Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
Finding out from Daniel about his love of beer & getting into brewing (he just ‘may’ happen to have decided on a name to use for the brand if it goes commercial), how he first started to technology, & what he is REALLY an expert in!
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Talking to Eswar about his dual love of AI & music (some interesting correlations!), & covering what could happen with specific commands being used on a NON-Microsoft system…
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Talking to the community legend that’s Damien about his vegetable garden, how he got into gardening in the first place, and a sudden medical condition coming out of nowhere that has an impact on life moving forward
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Chatting to the AMAZING rockstar that is Ken around our common love of BBQ – find out if he’s a low/slow or high/fast kind of guy. Also touching on a motorbike incident some years back that shaped his approach to life moving forward – some VERY powerful lessons to hear & learn from!
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Talking to the AMAZING Hardit about his love of sports, finding out just WHO his ultimate sports hero is, & discovering a life-changing event that happened as a child, with how it changed his life since…
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Finding out from Kristine about her love of chocolate & drumming (not sure which one is more important to her?), some challenges when she was growing up, and how her career has evolved over time!
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People sometimes wonder about what is the best way to interact with Microsoft. In fact, this post isn’t strictly aimed at interacting with Microsoft, but can also be taken as a general guide to interacting with any organisation. The reason for deciding to write about this comes from a conversation that I had last week with a good friend, who was having issues in finding a resolution to an issue.
Let’s start at the beginning. We, or our customers, have relationships with suppliers such as Microsoft. We’ll order software (licenses), need to have them supplied to us (show up in our account), and sometimes there may be issues that we need to help/support with. There are obviously general support channels available that support tickets can be raised through, but there are also other avenues to consider as well.
Apart from the ‘professional’ relationship/s that may be in place, we may also have ‘personal’ relationships with members of different teams. These can happen in various different ways, such as speaking together at events, organising communities, etc. They are very valuable to have in place, & many people that I know, as well as myself, strive to improve & increase the network & connections that we have with Microsoft & other organisations.
However, there’s something very important to keep in mind. Just as we are doing our day job (what we’re paid to do), they are as well. At the end of the day, they (as with ourselves) need to ensure that the job gets done.
So if we reach out to ask something from them, we’re essentially asking for a favour, usually without anything recriprocal being able to be offered. A really good analogy for this, shared previously with me by Mark Smith & Chris Huntingford, is the ‘Sweet Jar Concept’.
Here’s how it goes. Imagine that the person has a jar with 100 sweets in. There are a limited number (the number itself isn’t important though) available, and the person has to choose who to give the sweets to. If we ask for a favour without knowing them, it’s highly unlikely to be granted. Even if we do know them somewhat, it may still be unlikely – they’re not going to be getting any return on the sweet that they’re giving out. Potentially if we know them well, and have proven in the past that we’re of value to them, we’ll get a sweet.
But even if we do know them well, if we keep asking for sweets (aka favours), the likelihood of them being granted will diminish (rapidly). Again – there’s a limited supply of them, and we’re not going to be looked on favourably if we keep coming back & asking for more, whilst not giving anything in return.
So HOW could we go about this, to set ourselves up for success (ie getting the outcome that we’re desiring). Well, this is actually quite simple – we need to identify who will be gaining something by helping us. Let’s explain this in more detail.
Within Microsoft (& any organisation really), people have metrics that they need to meet for their role. These are usually referred to as KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), and are used for things like salary & role progression. What we should be doing is finding the right person (or team) that has (one or more) KPI’s aligned to what we’re trying to accomplish.
Let’s use the example here of the situation with my friend last week. He had a client who had ordered licenses from Microsoft that were needed for a project to start, but hadn’t appeared in the customer account yet. If the licenses weren’t there on-time, the project would need to be delayed, which would be expensive (& very annoying) for the customer.
On hearing the situation, I suggested to him to find the person (or people) within Microsoft who’d be aligned towards ensuring the situation was remedied ASAP. Examples of these people could be:
Now the above list isn’t exhaustive, and is also applicable to the specific scenario above. Additionally, the people mentioned might not be able to actually deal with the situation themselves, but if they’re not, are more than likely to know the right person/team who can deal with it.
With this approach, we’d be lined up for success in three ways:
So in a nutshell – when we look to try to get something dealt with/resolved, we should ask ourselves who’s best aligned professionally to help us, with it being in line with their professional goals. This way we can drive value, as well as giving goodwill all round.
Have you ever been in a situation where this may have helped? How did you handle it? I’d love to hear – please drop a comment below!
Talking to the wonderful Liz around her love of cooking (in specific circumstances), her rock climbing hobby, and some very important lessons learned from a specific rock climbing incident!
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Talking to Hillel about his love of drones – how he got into it to start off with, the joys of it, and why he thinks that they’re so amazing! Also talking about entrepreneurs, launching new products/services, and the KEY things to be aware of when bringing something new to the market!
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RPA (or Robotic Process Automation) is a capability that Microsoft has been developing for a while within the Power Platform space. Whilst cloud flows can be used to interact with any systems that has an API in place, many organisations have (legacy) systems that have no API, so interacting with them can be challengin. RPA capabilities allow organisations to be able to interact with any system overall, thereby enabling & empowering businesses holistically.
I’ve been aware for a while that there’s been an exam coming out for RPA, though it’s taken a bit of time to land. That’s fine though – I can’t really think of any absolute rush to have it in place. I do think that over time, just as with some of the other certifications, it will become a required for solution or specialisation status.
The official page for it is at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/certifications/exams/pl-500. The specification for it is:
Candidates for this exam automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks by using Microsoft Power Automate. They review solution requirements, create process documentation, and design, develop, troubleshoot, and evaluate solutions.
Candidates work with business stakeholders to improve and automate business workflows. They collaborate with administrators to deploy solutions to production environments, and they support solutions.
Additionally, candidates should have experience with JSON, cloud flows and desktop flows, integrating solutions with REST and SOAP services, analyzing data by using Microsoft Excel, VBScript, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), HTML, JavaScript, one or more programming languages, and the Microsoft Power Platform suite of tools (AI Builder, Power Apps, Dataverse, and Power Virtual Agents).
Now here’s the thing. I occasionally work in the automation space, either on customer projects, or when training users in the technologies. I wouldn’t describe myself as an advanced automation developer (whether cloud or RPA capabilities). I’m most definitely NOWHERE near the level of legends such as Matt Collins-Jones, for example (go check him out if you don’t know about him!).
So I knew that I may be a bit challenged when taking the exam, especially in the more ‘pro dev’ space (aka JSON etc). In fact, I didn’t actually realise that the exam specification included that sort of thing. I know, I should have – it’s aimed at developers overall…shows that I need to brush up on reading things properly!
Also, there’s still quite a bit of a focus on Power Automate cloud flows – it’s not JUST about RPA capabilities.
Now, really nicely, there are already Microsoft Learn pathways available (which have been around for a while, and updated appropriately). This really is a big help, I feel, especially for people who are new’ish to RPA.
Of course, there’s a lovely shiny two star badge awarded when passing the exam, along with the title of ‘Microsoft Certified: Power Automate RPA Developer Associate’:
As with previous exams, I sat it from home (the proctored experience). Learning from previous times that I’ve taken exams, I ensured that my workspace was entirely clear from everything. As a result, the check-in process happened automatically, and I didn’t need to engage with any proctors at all (which was quite nice actually).
As in my previous exam posts, I’m going to stress that it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else! ). I’ve tried to group things together as best as possible for the different subject areas.
Overall, I had 46 questions, with a single case study. I’m used to having at least two case studies, so it was nice to have just one of them this time.
So….it’s a lot of stuff. Definitely targeted much more at the ‘pro-developer’ end of the scale that someone who might occasionally automate things. It’s absolutely necessary to understand coding conventions, ALM, etc.
It’s definitely an exam that if you’re not already currently hands-on with the skills needed, I’d highly recommend you get a decent amount of experience with it before taking the exam! I’d highly recommend ensuring that you have an environment in which you’re able to be hands on with all types of automation (cloud & desktop flows), and really understand how they can be handled with an eye on the enterprise scale!
If you’re aiming to take it – I wish you the very best of luck, and let me know your experience!