Phil Glew-Deval's Leap to Power Platform Development: Bridging the Gap in Business Efficiency

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP Show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Bexel, england. He works at Hastings Direct as the lead power platform developer. He was first awarded as MVP in 2023, so nice and fresh. He believes that the power platform is a game changer for businesses of all sizes and industries. Couldn't agree more. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. As always, welcome to the show, phil. Thank you very much, hi, mark. Good to have you on the show. It'll be interesting. I'm packing a sorry-in-your-perspective on the power platform. We're looking forward to that. Before we start, tell us about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you? What's the impact they have on your life?

Phil Glew-Deval: 1:48
Food, family and fun. Well, equally important, I would say each one. So yes, you've said a lot about Bexel, so just a small town really outside Hastings. With my husband, we've just got a new puppy. That's taking out a lot of my time at the moment. We've got a from birth really Dash and Eric, who needs his own platform really.

Mark Smith: 2:16
Do you have an Instagram account for him?

Phil Glew-Deval: 2:19
Not at the moment. No, I think we need to get that one set up when he's of age. At the moment it would just be a lot of videos of him chewing things, which is great. Food-wise, anything goes really bit to me. You can't beat a good traditional full English. You've lived in the UK, mark, you know how amazing that is. So if that would be my go-to Fun-wise, I'm pretty happy. People say you know what do you do for fun? And people always say, oh well, I work on. You know I enjoy using the Power Platform tools and of course that's a big part of what I do for my own sort of interests and keeping me out of trouble, so to speak. But I'm a big reader. I've got about two, two and a half thousand books in our house. So whenever I can yeah, whenever I can is to read for pleasure, if that makes sense. So read a good novel, read a good biography, anything which is just completely different to what I do for work, something not related to technology. So it's a bit of a scapism.

Mark Smith: 3:27
I like it. I like it and the beauty of a book. Right. It can easily take you down a rabbit hole of reality that you can absolutely lose time with. Right.

Phil Glew-Deval: 3:39
Completely yeah. And even if it's not particularly, you know, real or true to life, it's, it's escapism, that's what it's there for, right, and a physical book to me is 10 times better than an ebook.

Mark Smith: 3:54
Yes, interesting, interesting. I've definitely read where I went to bed reading and I didn't sleep at all. I the sun came up and I was still reading, you know.

Phil Glew-Deval: 4:03
Yeah, we've all had those. And similarly you've had that where you, you started to read a book and you, you, you face palm with the, with the book in your hand. So it's great for both.

Mark Smith: 4:13
Yeah, totally, totally. I find that, particularly with electronic books, if I don't have the audio as well, I'll all of a sudden find myself asleep. You know, don't know what's going on. Yeah, no, it's interesting. Tell us a bit about how you got involved with the Power Platform.

Phil Glew-Deval: 4:31
Yeah. So it's actually been very, very quick for me to to really come into anything to do with technology, let alone the Power Platform. So whistle stop, really. Is the? The lot of sort of 10 years of my career priors are working on the Microsoft suite specifically. Power has been in compliance, internal audit and sort of complaint management. Really, the opportunity arose, for we're currently working to create a new application for one of our regulatory pieces of work that we need to do and, as it often happens, we were relying on Excel documents. We're relying on pretty outdated SharePoint sites which served their purpose but needed that overhaul, needed that refresh. I had already voiced that I needed to stretch my legs a little bit more. The one thing working in audit is you write an audit report. It goes out to the masses and it's well received. You get great engagement from people. But you write a finding an audit report or something that maybe has gone a little bit awry, a little bit wrong due to manual processes, and you think I could do that, I could automate that, I could fix that. So I kind of got fed up telling other people what you should be doing and I thought I could do that myself and the way I could do that spin up a power app, spin up an automation flow. It really is that simple in those cases. So towards the last six months, really, of me working in audit, I was given the opportunity to really sort of let loose on power, which even two years ago because it's come such a long way was a little bit less advanced than some of the elements that we have now. So my first deliverable was a pretty basic. I look back at it now I think, oh, what was I doing? That was really bad. But it was straightforward canvas app with a SharePoint data source to capture, as I say, regulatory information from some of our colleagues, and that was my first step into it. I thought I really enjoyed doing this. You can see the impact that this is having immediately. So those long development times have gone and you create what you know, as a business expert, needs to be done without having to jump through the hoops of elongated planning and elongated testing. It's all ready for you and that was my first app and it's really just taken from there and lucky enough to then move directly into a role where it was looking after the power platform for the organization, for the company. So I've had a lot of luck, but a lot of hard work as well, to be able to put my career in this position now, using these great tools and solving business problems and challenges, and being able to see the outcome, being able to see the effect that they're having in our day to day operations and also be a user myself of these. It's not something we create and then throw away. It's not something we create, deploy and walk away. We create, we deploy, we test, we use, we continue that support throughout its life cycle and that, for me, is, I think, one of the biggest pluses of the platform is that you continue through it. It's an iterative development process, like everything but those deployments. There's no updates. We don't need teams of developers. I can do that. That's the only issue with the accountability and the drive, therefore, of the passion of making this a really good application or a really good set of automation principles is kind of what drives me on.

Mark Smith: 8:40
So how did you first hear about it? Who introduced you to the Power Platform or the Power App or Power Automate? Who was at first? What was that first day that you remember, that you came across it?

Phil Glew-Deval: 8:52
Because I remember the date, but I remember the actual day. I remember where I was sitting. It sounds like you know where we were when X happened and it was a good friend of mine but our CTO, our Chief Technology Officer at the time, simon Bullars, and we were talking through what needed to be done and my original sort of proof of concept, my original spin-up of what I thought could work, was really a SharePoint site and, to explain in general terms, this was a way for people to log certain activities. It's all it really really is, but needed to be user friendly, needed to be quick and it needed to be in a way that really non-technology people could get to grips with and submit the information that they needed to. And he said to me this screams PowerApp to me. And there was me trying to play along, knowing exactly what he meant, but Googling feverishly in the background about PowerApps, and it was as simple as going then to makepowerappscom. Walking through the process, I was like I was back then what do I start with? I start with SharePoint. Okay, let's move forward. What kind of app would it be best to use? Okay, let's use Canvas. And then it really took from there and I've never looked back since that first conversation with him of how he sold, how it was sold to me. It can literally do anything or it can be configured to do anything, and I thought there's nothing that can do anything, there's nothing that you can really push that far. But from that day on, I've never yet found a case, a use case, that doesn't utilize some of the Power Platform or can't use some of the Power Platform in some way. So that really was the pinnacle turning point for me.

Mark Smith: 10:49
What's been your most advanced solution that you've created on the Power Platform.

Phil Glew-Deval: 10:56
So there's probably two, but the one that is in kind of most use is a desk booking application with a difference, as I call it. So this very, very large Canvas app now is used by nearly 4,000 colleagues daily to not only book desks across our current office space but also be able to amend and edit that desk booking book on behalf of others. So we have a lot of people with enhanced permissions on there who have got teams of people or look after maybe a member of our leadership team so they can book on behalf of that person but also submit requests for travel information. And the reason I say this is or travel booking, should I say the reason I say this is the largest is that we have swathes of dataverse tables in there. It's constantly being used, in fact, during the hours of I think it's between 11 pm and maybe around now, so called at 6, 6 am. It's downtime. From now onwards, people will be using the application for a whole host of things booking invisitors, for example, until 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock tonight. So it is big. It's getting a little bit too big for its booths In some ways. There's always a way to refactor, but again, that's not a huge task with Power Platform, it's because of its extensibility. This is how the future of these services should and is going to work, so I'm not scared to get back in there and update it, make it better.

Mark Smith: 12:48
So how do you deal with misconceptions around that the Power Platform is just for, like, simple apps, maybe a form capture, simple stuff. How do you deal with that?

Phil Glew-Deval: 13:00
Yeah, it's a tricky one, but I think not to be too evangelistic, but it's really about education, communication and knowledge of maybe some IT professionals or those in decision making roles within the organisation who really just don't understand it, because sometimes of the way it can be positioned as something to keep those people that think their developers happy whilst the actual developers get on with the real work writing their JavaScript, writing their Python. It's a difficult one to overcome, but the way I tackle it is to really show them. You know, you've, you've mentioned on this call, you've mentioned in this meeting that this is your business problem. This is what you want to try to achieve and, because of the speed and the ease of use from a developer's perspective, to use power to spin up something within literally an hour to hours and show that back to them Either on a screen recording or here's the out, here's the link to what you were asking for go and have a play. You can't break anything. Go and have a play, and that was all done with power. That's neither as well. With the right licensing, that's not going to cost you anything and you haven't paid a very expensive external consultancy firm. You know, to ground a day, let's say, for six weeks to come up with something in a pro code fashion. That's been a big way of making people think, oh okay, I didn't realize that the power apps or power platform or power BI, even in some cases, is enough to make people think, wow, this is, this is a game changer. That's done a lot, but for me it's what I said, that about that knowledge and the education that's been, I think the you know we talk about how I moved into becoming MVP, etc that's been. The biggest thing for me is to show people, not just give them the output and here it is done, does it work for you, yes or no, but show them those steps of. This is what we do, this is how it works, and that is that. I think that's been the far and away the best way of communicating and educating people on what this is. Because I do understand why it's scary for people, especially those that have worked in development teams, scrum teams, senior levels, even for many, many years, decades. Even this new kid on the block of low no code can be unsettling for them and I get that. But there's no reason it should be. It's not there to replace jobs. It's there to compliment what we already have, and the two, in my view, can work very much hand in hand seamlessly. So let's embrace that and let's exploit that as much as we can.

Mark Smith: 16:06
Yeah, I want to side steps quickly into the area of Microsoft certified trainer. I take it you're an MCT right?

Phil Glew-Deval: 16:14
Yes, I was MCT first.

Mark Smith: 16:16
Yeah, yes, so. So one of the things I noticed on your profile you had a comp tier trainer. Trainer was that right qualification. Now, I did that over 20 years ago, my career and it's been a long time and I've recommended a lot of people do it if they, if they want to become a adult educator trainer, how long ago did you do your do that comp tier cert and what was involved in it and what are the key things that addresses?

Phil Glew-Deval: 16:42
Yeah, so the comp tier plus plus, as I think, is known. I did that nearly two years ago now I think it was about 18 months to two years ago and that particular, along with some other training, adult training, classroom training, qualifications, is one of the prerequisites to getting the MCT. But the company specifically is an assessed program To really evaluate how you are as a trainer, not necessarily the content of what you're training you could train anything, but it's how you do that. How are you acting, how are you behaving, how are you engaging with your pupils, with your classroom students? For that particular topic and my particular assessment was actually on Dataverse, I did a half an hour. I think it was real high level overview. We dealt with it in a little bit of detail with my team. It was knowledge learning for all of us really, because you never really understand something until you try to train on it and you realise, oh, that's a very good question to find that one out. So I was on Dataverse and I submitted that through to them along with a formal assessment on the principles of engaging classroom training, and then submitted that through was successful and moved on to training the actual courses themselves. So it's quite a lot of work for the CompTIA in terms of meeting the requirements. But once you're in there and you're either virtually or in person doing that, that training, that assess piece of training and onwards, you just come into your own really.

Mark Smith: 18:41
So, specifically for those listening, it was CTT Plus as the actual training course. Comptia do a lot of different courses. My first one was, I think, called A Plus, which was how to build computers right back in the, you know, back in the day when I started in IT and so, but yeah, the train the trainer was a really good, or becoming an adult trainer was that program. And you're right, people, one person on my course I remember doing the class and everything. We had a full classroom environment. One person was an adult educator of yoga and they were using it to build out their yoga training skills. Yeah, so it's not not specific to IT, not at all, and it's industry standard qualification.

Phil Glew-Deval: 19:30
And the great thing about it now is really sort of buoyed on by the COVID years that I called them is the ability to not just have the classroom trainer element but there's also a virtual classroom trainer pathway between the two so you know you can pick the one that's most suitable for you, where your audience is going to be, and it's all tailored then to that kind of communication channel. So a classroom physical classroom trainer is about engaging you know your physical presence whereas the virtual one is how to use teams, how to use Skype to do breakout rooms. How do you engage with those people? How are you getting your message across? How are you pausing for breath? How are you bringing the subject matter to life? So there's two pathways there and they're equally as brilliant. So it's definitely the first step towards empty team. I go again.

Mark Smith: 20:28
It's good. The last question I have because we're at the 20 minute mark already is the last question I have is how did you become an MVP? Who nominated you? What was involved? Being that you've got it recently, it'll be interesting to hear how things were.

Phil Glew-Deval: 20:44
Yes, mvp for me was something that I always wanted to aspire to. I knew that the primary of becoming an MVP is really the gift back to the community. That's what it's all about. So I created my blog powerupwithfilcom Not quite sure of the name now maybe I have to change that, but that's what I went with To record very short shot videos and walkthrough guides of how we can push power, how we can really extend its boundaries. So I got that all up and running and started very, very small, with just a few little blog posts on how to use Dataverse. In a certain way, my good friend of my, nick Fry, who works for Microsoft, who I worked with in a previous life, has spotted blogs, spotted what I was doing and nominated me for MVP, which I remain always thankful to him for. It's, then, quite a long process for MVP because obviously you need to keep going on the blogging, the community involvement, the conversations with Microsoft as well. It really helps. So, at a time when Power Virtual Agents was in its infancy, I joined a working group of what should PVA do? What is it missing versus bot framework as your bot framework, and the two are never the same because of their underlying infrastructure, but how can we make PVA do some of the things that bot framework can do in a pro-code way? That was a great piece for me to really get involved in the future of Microsoft technology. So the application submitted. This is how it works in an app shell you get nominated, you put forward everything about yourself, why you want to be MVP, what is it about the MVP status and the MVP community that is going to enhance the Microsoft community overall? And then there's the tense moments of a month or two where you wait for your application to be reviewed, keep going, keep on with your knowledge, sharing your learning, your own personal development, learning as well. And then that magic email comes through mine came through early May this year of congratulations, you've been accepted in the MVP program. And then there's the celebration natural celebration to come after, and you then are welcomed. So well, the MVP community is one of the most welcoming places ever that you can never ask the wrong or bad question. So, even if this is something that is pretty fundamental that maybe I've just never come across, I can ask the MVP community, the distribution list, the groups that we are members of how do I do this? What am I doing wrong and someone will come back with here's a link to the docs, something very straightforward, but you just think, ah, that's brilliant. And for those more taxing challenges as well, and sometimes when we encounter bugs, we're often the first people to raise them with Microsoft directly and get them out, get them sorted, or at least workarounds developed by the Microsoft themselves, or all one of us. We'll help you do that to come up with a workaround that Tilifix can be put in. So it's extremely rewarding to be part of and the sky really is no limit in this case the amount of development, the amount of thought to each and every problem, each and every use case, each and every idea that we want to try and achieve, not just with power. This is when VP really comes into its own, because you're exposed to all of the Microsoft technologies and I've not come across it yet, but I know others have is when power maybe isn't the best solution for something. Chat with your mates, chat with your other MVP, chat with the community. What is the best Microsoft piece to solve this problem? And if it's not power, you'll soon get the answers to what it really should be. And just to close off, really from my MVP experience the amount of times where we still leverage some power capabilities in something completely left field from Azure. So Azure Internet things, keeval virtual machines, etc. That don't really natively have their place in the power world, so to speak, the two interacting between each other to bring a really fast and really reliable solution to the end user. It happens more often than people would think.

Mark Smith: 26:02
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time.