How to Automate Deployments with Azure DevOps Pipelines

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.

00:00:23 Mark Smith
In this episode, we'll be focusing on writing books and career moves and changing countries for work and everything one gets up to working in the power platform space. Today's guests from Frankfurt, Germany. He's a CEO and Power platform consultant at Siem consultant. He's passionate about. Learning new stuff and automating as much as possible in his daily work. I'm gonna love talking about that. Is active in the community and power platform and run both blogs and YouTube channels. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome back Benedict.

00:01:01 Benedikt Bergmann
Hey, thanks for having me again.

00:01:03 Mark Smith
Good to have you on, except for this time the difference. And last time you've written. A book.

00:01:08 Benedikt Bergmann
That is true. I did. Uh, really? Excited for it? Yeah, yeah, I wrote and. I have it here.

00:01:15 Mark Smith
Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. What's it called?

00:01:17 Benedikt Bergmann
It's called application lifecycle management on Microsoft Power platform.  But the stuff I like to do? ALM. Yeah.

00:01:28 Mark Smith
I love it. We'll unpack that in a moment. First of all, tell us, give us. Give us the update on your life. You're moving countries like some. We spoke on air. You were in Sweden at serum consultant are there. And now you're in Germany. So what's the story?

00:01:46 Benedikt Bergmann
Yeah, that's that's true. So the story is by wife and I, we moved to Sweden seven years ago. We both are from Germany and moved to 2017. In the meantime, got two kids and I moved from my previous employer to CMK. And so we decided to go back to Germany mostly. Yeah. Being near. The family and yeah, having holidays for holidays and not for visiting family and so. On. And yeah, so I talked to Gustav and Katrina, who are the owners of CMK in Sweden. And we decided on doing CMK in Germany together. So so I'm as you mentioned the CEO of CMK here in in Germany. And yeah, I'm building up the practice tightly together with the Swedish colleagues.

00:02:33 Mark Smith
Nice, nice. Good to see that company expanding. Known them for a long time now and always excited to see what's happening. And so this expansion is very cool. The reason I got in touch with you, of course, is because of the book that you have released. And I'm interested in in unpacking a few things around that. How did the book come about, first of all?

00:02:58 Benedikt Bergmann
So I had it on my list since a long time to always wanting to write a book to be able to call myself an author, and so I packed contacted me. Initially with the request of like looking over. And. Like and yeah, what is content summary of someone who wanted to write a nylon book and they asked me to to review it and see whether that's an OK stuff or if something's missing and so. On. So I did that and mentioned if you ever need someone, I would be open to writing. The co-author or author book on the on the topic as well, and then the person who initially wrote the. Like the content summary, he was like. Yeah, let's do it together. And then after a while, he hopped off the project. So then it was my book. So I I wrote it completely. And so yeah, that's how it came along that I'm the. Author of this book.

00:04:02 Mark Smith
Awesome. Awesome. OK, tell us about the topic and why it is super important and why people are so. Interested in application lifecycle management, specifically in the Microsoft Power platform.

00:04:16 Benedikt Bergmann
I mean, it's a it's a very hot topic in the power platform, especially the Microsoft has invested a lot of money into improving everything around Lam. So the, the tooling and how the imports work and what tools we have to do our yeah and like exporting. Unpacking and all of. That they have invested a lot of money in it and are pushing it and we see and I mean, I'm organizing 2 bigger events not examined in colour cloud and we see a lot of requests on doing like stuff in governance and ILM area. So nearly everyone wants to do it now because it's possible in the power platform.

00:04:51 Mark Smith
Yes.

00:04:57 Benedikt Bergmann
So they have to learn how it's how it can be done, and that's where my my book is stepping in and explaining how to do it. I have it's around 260 pages, something like that. So it's not. Very thick book, it's it's lightweight and you can learn everything you need to know for a standard setup. I already have a list of stuff I would like to add in a possible second release, but we will see whether that will come or when it comes and. That's about it.

00:05:29 Mark Smith
I like it. I like it. Tell me, are we at the point now that ALM is transparent and what I mean by that is that can. Let's. Use a word that I'm not fond of. That is citizen developers. Let's say they're building solutions, you know, in their developer environment and you've got everything set up that they don't need to know about ALM, but basically from an administrative level, you could be enforcing ALM behind the scenes. Is it at that level? Yet that it's kind of transparent to them.

00:06:05 Benedikt Bergmann
I mean, I mean, you can't enforce it yet. They can still go in and do like the the apps export and import manually, which also might be a proper or valid ALM process if it's documented that it is manual then it's some kind of mail in process.

00:06:20 Mark Smith
Yes.

00:06:26 Benedikt Bergmann
At least so, but you can't enforce the automated deployment yet, but it is, I would say if you do it the correct way, it is transparent, so we use. The the Azure DevOps pipelines in basically all of our projects we have a few which we haven't migrated yet and we don't have like CMK. We don't have developers in all of our projects so for sure all of them are consultants functional consultants so not citizen devs but still they are using. To their flops to deploy stuff like they know how to trigger it. They know how to see what the. Is if it comes to problems. If there are errors, they they might contact one of our developers, but in the normal process they can. They can use it and it's also the some of our customers are using it. So we have set it up for them for the parts they are doing themselves in our joint teams and then they are like running the pipelines and deploying it. As mentioned, most of them are Azure DevOps pipelines. We have one or two customers where we use the power platform pipelines. Which is even easier for the people to use because they are, they still stay in the makeup pot, they don't have to leave it. But yeah, I mean it depends on like how technical the the citizen developer is for sure. But they could use a proper automated alien process, yes.

00:07:48 Mark Smith
Yeah. Interesting. Tell me about writing. The book what was the hardest part of it?

00:07:53 Benedikt Bergmann
I mean, it took way more time than I would have expected, to be honest and. Long nights and weekends of writing it and finding all the the stuff. Because of course if I if I write something and say that it is the way I write it. Then I need some resources. For it and in the normal case, at least, that's with with pack and I think that's that's good. I should have at least one Microsoft documentation like saying that what I'm writing is correct.

00:08:15 Mark Smith
Yes.

00:08:29 Benedikt Bergmann
More or less so I that I have resource which is a Microsoft official document or documentation. So that was a very hard part of getting all those or enough of those because a lot of the I mean usually the documentation is lagging behind. Because the the product teams are implementing stuff and after that they they update the docs obviously. So for some of the parts I was writing there was no documentation or it was lacking so I had to explain why I don't have anything. So that was one of the hardest parts and then also. So I mean, I know all of the stuff I I wrote in there and it's in my head and I know the heart, but it's like explaining it in a way that it's understandable for everyone and also have it like in a structured way like the the following chapters basing on the previous chapters so that I'm. Consistent in what I'm writing like usually I I can do that for for blog posts. I I think I am doing that, but a blog post like 2 pages maybe and not 206. So it took a few months to write, so I always had to go back to the the the first chapters and read them again and say, OK, I wrote this already or I I referenced this one. Now I have to explain it and and so on or I have to add it because now something has changed. That also was a thing because it took. So long to write a few months and Microsoft is investing so much in this area. There were changes while I was writing. Yes, whatever, like how the input is working. For example, they have. They have improved the import while I was.

00:10:07 Mark Smith
Yeah.

00:10:12 Benedikt Bergmann
Writing the book so. I had to go back and write in the beginning that it's different so they can that they explain the same thing later on. So that was a bit. Of a challenge. To have it like all, like being one big thing that like, yeah, works together. So say.

00:10:30 Mark Smith
That's interesting. So you wrote it over a long period of time. Microsoft kept making changes to the product. There was often the inability to reference to any official documentation from Microsoft for. That makes it challenging. How did you really deal with just the being consistent about writing and, you know, chomping through the chapters? Almost on an endless type fashion.

00:10:58 Benedikt Bergmann
Yeah, that's a very good question. I mean I the the first half of the book is more like explaining the whole concept of begin with ALM and what is the concept of solutions and what to think about that and. Environments and so on. So the first half is not very technical, and then the second-half is like OK. OK, now we are doing like Yammer pipelines. How do they look like for Azure DevOps and for GitHub and it's really technical so it was more like I have to make sure that the second-half of course is implementing what I'm describing in the first half, but the first half of on its own is already like it could be as a. Own part that is like free from the from the rest. So I had to to make sure that one that those one hundred 130 pages are like. Distant, but still it it as mentioned it was a lot of OK going back to the previous chapters. What have I written there to make sure that that don't repeat myself or don't say stuff that are not like the same or one is saying A and one is saying B. So yeah it was a lot of rereading. What I already have written?

00:12:12 Mark Smith
Did you have any challenges around the visual elements that you would have placed in the book, whether they be screenshots, code snippets? You know there's a big difference between something showing up on a screen as to something showing up in a printed piece of work.

00:12:29 Benedikt Bergmann
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So one thing is that with the book, you'd also get access to a GitHub repository.

00:12:36 Benedikt Bergmann
And there I have like all the YAML files. So because we decided we we won't print YAML files in a book, that's like that's not going to work. But but I still have as I mentioned code snippets like OK. In this case you need this step and that's a configuration. So pack has a quite good like they have a word template where you have different.

00:12:41 Mark Smith
Gotcha.

00:12:56 Benedikt Bergmann
Highlighting and so on, and also for code. So that's they. They are doing that, that's pretty good. And the problem was more like screenshots and so because I took a few screenshots from like Dev OPS and GitHub. And how do you do the setup and what do you when you create stuff and give access and so? On. So there I had to redo them a few times because they need like as you mentioned, a higher resolution in the books than. I would need on like my block or in like. An e-book. Or so and also I usually tend to have like dark mode activated everywhere in GitHub as well. Which is not the best thing to print, but actually now I've seen that some of the screenshots I missed, so some are still in dark mode, some are in light mode, but the light mode is still usually in the printed version better than the dark mode. So I had to reduce quite a lot of the screenshots and then also another problem or problem was. If I would use an image or an image to explain stuff like solution layer. Thing we are not allowed to use like the official images from Microsoft. Of course, because of copyright stuff. So we have to recreate it in a way that it expands the same thing but isn't the official image. So I add this a few times that I that's how it is. Like I added in my my.

00:14:05 Mark Smith
Right. Yes, yes.

00:14:20 Benedikt Bergmann
The word I wrote and that's here is the image I explained and they're. Like, yeah, we can't. Use that. What's the source of this image there? OK, I have to recreate it. So that was. Yeah. I wouldn't say very time consuming consuming, but it consumed a bit of the time to recreate those. Yeah.

00:14:38 Mark Smith
Another question I have for you is then about hyperlinking off book and how you represent URLs in a printed book, right? Because you don't want some long, you know, 1000 character URL's. We're using tiny links or anything like that to do any kind of hyperlinking off.

00:14:58 Benedikt Bergmann
Actually was done by the by the publisher. So I wrote the actual wells and they took care of it. And now that you mentioned, I actually they they wrote most of them completely if they weren't too long, if if I see that correctly now, I haven't seen any like. OK. Short links or so.And then also on the GitHub, there should be a composition of all the links in the file. So.

00:15:24 Benedikt Bergmann
You don't have. To write it from the book, it's like there, yeah.

00:15:29 Mark Smith
Very interesting. I mean, I know I'm asking a lot of detailed questions because I've actually been contracted to author a book for Microsoft Press at the moment. Hence my these are all little quirks that I'm like on these things that, you know, people think that it's that perhaps writing a book can be straight forward. But I feel like it's it's a multifaceted, lots of different things. To learn and and to get right. And then there's about three or four other people that you gotta keep happy in the process. The from the various editors, the tech reviewers, things like that. And I noticed that, you know, you talked about word templates and stuff, and I'm like, isn't there a more modern way of of doing this, you know, because I'm writing all my drafts in loop and then I'm going to transfer it to their template as a kind of output type process because. Because. I don't want to be worrying about formatting and stuff just while I'm writing, you know? Yeah. So yeah, it's interesting.

00:16:29 Benedikt Bergmann
I mean to. To be honest, word has gotten better as well, so I haven't had much problems with that the format, but that's also more like in the template I have. I mean I selected a paragraph and said OK that's code and then was like highlighted in. I don't know italic and red or so, but the really setting of stuff.

00:16:46 Mark Smith
Gotcha.

00:16:50 Benedikt Bergmann
That was done by the publisher. So they are doing like an internal job of transferring like what we what they get and like those word templates to an actual book document like so it was a different styling then. But I mean little small anecdote. My my wife when she wrote her doctor to this she asked me whether I can help her like in setting this. Document PDF which was like the result or this was also booked yet and I was like I can do that but I won't do it in Word. I will do give you a latex template and you write latex or latex instead. But back then, I mean that's. I mean, that's nearly 10 years. Ago, to be honest. Their word wasn't very nice, but it gotten better as well. So yeah.

00:17:38 Mark Smith
Interesting mention there. You had to take screenshots at a higher resolution. I didn't realize you could change your resolution on a screenshot.

00:17:39 Benedikt Bergmann
You. No. What? Yeah. What I did is, I mean, I took. I took it on a different screen because most of them I took on my first on my laptop. Being because while I was writing but then I took like my better screen, which is the I have a 4K curve. Ultra wide string so I took it there. So then the resolution and that this resolution is higher and then I could also zoom in more so that the elements get bigger. And then if I take like the whole screen and then shrink it to the correct size, the resolution is bit higher like yeah something like that.

00:18:26 Mark Smith
That's good to know because I've got a full wrap round screen as well here and then I've got my 1080P resolution which is just for present. So people and I would have probably naturally gone to to screenshot on that, but now I'll probably take them on my my higher res.

00:18:43 Benedikt Bergmann
The biggest problem they had was like the the size of the element and the. Text. And then also like the size of the boxes where marked stuff was very was was too little and so then I zoomed in and then it was better, yeah.

00:18:58 Mark Smith
Did anything change for you after being able to put in your bio and stuff that you're? An author like you're. Officially an author as the world recognized authors, you know all the years of blogging. Yes, you've been an author, all all the social media posts you've authored them, but you kind of only get the title when you publish a book, it seems. Yeah, I mean.

00:19:19 Benedikt Bergmann
Not really. It is a bit in like. Discussions with customers. And also. One or two times with competitors like where we took over a solution or part of the solution, I I had this in in one of the discussions where we took off a part of the solution for a for a customer and the our competitor was still responsible for the other part. So I was like we will, we have to set up an alien. Process. That's not we can't handle it like it is so. So we had a meeting with the competitor me. So the ALM expert of the competitor, me and the customer and they were saying stuff which I was like, that's not how it is. I can prove I have written a book about it. So that was quite good.

00:20:10 Mark Smith
Yes.

00:20:11 Benedikt Bergmann
In that case, and also for like customers like. Yeah, I'm we we have to do that. And I am I I don't like doing it, but I am the leading expert on that topic because I have written a book on it. I am not. But there are a lot of people that are much better and in this topic. But I am also a book. So which is like reinforcing the. The customer that it's what we are saying or what I am saying is. Good. And that's how we should do it. So that came along with that. And we also like here, OK, we have brought a few of examples which we are giving to our customers like yeah, like a present and to some of the customers. So yeah, I mean that's more or less the the thing. But nothing more than that I missed to send in my book to the Microsoft. What is it? Take? What is it called?

00:21:08 Mark Smith
The library.

00:21:09 Benedikt Bergmann
Libraries. Thank you because I saw some another person from Germany wrote. He wrote a book about Asher's questions, I think, and he was like at MVP Summit. He was in the in the library there and signed his book and it is in the shelf there. So I missed that one. I have to. Do that, yeah.

00:21:28 Mark Smith
After next year. Yeah. Yeah. Did you put it down as an MVP contribution?

00:21:34 Benedikt Bergmann
No, I did not.

00:21:36 Mark Smith
Ah, do you know that a book is?

00:21:38 Benedikt Bergmann
It is. I should I should add. It now to the.

00:21:41 Mark Smith
Do you? Do you know why?

00:21:43 Benedikt Bergmann
No.

00:21:43 Mark Smith
Because Microsoft knows that you'll never be compensated enough money for the amount of time you have to put in to write a book.

00:21:51 Benedikt Bergmann
That's a good thing that you say it. I have to. I have. To add it. Yeah, nice.

00:21:56 Mark Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you've got to the 14th, right? So yeah, definitely worth adding that into the mix of of of your contributions.

00:22:09 Mark Smith
What did you notice around distribution? Have people tended to buy the Kindle version more? Or PDF version or the physical version. What have you seen the most popular?

00:22:23 Benedikt Bergmann
I actually got the what is it called? The royalty statement from Pact today where they like print out, OK, how many books were like print the books and ebooks and most of them are at least in the last quarter and most of them were ebooks, the versions that were sold, but still quite a few. Printed books like. It's nearly 5050, but a bit more ebooks. But I would have expected way more ebooks to be honest. But there are a few people that like ordered them to give to others, like SMK did or shown for his admin or power platform course that he had like solution architect course but also. You feel like like I only I, I mean I I will read it by first of all I want to have it. In my shelf.

00:23:15 Mark Smith
Yes.

00:23:15 Benedikt Bergmann
With all the other power platform books from friends. And so on. So.

00:23:19 Mark Smith
Yes.

00:23:22 Benedikt Bergmann
Yeah. So quite a lot that are. Physical books, but a bit more ebook.

00:23:27 Mark Smith
That's good to know. Good to get a sense check on it. The other question I have, do you see more books move through Amazon or directly through the packet website?

00:23:38 Benedikt Bergmann
There were more from from Emerson, but it was as there as well, not as many as I. I would have expected. So I would have expected like 90% of all of them are through Emerson. But that's not the case. It was split, but I tried to. See the statements because that's quite good here because I can. I can see it on if I log into my.

00:24:06 Mark Smith
Can you see it directly on Amazon's website yourself as the author?

00:24:11 Benedikt Bergmann
Yeah, exactly. So, but it's month like per month. So but what they are, what they're saying like they have to calculate so. 55% was Emerson and the rest was, yeah. Through packed. Yeah.

00:24:30 Mark Smith
And and so did you set up an author profile on Amazon? And then that goes out to Goodreads. And of course that's then consistent across any kind of rating platform.

00:24:41 Mark Smith
And what about? Reviews have you? Have you had many reviews?

00:24:44 Benedikt Bergmann
Just one, to be honest, I just got one. Yeah.

00:24:49 Mark Smith
Just you need more people to review. Yeah. See, I'm a I'm an avid reviewer. I read lots of books and I review everyone. Like, for me, it's almost like I have to religiously review. The book but. A lot of people, you know don't, right? They don't go back to I I. So I suppose why I review is because Kindle when you get to the end of the book, it pops up and says hey. And because it's naturally in my face, give it a star rating and then write something and it has a minimum you need to write. It means the review is generally quite, you know, robust. And then it's about 48 hours later it gets published out. So it's interesting, OK.

00:25:27 Benedikt Bergmann
And then also like what I what I think is interesting that now that I see it here on the screen is when it comes to to Amazon there way more printed books sold through Amazon than ebooks. But through packed it's nearly only ebooks.

00:25:41 Mark Smith
Yeah. Wow, that's so interesting. That's so interesting and good to know. Good to know. This has been very interesting. Would you write another book?

00:25:57 Benedikt Bergmann
I am. I am considering writing a second version because so much has already changed or. Wow could be added. Like for example I was part of the native Kit integration Preview Private preview while writing the book and I was like. That needs to be. The book, but I can't do it because it's a private preview and it was then like a public preview after my book was released. So that's the thing I I really have to add in the second version and there was more other things that I could go more to like a deep dive into that one or into that one. I could write a bit more about that. And so nothing that is. Like nothing that is wrong since Microsoft has changed stuff, but I could add more details to stuff so I am considering writing a second version. I have to talk to to pack about it, but I mean that's basically it. I don't think I will write a second book about something else.

00:26:54 Mark Smith
Yeah. How good are they at getting marketing the book as a publisher? How good are they getting the book out there?

00:27:01 Benedikt Bergmann
Yeah, that's a that's a very good question. So they they asked people to write Amazon reviews. As mentioned, there is only 1, so it don't know whether that had worked so good, but they are. They are marketing through their channels, which is like their LinkedIn. And also if they have people they have people that have like subscription where they get access to books. So they market it to them. And then mostly like. I don't know. Who has bought it and why? Or how they have learned about it. But a lot of people, I think because I I wrote it on LinkedIn and saw it and then they have me in. LinkedIn and. And so about it. And we're excited and bought it. So yeah, I think they are practice relying on the authors like network A. Lot.

00:27:57 Mark Smith
Yeah, interesting. Good to know. Benedict. Is there anything that I've left that's kind of like you're like, you need to know this as part of the experience. You.

00:28:09 Benedikt Bergmann
And no, no, I don't think so.

00:28:12 Mark Smith
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I will make sure we get the links in the show notes for the book on Amazon. So if people want to get up to speed on application lifecycle management, check out Benedict's book.

00:28:27 Benedikt Bergmann
Thanks for having me.

00:28:28 Mark Smith
Thank you. 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.