Integration Love Story med Sofia Platas

Introduktion

Sophia, welcome to Integration Love Story. We are very glad to have you, so thank you so much for joining.

Thank you for inviting me.

We have been doing an intro in previous sessions where we ask you about who you are, but we’re going to do it with a twist. I will try to introduce you — I’ve never met you, but there are some things you can read on the internet. I will try, and then you can correct me or add something.

Sophia Platas. You have been working seven months at Prodware since July 2025. Your LinkedIn says software architect, but also power platform software architect. If I try to understand your career, I would say that you are a Dynamics 365 champion who moved to a more tech-focused role. Speaking of champions, I could read that you are a Kempo champion — actually, world champion from 2023. And if I read it right on your LinkedIn, last year you traveled a lot, both for work and for speaking sessions. You were at BizSummit, Azure Dev Summit, Global Azure Torino, and Nordic Integration Summit in Stockholm, where you were a speaker.

I would summarize this by saying: since you are a fighter, you like a challenge. Since you are a speaker, you are your own worst critic. You love a challenge, you love training, you love traveling. You already mentioned in the pre-intro that you were traveling during Christmas as well. So — how was that presentation of you, and is there something you would like to add or correct?

No, I think that’s pretty much it. The only thing I’d add is that I love cooking and food.

I was actually thinking about adding that — since you are from Spain, you obviously love food and cooking — but I missed that part. Sorry.

It’s all good. That would be a great summary of me.

Kampsport, balans och att ge allt

Is there something you want to dig deeper into? I mean, we will talk about tech, but — world champion. Can you tell us about that?

For me, sports is like therapy. It helps me keep the balance in the rest of my life. As you were saying, I like challenges both at work and while traveling for sessions, to promote the community and everything. My head is always going at 200 miles per hour. So the moment I step into the gym or onto the tatami for a training session or a fight, the whole world stops for me. It’s something that keeps me grounded.

The titles just came, once you train and put all you have into something. The effort — you don’t always see the results on a short path, but they come in the end. And maybe they’re not titles. Maybe they’re the people you meet or the places you travel. For the world championships, I had to go to Tunisia, to Portugal. My martial art is called Kempokai, which is a traditional Japanese style, so we go to Japan every few years as well, to meet with the people who train there. The effort you put in just comes out at the moment you need it.

But did you plan to become a world champion? Was there a plan, or a dream?

There is a plan, but you never know exactly what you’re aiming for. There’s a saying: aim high and hit low. You train every day, every session, and you give your best — every day at your job, you try to excel yourself, and then whatever comes is what’s meant for you.

When I went to the world championship, I had no expectations. I just knew that in every fight, every second on the tatami, I had to do what I had been training for. The day before, I was in my coach’s room with all my teammates and I told them: I might lose in the first minute and be out of the whole thing, and I swear I don’t care. The whole training, the family feeling — that was my prize. And when you go out there with no expectations and just do what you’ve been training for, you’re not nervous. You’re just doing your thing.

That’s what I also like about the community and the sessions. It’s actually just what I do in my daily life. I explore technology and try to help my teammates, or teach clients — and being on stage is just doing that, up there. There’s no difference.

Från Dynamics 365 till power platform software architect

How close is the comparison I made — that you were a D365 champion who moved to a more tech-focused role?

Yeah, kind of. I started in Dynamics 365 CRM about seven or eight years ago, and I just advanced with the technology. Now we’re moving a bit away from CRM and focusing more on power platform. It’s more adaptable, more scalable. I studied biomedical engineering, which has nothing to do with it directly, but at the same time it is engineering. The problem-solving capabilities you acquire in that degree kept me motivated. And then of course there’s always code, always new technology — Azure, AI, whatever comes in. It’s just a new challenge, just continuing the path. You don’t even think about it, you just go with it.

You’re making it sound very easy — but I think that’s actually what this drive is about. You now have a title that is more management-oriented, being a platform architect. What does a typical day actually look like?

Basically, I’m the liaison between the consulting or design team and the building team. They give me a design, and then I choose the tools and the how. They have the what and the why — what has to be done and why — and then I do the how: how are we going to do it, and when do the new pieces come in and how do they attach to one another.

What I do is translate the functional design of a project into actual technical tasks for the team to develop. And if there’s something complicated, or if I have my hands free, I’ll jump in and be part of the team.

I started on the building team with a little bit of responsibility for the functional designs, because not all projects are big enough to have all the different roles in the team. So you just have to change your hat and do a little bit of everything. Having both points of view, I became the middleware between them. I just make sure that everyone understands each other.

Hur man väljer rätt verktyg — och inte överkonstruerar

Can you invite us into your head for a moment — when you get a solution to work on and your hands are free? What’s your thought process?

There’s always a first stage where you really need to know the context of the project and the client. What’s the budget? What’s their tech level? Who is going to use the system? How much are they going to let you build outside of the power platform — with Azure or other systems? What’s their capability to integrate with third-party software?

When you have that in mind and they pose you a problem — say, “I need someone to be notified when a process enters its final phase” — you start asking questions. Where is that process defined? How do you know it’s happening? Who needs to be notified? What should the notification say? Can you go with Teams, email, a popup, or an in-app notification?

Depending on all the information you gather, you design the best solution you can. Sometimes it’s easy when they have limitations and you have a small scope to work with. But sometimes they give you a blank page and say “give us all you got” — and that’s when you start enjoying it and looking for new things.

How do you stop yourself from being biased toward a specific technology, or always going with the easy choice?

We have some internal rules. First: go with the out-of-the-box functionalities as much as you can. If something fails, it’s not your fault — that’s the first rule. But then you also need to know the team well enough to understand what they are able to do, and whether there’s room in the project for the team to grow with new technology.

And sometimes you reach a point where you’re on cloud nine just thinking about everything you could do — but you just have to remember: it’s not your money. We are consultants, not the final client. If it were my money, would I be willing to pay for that? That’s a good perspective to keep.

I also like the challenge of the budget, but I see it another way. I want to know how to use fancy new things in the cheapest possible way. There’s always an alternative — and when there isn’t, just don’t get greedy.

Power platform, Azure och att se hela bilden

There should also be a power platform software architect on the Azure integration side, because you get to work really closely to the business side of things. You’re not just working with background processes — this is what’s happening in the office.

Exactly. And sometimes I take a step back and ask: do we really need Logic Apps for this, or can we use Power Automate, because it’s a smaller process? We need to think outside our own box. But I’m impressed by how open you are to going outside yours. How far have you gone toward the integration side?

Power platform is a great suite with all the tools already provided. But low code has its limitations. There are also capacity limitations for environments — the storage within the power platform, the database — it gets quite expensive once you reach the limits of your licensing. So instead of just thinking about deletion or storage limits within the database, you start asking: are you going to keep all your archives in the database knowing you could use cold storage? Or use another tool like Fabric for that part of the project?

When you start as a low-code profile with power platform, you just look at that picture. But everything in power platform is on top of Azure. Why wouldn’t you pull from the roots to give it more power?

I totally agree. And I see the other side as well. We work with Azure and the Azure integration stack, but I love asking: what can we do with other technologies? I think a lot of architects in our field are biased toward the heavy-lifting side — bigger stacks, more scalable — and I think we sometimes over-engineer things. Sometimes you can just use Power Automate for something simple.

Power Automate is genuinely great. There are some more limitations compared to Logic Apps, but is it worth the price? Maybe you don’t need more. It gives you a slightly more structured background, a little less freedom in your design, but you still have custom connectors if you need more. You don’t need to always go big.

I work in the small field and see the big picture. When I find a limitation, I can look outside for it. But on the bigger field, you sometimes forget to put on the little microscope and remember that things you’re designing have already been built.

Touché.

Azure functions och tunneling — sessionen på Nordic Integration Summit

In Stockholm, at Nordic Integration Summit, you talked about Azure functions — which is not low code, it’s actual programming. What drove you to talk about that?

I related it to Azure functions because that was the way I first came in contact with tunneling, but it can be used for many more things.

The first issue I had was a limitation with the timing of a plug-in. When it became very recurring in the environment, it started to cause problems — regardless of whether it was synchronous or asynchronous. So we took the logic out of the plug-in and put it into an Azure function.

The problem was: every time I wanted to make a small change and test it, I had to deploy it, connect it, and then trigger the event. I was going crazy over something as simple as a field written incorrectly — the dumbest thing — but I had to keep trying over and over.

Then a friend of mine, Victor, came around and asked: “Have you tried the ngrok?” And I said: “The what?”

A tunnel — like connecting two sides. You connect your local computer to the cloud, so you’re actually working with your localhost but attacking it from the outside. At the time, we didn’t have Azure Dev Tunnels or anything in Visual Studio yet. But now everything is connected. I just thought: not a lot of people know about this, and it’s actually going to help — not just with Azure functions but with APIs or whatever. You avoid going crazy every time you have to develop changes. You make sure your code works first, and then go crazy with the infrastructure of publishing.

That’s exactly what the audience thought. When we were traveling home from the event, I asked a group of developers which session was the best. The spontaneous answer was: “The girl who talked about Azure functions and tunneling. I’m going to try that tomorrow.” And another colleague who had a new project told me he’s been using that solution since then, through the entire project — and it’s going into production.

I’m very happy to hear that. Also — when you’re busy with everything else, you sometimes miss these things because you just want to get through the day. Even if you call it “just a tunnel,” people miss it.

Kunskapsdelning, community och att kommunicera det som hjälper

I like what you said earlier — that it’s just talking about what you do every day. Internally, I know people who are a bit hesitant, thinking “but who will listen to this, why would anyone be interested?” Your thought is different: if I talk about this, it will help someone.

I’ve already worked for several companies and many projects. The hardest thing to work on is not the technology. We all think the hardest part will be the transition from Excel to an actual program. No — the hardest part of any project is the communication. Between all parties, within the teams, all the information that gets lost.

Even as consultants — I can be working on a project, see something, and a colleague somewhere else is having the same issue. If I don’t talk about it, and unless they’re brave enough to go out and say “I have this problem,” we’re never going to share it.

Communicating is the hardest and most important thing — not just in this work, but in all professional work. That’s one of the best things about the community. It gives you the opportunity to talk about something you’re passionate about, or something that actually helped you — and you know not a lot of people know about it, or maybe they do but they don’t know your point of view. You can help them think from the other side.

Varför man fortsätter hålla sessioner

You are really active in the community, but these talks — it’s a lot of preparation, a lot of stress. No one is ever just “used to it.” You can like being on stage, but it’s really stressful no matter how you prepare. Why do you do it?

Everything came from a few years ago when I went to my first event — just as an attendee, not as a speaker. I saw the importance of people sharing their knowledge. You never know when you’re going to need it, but at some point you will.

I think it’s important to give as much as you take. There are 200 people attending compared to maybe 10 or 20 speaking. It’s the bravery of those 10 or 20 who actually share that enables the 200 attending to take something home — and maybe just get inspired and say: if they can do this, why wouldn’t I?

That was the thought I took home from my first event. These people know so much that I don’t know — but how would I know about it if they didn’t tell me?

I appreciate that. And I also hear from others that they like going to conferences but wouldn’t come home with that thought. It says something about the person. Do you see it as work?

No. It’s an activity. It’s exactly answering what you have, because you’re paying for it with your own time. It comes with the person. I think you need two types of personalities to be a speaker and actually enjoy it. One is being a giver — used to helping people or sharing what you’ve got. The other is being a narcissist. But we’re not going into that one.

Vägen hit — från biomedicinsk teknik till integration

This personality didn’t appear overnight. You also studied something entirely different. How did it all come together?

I studied biomedical engineering. I was really passionate about it — my final project was a circuit with its own software and everything. I’ve always liked hands-on work. But when my first consultant firm called and asked if I knew how to write code and program, I said yes. Then they asked if I knew what a CRM was. I said no. And at that moment — before ChatGPT or Copilot — I was just in the background on Wikipedia trying to figure out what a CRM was.

They gave me the chance. And for me, that was my first real challenge. At first, I didn’t fall in love with the technology. I fell in love with the feeling of everything being new. And I still have that, because every day there’s something new.

Although I studied biomedical engineering and would have loved to work in that field, this other side just captivated me. I started with CRM, then power platform, then Azure scalability options, then AI — and what’s next, you never know.

Integration Love Story

What is your integration love story — is there a specific moment or project that made you say, I’m going to pursue this?

There are actually two moments. There’s a Spanish song that says first love is the only real one — the rest are just to forget the first one.

The first spark for me with integration was back when it was still pure CRM — no Azure options, no power platform, just Dynamics 365. There was a specific issue where we needed to connect to a third-party software and just didn’t know how. That was the first one.

But the next real one, the one that actually left a mark, was my first day at my previous company. They said: “I know you’re new, but we don’t have hands available. Here’s a blank page and a functional definition. We need this done before May 3rd.”

I started reading, and what I read was: Azure functions, Azure Service Bus, Azure whatever. I was like — is there anything else besides service principals in Azure?

So my first day in that company — no access card, no meeting the HR people — just a full dive into “what are Azure functions and how do you deploy them?” That’s the first shock you get when you change environments. I was used to CRM, a little bit of power platform, and then suddenly Azure is completely open. Whatever you do, just pay for it — that’s it.

At that moment, I needed to know everything within three days. I had already built seven Azure functions with different triggers, connected them to different services, and was integrating them with Service Bus.

It’s not exactly a moment in a project. It’s just the first time you actually open your eyes and see what’s outside. The first time you take a step back and take in the big picture of what you’re really able to use when you’re free to do it.

And I’d add to that — you’re an engineer. When someone says “this is what you need to do,” the engineer’s thought is: okay, what can I do in 10 hours? Instead of “it’s impossible,” you open the windows and look out, or you go in deep and start looking for whatever can help. And it’s usually easier than you think.

Exactly. You think it must be impossible — and it’s just three clicks away from being your first time.

That’s the title of the podcast. Three clicks away.

I love it.

AI och power platform — med försiktighet

Now, we don’t have many power platform people here, but how is it going with power platform regarding AI and the development there?

It’s going great, but we need to proceed with caution. In power platform we work with solutions — the same way in Azure you have different resource groups for different environments. There are a lot of new functionalities with AI: low-code, and now we’re starting to work with pro-code apps and everything that’s coming in. It’s amazing.

But then you start actually working with it — if you manage to get the US region and the previews — and it’s still such a baby. The ALM is not fully formed. I wouldn’t be able to add it to a project right away, because I couldn’t guarantee stability.

For instance, with low-code: one single iteration where everything seems perfect, you just change the color of a button — and suddenly everything messes up. It’s really dangerous to work with that in a production environment. Maybe it’s useful while writing code, because it will help you a lot. But then there are setbacks: how do I add this to a solution and move it between environments? Am I going to have to replicate it manually? Then it becomes inefficient and insecure.

I’m really excited to see what comes next, because things are moving fast and they look amazing. It’s just — be smart.

I wanted to go into this debate earlier. I don’t like that everyone is just using it without understanding it — as if it’s magic. I think we need to focus more on understanding what’s actually growing, and controlling that. The building blocks matter. Hopefully people will start putting more energy into understanding how this actually works.

When we develop a solution, we make it dummy-proof — because you never know how users are going to use it. Now we are the users. We are the dummy ones.

Exactly. We need to be careful. And we need to try to understand, and not forget that we are developers. We always need to focus on what’s behind, to know how to actually use it. We are not simple users. We are developing for other people who are going to be the end users. We need to keep that in mind as a responsibility.

Hopefully we’ll see that soon.

Avslutning

Thank you so much for joining us today. I wish we could keep going — I think we’ll need to redo this sometime and focus more on the power platform side. I really want to have that AI debate too.

AI debate next time. Yes.

Thank you, Sophia. Thank you for joining.

Thank you, guys.