Building Smarter Forms and PDFs with Power Platform

00:00:01 Mark Smith
Welcome to the power platform show. Thanks for joining me today. I hope today's guests inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power platform. Now let's get on with the show. In this episode, we'll be focusing on rescom's mobility, ISV partnerships, and PCF components in the Microsoft ecosystem. Today's guest is from buttocks, lava Slovakia. He works at Wesco as the power platform specialist. You can find links to his bio socials and anything we discuss on the show. If there's a hyperlink, you will find it in the show. That's for this episode. Welcome the show, Cuba.

00:00:48 Jakub Bajla
Hi mark. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
 
00:00:50 Mark Smith
It's good to have you on the show. No, it's been a long time coming, right

00:00:55 Jakub Bajla
Yes, we actually. Sort of agreed to do this in 2018 when we met in, I believe, Stockholm and then. Me and you, I would say both at the same time kind of forget about it because I switched roles. I, you know, went over to Microsoft, you know, for a couple of years. And then when I got back and actually. I find myself in a situation when I wanted to say a couple of words about the. Community. I realize that that's totally my beginnings. When I met Chris Huntingford and Gas Gonzalez and you, Stockholm and you. You, I mean, actually attacked you. It's not just you found it. You. Yeah. Attacked you. You you found me and you were kind enough to offer to, you know, go back to all promises. So I really appreciate it.
 
00:01:29 Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah, there's good value, good value. I always like to start with food, family and fun. And you come from a part of the world that I have not been to and I would love to go to tell me about about food, family and fun.

00:01:54 Jakub Bajla
I don't necessarily have the answer that would have a lot to do with what I'm from because the food that I like, it might sound kind of cheesy. It actually is cheesy. It's a pizza. I like Italian food a lot, but being international guy that has to be in the end, that has to be Chinese there.
 
00:02:09 Mark Smith
Nice.

00:02:15 Jakub Bajla
To be sushi. So I'm not. So I would say central European, as is supposed to be, but over Slovakia next to Czech Republic. Flowers of beer and all kinds of nice stuff. Stomach is a very small country, so we don't have nothing that's really typical apart from, I guess, the beautiful mountain nature and personalities I would say. So when it comes to food, it's Italian. It's kind of similar to my name actually I. Always like wished that I. Was in Italian because my name Baila is supposed to mean something in Italian and later when I was older I realized I actually have some roots in Italy, so maybe it somehow connected, but also on the other hand, over the last two years the topic of food family became sensitive to me. Because I gained like 20 kilos over the last two years because I have a baby son. And I have a, you know, a happy relationship. So every time I'm asked about the food, I'm wondering whether it's, you know, either interest or they saw me before. They see me now and they're trying to figure out, you know, what's the reason for it? But that's for the food and for family. Like, I already said, I I have some. The total one in 21 days, so it's it's been very exciting in 2024. And what can I say I'm I'm from a pretty big family. Definitely. Also like I said, I love Italian food. I have Italian roots. My family also behaved like Italian family. So I remember all the gatherings. 2025. Thirty people in one tiny room around our grandmother. Images, you know joking and making fun of each other, so I definitely am a Family Guy and I always will be. A Family Guy. And when it comes to farm? I'm I would say I'm a full of contradictions. I always loved sports. I was always about the sports, but at the same time I attended art lessons for more than 15 years. So when I was a small boy, I started with the tennis. Then I switched. To ice hockey. Then I switched to short track speed skating for a couple years. Then I switched to basketball for like a 14 years. That was probably the the biggest sport for me and. In parallel with all of that, I was painting and drawing a lot, so that was my fun time. So very strange child, I would say, wow, this is amazing. This is like very full, very full life. Very cool, man. Yeah. And it's find a lot of. Choices that I've made, for example, when I finished high school, I went to college for civil engineering. Which I really wanted to do because that came out of the old art lessons out of old drawing and. Thing and quickly I realized that even though I like it, it might not be the way that truly I'm not that passionate about it. I really like it, but it's not. The passion is not there. So that's why I realized I want to switch, and I picked technology and that's where it all started.
 
00:05:37 Mark Smith
Wow. What? What a cool path, man. Very interesting.

00:05:41 Jakub Bajla
It is interesting to me it might. Sounds strange because there's too many. I would say decisions or choices that I'm in. I pick like totally different path and I tried that one and it's not that I cannot really. Make a proper decision and stay with it. It's probably about a self discovery. I'm not afraid to just go back. And really follow the new better me because you always, you know, learn about yourself so. It might sound. That it's a whole lot of people in one person, but for me it's just I can definitely say that where I am right now, it's a conscious choice. It was not that I started some bad and now I have to, you know, keep walking because I already invested a bunch of years. Every single thing you do that I do is Council decision, especially also the the role is, you know, you introduce me as a power platform specialist, but it's been a month that I'm in the draw and everything before looked a bit different than you would expect when you see someone who's above person specialist you expect. The background of comes out with. Maybe you spend the background of the DT-65. For me it's been a lot. It's been a yes IT, but also networking. It's been partnerships. It's been self a lot of different things so. I see a lot of benefits in having such perspective.
 
00:07:13 Mark Smith
Yeah, I totally, I totally agree. And it's and it's. It's great to see that determination. Of where you've where. You've come from and that where you're going is on purpose and of of your crafting. When I think about like, I try not to get guests on the show that are. Just gonna peddle. A product, right? Because that's not what this platform's about. And The thing is with Wesco though, why it's always interested me resco is that. I think I first came across Risco either in 2012 or 2013. I can't remember. It was around that time, a time frame. On thinking. It reminds me of being in Seattle and the reason. Is back, then RM had problems or had challenges when it came to him with. The mobility story. And I was working with more and more customers that wanted mobility that wanted offline. And one of the projects I was in, we built a an offline. Mobile experience on toughened you know, computers that would sit in. Road worker trucks. And it would use a SQLite in the back end. And would allow for these Rd. workers wherever they went over over the area of work which had no mobile coverage, to allow them to do their job, come back, sync up and go back in. Now at that time there was another product in market, maybe CWR mobility or something like this. I cannot even exactly remember what the name was. Microsoft acquired them and. And everyone was like, oh, poor Esco, you know, because there are two mobile solutions that the world saw that work with dynamics, and it was seen that the other one won. And of course it wasn't the case because. Petered out and became nothing, and risk just went from strength to strength and and grew into this very robust, trustworthy platform. And what I mean by trustworthy platform is that you need something to work where you don't have high fidelity. Wi-Fi or even mobile coverage and things, and you don't want your device breaking down. That could be a key data capture tool. It needs to work and I think Risco has developed that reputation of it works and it's solid and it's and it's trustworthy from an end user perspective and from an organ. Therefore you know an organization can have trust in it. So I was very interested in getting you on tell us about.  When you explain what Resco is and what Resco does.

00:09:49 Mark Smith
How do you tell it?

00:09:50 Jakub Bajla
Now that. Direct cost product portfolio used to be very singular like and it used to be about advanced mobility. So it used to be very simple. In you know how to position resco's value, now it's getting breed more tricky as we add it you know bunch more activities with our platform. That's why I usually prefer to start with a bit of a history lesson. I know it's usually super boring, but it's easier to. I would say absorb where risk is actually going because in a sense resco is similar than me. Like if you look at my history like there's art, there's basketball, there is here and that and people like, OK, why? Why? So that's why I always start like frescoes founded in 1999 by bunch of friends. And the first idea was that the mobile devices are super cool and not just for, I would say. Consumers, but specifically for businesses. And who's gonna really figure out how useful these mobile device can be? Those will be develop. So we like, we like software house from the very beginning. We like a developer based company and our first idea was not to find a gap in the market or just to figure out some brilliant product. We're just focused on how we can help developers to actually develop good applications for mobile devices. So it really. Started with components that help them to load with the photos load with the camera or with some. Other I would say elements of mobile experience would be expected developers to meet, so that was, I would say like the first ten years of of our experience of actually just supporting developers with the toolkits so they can better develop for mobile application and at certain point we realized we have enough experience. To not just support developer directly. Let's say the one-on-one. But to create the platform for them at the same time, we realized that in all of our conversations there was developed with some need. They were helping, but in the background there was always some back and forth application. Either you have a front and back end and in many cases in the most strategic customers that we talked to. The back end was dynamic, so at that point we're like first of all we have, we know enough now about the developers, their needs and their needs when it comes to the mobile application. So we can create the. Form on the other hand, that platform will be natively for dynamics, because that's the world that we came to live in. Actually, when you said 2012, that was the year when we released our foot forward application and vote for application, that was pretty much what power platform is now for application. Movement good for is the same thing, local, local for mobile application development for dynamics at the time. So we are all called no code for mobile applications years before the power platform, so that's where we started to be like seen through that application mostly. Like you said it was, it was a long story through many projects where we showcased many of our capabilities. Not just the offline, but also fix offline also can mean many things, right? And you explain it perfectly for some people they only have that tool. They only have mobile device, they have nothing. And also the perfect example is I just recently actually traveled to Auckland and to New Zealand to meet with the Microsoft folks, but also to visit one of. Our customers. And when we met with their engineers in the field, they were digging fiber and that kind of stuff. We're asking them about their experience with the rest call and when we actually have them. Like, do you have any manuals? Like, how do you know what you're supposed to do, what you supposed to take with you? No, we have only mobile app. Visual, nothing else. This is it. Like everything that I need to know or do is in this mobile device and also I like to think of it through probably my experience from enterprise sector. When I look at the Microsoft like when you have a bank. And they're thinking about going from. All from the cloud, the most hesitant because they have some critical applications. For service based companies that critical workloads, the critical application is that person and that mobile device, so they. If the bank is asking about the availability of your cloud service and it has to be. 99 dot. 659 the same thing applies to model processes. That's why we bought everything on a very reliable offline. Because it's not that there is no reception. In many cases, there is a reception, but the reception might not be enough to provide that worker with what they need. So that was kind of like a cornerstone for the success that we had with the many customers. Microsoft actually discovered little resco and decided to make resco part of the field service. Package from 2016 so. In 2016, Microsoft introduced field service module and a sound module and it a full service module. When you bought the license, you only get a license to filter with mobile. And that was white labeled resco's application, but it was only one stream us working with Microsoft. All of the filtering projects, but also on the other hand, we are doing the similar projects for Microsoft Dynamics for South and many other custom projects, especially the projects we are most proud of and those are our projects with the NGO. So that those are very, very specific projects. So and that was our story pretty much the legacy story of resco you have that mobile client for dynamics up until I believe 2022 when Microsoft switched from from us to their own native. Our app, for understandable reasons because most of the mobile use cases, they don't need that advanced functionality. Many of the projects they don't need that full, very strong offline. So we kind of like maintained our knee specialist status. And kept working on all of the other projects we had. Apart from that collaboration. So that was up until 2022. And then naturally we, as I explained, the history, thanks to you know the success of the platform. As a platform for getting business applications, so it was not just dynamics anymore. There was a huge power platform where you can create any this application and also that business application can have mobile users, users in the field. We will like naturally we won't enable our application available client also profile. Welcome. And whether we actually entered the? Park button, we realized. I mean, we have a history of creating components. We have a history of creating lot of interesting stuff for developers. Those people that we're going to have back in the day that we're supporting back in the day are now in the power platform. Let's go back to basics and let's do the same thing. So that's how we started with the what we call power solutions and power components. So this is how we're creating these little pieces of functionality that now can be used within. The power platform. So now let's create a bunch of things, but it don't make sense when. You look at it as a story.
 
00:17:40 Mark Smith
Yeah. So let's look at Power Solutions and power components. So these are PCF components ultimately, is that right or is is that only? Part of the story 1st.

00:17:54 Jakub Bajla
Sign of us doing something else than mobile client over three power solutions.
Once the forms plus there's the docs plus and and there's the steps plus essentially what it is forms plus is the questionnaire or forms functionality taken out of our book from platform. And you know we made it available for for.
 About what it mean if you want to create the dynamic form with the with the business logic. You can do it with all engine within deeper platform. So you have a designer for that form within the power platform, but also player of that form. So essentially you could say the control but it's a heavier thing, is not something smaller. Same with the box. Plus, our mobile client has ability to generate PDF in the offline byte itself from any data we took that. And now it's available as a PDF generator. For power platform. It's not offline, it has to be online because we're using the serverless function for measure, but it's the same thing like whatever you want. You can create the PDF, so we have a designer for that document and also the whole engine that really transfers it to A to a PDF. So those are the solution. Just pretty much we know that there is a functionality, yeah. So that's two. What was the 3rd?
 One that was. That's plus steps. Plus is a different kind of animal. What we did there, we call it it's it's social for knowledge sharing. Because in many of our. Projects we realized there's always headquarters or whoever manages knowledge, and they write all the processes that document. How it's supposed to be done and the people in the field who actually do the job, it's a completely different world and in many cases there is no communication between them. So we pretty much threw. All of our mobile products. Like. With our mobile client, we realized we need to come up with the solution. How we can share the knowledge but also how the field worker can provide feedback to that knowledge.mSo that is available with the rest of technology, but also was taken out and now it's available as a solution for power platform. So essentially you create the guide with the fold, those with the steps, with the warnings, with whatever you enable it for the field user and that field user can. Go through it actually work based on that, but also operate it and provide the feedback back to it actually and reaches the knowledge with the with the real life data let's say.
 
00:20:45 Mark Smith
Interesting.

00:20:46 Jakub Bajla
So those are the three big solutions, but then we realized these are three heavy things we've taken out of our platform. These are IP's that we just, you know, put on our platform. But there are also these components which is you know our nature from 20 years ago. Let's look at that as well. And this is where we have a. Kind of like a. After multiple visions. Because we're not the only ones that understand and do PC's right. PCs is like everybody's game in the power platform. But we were like. And it goes back to one of the conversations that I had even.  Before we announced. That. We're doing PCs and I talked to one of my friends and his solution architect for one of the big four companies. Amazing Guy understands and really excels at all of the building applications and we were talking about the components and there are a couple of things that he told me like first of all, he was like. But it's open source, like no one's going to use it in enterprise sector because it's it's too much effort.
 
00:21:46 Mark Smith
Yeah.

00:21:49 Jakub Bajla
It was like but. But you do it. You do have internal library, right? It's like, yeah, we have a huge library of components, but we never reuse them. We create them, we store. Them. If it's relevant, we show them to customers so they actually see something real. And so we create the interest, but we still created the new one for them anyway. So there was. This whole like a weird situation of every everybody wants them. Everybody's trying to create them. Everybody's trying to reuse them, but it never really clicks. There's something missing and they were like we. As a software.House of 20 years of experience development Why don't we take what's out there and we have to support it to document? So our vision at the moment is whatever is out there, we're happy to just, you know, take it maybe maybe rewrite it at the layer of support and document on top of it at the same time, we're accepting direct requests. So whoever needs PCF and doesn't have the capacity. We're happy to do it for. Them, yeah. And on top of that, we have these, you know, visions of creating the whole. Platforms for configuring and managing PCF, so there are different pillars, different horizons that we see in a PC game, but it's not like that we are pretending we're the only ones doing this. We're the only ones understanding this. No, we're just trying to do what needs to be done, I would say. So this PCs can really go a long way because ultimately it really supports the mission of the power platform. And for me it's a very personal it is the same thing that is that I told to Scott, you know, when we had this conversation today.
 
00:23:38 Jakub Bajla
Like when you think about BCF, you usually hear these great names like Scott or Diana. Bill come back from orbits from Germany like these are great professional great developers who actually talk about the PCs in a passion. They talk about their value. But I am a typical example of a citizen developer with almost no deep IT background. I used to do a lot of envisioning. I used to do a lot of selling and consulting, but I never went really. Functionally deep and even the for me, these components have a huge added value because for some skill developer it saves time. For me it's ability to build a higher value because without the component I'm stuck. So there's also that perspective of enabling all these citizen developers, because that is the second population right in the whole part of the. World you have. All the amazing developers they can now develop easier and quicker, but you also have a lot of other people who now can contribute. Good. Thanks to things like PCs and also all the other options are in. The bar platform.
 
00:24:53 Mark Smith
Yeah, very cool. Has Scott ever showed you some of the PCF controls he's made in the past? That, that, that are not in the public.

00:25:02 Jakub Bajla
We're on the way there. We on. The way we. Have bunch of secret plans because we like to be honest. Resco announced that we're entering the PC game only like 1/2 year ago, so we started up and I think the 2025 will definitely breakthrough. Because apart from talking about the fact that we are here, we have a knowledge, we have a capacity, whatever. We're also working on some big things. So I don't wanna really reveal too much. But yeah, there be some really heavy components coming from us this year.
 
00:25:35 Mark Smith
That's good.

00:25:40 Mark Smith
Tell me about being an ISV.And the relationship with Microsoft around and you're a unique SB in your relationship with Microsoft and that Microsoft White labeled your products and in the past, but that structure is not there now so much, right? You're they've gone their own way. You're doing your own thing. And so you're a more traditional. Now what? You know, classifiers an ISV. And over my 21 years have been in the space, the experience that partners have with Microsoft from an ISV perspective, this just has been a tumultuous Rd. for 99.9999% of every ISV that is work with Microsoft. And the biggest reason is. The people that own the ISV relationship within Microsoft, you are lucky if any of them own it for more than three years before they move on to something else, and the next person comes in with their new program. And you know there's an attempt at a thing called appsource, which is. It's predecessors etcetera. I have laid out many complaints in my history of that product and when I used to own my own company, I create a lot of components that worked on dynamics and I've gone through everything from escrow to getting them certified for Microsoft platform and the likes now. Is the partnership today with Microsoft? How does that work for you? Do and, and I suppose. You wouldn't just have your ideas on it. You're bound to have talked with other ISV's out there, but how does it work now? What and what works and then what would be awesome if it changed or if you, you know, had a magic wand? And could choose. How the ISB to Microsoft relationship worked? How would that work?

00:27:36 Jakub Bajla
Being either being for me is very similar to being a teenager. Your heavily misunderstood and mislabeled in many conversations, and you don't really know what to do with it. When I'm thinking about, how is it to be either be, I'm really going back to the to my Microsoft base because before I was a part of the enterprise sales team as an account technology strategist, I was a partner recruit.
 
00:28:11 Mark Smith
We you an ATS.

00:28:13 Jakub Bajla
80s, yeah.
 
00:28:14 Mark Smith
Its.

00:28:15 Jakub Bajla
Atheist. Well, interesting. And before I was an ATS for commercial sector, I was a partner recruit in our subsidiary. So responsible for really getting all the local partner or potential partners interested to get them on board in the program. Look at their IP's, look at their services. Throw everything in the partner centre and that. Sort of thing. So that's when I actually started learning more about the differences between the system integrator and the ISV. Because coming from Resco previously this is my second time in Resco. I understood that we are ISV but. It's also important how Microsoft sees that difference. I think that was the rule of thumb or this layman's approach to what is the difference between those these two types of partners? And I remember one of my older colleagues, he told me like. Imagine it like this like. These both types of partners they extend and and like adjust and customize the Microsoft solutions. But the IV doesn't with the IP. And the system indicated us with also with customization the code but. Technically, with the services, so the benchmark would be. Let's say it's a 50% off code. That's how we explained it. Like if solution provided is if more of the 50% of the code is the IP it's ISV, if if it's less. Then the system integrated because many system integrators we have a great partners who actually took bunch of ISV solutions, put them together with the with the dynamics and some other created package. And there's still as I because. The code they used for integration or customization with small portion of the package they created on the other hand because mobile client is 100% are. Code. So interesting approach from from the old man, old colleague of mine and this is how I'm thinking about it. And I also remember the fact that as I was working on these. What types of partners you have? Azure your business applications, you have more. Work. In Asia, the ISV's are a huge thing like everybody supports them because ultimately whatever IP you created, it fit in Azure. It creates Azure consumer revenue. So there's still friends wow in business applications area it seems. Like a competition. And it's mostly because if you're a partner and we need a size to work with us, right, because a sizes are local, they speak to customer, they deliver the whole project. So they need to be the ones that recommend risk. But overall, how a side like they they talk to customer, they see a situation. And they're trying to deliver what they can deliver. And if there is a gap, there is a gap. But. Resco and other ISV's, they have to make conscious decision that we are creating some products, some IP that will fill some gap. So we're here only for a specific purpose. And we somehow have to convince some of the sides like you see this gap, we see this gap. Don't try to put your 10 percent, 20% solution there take less cost 100%. So this need to explain that we. Picked specific problem very very specific problem. In most cases niche problem that I would say is. Is the reason for why eyes with having too difficult because you need to do a lot of explanation why? What kind of problem you're solving, why and why it is not a completion to something that existing. Hands, you know are mobile client or one of the examples that I use is just amazing guys, the FLS. Which they're pretty much what we are for mobility. If you have a customer that is like happy or I would say they they it's nice to have for them to have a mobile application for the mobile workforce. If it's nice to have, they can use power platform because you know if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, it's OK and it can happen anywhere. I was just visiting Avanade in Stuttgart and there is a. Have enough Accenture and I think it's a B and you go downstairs. You're waiting for the bus. There is no reception. In the middle of the good God, like it has these things happen in love and everywhere. And but if you cannot afford this risk. You have to go with the risk. You have to go with the advanced mobility. So it's like a second layer. If this use case is important, it's availability. You'll go with the risk. Same thing does to SLS for scheduling in the in, in the field service. So if RSO itself is a problematic for you. Because it's too automated or you can't really customize it. To your needs. You're going with the fellas. And they have the same difficulties because. In most of the cases, first question is why not are also, are you in competition to to Microsoft that? No, no, no. We just know that one scenario. For the other customers that need us. And there is no customization that you can do or you should do to fix that because of your social like this and another great point you made. PDM, like every partner that wants to grow and make Microsoft happy, needs to have PDM because you need to be in line with the Microsoft. You need their help. I'm not sure how many PDM's. There are for. ISV's in business applications, I know of 1. I know one in the world.
 
00:34:19 Mark Smith
Wow.

00:34:19 Jakub Bajla
And I and I totally remember for my days with the Microsoft. If you had a good PDM as a partner, sky is the limit because you're gonna, you're gonna know about the projects. You know you don't know about the programs and programs can make a really difference for you. I just attended the business Central Conference directions in Vienna two months ago. And the business central amazing world, amazing world. There's so many IV's in a in a business central ecosystem, and it's growing insanely. Yeah. Not just because there is huge demand, but on the other hand, the programs there are unbelievable. And if you want to use them, you have to be on board with managed. Etcetera. So PDF for IV in business applications area would really really help but. I mean, it's one person, I mean. I almost feel. Bad to try to reach out to. Lady or gentleman. So like I said, there is a there there is structural problem, there is a misunderstanding there is a lack of resources. It's a it's a tough world out there, but but still if if you know your ideal customer profile, if you know your GTM strategy. You definitely can make enough people happy, but overall it's not as easy. It's not as seamless as well though.
 
00:35:37 Mark Smith
Cooper, it's been very good talking to you, your wealth of knowledge, and you've definitely left me with some insights that I never had, which I am going to follow up with you on. But thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:35:49 Jakub Bajla
It's been a pleasure. I can't wait for for next time. We have a lot to talk about and definitely take care, hopefully see you next time. Then I'm flying to Auckland.
 
00:36:01 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guy. If there's a guest you would like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check. Out buy me a coffee.com/nz365guy. stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.