that data that you saw,
and I'm so interested in seeing it right now.
In terms of the data that you saw,
was it what you expected,
or was actually quite interesting to see
the books that were probably a little less popular?
>> I'm going to be honest with you.
It's still quite early so I've been trying to analyze it.
What's disappointing is that there are certain things.
I tried some experiments where I took some of
my very favorite books and went, "I'm going to put this in."
I started out with a Facebook page,
which didn't really work.
So it's now got a Twitter accounts, which nobody follows.
>> We will go and follow it.
You need to put this in [inaudible]
>> I like it. I will do. [inaudible] .
>> [inaudible] .
>> What happens now is,
if anything new arrives in the library,
I scan it, and the scanner goes
on to recognize that and goes, "What's that?"
It then keeps the bar code,
takes it to an edit screen.
I dictate the title,
just using [inaudible] from the phone,
so the titles are really wonky,
then that will go capital letters,
and then I save it back to the list.
Then there's a flow that will be
coming after that, a little tiny flow,
which I'm immeasurably proud of, but it's the simplest thing,
that just prints it,
goes, "There's a new book in the library."
>> Oh, that's cool.
>> Well, it's great, except it's
howling into the wilderness because there's nobody.
>> Nobody is going to be there, right?
>> Actually, it would be great if you guys follow the account.
But, of course, you will never [inaudible] live
in Edinburgh, so it doesn't really matter.
>> Dona has global reach.
I think she knows people everywhere.
>> Your book library that tweets,
it's going to be famous. This is so cool.
>> I love that. I didn't even know that bit.
I knew that you built the library and stuff,
and you did the scanning piece,
but I didn't know you had the social media part, which is amazing.
>> That's the thing, Sarah. Probably when I spoke to you,
I didn't, but I keep adding things.
The next thing is, I want to try and work with
the Google Books API to scan the bar codes when it's an e-book,
and the bar code goes off and it brings back the author,
which is the piece of data I don't currently have.
I can add it because it's only 50 or so books or less.
The author, a bit of blurb, and the cover,
then the tweet could include the cover, and that's [inaudible].
>> That will be amazing. I'm too excited now, Matthew.
Show us what you've got,
what you've brought for us today.
>> I'll do a little demo then.
I've video'd it.
I did a screen capture on my phone because I
can't demo it on Power Apps. Hang on a second.
>> While you are getting ready, Matthew, for the audience,
we'll make sure all the links are down below in the description,
so you can go ahead and follow the library,
follow Matthew, and definitely check that out.
>> Yeah. I just like that
a guy with stage fright became a pig farmer,
global bookstore magnate, a library magnate,
and now has a library who tweets.
>> I know. Especially the library.
I'm so jealous a little bit as well.
Having a bookstore, I've got so many questions.
I'm going to be DM-ing you on Twitter like,
"What was it like? Tell me everything."
>> Can you see this?
>> Surrounded by sheep and books somewhere.
>> Can you see this?
>> Yeah, we can see.
>> I see, yeah.
>> You can see this, okay. I'll talk you through.
I'll press "Play" and I'll scroll a bit.
What you do is you go in and you hit
the "Scan" button and just scan a bar code,
and then it comes back with a book.
You hit the save thing,
scan another bar code,
hit the save button, scan another one,
and go, I don't want to keep that,
I'm going to chuck that one away now.
>> So that's when it's no longer in the library.
>> Then you see the bar codes, those in the corner.
Then you scan another one, it goes,
"I don't know that one, what's that?"
I had to scan it twice, don't know why.
Then it brings up the edit screen,
and I didn't dictate our title in, this time around.
This is a book about my favorite band, The Fall,
and you go into the "Status",
you go, it's in-stock.
You save it using the button on the top right, and there it is.
>> Nice.
>> Okay? Really straightforward.
There's The Big Midweek on my SharePoint list.
There is Chasm City,
which is the one I removed,
highlighted there, with removed now flagged on SharePoint.
>> Look at that.
>> That's cool.
I have so many questions and ideas for this as well.
Do you reckon you'd love to put into the app,
if someone could actually query what's in and what's not?
>> That's the other thing, it's I'd really like to
try and build a website off the back of it.
I probably shouldn't use SharePoint as my data source.
I want to try and put that into
the database at some point or another.
Then run a simple website off the back of it, as a project.
I look at this and think, well,
I could go and try and teach myself how
to build a website as a thing,
just to learn how to do.
There's one idea of building a library,
which I built myself.
Do you want to see a picture of it, by the way?
I'm not sure if [inaudible].
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, for sure.
Our answer is always going to be yes to those kind of questions.
>> We are like, "Yes."
>> Can you see now? No? Yes, no?
>> No, we can't see that yet.
>> Never mind. Maybe afterwards.
>> That's okay. What we can do in the description,
for the audience, for everyone watching,
we'll include some links in the description that show
you where you can find the information; obviously,
we'll include all of Matthew's social links as well,
so they'll be able to find it in the description, they will.
>> By the way, that's the tweet.
You can't see that at all,
the last tweet that it tweeted,
to say The Big Midweek had been added to the library,
but you can't see that because it's far too bright.
>> [inaudible] We'll add your Twitter account,
we're going to follow it, and tell everyone to follow it.
>> Let's see if that's any better.
There you go. That's good.
>> Oh it's there, a little bit. We can see that now.
>> That's what it tweeted last night.
>> I love it. That is cool.
I love that your library tweets.
>> It's nice, isn't it? I like
the fact that you think it's the library
that does it, which is really sweet.
>> Yeah. It's Matthew,
don't remove him from the magic.
>> Yeah, the library that tweets,
that is amazing. I love this.
So cool. We ask all of our guests to
assign homework to our audience. What have you got?
>> My homework, which you'll
be disappointed to hear it's not book-related,
really, but it's bar code related.
I was thinking about what I could do with this.
What I'd really like to do,
I make shopping lists all the time to go to the supermarket.
Then I go to the supermarket and I have
to wander up and down all the aisles,
and keep checking my shopping list to go,
"Where is that again?"
I've got everything on my list,
and the list has got 50 items on it,
and I'm in fruit and vegetables,
and bananas are at the bottom of the list;
I then end up going back to fruit and vegetables for bananas.
>> Yeah.
>> My thought: most
of the food in your house has got a bar code on it,
so you could start yourself a little food inventory
using bar codes.
You could, just sitting in an idle moment
in front of the telly with your list of bar-coded food,
go, "Well, I know that's in aisle 1,
and I know that's in aisle 2,
and I know that's in aisle 3."
Then you could use bar codes to
scan the things you wanted to go and buy,
as you run out of them,
and then it'll give you a shopping list that
would tell you where in the shop to go,
based on the layout of the shop.
Someone should go off and build that, I think.
I'm going to try it, and I'll race you.
>> That's amazing. That's great homework.
>> I have never thought about bar coding before,
but now I'm going to go bar code
the heck out of everything in the kitchen,
much to my husband's chagrin.
We're, of course, out of time,
but thank you Matthew so much for being here with us today.
It has been such a pleasure to hear this story.
Definitely, Sarah, one of the most unique ones we've had.
>> Yes. Absolutely.
>> Thank you very much. It was lots of fun.
>> Thank you. All right,
everyone. Until next time.
>> Bye.
>> Less code.
>> More power.
[MUSIC]