Unlocking Microsoft Office Potential with Jennifer Buchholz - Excel, Loop, and the Power Platform

Mark Smith: 0:01
Welcome to the Power Platform Show. Thanks for joining me today. I hope today's guest inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power Platform. Now let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Milwaukee in the United States. She's the owner and trainer and consultant and Excel expert at Excel and Flourish. As a Microsoft Office trainer and specialist, her greatest joy is watching an employee stop feeling intimidated and overwhelmed by the program that's supposed to be serving them. You can find links to her bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

Jennifer Buchholz: 0:50
Thank you so much, Mark. I'm happy to be here.

Mark Smith: 0:52
Great to have you on and you are a guest coming on an era of technology that I don't normally discuss. But I have noticed that my podcast is starting to pivot a lot more, to be a lot broader than what my career was originally based on, as tech is permeating every part of our lives and it's about using the best of it everywhere we can. But before we get started, tell me about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Jennifer Buchholz: 1:18
Food, family and fun. I don't know if I'm a foodie right, but in your hometown and I actually am fortunate enough to be a tour guide in my hometown on weekends sometimes Definitely have our food favorites, and in Milwaukee almost all of it revolves around cheese. So, yeah, my favorite food right now is from a local pizza joint, and they happen to put cream cheese on the top of their pizzas. Now I'm not sure if our cream cheese is the same as your cream cheese.

Jennifer Buchholz: 1:48
That one I don't know if I've tried yeah that could be irrelevant, but like really, what doesn't go well with cheese? Thank you so much. Exactly, yeah, Um, family I don't have kids, but I have three kitties and my partner lives in Europe, so we do a long distance relationship and so fun is travel. And you know again, if you do the work that you love, you know that can be fun too.

Mark Smith: 2:16
Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's interesting in that you talk about travel, because when I first became an MVP years ago, 2012 went to MVP summit and I was surprised about how many Americans didn't seem to travel outside of America. I take it you'd go abroad quite a bit so I have some opinions on that.

Jennifer Buchholz: 2:34
I won't I won't go too long with it, but yeah, I've been fortunate enough to be in New Zealand to lead a couple studies abroad. Um, while I was there I piggybacked a little bit of time in Australia and Fiji, nice, and I've taught in South America as well. But my partner who lives in Belgium you know when we talk about geography and I think anyone who's been to Australia has the same sense as well that you and you all get a lot more time to travel than Americans do. Yeah, I can fit four Belgians in my state.

Mark Smith: 3:14
Yeah, Isn't that crazy.

Jennifer Buchholz: 3:16
Right. So when they're talking about going to all these wonderful European cities, which I have had a chance to visit several, but they're talking several hours drive, where several hours drive still keeps me within my state boundaries, Amazing. So I want to get our Americans to go see America. I mean, they need to go everywhere else too, but it's a lot.

Mark Smith: 3:36
So true, so true. That's perspective right and understanding that, see, when I think of Milwaukee particularly, is that it's a big power tool brand. It is Probably one of the best power tool brands in the world, and that's what comes to mind. But I assume its origination is Indian.

Jennifer Buchholz: 3:54
Yes, it is Native American, correct?

Mark Smith: 3:56
Yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome. Tell me about M365 and Excel.

Jennifer Buchholz: 4:07
Why has that been your career focus? Well, if you think about Microsoft 365, it's touching the majority of our workforce in some way, shape or form, and I've always come at it from this very low-code, no-code perspective. But Excel in and of itself is actually the most powerful. You know, what we're doing in there, when we're writing formulas, is actually doing code or programming, and so it's a really powerful tool for that. So, for me, I want businesses of all sizes and employees of all experiences to be able to feel really productive and successful in what they do with these tools. And it's just, it's a lot of fun.

Mark Smith: 4:54
I have a question that is very right now and that I've just asked it a few hours ago on LinkedIn, and I did a video about it yesterday. And I've got two people in mind that they both own their own companies, they're both in labor-based businesses, so a lot of physical activity both men in this case and their bodies are failing them. They've been doing it for so many years, getting down on their knees, jobs that are very, very physically intensive, and they see technology as a way of moving beyond that. And and my question in the video I did yesterday is that in the microsoft ecosystem, when we go and we talk to people about they want to do a career change, if you're talking to a microsoft person, they are straight away pointing to oh, you need to learn this, you need to learn power apps, you need to learn power automate and stuff. And I'm like, whoa, hang on a second. These people, apart from using their phone, might not even have a computer and have never had a computer. You know there needs to be a stepping stage and for me, my personal thing is you know I came from a training company. What?

Mark Smith: 6:08Maybe 20 years ago in my career, I worked for a company called New Horizons, which is an American company, very familiar day course, followed by intermediate excel one day course and then advanced excel, and why those stick in my mind is that they taught so many of the fundamentals, not just for excel, but if you're wanting to understand databases. You really started to think about that. You want to understand, you know formulas and how things it really led to that and and. So as I put this question out there and I see people jump into, you know they need an app in a day and I'm just like no, they're not even there yet. Right, where's before that? And I just feel you know, excel is potentially that introduction. That's the starting point of really understanding so many other technologies that they could move into. What are your thoughts?

Jennifer Buchholz: 7:10
100% agree. My first example on that is I did some work with a plumbing contracting company and they had just brought someone up through the ranks who was going out to give quotes and estimates. And they had just brought someone up through the ranks who was going out to give quotes and estimates and they were still pretty old school. They did a paper and pencil quotes but someone somewhere had built them something in Excel that was going to. It was really a parts costing tool and the guy who's been in the field is like I think there's gotta be a better way, but I don't know the whole way to do it.

Jennifer Buchholz: 7:46
But they have such expertise of the nuance of the labor work that is happening that it's so part of what I do is train, but we can also, especially when it's one on one and we're trying to achieve a specific result.

Jennifer Buchholz: 8:04
We train through the creation of a project and we talk through the logic of how things get laid out and it's once they can see an opportunity for improvement and then start to slowly and incrementally drive that process. The challenge as much as I love the immersion of a two-day intro training, if they can't go back with some immediate application to what they're familiar with, they're going to lose a lot of the context and the nuance of it them and then give them work to do, you know, go answer these questions or how can we solve this together, especially because there's more than one way to do things in these programs? But I 100% agree because they have such great expertise that they're going to debug the programs along the way and I mean honestly, even while they're in the roles that they're in if they can start to leverage that or if they do see opportunities for automations. I get step by step, but I wouldn't throw them full into anything related to code until they get the logic of how some of these tools work.

Mark Smith: 9:23
Yeah, I agree, I agree. So Microsoft and the M365 suite in recent times have been continuing to add a lot of functionality and I feel two of the under well, particularly one, microsoft Whiteboard. I don't think people understand actually how powerful that tool is now, particularly with things like templating, and you know, for me, I just think there's such a great workshopping tool and it's not that it's a whiteboard that you have to draw everything on. You can actually start from Tell me what are you seeing with the use of that product, and then let's look at Microsoft Loop.

Jennifer Buchholz: 10:28
Well, so for whiteboard, there's a couple of different ways. I like to go with it First. Well, so for whiteboard, there's a couple different ways I like to go with it. First of all, anytime you're in a Teams meeting and you go to share your screen, whiteboard would always be an option and it's going to create it and hang out with your meeting notes and all those things.

Jennifer Buchholz: 10:42
But you know, I came from a facilitation background and I mean, I remember the days of sticky notes on a whiteboard and how do we organize them and how do we really engage people in a facilitated process so that their voices are heard, and things like that.

Jennifer Buchholz: 10:59
And the templates in whiteboard are incredible for any of those solutions.

Jennifer Buchholz: 11:05
What's neat is that I have actually created my own templates in whiteboard based on my style, using some of the things that they do and then some other, like a rating scale, and I just put an image out there and have them go in and interact, and that's also how I get people in a, in a team's meeting, to start to engage in it so they can test it before we dive all the way in.

Jennifer Buchholz: 11:28
But I also somewhat like in whiteboard to Prezi have you done any work with Okay. So if you follow my line of thinking on that, prezi is almost this unlimited canvas of images and things like that you can do that in whiteboard. Canvas you have available to you is virtually unlimited, depending on how you zoom in and zoom out and move through things that I actually, if I'm doing a more extensive training or really trying to lead people through a process, I get my whiteboard all laid out in the phases of which I want to use it, plus, with maybe a couple alternatives in case things don't go as well as I expect, and we just take them on that journey and whiteboard and it captures everything as we go.

Mark Smith: 12:17
I love it. I love it. Are you generally in person for those, or are you talking about over Microsoft Teams?

Jennifer Buchholz: 12:24
Some of both. So I would say pre-COVID we were 80% in person, 20% virtual Now, not because of my preferences, necessarily, but my customers are finding more remote workers or people who are not near location. So that's basically flipped and we're about 80% virtual now.

Mark Smith: 12:43
So another question I have, then, is that you know I'm talking to you, you can see me on camera, even though it's an audio only podcast, and this would typically be my you know team's environment that I'd be presenting on, and I can't kind of go and write up on my screen, because one that screen is not a touch screen, and write up on my screen because one that screen is not a touch screen.

Mark Smith: 13:07
And since COVID I've gone back to a full computer setup, not where, for the 15 years prior, I was always laptop centric, but because I don't travel anywhere near the extent I do, you know, my laptop is the smallest possible and it's designed to give presentations right. So I know it's tiny surface, yeah, and it's touchscreen, but that's not my day-to-day device. And I'm just wondering, you know, back in the day in the design space there was a thing called a wacom tablet, which was designed to sit on your desk with a pen, etc. Is there that kind of level of sophistication now in whiteboard where I can still have this conversation, but on my I could have a tablet here that I'm drawing which is? Is that there?

Jennifer Buchholz: 13:43
Yeah, it is. You can integrate with all different types of inputs. My partner works for a fortune 500 company and he is all techie and so when he literally will have his surface or even I think he's been able to make the remarkable integrate in to um, yeah, now, maybe not just in whiteboard, but like they really can integrate. So it's, it's pretty fascinating to see, you know, people who still have that preference for you know, pen or stylus can engage very similarly and, yes, I do wish that everything was touchscreen.

Mark Smith: 14:23
Yeah, yeah, I tell you, this is the thing. Even you know, as in. I've just left IBM recently and there I had a Mac and the amount of times I hit that screen to do something and of course no touch was there, right and just weird, weird and same. I noticed with my kids that they, if the screen doesn't, you, can't engage with the screen. They're like what's, what's wrong with? It's broken right, absolutely tell me about loop.

Mark Smith: 14:52
You know there's a lot of talk around notion uh and a product out market and that loop is designed to fill that gap of what notion can do. As from a microsoft stable point of view, are you using loop much? Do you see it being used out in the market? What's your experience with it?

Jennifer Buchholz: 15:13
I believe that microsoft loop is the most powerful collaboration tool that microsoft has launched, and I'm not going to say since Teams, perhaps in addition to Teams, but even outside of Teams. So, first of all, if people have never tried Loop, I highly encourage it. It's a funky little circle with a little square in the bottom left-hand corner in almost every application your team's chat in your team's channels, in whiteboard, and it integrates into so many different things. So the first thing that people get worried about then is well, where does it go? What does it do and where does it go? So there's actually a loop app. That is, if you think of it, it's the place where it's all saved behind the scenes. It's all saved in OneDrive, but the loop app can surface any of that for you. So if you start a loop, even mistakenly, and you want to come back and find it, you're going to look for the loop app.

Mark Smith: 16:16
Okay.

Jennifer Buchholz: 16:16
Let me give you a use case that's baked right into Teams that many people don't pay that much attention to. If you click on the notes part of Teams now, which used to be the wiki, which was a horrible experience because it wasn't searchable, and you know, now it is loop and it brings up three loop components. The first is the agenda, which is a bulleted list that everybody can collaborate in. So build the agenda. Let's take five minutes. Brainstorm, build the agenda, let's go. Everybody puts it in there. It has a notes section which is paragraph format.

Jennifer Buchholz: 16:56
Again, you could say we have a meeting with 10 people. Hey, jim and Sally, can you please be responsible for making sure the notes are accurate? So now we have one version of the notes and the final thing that we have in every meeting that we do is a task list. But that task list, when you bring it up in Teams, when you're doing it in loop, no matter where you are, can feed directly into Microsoft Planner, can feed directly into Microsoft Planner, right. So it's closing the communication loop and the app loop and integrating all the things into all of these places, and that's just one part of its functionality. But if we're truly trying to accelerate the speed at which we're doing work, improve our collaboration, use templates that are already out there and, honestly, stop having so many emails going around. And where did that file get stored? What's it called? Loop is collaborating at the speed of 2024 and beyond collaborating at the speed of 2024 and beyond.

Mark Smith: 18:04
That's interesting. And it's interesting you brought Planner into the mix, because I mean using Planner again, for I now do all the scheduling. This podcast is Planner as in, because schedule, you know, running a podcast not just about scheduling, there's actually a whole bunch of things that need to happen and those are all lists, and they're all but the lists that I'm going to do tomorrow for the next show, the next show, the next show, and it's like. I read a book years ago called the Checklist Manifesto, and I'm a big fan of not dropping the ball on anything, and what they've proven scientifically is that checklists, even though they're so simple, is that they stop you making mistakes because you're an expert.

Mark Smith: 18:44
So the application of the manifesto was the medical industry, where doctors would make mistakes in surgery even though they had been doing it for years, and so they introduced that you know, the prep before they started operation would go through a checklist and it just eliminated so many secondary infections in patients and all this type of things. And then the book applies it to the building industry. It's just, it's important for experts to have checklists, and then you know Planner does that really well. Are you seeing also that Microsoft seems to be doing a lot more investment into Planner at the moment. There seems to be new functionality starting to appear and they've got so many planning products to-do lists Like how is it all coming together? It's just a bit of confusion about how many different tools do the same thing.

Jennifer Buchholz: 19:31
Well, so they're intended to be with different purposes, if you think about it. So when I think about these, I kind of think of it on a spectrum and we used to have Outlook tasks at one low end of the spectrum that, unless you were really a task power user, you weren't, or your organization wasn't leveraging that to its full potential by assigning others tasks and things like that. And now we have the whole other end of the spectrum, which is Microsoft Project. And when I worked at Harley-Davidson, I mean we were running Microsoft Project for everything, but we had full-time employees, like plural, dedicated to make sure that project was running right. So they needed to close the gap and with 365, they did it in two different ways.

Jennifer Buchholz: 20:15
One, to-do replaces Outlook tasks. Outlook tasks are moving into to-do. Even I just saw someone else's Microsoft tenant today and the check mark was completely there and there were no tasks anymore available. So that is now. But then we still have this gap between your individual tasks and project, and that's where Planner is. And I think when Planner came around it was pretty far away from project and it's intended for group project management, group tasks, group initiatives, and you can do it with inside or outside of teams. Whichever works. Best position on what's going on with Planner is it will top out with features because they are not trying to compete with people paying extra for the Microsoft Project licenses. Mm-hmm. So it's coming, it's making progress.

Mark Smith: 21:17
Mm-mm. But you know there's so much stuff that you do every day in business. That's not a project, it's just it's the things I have to get done as part of my job and so I understand that topic in. You know, microsoft Project and there's been even in my part of the Microsoft ecosystem we have had dedicated other type project tools under in the dynamics realm, um, which were for running consulting gigs and things like that, which was different than microsoft project, the traditional, you know, which you know originally was a desktop server type version way back in the day, and I think they've had all these teams and whether it's through acquisition as well, doing different things around it. But there's definitely a separated space, I feel, with planner in that those kind of things that you know. Like I say, running a podcast, I've got to do all these checklists for every single show. It's not a um, I'm not manufacturing something that's going to be a multi-month thing, it's only a week thing.

Mark Smith: 22:14
You know, yeah, and I think that you know, and I see Planner was kind of like they compete against Trello, yes, which was used a lot in the market, but I just think, yeah, there seems to be, it seems to be coming together. But I think there's still a lot of misunderstanding. And then there's a lot of people that try stuff once and when it's in its V1 or beta and they're like, ah, it's not for me. And then and they don't come back and see, actually like, and that was whiteboard for me, because I've used other whiteboarding tools like mural, klaxoon and mirror and where I do a lot of design thinking based workshops in those tools. And then I looked at, as I say, whiteboard recently.

Mark Smith: 22:53
I was like gosh, my, you know how might we statement there's a template for that, there's the, a template for rose thorn bud, which is a standard, you know, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can do a lot more now than when I looked at it on day one, you know, years ago. And I think this need to revisit some of these tools that people already paid for, they already own them, they're already in the subscription and I like what you had around, you know, programs that support or serve people. I thought that was really cool. But people are going to go back and keep giving things another go because, you know, some people say it's not until V3 of a product that it's really nailing it, but they try to V1 and make a decision and walk away.

Jennifer Buchholz: 23:39
Well and again. Part of that. Also, the time that they go back and revisit is when any one of those Trello Asana Monday, whatever it is right Soon as they raise their prices, they go back and say wait, how is this product comparing? And you know, as trainers, I want to make sure that people are maximizing their investment in this product because it's expensive and I want people to get the most out of it, and that in some cases, the integration with all the other Microsoft 365 things will sometimes make up for what a product might lack, right? Look at OneNote. I mean OneNote competed I'm air quoting that it competed with Evernote. Evernote was miles ahead because it was a one product lane, but OneNote caught up. And now, because of the full integration with all the things, onenote is a fantastic place to play. I think the same thing is happening with Planner yeah, don't just look at it once, give it a year. And the other part is find a community where you can ask questions.

Jennifer Buchholz: 24:53
So today I was out at a grocery store chain and they have made the investment in Microsoft 365.

Jennifer Buchholz: 25:01
And the first thing that they want to put into a regular plan is their full set of accounting tasks. So the accounting manager made a list and it was a hundred and some tasks that are either done on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis, and today we imported all of those tasks from Excel into Planner easy peasy. They all got assigned to the right people and now you know, we're showing them how to take it to the next level when they're ready with labels, and to do the grouping and the filtering so that each person doesn't get too overwhelmed. But it's that kind of thing that when you're working with someone like first of all, they're like I don't want to build all of this, oh, just put it in a spreadsheet, we'll get it built. And to take some of the friction away and then to show them what the reporting looks like, or the easiest way for each person to do the work they need to do, it can really be a game changer for productivity and efficiency.

Mark Smith: 26:03
Last question I have for you is when you make recommendations to organizations around. You know it's kind of like everyone knows Word, excel, powerpoint, outlook, but let's say put those aside and let's not consider them part of the discussion. But let's say, put those aside and let's not consider them part of the discussion. What are the other tools that Microsoft have in the M365 suite that you think are just man? People need to use these because it is so valuable.

Jennifer Buchholz: 26:27
Well, again, this is not going to be a one-size-fits-all, but I will tell you, microsoft Sway is kind of a hot tool. I would call it a combo between PowerPoint publisher and word. It's meant for a good visual impact and online delivery of information. I showed it to a contractor supply company a week or two ago and I'm like look, you can brand it, you can template it. And the owner and one of their business development people were like so what we could do is we could have this beautiful, consistent format for all of our proposals that have already included all of these elements and we can send it over in advance of our proposal meeting. And then there's analytics that go with it. You can see how much someone has viewed, how much time have they spent, and so they're trying to fast track their proposal and quoting process using Sway, with the idea that it's easy to navigate, it's much more visually engaging and that they're going to come in in that meeting and just answer questions. Nice, I like it. And that they're going to come in in that meeting and just answer questions Nice, I like it. So I think Sway is a pretty hot ticket.

Jennifer Buchholz: 27:43
If you're doing anything in video, clipchamp is really great. Have you played with it, mark?

Mark Smith: 27:51
I've done probably over 200 hours in it. I'm an absolute fan of ClipChamp over 200 hours in it. I'm an absolute fan of ClipChamp. I use it, I would say, every day pretty much. I love it Absolutely.

Mark Smith: 28:07
I'm trying to actually get a meeting with the product team for ClipChamp, which is in Brisbane, australia, surprisingly, because it was an Australian-bought company and I've just been making arrangements because I have done so much work in it. Arrangements because I have done like so much work in it and I just you know, back in the day it was Camtasia would use for these type of things from TechSmith. But this is just an absolutely phenomenal tool, particularly for creating training videos for people, as in that you would use internally or externally. I mean yesterday I've been editing up three videos for a partner of mine. Today I'll edit a bunch more and I just get them to record it in it. Send me to the two raw files, send me the head and shoulders, let me lay out the screens and et cetera, and then publish. And I tell you what particularly. No, it's your show, but the feature I love at the moment is the transcription, since they've introduced ai is on point and it does a kiwi, it does new zealand accent as well. So I'm I'm wrapped.

Jennifer Buchholz: 29:05
yeah, I love it I've never heard someone that passionate and I'm really glad because I know it has a lot of power and I've seen a lot of that, maybe more in the marketing space. So the fact that you're talking about in the training and development space is brilliant as well. And just for fun, I'm going to throw back out there that I don't think we have a clue how to use PowerPoint, because now, with designer in PowerPoint, if you do have Copilot Pro, you can go from outline to completed PowerPoint in minutes. The recording of content, including direct screen recording capabilities in PowerPoint are on point, and your outputs can not only be video. You can create GIFs, gifs, whatever. However, we just pronounce it, you can create those in the simple PowerPoint. So I feel like that's actually just an example of existing products are still getting improved. Yeah, they're still trying to add value at all these places, and we just need to be curious enough to push the button and see what it does.

Mark Smith: 30:13
Yeah, there's an MVP in Australia, sydney, what it does. Yeah, there's a. There's an mvp in australia, sydney, um, who's a powerpoint mvp. He's got something like um a million followers on youtube and when you look at his powerpoints you're like this is a movie and he and he shows you and all his you know stuff on on youtube is all how to build the and and honestly talk about engaging. Like you would never come up with a concept of death by PowerPoint if you looked at this guy's stuff. Right, there's just the ability to communicate with visuals as part of your presentation. Just amazing, absolutely epic. I totally agree with PowerPoint, it's incredible.

Jennifer Buchholz: 30:56
And it's fun because the development as they keep making strides in the AI and things like that, I'm just really glad that they didn't forget what came first in the core product line.

Jennifer Buchholz: 31:08
Rather than just forward thinking, they're really doing some backwards engineering on it as well. The last story I'll tell just related to now the AI stuff, because I don't do a lot of this. But, as I was saying, we were working on importing from an Excel spreadsheet directly into planner. So when I go to power automate to do this, because it's not a direct functionality, you need a connector to do it. I went to power automate to do it and I was on my client's computer that they do not subscribe to copilot Pro, but Copilot was assisting in writing the script to do the connection and all you had to do is really say in there create an automation that takes this list of tasks in Excel and puts it into Planner, and it basically wrote it for us. It was a little bit of trial and error, but all of these products can integrate in such amazing ways. We just have to be curious.

Mark Smith: 32:03
Yeah, totally agree, Jennifer. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Jennifer Buchholz: 32:08
My pleasure. Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark Smith: 32:12
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If there's a guest you'd like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check out buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash NZ365 guy. Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.