Joe Camp is Product Marketing Manager, part of the Power Apps Advocacy team, and a consultant to...
Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Published: | July 15, 2022 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Category: | Legal Technology , Practice Management |
Tom’s a big fan of the Power Platform, both for its versatility and ease of use. To take a deeper look, the guys welcome Joe Camp of Microsoft to give listeners perspective on how to learn and use the Platform to aid their professional lives. From automation to app-building to data analysis and more, they discuss use cases for lawyers and the best ways to get started.
As always, stay tuned for the parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second the podcast ends.
Have a technology question for Dennis and Tom? Call their Tech Question Hotline at 720-441-6820 for the answers to your most burning tech questions.
Joe Camp is Product Marketing Manager, part of the Power Apps Advocacy team, and a consultant to Microsoft at Derflan, Inc.
A and B Segment: All About the Power Platform – interview with Joe Camp
Parting Shots:
Tom Mighell: Before we get started, we’d like to thank our sponsors Embroker, Clio, and Posh Virtual Receptionists.
[Music]
Intro: Web 2.0 Innovation, Trends, Collaboration, Software, Metadata, Software Service, Podcasts, Virtual Law. Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help. Legally speaking, with two of the top legal technology experts, authors, and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, here on the Legal Talk Network.
Dennis Kennedy: Welcome to episode 317 of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.
Tom Mighell: I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.
Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode, we discussed the many ways, the internet of things might be watching you, and collecting data, and how you might prepare to deal with that. In this episode, we are excited to be interviewing another very special guest as part of our growing interest in automation and automation tools. The topic will be Microsoft’s Power Platform. And what you need and will want to know right now. Tom, what’s on our agenda for this episode?
Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis in this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, we are thrilled to have as our guest, Joe Camp who works at Microsoft to help make its Power Platform products more useful to different audiences, and currently works with Microsoft’s accessibility team. And as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots the Onetip website and observations that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over. But first up, we are so pleased to welcome, Joe Camp to the podcast. I have made no secret in past episodes of how much I like and use components of Microsoft’s Power Platform, primarily Power Automate, but also Power Apps. I’ll talk about that a little bit more later in the podcast and I use them in my work frequently. So, I was obviously thrilled to be able to have someone from Microsoft come to tell us more about it. Joe, welcome to the Kennedy-Mighell Report.
Joe Camp: Thank you. Thank you, Tom and Dennis. Great to be here.
Tom Mighell: Before we get started, can you tell and I gave a little brief introduction. But can you tell our audience a little bit more about you, what you do with Microsoft and how you’re associated with the Power Platform?
Joe Camp: Sure. So yeah. So, I’ve been at Microsoft little over 12 years as a full-time employee, as well as a contract vendor currently. And as you referenced, I’m on the accessibility team and I just started that role two weeks ago. So, it’s the classic, you start a new role. It’s the drinking from a fire hose type of scenario. So, I’m a little swimmy-headed trying to catch up as quickly as possible. But prior that role or this role, I got hired by Microsoft in a community relationship-building type of role working for their MVP program, which is the most valuable professional program. And it’s a program where you recognize third-party IT pros and devs based on their community work.
Joe Camp: So, I did that for a good while, and then from there, I moved into the Windows Insider team to help build out a comparable or comparable MVP program for that team. And the Windows Insider team is a program that provides or allows folks the opportunity to beta test, or test builds of Windows. It’s a really cool program and did that role for four years. And then two years ago, I was asked to work on the dev advocacy team for Power Platform. And this would be kind of my first real and I say this in air quotes “technical role.” The other roles that I was in were program management, product management, relationship and building community. And in this role on the dev advocacy team, it was leveraging those skillsets but then also learning Power Platform. And the idea being that Joe you’re not traditionally based off on your skill set. You’re really not technical. We have an audience, the citizen developer that we feel would really benefit from the Power Platform, and maybe it makes some sense to bring you in and you learn Power Platform. And then tell that journey because I kind of looked at it this way making fun of myself, “If I can learn this stuff, then pretty much anybody can learn it.” And so that’s kind of my background.
Dennis Kennedy: All right, but I think you’re talking to a lot of people in the audience too. I think that a lot of what you say will resonate with people who listen to this show. So, let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start kind of with an introduction to the Power Platform. For those who don’t know or aren’t familiar with it, or may not have listened to us talk about it in the past, can you tell us kind of what the Power Platform is, what its components do, and what its purpose is?
(00:05:07)
Joe Camp: Sure. And so, Power Platform is Microsoft’s low-code offering. And kind of with a bit of learning and leveraging your office skills, whether that be in Excel, or that be in PowerPoint, Outlook, customers are able to build apps, are able to automate workflows and processes to kind of make you obviously make you a little more efficient in the office. And you know give you more time back to do stuff that can make you “money” and I say that again in air quotes. And then just to kind of walk through the tools within Power Platform. There are Power Apps and Power Apps is the application development component of Power Platform. And this is a low-code platform for building apps. Then you can use this for inventory management, and purchase processes that sort of thing. And the next is Power Automate. Power Automate is the automation or the ability to automate workflows using low-code. The next component is Power BI and Power BI is kind of the business analytics component of this. And that’s the ability to take data and then dump it and I’ll use the kind of non-technical terms, I guess. Dump it into a tool where you can visualize and graphically look at data sets. And then the fourth component is Power Virtual Agents and that’s the ability to build intelligent virtual agents or bot building, chatbot type of work. And then the fifth component, which is relatively new, and this was announced, I think at Microsoft Build, which is a developer conference this past May. It is something called Power Pages. And Power Pages is the ability to build modern and secure business websites. Honestly, I haven’t played a lot with Power Pages, but I think the really cool thing with Power Pages is you can kind of set up a website and then you can direct specific people to have access to that in a secure manner. So, those are the real big kind of highlights.
Tom Mighell: Which will I got to say that, unlike many in the legal profession, I’m kind of excited just by what you’ve described so far. But those in the legal profession actually do tend to absolutely freak out. If he mentioned things like math, coding, databases, or automation. So, when somebody asks you and someone who’s not technical asks you to describe Power Automate in this sort of quick, what’s in it for me with some examples. What do you like to tell them so, they quickly appreciate the many different ways they might use Power Automate, and then I’ll come back and ask you the same thing about Power Apps?
Joe Camp: And so, I mean, I just kind of thinking about this. I think my answer is applicable to both Power Apps and Power Automate. So, I’m sorry if I’m taking the question away from you.
Tom Mighell: No, please.
Joe Camp: But I think from my perspective with a little bit of learning and not a lot and that’s your investment. Your return on investment is fairly quick. At least, I mean, this is from my perspective. And again, this is coming from a person that is not super-technical. I’m starting to get a little more technical, but leveraging the skills that I’ve learned with Excel, with PowerPoint, and, like within Outlook, and leveraging some of that and then doing a little bit of learning, you’re able to build some sort of automation process that gives you some time back. And I think, from an attorney’s perspective, I would equate that to giving you more opportunity for billable hours because you’re taking some sort of repetitive motion that may not necessarily be something that’s billable. And you’re automating it and it’s given you back 10 to 15, 20 minutes, or whatever that may be in a day over time. You know, that’s a couple of hours. You know, I think from an ROI perspective, it’s I think it’s worth the time and worth the effort to learn a little bit so that you can kind of focus on the stuff that maybe gives you a little more ability to monetize.
Tom Mighell: So, let’s dig in a little bit more. We talk a lot on this podcast about how one of the nice things about Microsoft 365 is how the components integrate with each other.
(00:10:01)
And you’re able to use different pieces in conjunction with each other. And even though I should come back and say, even though, Joe described five different components, we’re probably going to spend more time talking about Power Automate and Power Apps, and anything else here just because it may be the I would think the lowest barrier to entry for most of the people who are listening to the podcast. But you can certainly talk about others if it makes sense to do that, Joe. But how do these components work with other Microsoft, 365 components? What’s the connection there?
Joe Camp: Well,I think and I think that the key the term is something that you just use and that’s a connection or in in the context of Power Platform, its connectors, and that’s the kind of the bridge without getting technical. It’s the ability for Power Apps, and Power Automate to connect to these other services within Microsoft 365. So, that’s gosh, that’s Excel. What’s really cool and maybe I don’t know if we’ll get into this or not, but as folks are learning to build a Power App or learning to automate something, Excel though it’s not a great tool for that as a database, it’s definitely something that you can learn off of. And the reason I say that is because it’s not as secure as say, SharePoint or some of the other kinds of meatier databases for the lack of a better way to say it. But from a connector perspective, Microsoft’s Power Platform connects to over 400 now different services internally and externally. So, those are examples within the Microsoft 365 Suite that you were referring to Tom. Excel, Outlook, Word, you can connect and do some automation where you can take a Microsoft form that may be a client can fill out, that person can click submit, that form then can be tied to an Excel spreadsheet or can be tied to a more secure database, that information can then be dumped into that database, you can also take that information. And this is using Power Automate, you can then tie that to a Word document for some sort of correspondence that you may need to use. Let’s see what else? OneNote, and OneNote, OneDrive. I’m kind of rambling here, but I feel like the crux or the answer to your question is, that it’s pretty easily and seamlessly connected.
Tom Mighell: All right. Well, we have a ton more questions for Joe Camp. But before that, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsors.
[Music]
Sponsor: As a lawyer, insurance is one of the last parts of your job you want to spend unbillable hours on. That’s why thousands of lawyers have switched to Embroker. Embroker offers A-plus rated insurance for law firms that you can quote and buy instantly online if you need help, they’ve got experts on standby. Go from sign up to purchase in just 15 minutes by visiting Embroker.com/law. That’s E-M-B-R-O-K-E-R dot com forward slash law.
[Music]
Sponsor: As a lawyer, ever wish you could be in two places at once? You could take a call when you’re in court, and capture a lead during a meeting. That’s where Posh comes in. We are live virtual receptionists who answers and transfer your calls so you’ll never miss an opportunity. And the Posh apps let you control when your receptionist steps in. So, if you can’t answer, Posh can. And if you’ve got it, Posh is just a tap away. With Posh, you can save as much as 40% off your current service provider’s rate. Start your free trial today at Posh.com.
[Music]
Dennis Kennedy: And we are back with your Camp of Microsoft. Joe, we’ve talked in the podcast before about how we felt that COVID and the pandemic really ramped up the adoption of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams in particular. But how did COVID change the Power Platform roadmap and its adoption over the last couple of years>
Joe Camp: That’s a great question. And I don’t know if I’ve tracked that. I mean, I think I’ll answer the question this way. When I started in this role two years ago, about six months into the role, I started tracking just out of curiosity, using LinkedIn and LinkedIn job service sort of tracking job postings that had Power Platform or Power Apps or Power Automate, Power Virtual Agent, Power BI somewhere within the job description, right?
(00:15:14)
So, I was thinking, “All right, what’s the uptake?” And I didn’t really have any other mechanism to kind of pull this data. And my theory was, if I’m seeing job growth, then there’s got to be as a correlation, there’s got to be an increase in adoption, right?
Joe Camp: And so, when I started doing this, I started in March 2021, and I did a query. So, I just pulled a bunch of data from LinkedIn. And I found that there were 47,000 jobs globally were within the job description Power Platform, Power App, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Bi was mentioned within that just to kind of a keyword search. And so then, the last time I did this was June 2022. So, after a year and three months, and that number had more than doubled to 88,200 eighty and something roles globally. The majority of those roles were within the United States, and then you look at the U.K. and kind of look at it that way. And so, from my perspective, I’m thinking “All right, well obviously, there’s some traction here.” Now a lot of those roles were consultants. And I mean, I think that kind of makes some sense. And I’m using my hands but I kind of look at the adoption as something like this where if you look at an inverted triangle or even if you look at a funnel, at the bottom of the funnel is Microsoft people that are testing it. And then the next group as it gets a little broader is maybe it’s a private beta program or some partners that testing it. And then the next group is the consultants. And then the last group, which is the broadest breadth of this are all kinds of industries that are using this platform. So, I guess, what I’m trying to say is that the adoption is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we’re at the consulting phase. And I think that as we get more and more of that work, then that’s going to migrate to the industries themselves. I mean, the companies, the Fortune 500s are starting to adopt that. And then you’re going to get to a point where you’re going to have the subject matter experts within the marketing of a corporation, the subject matter experts within accounting, within HR that are leveraging or starting to leverage and leverage more and more Power Platform and Power Apps because there’s a need for that. So, I didn’t necessarily answer the question regarding COVID, but with respect to the adoption rate, it’s definitely on the increase. And then I did kind of pull a quick number as part of the queries, I was looking for legal services. And over the past 12 months, there was an increase of just over two hundred percent of jobs posted on LinkedIn, where one of those skills is part of the job description. So, there’s definitely an interest from a legal services perspective.
Dennis Kennedy: Well, it feels like a trend. Joe, when I went on the website today, I was looking at some of the video samples. The one that really struck me was somebody was able and I think this is more of a Power App application. But they were able to kind of in just a few minutes pull together some information, and some workflows, which is sort of the low-code idea, use a little bit of AI to be able to recognize what the stock in a store looked like, so it could be identified. And then roll that app to somebody who worked in the store, and that person could kind of take a picture of the shelves and then they were able to basically get information, and then make decisions about like, how well things were selling, and other things like that. And sort of like really amazing how powerful and simple those things really were and how effective that demo was. So, I guess I want to ask you this. What other uses do you see your customers making now that you find exciting and what are the common things that they are asking for?
(00:20:05)
Joe Camp: So, I think, honestly, it’s the things folks are building, it’s all over the board. We’ve seen folks that have built onboarding tools for new employees where we’ve got a new employee that comes in and there’s a list of tasks they have to do, that can be as part of a Power App as they go through one learning, as they go through another learning, as they go through another and they can just click a button. That button is effectively a trigger that tells — and this is within a Power App, that button is a trigger that tells Power Automate to send a notification to human resources, to the persons manager that new employee X has done this training. So, there’s some tracking capability for that. And then also, that might get back at — also get pushed back to the employee into their own inbox so that they have an ability to track what they’ve done. That’s one thing.
There’s — let’s see, a client routing automation type of scenario where a customer comes in — a new customer comes in to — maybe even it’s within a law firm and there’s — and I have to throw this caveat out there, I’m not completely — I don’t have a deep knowledge on how law firms operate from an operational perspective, so my description may be a little vanilla, a little generic, I don’t know. But as a customer comes in or a client, potential client, comes in, they need to fill out some information. And that may have a dropdown — and that maybe a Power App and there may be a dropdown describing the issue that the customer or the client may have based off of the answer, that information for that client may get pushed to the attorney that’s focused on whatever type of law is relative to this individual’s concerns or issues coming into the law firm.
Let’s see, some other things, there’s the ability through — and this is something that I didn’t really talk on, but it’s a part of Power Automate, it’s called Power Automate Desktop, which is a robotic process automation type of thing and the ability to take data from — move data around from one location to another location from an automation or automatic perspective, it also — there’s some tooling within this feature that allows you to do some web scraping which is actually pretty cool and I did some of that myself where you can set up information on a day-to-day basis, so you’re pulling information down from some website and you can — as an example, as you can pull data down from, say, for example, Microsoft Finance website where you’re tracking stocks so you can dump those stocks and do a spreadsheet, that sort of thing.
So, I would imagine that there are absolutely a lot of different opportunities within a law firm to automate repetitive processes using that tool as well. Those are just three examples that come to mind. I mean, there’s a ton of others. There’s one that I thought was really cool. This is really — I don’t think I could build it because I don’t have the background, but it was — a company built a Power BI dashboard to pull financials into a dashboard and then allow the CEO to kind of change some numbers around from an M&A type of perspective, which I thought was really cool. And something actually, I’m going to follow up on a backend and see if I can figure out how to learn how to do that because I thought that was a really neat kind of geeky thing to do.
Tom Mighell: All right. So, I’m hoping and assuming that some of these use cases, some of these examples are getting our audience thinking about ways that they could use it in their practice, in their business. Let’s say, people want to get started, where is the best place or best ways for them to get started to use the Power platform? And I’m thinking more about Power Automate and Power Apps here, but kind of what’s the learning curve, are there specific resources that you would recommend? How are they going to get started?
Joe Camp: Yeah, that’s a great question. Thanks, Tom. So, I think from my perspective, and these are some tools that I’ve learned — actually, not learned, but that I have leveraged and used.
(00:25:01)
The first and foremost, Microsoft Learn and all the information I’m going to share with you, it’s all free, you don’t have to pay for any of this which I think is really cool. But Microsoft Learn has a ton of free learning modules and there’s a module that’s called the — I think it’s Power Platform Fundamentals, and it is a very much beginner series of modules or classes. I think it’s called — it’s a learning path when you go to the Microsoft learning website. And it goes from introducing and talking about all the different components within Power Platform and then there are some exercises that you can do that definitely kind of get your hands dirty on each of these components, so that’s a great tool.
In 2020, the team that I was on built a Udacity class called — it’s a Power Platform Udacity class and that takes 8 to 10 hours to do. It walks you through setting up a test environment to building an app using Power Automate, using some of the AI, Dennis, that you were talking about, tied into this app. And when you’re done with that, you actually will have a functioning app on your phone which is really cool. That was actually a really fun thing. Let’s see what else.
Within Power Automate and Power Apps on the landing pages which I’ll — Tom, I’ll give you all the URLs and you can post them in the —
Tom Mighell: We’ll put them in the show — absolutely
Joe Camp: — in the show notes for folks to access. There are actually a bunch of templates that are already set up for you within Power Automate. A ton of different templates to show you how to pull like, say, for example, you wanted to — and this is just an example. But, say, for example, you wanted to — you’re really interested in a specific topic and to see if it was trending on Twitter, you could set up a Power Automate that would go out to your Twitter account, pull down a specific keyword or term all the tweets that are coming from that as a kind of a trend analysis type of thing.
And though it may not be specifically related to the legal industry, what it does is it’s teaching you to kind of think through the process and it’s kind of a linear process where you want to this first, this first, this first, this first, this first to connect the dots. And once you start playing around with those, then you go back to your office and you’re like, “Well, what if I did this, this, this, this, and this?” And to set up some sort of automation.
Those are three things. And then the fourth, which I think is great, is just the Power Platform community in and of itself. One of the ladies that I used to work for, April Dannum, on YouTube has a fantastic YouTube channel that walks through a ton of different scenarios on Power Apps, Power Automate, and she does a great job there. Fifteen, 20 minutes long, they’re not super long, all searchable and a lot of great information there.
So, those are four things and those are four things that I’ve leveraged, and there’s a ton more, but those are kind of some of the meat-potatoes at least from my perspective on how to learn and get up to speed with these things.
Tom Mighell: And we will make sure — like I said, we’ll make sure to put those in the show notes, so everybody can get to those. Those sound like some really terrific resources. We got a few more questions for Joe, but before that, we need to take a break for a quick word from sponsors.
[Music]
Male: Being a lawyer can be stressful, especially if you juggle multiple systems to get your work done. That’s why over 150,000 legal professionals switch to Clio. With Clio’s cloud-based legal software, you can manage everything from client intake to billing from one secure platform. Plus, Clio integrates with your favorite tools like Outlook, Gmail and QuickBooks so you can get more done in one place. Learn more at clio.com, that’s C-L-I-O.com.
[Music]
Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy and we are joined by our special guest Joe Camp of Microsoft. Joe, I find a lot of interesting things that somebody could start out within — the one that struck me when I was looking at the templates in some of the examples I think that would intrigue is just doing some simple workflows like send out a document for approval and have it routed the right way.
(00:30:06)
So, if people — and our audience are actually interested in this, I think that template page as you said is a great place to start, but how do you recommended firms that are serious try to get started in this? Is it just kind of activating what you already have in Microsoft 365 and designate people to do some training which might work with — then it seems like they’re sort of looking for a problem to solve? Does it best to say, “Hey, here’s something that might really help us, how can we use it to automate?” So, is it sort of problem first or tool first?
Joe Camp: Obviously, every firm is going to be a little different from their concerns on allowing somebody to turn on a new service, and does that going to get out of control, I mean, you want to control it as you’re rolling out. I think, from my perspective, I’m all about — let’s just open it up and let’s let people play with it a little bit. And then if it gets out of control, then you whoever — and I’m assuming that a lot of these firms have some sort of IT department or even if they don’t have the ability to go to kind of control who gets what from a services perspective, you can roll that back if it gets a little crazy.
I think maybe it’s kind of all crawl-walk type of scenario where you’re going to share the ability to build a Power Automate workflow or a Power App with one or two folks on the team and let them kind of play with — maybe designate one or two folks who want to learn, let them play with it and then slowly build off of that if that’s your comfort level or if you want to just kind of let everybody play with it, that’s fine too.
You can control the rollout with using the Microsoft 365 admin center because I’m assuming everybody — they were talking about has got some sort of M365 SKU. And I think that E3 SKUs — I may be wrong in this, but I think the E3 SKU is a SKU that offers Power Automate and Power Apps. I’m not completely sure on that, but I think that’s right.
So, I don’t know if I’m — I’m kind of playing economist here, both sides of the fence. I’m not giving you a direct answer, but I think it’s just based off of the comfort level that the firm has. I mean, from my perspective, I think if I have a law firm and I wanted to play around with Power Automate, Power Apps, I would probably designate two or three people as maybe — and let them kind of be the test environment and then see how it builds off of that and then maybe build organically internally the knowledge base that way.
Tom Mighell: Well, Joe, we really want to thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I think you’ve already kind of told us a little bit about where people can learn more about Power Platform, we’re going to include that in the show notes, but maybe let everybody know if somebody wants to get in touch and learn more from you. Is there a way that people can get in touch with you?
Joe Camp: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So, I’m on Twitter, it’s joecamp13 is my — also, in LinkedIn and just a shameless plug, there’s a bunch — I wrote probably 13, 14, 15 different articles in my profile that are beginner type of articles with a bunch of screenshots. I tried to be as specific as possible of do this, then this, then, this, then this, and I’m hoping that people — people seemed to have found some value on that, so I share that with your audience and you’re more than welcome and I’m happy to engage with anybody from your audience, so I think it’d be great.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, perfect. Joe, thank you so much. Now, it’s time for our parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second this podcast ends. Joe, we’re going to ask you to take it away.
Joe Camp: Well, I think for me, the parting shot from a Power Platform perspective is learning — god, this sounds so cliché, but learning by doing, so just getting your hands dirty. If somebody that was not super technical and I’m still — I mean as I’m still learning, I still get a little nervous, started playing around with tech like, “Oh, I’m going to break it. Oh, this is going to happen.” I second guess myself, second myself. Don’t do that. Just go in and play with this stuff.
(00:35:00)
And you’re not going to break anything, you can just close out of whatever session you’re in and then go back in, but play with it. I mean, I think we learn a lot from playing around with the tech.
Tom Mighell: And to follow on, my parting shot is going to be sort of the use cases that I have made in both my work and our company’s work using the Power Platform. Once simple, a little bit more complicated, I’ll talk about how — a very simple way that I use Power Automate. We use in the Microsoft 365 world, we use Tasks and Planner to assign tasks to people. I do not happen to use that in my personal life. I use To Do list. Everybody listens to the podcast know that I’m a big To Do list fan. Although I appreciate getting assigned tasks in Microsoft 365, I am more likely to pay attention to them if they are in To Do list. I have a very simple flow that’s set up and automation that’s set up that whenever somebody assigns me a task and planner, it is automatically forwarded to me in To Do list and it appears as a task that I can then execute right there.
So, I’m able to access it in the tool of my choice and I’m able to get things done in the way that makes sense for me. So, that’s one, I think, very simple way and like Joe said, you can go in, there are dozens of ways to connect different tools together and take some chances and do some experiments and you can turn it off if you don’t like it.
The more complicated one that we use, just as an example, not that anybody would do information governance with a Power App, but we routinely create record retention schedules using Power Apps. We used to create them in Microsoft Access. I feel that Power Apps tend to be the successor, the modern version of Microsoft Access so we can create databases in there where you can include your retention schedule, the citations that are attached to those record categories, link those together, make them searchable and then they appear essentially as a website for your users of the company to be able to look at. We are also starting from a privacy standpoint to put personal data inventories into Power Apps so that those of you who to follow California or Colorado or Virginia or whatever privacy law you have to follow, you’re able to see what’s the personal information that we keep on our customers or our employees, where is it, how do we get to it, how can we respond if somebody asks something about their information.
So, a couple of different ways that we’re using it. It’s a very powerful tool. We’re just scratching the surface on our end. Dennis.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. On Power Automate, I just want to say, when I went to the website just looking at the templates just gave me so many ideas, so, I think that’s a tremendous place to start. So, I’ve two, one is really quick. I’m doing my little summer side gig for the summer, it’s something called Legal Innovation as a Service for law departments only, you can find out more about that on my website.
But my real parting shot is looking at how Microsoft is starting to bake in AI into the sort of core tools. And so, I found this article on howtogeek.com, it’s called How to Use the Scenario Manager in Microsoft Excel. So, if you use PowerPoint, you know that PowerPoint will design your slides for you in a really amazing way and give you a bunch of choices. But if you work with Excel and spreadsheets where you need to vary assumptions over time, say, like inflation rate these days, that — Excel now have this little tool called a Scenario Manager that uses a little AI and basically does all the heavy lifting for you.
And so, if that’s the type of thing you would do in Excel where you need to kind of play out variations and what might happen going forward, this article is great and I think you want to explore that tool in Excel.
Tom Mighell: So, that wraps it up for the session of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. You can find show notes for this episode on the Legal Talk Network’s page for the show. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes on the Legal Talk Network site where you can find archives of all of our previous shows along with transcripts or in your favorite podcast player. If you’d like to get in touch with us, please reach out to us on LinkedIn. We’re also on Twitter. Remember, we also love to get your voicemails for our B Segment, so please leave us a voicemail with a question at 720-441-6820. So, until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy. And you’ve been listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus. If you like what you heard today, please rate us in Apple Podcast and we’ll see you next time for another episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.
(00:40:03)
[Music]
Outro: Thanks for listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon. And join us every other week for another edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report only on the Legal Talk Network.
[Music]
Notify me when there’s a new episode!
Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.