Factor’s Senior Functional consultant and Power Platform Guru, Suzy Weatherfield talks about her journey going from her PhD in Chemistry to creating apps. She shares her experience, tips, and insights on Power Platform as well as her motivations for starting her blog.
Timestamps:
[00:00:19] Introduction
[00:02:00] How did Suzy get into IT from her Chemistry degree?
[00:03:02] What is Power Platform?
[00:04:13] How do we use Power Platform at Factor?
[00:05:22] Power Apps Case Study: Automations in Factor’s Onboarding app.
[00:06:37] Benefits of working with PP as a low-code solution software.
[00:08:30] Microsoft Power Platform Convention: Power Platform Got Talent.
[00:10:27] What makes you excited about Power Platform?
[00:11:43] Difficulties of scaling citizen development low-code solutions.
[00:12:35] Why is governance important when building on Power Platform?
[00:13:18] Advice to your younger self and anyone who wants to pick up Power Platform.
[00:14:25] Suzy’s blog and sharing of knowledge within the Power Platform community
[00:15:43] Microsoft’s MVP program
[00:16:26] Conclusion
Links:
- Suzy’s blog: Power Functional Suzy – #PowerPlatform #AlwaysLearning (wordpress.com)
- Factor’s Onboarding app: Onboarding App- The Factor
- Center of Excellence : Center of Excellence (CoE) overview – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
Transcripts:
[00:00:00] Suzy Weatherfield:
Well, I think one of the really good things about a product for you is that you’re really invested in getting the features that provide you the most value. And so we really get to do that agile approach where you build something, you assess its impact, you assess where you want changes and you iterate and you slowly release new features and just improve on it. And learn, learn from what you’ve done before.
[00:00:19] Juvi Rivera:
Welcome back to Factors podcast. Today we’re talking about Power Platform, its capabilities and how easy and accessible it is to work with such a low code solution within your Microsoft environment and how we use it to provide solutions for our clients. Also, we’ll talk about Suzy experience at the Microsoft Power Platform convention last year, which was their first time hosting it out in Florida.I’m sitting with Suzy and she is our Factor Power Platform guru. But you wouldn’t know that she didn’t have a technical background before starting at Factor. But she actually transitioned into the tech field with a chemistry PhD background. I wanted to ask her what her journey was like coming into the tech world, because especially I think as a woman, speaking from experience it can be a bit intimidating to get into a field like this. But there are definitely avenues to enter into this space, even without a degree.
It’s really all about experience and there are bootcamps that you can sign up for, which is what Suzy did. And if you wanted to let us in on what that experience was like.
[00:02:00] Suzy Weatherfield:
I was originally working in chemistry. Did a undergrad degree in chemistry and forensic science ended up doing a PhD because I didn’t really know what else to do. Found it wasn’t really for me and ended up getting a job in IT service desk. And from there stayed in the support side for a little while.
And then saw an ad for a Power Apps in a day for women in Canberra. A bit shy. I shared the ad with my friend, she signed up and then I felt the pressure to sign up to. So on the day we, we learned how to build an app from end to end. It was just quite a simple app to request a computer and then to receive the order. But yeah, from there I made connections and then ended up getting a job at that company. And haven’t looked back at all.
First project I was on, there was me and another guy, Tom, who neither of us really have much experience in the area, but because the Power Platform is low code, we were able to pick it up really quickly.
[00:03:02] Juvi Rivera:
And for those who aren’t too aware of what Power Platform is, the Microsoft definition of Power Platform is a family of software products or applications created by Microsoft to design and build complex business solutions. It can analyze act and automate business processes and manipulate surface and visualize data. It includes power BI ,power apps, power automate, power virtual agents and power pages. It uses a low coding program language called power FX and integrates with GIT hub and teams. It is built on Azure and is a capability of your Microsoft cloud environment.
It’s a pretty cool family of software that we use as like our bread and butter because it allows us to create these complex solutions relatively fast. And you know, not everyone on our team, for example, are magic wiz coders, a lot of them are just very proficient in these software products that use low code solutions.
So piggybacking off of that point, can you give us examples of how we use Power Platform at Factor to create solutions for our clients.
[00:04:22] Suzy Weatherfield:
Maybe we can focus first on how we use Power Platform at Factor .
So, we use it in a variety of scenarios. The first app we got up the ground was around onboarding. All the way from hiring people and then providing them with a good experience to onboarding. So an app where they can log in and find out about Factor, they can provide all the information that they need to give the company.
They can also introduce themselves to all the members of the team. They can view some information about other people in the team and see all the checklist of tasks that they need to do in order to onboard smoothly. So this was something really that we were just like, oh, let’s, let’s stop building an app.
This will be something helpful. So it probably, wasn’t a huge piece of what goes probably one or two weeks before we started using it in production. So I think using the Power Platform definitely allows you to build these solutions quite quickly, especially if you keep it quite simple and focused on what you, your after.
[00:05:20] Juvi Rivera:
Awesome. And so in terms of our on boarding apps , we use a lot of automation in that solution because business process as complicated as onboarding typically has a lot of manual repetitive tasks. Can you give an example of how we use the Power Platform to alleviate those annoying tasks
[00:05:46] Suzy Weatherfield:
I think it really depends how far you want to grow with the automation. But one really simple example is just on the day someone starts, it sends them a welcome email automatically. At 9:00 AM it gives them a link to the onboarding app. It gives them a bit of a, a welcome from Factor and that they need to join our coffee connect 11:00 AM, which is when you get to meet everyone in the company. Another simple example is where we celebrate our achievements. So if someone’s been at the company for a year, we have automated notifications for that. If it’s someone’s birthday, we celebrate that. And whilst it’s very easy for someone to put that in the calendar, that means they then have to go and act on it. So it can be as simple as that. There are also a lot of automation around someone starting today, what tasks do they need to do? And yeah, it’s just about getting that information there without manually doing it.
[00:06:36] Juvi Rivera:
I find that some of our best apps are solutions that we make for ourselves. And then we come back and say like, we need these things to change or we need ad-ons for example, like DocuSign to make our lives easier. And I think that’s the beauty of what we do at Factor is that we are the people who develop it and we are also the people who are going to use it.
[00:06:59] Suzy Weatherfield:
Well, I think one of the really good things about a product for you is that you’re really invested in getting the features that provide you the most value. And so we really get to do that agile approach where you build something, you assess its impact, you assess where you want changes and you iterate and you slowly release new features and just improve on it. And learn, learn from what you’ve done before.
[00:07:19] Juvi Rivera:
Yeah, we’re always constantly learning from each other , just like how Giles just had this whole presentation on what he learned from his work at a client.
And we just had a whole discussion on like, okay, what are we going to do moving forward to not face those challenges again. And it’s cool because Power Platform makes it so that we can create solutions really fast. But also we can edit really fast too. Whereas in the past, when it comes to things that are highly code-dependent, I’m sure it would take a longer time to see those changes come to fruition.
[00:07:58] Suzy Weatherfield:
You have like a really good foundation to build on. And also a lot of this is configuration is like, you see it and then you click on it and you move it around. So it’s very intuitive to do and therefore, there’s a big talk about fusion teams and having citizen developers and pro developers working together. And because some of these things are so accessible, it does mean like I know exactly how I want the fields laid on the form to make the most sense to me, I can do it. I don’t have to wait for someone to code it out and then see the result. It’s kind of done live.
[00:08:30] Juvi Rivera:
Yeah. And talking about citizen developers, you attended the Microsoft Power Platform convention last year in Orlando, Florida.
And that was a really fun experience to see your live updates. And it was you ,Ethan ,and Jacques that went. One thing in particular that I found super interesting was the Power Platform Got Talent where people showed off their Power Platform skills in a very creative way. And a lot of the people that presented were citizen developers, which just goes to show how easy Power Platform is and accessible it can be for people who just want to create solutions for every day problems.
So, if you want to talk about kind of the cool presentations that you saw at the Microsoft Power Platform convention that got you really excited about the software.
[00:09:34] Suzy Weatherfield:
Yeah. So I think one of the most interesting nights at the conference was the Power Platforms Got Talent night which as I understand was actually sort of just created off the cuff. It wasn’t planned into the calendar.
But basically people could put forward an app they’d built to showcase what they can do with the Power Platform. And there were a whole heap of people that entered from MVPs and professional coders or functionals to citizen developers . So there were lots of different apps demonstrated, some that were more for like a larger user base in a company to like small personal productivity apps. One of the MVPs who did come from a citizen developer background, he built an app that was a game. It was the pipe game where you have to follow the water within a time limit. And I think he actually just got a high five from Microsoft about this, like a couple of weeks ago.
[00:10:27] Juvi Rivera:
So your time at the Microsoft convention opened your eyes to kind of the possibilities of Power Platform, not only where it is, but where it’s going to go. What are you excited about the most in terms of where the Power Platform is going to take the industry.
[00:10:44] Suzy Weatherfield:
I think one of the biggest announcements at the moment is around the AI, the Copilot and how you can use that to do things faster, have more power. But I think there are so many different things you can tackle from small personal productivity apps to enterprise wide solutions. You can use Dynamics, which I think is where a lot of big government agencies have started the journey in the Power Platform. But it doesn’t even have to be about that anymore. It can just be a chat bot that you want to create like a HR chatbot where you want to ask for advice rather than, you know, having to have a service desk, answer these questions.
We have this new idea for an app that we think would be helpful for Factor. So for example, the consulting score board. We have like a point system where the more you contribute to certain areas of Factor ,you get points. And then that leads to doing well on the school board. And so we had this idea about building an app that sort of made it into a bit of a game. And so everyone could see how everyone was going and motivate people to contribute to the company. And so that sort of app, like we built in a couple of days.
The problem I find is people think, cause it’s low code like we don’t need to have good practices, quality control or anything like that. This citizen dev side, which is all about like me enabling myself and, you know, my small area around me. And then there’s like, you know, enterprise systems where we really want to follow a proper robust process. And so the turnaround in those is going to be longer than your turnaround over here, because over here you don’t need to worry about about processes or like quality. So I think when you work in government or really big enterprises, there’s a lot of governance. So you need to implement over that side of things. So it doesn’t like blow out into this big thing that you have no control over.
Now that we’re trying to implement more processes and Factor, our agility is going to slow a bit because we’re not just build, go build, go build, go. Yeah. And I think architects that traditionally work in like enterprise get a bit scared by citizen development cause it’s like on or what can they do?
[00:12:35] Juvi Rivera:
Scared as in in they’re building so fast without any of like,
[00:12:38] Suzy Weatherfield:
Well, it means you need to have the governance set up. Understand what sort of data people are using. Do you have the policies in place to ensure your data isn’t going to go where you don’t expect it? Do you have the security setup?
Like what happens if I create an app that then becomes critical for my team and I leave.
So things go from a business citizen development point to. Okay. Now it really needs to be under ITs control and we need to follow certain rules. You have two things that are at odds. You’ve got the rapid development to enable like small areas, but then security is like, oh no, what are you doing?
And you can have really good frameworks set up, but like people have to invest the time to set it up like the center of excellence.
[00:13:18] Juvi Rivera:
You know, a lot about Power Platform. And you didn’t expect yourself to be so enmeshed in the tech world when you were starting your PhD in chemistry, what advice would you have given yourself back then knowing what you know now.
[00:13:40] Suzy Weatherfield:
If you see something that looks interesting and you maybe want to pursue a career in it, give it a go. What’s the worst that’s going to happen. Don’t be scared of signing up to something and going.
[00:13:51] Juvi Rivera:
Yeah. That’s a good one. And then what do you think are the top three skills that someone who uses Power Platform would need in order to be successful.
[00:14:03] Suzy Weatherfield:
I think probably the first one is the desire to learn and recognize you’ll never stop learning. There’s always more features that are released, always more things to know, never think you’re the expert of everything cause you’re not. That would be my main one. I think for me as a functional consultant, rather than a pure dev, having the ability to sit and understand business and try to come up with ideas that will help.
One of the big things about the Power Platform community is the wanting to share knowledge. It’s not just about like how I can achieve my work, it’s how can I learn from someone else? Or how can I share knowledge with other people? So if they face a similar problem they have some tips how to do that.
[00:14:43] Juvi Rivera:
And is that the motivation for your website?
[00:14:46] Suzy Weatherfield:
Yeah, so I kind of started the blog a little bit out of the blue, really. I was talking to one of my colleagues and we have this thing where we do peer review at the client site I’m on. And so he asked me to peer review his flow and I made some suggestions.
And I found out that another colleague had given someone else similar advice that same day. And I was like, oh, I should pass on that knowledge to him as well. And I was like, oh, maybe I should just tell all of Factor. And I was like, you know what? I wanted to start a blog. Just didn’t really have the confidence.
And I was like, Good time. That’s great. No time like today.
[00:15:19] Juvi Rivera:
I agree. And it does take guts to put information out there and being able to share that knowledge out to like a wider community is super cool.
[00:15:28] Suzy Weatherfield:
Yeah. There’s always so many different ways you can tackle the same problem. So just because I put out an idea right there, it doesn’t mean it’s the right way. It just. It’s just an idea. And it also gives people a chance to give me feedback in other ideas. So it’s not really a loss by putting yourself out there.
[00:15:43] Juvi Rivera:
And there’s the possibility of becoming an MVP one day. If you want to touch on what that is.
[00:15:51] Suzy Weatherfield:
The MVP program is a Microsoft valued people. I think so it’s usually awarded to people that make be contributions into the community through various different ways. That’s like blogging or contributing to the community forums and providing feedback, running events. There’s a lot of people in the community that have really good content. And a lot of them have really helped me find the right idea to solve a problem. So you’re just trying to give back a little bit.
[00:16:26] Juvi Rivera:
Well, I think that’s all the questions that I have for you today, Suzy. Thanks for sitting down with me.
Thank you for tuning in to another factor podcast, you can find Suzy’s blog at the powerfunctionalsuzy.wordpress.com and any other relevant links down into our show notes, including our onboarding app. Thanks and we’ll catch you next time.