 Hey, this is Christian Buckley. This is another collab talk tweet jam post tweet jam interview. I'm here with Trev. Hey Trev How's it going? Hey Christian. How's it going? I'm doing well today. Hopefully you're doing well Yeah, doing well. So why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are where you are what you do? All right, so for those who don't know me My name is Trev Gott from originally from Louisiana So not spelled the way it's pronounced like everything else down there and I am CEO and I'm Power BI MVP Sites up here in Bellevue, Washington where we help companies build data cultures. How's that? That's great And the the topic of today's Today's sessions that we had good turnout very interactive. We trended briefly We were in the top 25 on Twitter there for a while. Wow was the era of the power platform Yeah, it's funny The only reason I knew that we trended is because there were some people that were complaining that this collab talk thing Knocked them kept them out of the top 25. So like Number 25 or something with with all the politics stuff going on. That's kind of amazing right now Yeah, we'll take it. I was getting lots of likes and stuff. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, people are listening. It's all good It was good. Well, you know, it's an action-packed hour. I know we always as we do every time We run through seven questions. So love to get your thoughts around this So question number one we kick things off and some of these are intentionally broad You know, so read into it what you may some people ask you what did you mean by that? It's like, what did you think I meant by that? Yeah, so that here's this one So how does the power platform fit in a Microsoft's future strategies? so They they've done an excellent job over the last few decades if you will of capturing the enterprise market the formal market where everything is, you know, captured collated Curated and you know stored away in SQL databases and that you know analysis services data warehouses and whatnot But the reality is that's only about 27% of the data out there according to Forrester And so what we're seeing is we have this need to do a better job Managing the processes and the data that come along with it for our day to day And so the power platform is really designed to help more of your power user fulfill their own needs While a lot still allowing it to take part in the process and so we see a lot of things like what we're doing with Power BI is We're doing self-serve BI and that's great. The data model is being managed by it But business analysts can write their own reports They don't have to submit a request and go through this whole process anymore In fact, I had one person tell me they're not really looking for another report They just need an answer and that's the thing with the power platform is getting Closer to results and that's why I think this is a great strategy moving forward. Well, you know, it's interesting So folks that don't know Treb in his background. So one thing that we share is that we are entry point into this world Was through project portfolio management technology. Yeah, I found my way over into the SharePoint side of things and to Collaboration knowledge management. I had done some things in the knowledge management space But I was more of a project portfolio management and then went into the SharePoint world where you've gone more into now the new the power platform area and Power BI specifically but you know so much of this is We have all of this data whether it's project management data or collaboration knowledge data or You know raw data that's coming from systems operations and whatever that is And we need to better surface that that information. There was a shift in how Microsoft was looking at Product management within the organization when Satya Nadella took over Really put the push so much of the emphasis to you know data analytics to have data driven decisions about the products the features and what people are actually doing and So here we have all these systems We have all these enterprise applications collecting all this information and yet Organizations are really bad at Surfacing relevant information and then doing things Well, and this is part of the whole thing when we talk about culture And I've heard people you know mentioned data culture and app culture and all this other stuff They're always talking about the tools. It's like the tools are I won't say they're irrelevant They're definitely an important part of it, but they're 20% of the effort you've got to change the mind the mind Shift if you will that If I'm going to ask a question I need data to prove it I need to stop managing by emotion and One of the ways that are one of the things that we listen for actually when we're in meetings with customers is If they are really data driven they will always ask the question What does the data say? Because data has a voice it has a place at the table and the same thing with when you're looking at the power apps and whatnot Do they have a clear use case for these things because one of the things that we are getting into now is we have It's funny. You mentioned project management so much of project management is gathering information and then redistributing it and There was this great template for meeting capture that the power apps team had created a while back But they really hadn't targeted it to the project management environment So what we've done is we've actually taken it we've reconstructed it because there was some interesting things going on it That we're causing some issues, but we've redone it in a way to make it a power tool for the project manager So that they have a much easier way of gathering that data pulling it together disseminating that data and now We're hoping to layer a SharePoint syntax on top of it So we can start mining that data and starting to get patterns out of this and as we see project Cortex Progress in its releases that's going to unlock a whole New set of things that we can analyze and help people communicate around so again I think the the strategy power platform unlocks a lot of scenarios that were stuck in the product or for a long time People can build this stuff very quickly But where it's going to take us is just something going to be amazing and when you add on the AI Stuff with this where I can just plug in an AI is easy as a custom visual You know some of the other questions we're gonna come back to this point But it's also becoming a bridge those other enterprise applications It's a you know a lot of what's happening with the power platform is really kind of Bridging that long-time gap between the dynamics 365 folks those communities and the more the collaboration technology people where a lot of the You know a lot of the the in the Microsoft ecosystem at least Of the citizen developer movement has really kind of grown and has lived for a long time Let's jump go ahead. We're seeing that too Because the thing is when we're all on prem doing transactional integration was actually I won't say it was easy But it was doable because you you had control over the versions the interfaces would versions they were what not When everybody went to the cloud so say I'm using SharePoint and I've got Jira online I've got Salesforce and I've got all these other things Doing transactional integration doesn't work because you don't have control over that environment anymore And so what we're seeing is with power platform. It's becoming the integration layer from a power BI perspective We're seeing BI integration I just need to pull in the data and create the one view of the world with power apps It's like oh, I've got you know an app for my sales my sales team So now I'm writing stuff to SharePoint and rank stuff to Salesforce I'm writing stuff to you know some other thing or I'm submitting a service now check it or something That's the power that this is giving us is the ability to integrate these things in a way We couldn't even do right. It's it's the two-way integration exactly right I mean that's the world that I that I lived in where where people say well I want real-time analytics of this like well We can pull down this data from this other system once an hour or once a day Or or or maybe more frequently, but then limited data sets around this and now you can have these live data sources coming in and Having it two-way and making changes there and pushing things out as well So it's not just read only and yeah, it's it's amazing. Yeah, that definitely changes things Well question number two was how much of your focus your business or you personally have shifted towards the power platform And what has driven that change? Well? So, you know again started off in project management was probably we were originally a project Company we did project online implementations And I first got to work with power bi way back when I was project Crescent and there was some other project designation And it was really designed to solve a need and that by itself would have been interesting, but not compelling I think what really forced us or what really drove us to go in that direction was when Satya Released their data strategy and said look we're only going to focus on three tools But it's silly. We're investing in so many different places. We're gonna have Excel for the person We're gonna have SSRS for the folks who need printed reports We're gonna have power bi and they had just opened up the power bi partner program So we were actually one of the first group of people in and we went all in Because at the end of the day no matter what process you're running no matter what project you're managing you need Reporting you need to understand what's going on so you can make a decision And so we focus on the decision-making and the power platform came along with that. So that's it's been a compelling Reason to go in and our clients are finding it very compelling as a way to use this to solve their business problems And you have a lot of people again in the community I know that from the power bi standpoint There's a few people that are we're in the SharePoint space that are you know big on the power bi side of things Yeah, of course you have then also the you know shutting down an info path and the kind of the rise of Microsoft Flow which was renamed as automate and you create flows and automate People still call them Microsoft flows Flow and stream two or some names ever for products like yeah, I feel like it should be on the adult You know, what do you mean the worst name like Microsoft teams No teams isn't bad at least teams. Yeah, I guess but you know shouldn't relate to bodily fluids at all That's that was my thing. It's like Okay, so we just Segway 13 there, so that's excellent Okay, so question three So what are some of the common solutions and business accelerators being built with the power platform? Well, let me speak to the stuff that we've been doing because again, I'm the most familiar with that If you're going to build some of the stuff from scratch you're talking weeks months of effort to get there and When you study the various, you know processes and whatnot like project management We talked to a bunch of PMO directors and what we found was about 85% of what they wanted to get started with was the same Okay, well the power platform enabled us to roll out a product that gets us done in two days So that it plugs in Immediately works with their data gets them 17 reports that they're going to need right away And then they can move on to the next phase The other thing about this is that it also allows them to show their stakeholders that they've gotten value very quickly Same thing with the power apps like the meeting capture tool We can plug that in I've got one person who was like jumping for joy In fact got up in a meeting and went on for several minutes about how much they love this tool and I'm going Wow, you know, we were thinking okay This is going to help them a lot and whatnot But they were just loving it and they were giving us great feedback. We were able to iterate on it But that's the thing. It's rapid. It's quick You show value extremely fast and people can immediately see where it belongs in their day-to-day and to me That's a huge huge win from Microsoft perspective because so many times in the past We've rolled out these big systems and people are like during the headlights moment Oh god, you're gonna chart change everything about what I'm doing and then they have to figure out How did they do their job within the new SharePoint the new project the new dynamics dynamics? I'm still lost. I'm Can't get my head around Still trying to figure that one out, but you know, it's it's just it's definitely more tactical But again, there is a strategic aspect to it that people are really enjoying so yeah, I think a lot of the answers to I think across questions two and three some of the you know, just the common solutions people were going and repeating and there's You know, I talked to a lot of consultants a lot of you know SI strategic integrators that are have moved a bunch of their business over to that And that's what customers are asking for those things So they're able to kind of build a practice where go and build these Vanilla versions of these different solutions and then go in and fine-tune it customized and it's you know It's funny having been in IT for you know almost 30 years And you see these cycles that come around and one of them is the build versus buy discussion And we seem to be trending back into the build automation part of it And there's a whole another discussion about what happens, you know, or how do ISVs live within this this world We're not gonna get into that but Question for ISV. We're not see we're living quite well in this world I really think there's gonna be other product opportunities that are gonna come out of that where you might go find that That that they that customers need a more comprehensive solution and that's more complex than Going and building a power app to to help resolve. Well, it's sometimes you want you need it now it's like you don't realize you need a solution until you need it and then I don't have time to build it and so For example, we have a report pack over the new list infrastructure over the out-of-the-box list So if I want to do all my reporting over the issues list We've got a pre-bale power BI template for that and it takes probably about five minutes to get it You know in place you could put in the list name what not boom you're done You get and then if you wanted to change it, you've got something to build on and so that's a huge huge winch for people And when you look at what people are doing with this one of the most interesting things I have seen done over all the projects I've seen was actually not done by us But was being done by an architect so one of the things that commercial architects have to do when they're Looking to redo a building is they have to do an 88 American disability American Disabilities Act assessment You know measure stuff and whatnot. This is massive government form So this guy basically started building a power app that he could walk around the place with his phone Capture the photos do measurements to you know all the stuff with a power app And then at the end click a button generates the form. I was like, wow, what a cool idea You know it was taking them hours to do this and now it's minutes so I Think the creativity that it's unlocking is also very interesting because sometimes your greatest product ideas come from Watching your users try to solve their own problems and that can help you figure out a better way to do it So yeah, I think it's up to I used to do what they you know to do. I think that's also a good great segue into question Number four, which again could be a standalone topic and we've actually covered it in the tweet jams before But what is or should be the role of the citizen developer and where does the plot power platform fit? I mean you've kind of addressed that it's when you need when you need solutions Immediately, but then I know it's a slightly different discussion because this is you that came out the tweet jam Some people talking about what's the role of how do you define what your engineering team your it team is? versus Citizen developers that have some formal training that knows something about the systems and the data and build that Versus power users, which might be very technical end users, but they're not building solutions And I know a semantic point you can define each of those differently within your own organization, but what do you think that role is? It's it's a very It's poorly defined it is Can bring great benefit and great danger all the same time? And I say that because I'm working with somebody right now who they're a project manager. They have tech background Some MVPs had worked on creating a documentation tool for power bi and he actually took their open source code and Took it further. I mean he's taken it much further than I ever thought he's come with some really great ideas and That's the thing is that this power platform acts as an amplifier And so if you have somebody who is good, they can accomplish great things very quickly On the other hand if you have somebody who isn't well skilled and well mentored they can create what we call chaos at lightspeed You also have the other issue, which is people It's sort of like YouTube. We don't all want to create videos Which is unlike what my son keeps telling me is like he wants great videos No, that's fine I just want to watch them and I think majority of people in New York just want to use the tools So it falls to one or two people to do it and this is a danger point for many companies I know one company in the Midwest They had the lady and the lady knew how to do every bit of the reporting knew all the tools knew all the data all the ins and outs Everything and came in one day and had been offered basically from another company to double her salary So she left Now what so spend, you know two years and they're still trying to get caught up And so if I'm investing in the power platform, I need to actually make sure I've got the citizenry Involved not just continually making it one or two persons Job to do this and so that's that's that was actually some feedback from today that I saw that you know It there is a bit of a learning curve involved that isn't just something that hey Every one of our users that you know within the system will have a certain amount of knowledge to go and do It's it's it's kind of like you know technology evangelism There are some that just naturally gravitate towards this citizen developer. I think they want to learn more They want to go and build these things solve these problems, but it's not everybody Correct, but to your point you can't put all of your eggs into the basket of a single person That you need to find and develop, you know multiple people and have that backup plan Well, we had one company. We taught 72 people on how to use power BI and I keep seeing this. It's like you you wind up with about 20 percent Where it really takes and they're the ones who keep going and we've actually had to roll out ongoing mentoring programs to get that percentage up Because people what happens is they just don't have a need for it right away, but three months from now How do you get them re-engaged and whatnot so? It's the same thing with power-ups. I was dangerous with power-ups probably about four weeks ago right now I'd have to be back in the books It's not my everyday tool But it's sort of you know, it's like it the ebbs and flows sometimes can hurt you and that's where you gotta be careful about I took Unix training and 25 years ago. I had used for that and It not so much. No for a long time in the world Yeah Yeah, it's not a long time ago. So I just remember I came across something What did I find is I going through storage and it found like a certificate that I had earned for that might like oh Yeah, I had some knowledge at some point a long time mid 90s Okay, so question number five. So what three things do you wish you had known before getting started with the power platform? Well, you touched upon it with the learning curve. It's like a A you really can do some really epic things with the power platform I mean using power apps to capture it power automate to act upon it power BI to visualize it Amazing mind-blowing stuff you could do with this But in order to do epic things It's going to take you longer than you think because the five minutes to wow thing only is it has a lot of Assumptions built into it like you have clean data like you're capturing all the data Then you know everything is the nice happy path. There's that but there's also the integration gaps I mean, these are three relatively young tools There are still gaps between how do you use the or or oh, I just get the logos You know the power virtual agents as well virtual agents. Yeah, I'm That's part of a different discussion because virtual agents to me are just they're like they're an enhanced search and The future we're working toward is that if you have to search they failed Because that's really the outcome of project cortex is to surface up the data when you need it as you need it I'm just holding to the Microsoft brand I'm just I'm just sitting there going, you know if you have to search for something something's not right here But but looking at these tools they they're all young and they also are young in the entire Microsoft ecosystem So in particular, I was trying to write a power app where I'm writing back to a SharePoint list and all sudden I have a people field or have a multi-value field and Then it's like well, how do you do this because everything else you just click patch and life is good. No, no There's like 30 lines of code you got to put in there. Okay, that's got to get fixed That's something that it will get fixed over time Same thing with power BI if you're and I'll just use SharePoint because that's the most obvious one Multi-value fields people fields that kind of thing when you hit the list initially You don't see them and that's because they're buried under a subquery. You have to know to go over there Oh, and by the way, we don't retrieve any of the data types So nothing comes back is numeric or whatnot and these are all they're growing pains But it's a learning curve that everybody has to go up In fact, this is one of the reasons why we went out. We curated a bunch of content Specifically around SharePoint on our get started with Power BI comm site Because I kept answering the same questions over and over again on the form. How do I get to a list? How do I get to a document library? How do I combine files like let's just do video and walk you through it, but But again, it's it's growing pains I think it's going to get better and The net of it is the third thing is really we've had to double our estimates When we've gone in to do work because inevitably It's going it's all these little things that build up and they slow you down So you you get started very quickly, but then you kind of get to the middle It's like just trudge trudge trudge to get through all the little things and then finally get to the end So those are my three things great things takes a bit of learning and you know The getting through the the ditch if you will in the middle, it's gonna take you longer than you thought I think that's good advice because again, you know based on the promotional marketing that Microsoft's doing against a platform It's just yeah stamp your finger your fingers. You're an expert on it Yeah, move forward build some stuff and there's a little more effort involved. Yeah, and that's why Like I've been I did a tech review on a book recently. It's called the pro Microsoft power platform Written by Mitchell Pearson, Brian Knight, Devin Knight and Manuel Quintana. I have to say great book I really enjoyed actually one of the books. I have enjoyed most doing a tech review when I sat down to all the exercises You really need something like that to get people engaged to get them excited about it because it's the excitement That's gonna carry you through that middle part. It's when you're not excited It's just drudgery and then it becomes annoying and frustrating and you know once you've gone through it a few times You you're like, okay I know what to expect but you want to make sure you get through it as fast as possible and at least now We're getting more books Guy in a Cube for Power BI Stuff Daniel Christians doing Shane Young Laura Rogers, I mean, they're all doing wonderful things to help people work through that cycle and so I really suggest people You know start start following these people. It's amazing what you're gonna wind up learning along the way Exactly now. I'll have to provide some links to those I mean, I know all the folks that you mentioned and we'll have to include that in the blog post as well So question six was what does Microsoft need to change if anything about their power platform strategy? So the most common answer like thing was licensing licensing and licensing. Yes So and it's funny because when people talk about the power platform They really do think there's three products. There's power apps float power automate and power virtual agents and then there's power BI over here and Those licensing things don't talk to each other at all So I think power BI because it was the first is actually furthest along the new premium per user It's going to solve a huge problem. We've had all along Which is I need all power premium, but I don't have five hundred people to afford regular premium So this will bring that cost down for power apps though I think hey you can't change pricing in the middle of a budget year Okay, if you've ever had to do budgeting, right? Yeah, that's so that's the no go It's just to be fair to Microsoft with the first change that they've been I know they've adjusted things a couple times But they've even you know announced. He said look, we don't know what this is going to be We have to kind of understand The usage patterns and the response from the community and figure this stuff out So there's just there's kind of a hold on the licensing And so then they came out with that and everybody complained, you know about that, but it's But yeah, it's it continues to be a point of frustration I think So here's the thing that I'm seeing is a they're selling them separately and they really shouldn't they really have a good play here To sell them together and create a licensing around that secondly They need to work out what's going on with the e5 story Because now we've got SharePoint e5. We've got add-ons to e5 and You know, then we've got integrations like with syntax. They're using AI builder and power apps Except now I got to go buy AI builder stuff, which is then on top of the power up stuff It's like I need more consolidated stuff that I can budget around and that's the thing that Enterprises don't really like consumption based pricing But you know at least from a business perspective because I only get to budget once a year I don't get to keep going back and say oh, I need 10,000 more. It doesn't happen so I think this is a huge problem, but They really really do need to start presenting this as a holistic front and right now I'm seeing, you know, it's it's four separate products and I never see any end-to-end examples Yeah, I I think and this is more of the speculation But you know kind of looking at what they're doing trying to shore up the branding They've just refreshed the logos. They're tightening some of the messaging around that I they're going in that direction. We know they're gonna get there Yeah And so I think there is movement there and there's other improvements just around the community side of it and talking about it as It's not a platform But you know it talking about it in this skew of your power platform as an entity as a thing I mean they hire somebody we both know very well, so they hired Heather Newman to Who's it comes from with a strong community background for those that know don't know Heather So she's a she like a I'm trying to remember what her like a principal product manager But the evangelism aspect of power platform But Heather has been in the space for a long time was an MVP in the office apps and services side But help put on going back to like Tech Ed and other Microsoft major conferences So she's been in and out of Microsoft and in the community for a long time Now having her help build out and expand that community it's only gonna help with a lot of these these pieces and and she also it's a very a Friendly voice were to this kind of feedback back from the community Well, yeah, and the other thing too is you know, they're the user side of their marketing to large Enterprise are small Because there should be a power like a 25 person power pack that has everything, you know Yeah, they have a huge opportunity to gather up a lot of mid-size and small businesses with this But all of the marketing the pricing seems to be geared for enterprise and that's gonna be a big problem Well, we could talk about that Microsoft has had You know historically that problem in a lot of different areas of going after the unicorns and and not thinking about the long tail of Customers and building up to that point. So I agree with you there Well question seven our last question of the of the tweet jam was For businesses and individuals who want to get started with the power platform. Where should they begin? So we've talked about some of the community you've named some of the folks that are out there this book You know any other recommendations about where to get started? Um Yeah, they're like, you know visit the community sites. Those are a goldmine and you know community that power bi calm the PBI Communities they actually their power platform communities now if they've they've joined them all up They're a great place to look up your questions and start learning There are several podcasts out there that you should check out again. I mentioned a few of them Also Jason and John keep you up to date on what's going on power bi focal podcast So, you know, it really depends on Where you want to go and that's the thing that I tell people it's like Have a project in mind because the thing is if you start with a goal it makes it much easier to find what works that said Watch some of the places you go get answers because we have Oddly enough one of the best places that you can get answers right now is we have a power bi reddit group and The people that are on the which you know reddits kind of an interesting place to be in it can't be yes Yes, it can be but the people that are in that group are actually very highly skilled to give you great answers There have been a few Facebook groups that are power bi related power up Not so much. They're just you know self promotion kind of stuff So you want to be aware of there's one to the cloud 365 one that I've heard said like they they get rid of people Self promoting and they leave it to questions But it's the other one I was going to say is like through the Microsoft tech community and there's There are links and things through that but by finding some of these communities like reddit And especially if you have a specific solution in mind and go and say hey Along this line, this is what we're trying to do solve this problem for our HR organization solve this to to link, you know sales and marketing together and automate some of these activities you're going to find people that have Built dozens of different things and we'll be able to give you some advice. Here's what we learned about this Here's how we integrated with these other, you know industry specific or or role specific Enterprise applications and and so you can you know tap into the community side of that It's always a good first step. Well, and you mentioned like HR we actually had a thread on reddit where somebody was building out an HR solution and One of the people asked them what about salary changes and position changes. How are you going to handle that and they were like Totally, you know, yeah, it'll help you get Basically leverage the the community's experience beyond just the tool but also the problem space And so we when we're teaching people we always have them do a personal project because I want them to leave class With that knowledge cemented into something that they're actually going to use every day And so I recommend this for anybody if you've got an app idea if you've got, you know, something to try and automate Some kind of answer you need Let's start with that and then work our way back into which tool what training what, you know It's a lot easier to do it that way I think then just it's it's not like school where you have to be worried about looking over somebody shows like What did they go and do no you encourage that you want like yeah, what did you go and do? What did you learn? What should I avoid here if you don't find somebody building something that's similar to what you're doing? Or exactly what you're doing and just say post it out to those communities. Here's what I'm trying to do and It may just not have been posted and somebody will have attempted to build something if it is Brand new then people will be like, you know, hey, they'll follow along and provide feedback as you're going along the way So I really think you know to copy off another market We really should be we should call it the maker group Because that's what we are. We're like those folks who are with the 3d printers and whatnot. It's like, oh look look how cool This is I have learned so much from watching these YouTube videos where there was ones like taking buttons to the next level Okay, I'm kind of curious and I don't even remember who made the video But I learned a lot and I'm like I do this every day, you know, but I still learned something new something cool And that's the kind of thing it's like how do I build that excitement? How do I build on my knowledge base? But having that personal project really really really is where you start and I had one guy who did his fantasy football team That he was going to manage it power BI. So that's what we did. We built it from there And he paid for your services for around that. Well, he was building stuff for his company as well But it's like to really that was secondary to what's his second? He was he might make sure his drafts for it, you know I Understand yeah, yeah, it's important. Well, he really appreciate your time Thanks for again for participating today and the in the tweet jam and thanks for talking and as part of this post-tweet jam Wrap-up. All right. Well, thanks for having you later