Aug 15, 2018
There seems to be quite a bit of confusion lately about Dynamics
365 and PowerApps, particularly now with Model-Driven PowerApps.
Microsoft's #FreightTrain, seems to have become a #BulletTrain of
innovation, and sometimes things like "naming" and "explaining" lag
behind. Let's see if I can unpack this one. Warning, this is a long
post, so you might want to listen to it instead.
The PowerApps Path
When PowerApps burst onto the scene, it was a citizen developer
tool for building simple apps using what is called the Canvas
Model. The Canvas Model allowed you to "connect" to multiple data
sources, including Dynamics 365, to build your App. It was not
intended as a tool to build a complete business solution, but
rather to build a mobile app for specific tasks. When the Common
Data Service "pivoted" to the XrM platform, PowerApps and Dynamics
365 got mushed together, and a new concept was introduced for
PowerApps called, "Model-Driven PowerApps". Microsoft often
describes the difference between Canvas and Model driven as the
ability to have either pixel precision in Canvas, or an "automatic"
UI in Model Driven, but that really does not help you understand
where the parts fit.
What's in a Name
Microsoft has struggled mightily over the years with product
naming; not just in Business Applications, but across the company,
product naming has been... let's call it, less than perfect.
Many partners and customers first became aware of Model-Driven
PowerApps when they logged into the Solution Explorer one day, like
they did everyday, and suddenly it said "PowerApps" in the header.
"What the hell is this?". This was further evidence of the
separation of the Apps from the platform. The Platform being CDS,
and PowerApps being... what exactly?
A Power Fork
Today, the PowerApps brand means two distinct things, Canvas AND
Model-Driven apps. These two "things" are for different purposes.
The recent announcement that we will soon be able to embed a Canvas
App into a Model-Driven App, has made things even more confusing
for many people. One thing that PowerApps does not mean is Dynamics
365, these are not the same thing... well, not exactly. So what is
Dynamics 365? What is "Power Platform? Why are there
two Common Data Services? Okay,
now I have gone and confused myself. Let's try another angle. A
while ago I had some fun with a post I called "
The
Strategy Simulator", let's have some fun again, with another
short-story.
Steve Builds a Home
I assume we are all familiar with a "Duplex". It's a residential
building split in half, with two families living under one roof.
Let's imagine that I want to build one, but not for two families,
just for me. The reason will be clear in a minute. The first step I
will do is to find a community, and I have selected one called
Azure. Azure is a sprawling gated community, with rolling hills and
miles of roadways, underground power grids, water systems, lakes,
ponds ,etc., with many neighborhoods within it. I had looked at a
couple of other communities; Amazon and Google. Amazon was an
enormous gated community, but it did not have the rolling hills, it
was dead flat as far as the eye could see. While there were miles
and miles of roads, I did not see any amenities. The homes all
looked exactly the same, like one of those old movies they showed
to kids in school in the 50's, simulating a nuclear bomb leveling a
neighborhood of fake homes. I pulled into, and then immediately
left, the Google community, it looked like it was just getting
started as none of the roads were yet paved, and the gates were
unmanned. The construction workers I saw in there all looked like
60's era hippies, that did not appear to be in any hurry. So
anyway, back in the Azure community, I saw a lot of interconnected
neighborhoods, some of these were gated also. Gated within Gated
seems like overkill on security, but I guess there are a lot of
paranoid people in the world. I ultimately selected a lovely lot in
the "Business Applications" neighborhood, because the neighbors all
looked a lot like me. Business Applications is a fast growing
neighborhood, which is adjacent to the huge "Productivity
Applications" neighborhood, and they both share a lot of amenities,
like the golf course, clubhouse and pool. The next step was to pour
a foundation on my new lot. The left side of my foundation will be
poured with "Common Data Service for Apps", and the right side will
be poured with "Common Data Service for Analytics". While these
halves are indeed different, for my purposes at this stage they
look the same. They're both flat, with lots of pipes stubbed up out
of them. There is also a vertical wall splitting the two halves of
my duplex, and it has a lot of pipes pushed through it. At
this time, this foundation does not "do" anything, I can't live
here yet.. I can't even cook an egg. What I have so far is the CDS
Platform for the "Power Platform", which in turn sits on the Azure
Platform, all of which does nothing on its own. I step onto the
left side of this foundation. There are a ton of pipes sticking up
through the floor, but first I'll take a look at the ones poking
through the wall. I walk up to the biggest one which has a label on
it, "Power BI". It is so big I can stick my head through it to the
other side and see the Common Data Service for Analytics
floor. The slab on that side looks different, it seems a lot more
porous, and still appears to be... liquid, like it will never
harden. I pull my head back, and look at the other pipes through
the wall, each of them is called "something Insights". It is clear
that the right side is for large-scale number crunching of massive
amounts of data that will eventually get pushed back and forth
through these pipes. I turn my attention back to the floor, on the
left side of the wall where I am standing. Scanning the floor of
the left side there are so many pipes of different sizes, it is
hard to even walk without tripping. Around the perimeter edge are
small green pipes every few inches, hundreds of them. I take a
closer look... "Twitter Connector", "BaseCamp Connector", "Dropbox
Connector", etc. There is a second row around the perimeter, just
inside of the first one, I see they are all labeled "Future
Connector". About halfway down the left edge I see a big pipe
labelled: "Connection to Productivity Applications
Neighborhood". This is clearly going to be one of those new
"Connected" homes. The rest of the floor is covered with steel
plates embedded in the slab, with threaded rods sticking out of
them. None of them appear to be marked, but clearly, they are here
for something. A big truck with a flat-bed trailer pulls up out
front, and I head out to see what's up. I see on the truck door a
sticker that says, "
Apps, Tools and Beyond".
Interesting... it looks like the trailer's bed is filled with
Appliances of various sizes. Most of them have these steel base
plates with holes drilled in them, that I assume marry up to the
steel rods I saw on the slab. I noticed that many of them also had
steel plates on their tops, with the same threaded rods... it looks
like some of them can be stacked on top of each other, like those
compact washer/dryer combos. The driver comes around the front of
the truck to meet me and says, "
Wadda ya want?". Caught
off-guard, I said, "
What do I need?". He says,
"
Whatever you want", which is not helpful at all. I said,
"
Well, what do most other people do?" He says, "They
l
ook at me all confused, like you are now". Boldly, I
respond, "
Well I want "Best Practices"!". He chuckles and
says, "
You realize that "Best Practices" is a made-up, bullshit
term right?, "Best Practices" is whatever works for you". Then
he says, "
I'll tell you what, I'll leave the rig here for a
couple of days so you can decide". I said, "
Wait a minute,
how am I gonna get any of those things in there to try, I don't see
a crane or anything, and some of these look super heavy". He
says, "
No crane required... look", and he points to a
button on the side of one these things that says "Install". He
pushes it and the thing, whatever it was, vanishes off the truck
bed. Startled, I said, "
Where did that go?". He points
over to the slab, on the left side of the wall, and I can see the
"thing" sitting on the floor. Wow... that was cool. He says,
"
If you don't like it, there's another button on it that says
"Remove", which will put it back on the trailer". With that,
he turned and started walking down the street and says over his
shoulder, "
I'll be back in a two days". Hmm...there are a
lot of things on this truck and I have no idea what any of them
are. Walking around it I can see labels on them, "PowerApps",
"Dynamics 365 Enterprise Sales", "Dynamics 365 Business Central",
"Flow", "Power BI", and many more. I recognize Power BI, from the
big pipe through the wall I pushed my head through earlier, so I
push the install button on the side of it, and of course it...
vanishes. I look over but I don't see it on the floor. Peering
around the end of the wall, I see it now, attached to the wall like
a crab, up towards the top on the left side. There are a bunch of
wires dangling from it that are not connected to anything. I walk
around to the other side of the wall, and I see a huge bundle of
wires coming out of that pipe, streaming across the floor, running
into all the other floor pipes. It does not seem to be doing
anything, there is a panel of lights on the side of it, but none
are lit. The right slab almost looks translucent, like I can see
right into it... but I don't see anything. It's like standing in a
boat, looking down into a clear lake... but there are no fish...
no... anything. Well this is stupid, and useless, I push the remove
button and all of the wires snake back out of the pipes, like a kid
slurping in a piece of spaghetti, and they all go back through the
wall and then the Power BI box vanishes. I look over my shoulder
and see it re-appear on the truck bed. I wonder if there is a
particular order that needs to be followed. I pull out the
home-builder's guide-book, and can't make any sense of it, too many
acronyms, obviously written for an experienced home-builder. I take
a closer look at the PowerApps appliance on the truck bed. I see
the Install and Remove buttons, but this thing has another button,
"Reorder". What the hell does that do? I push it. Suddenly it
lurches upward, flies over and lands on top of the Enterprise Sales
Application thing. Interesting. I notice that the Enterprise Sales
App thing has a similar "Reorder" button, so I push that. It does
not seem like anything is happening, until I look up and notice
that the PowerApps thing has lifted up from the top of the
Enterprise Sales App thing. As soon as it clears the rods, the
Enterprise Sales App thing lurches to the right, about its whole
width distance, leaving the PowerApps thing floating in mid-air. It
starts to descend slowly, and I notice that the Enterprise Sales
App thing starts to rise up a the same cadence. The PowerApps
things lands softly on the truck bed, and once the Enterprise Sales
App thing clears its top, it starts to move to the left, over the
PowerApps thing, and eventually settles on to the rods on the top
of it. So it seems that these things can be stacked on top on one
another in either order. I wonder why I would care? I am feeling
brave now, so I push the Install button on the Enterprise Sales App
and it vanishes, and reappears over on the foundation. I go ahead
and do the same for the PowerApps thing, and it appears on the slab
near the Enterprise Sales App thing. I walk over to the slab to see
what these things are all about. They are both large... room-sized
in fact, and like a room, they each have a door on their side. I
crack open the door on the PowerApps thing and peer through. Whoa,
that was scary, I slammed the door. It looked like an entire Home
Depot store inside of this room, but how is that possible? I crack
the door again and I can see the interior of this room is like
30,000 square feet, but from the outside, it looks to be a cube
about 12' on each side. I close the door again, and start pacing
around this cube. This is simply not possible... its like some
David Copperfield illusion. I decide it must be an illusion, so
when I come around to the side with the door, I swing it open and
just walk right in. I gulp. I am literally standing inside the
entrance of a huge Home Depot store. Rows and rows of everything I
would need to build whatever the hell I wanted. Getting over the
fact that there is a 30,000 sq ft store inside of this 12' cube, I
think to myself, "Well this is handy". I turn around and exit the
store, er, cube. As I exit the PowerApps cube, I am facing directly
at the Enterprise Sales cube, which looks to be the same 12' on
each side. Feeling braver now, knowing that I was able to exit the
other cube successfully, I confidently move forward to open the
door, I wonder what will be behind it, maybe a Lowes Store? I go
ahead and enter. Well... this is different. The space is not as
large as the PowerApps Home Depot, I am guessing about 10,000 sq
ft, but this is a finished Mansion... and it's fully furnished.
Still, it fit in a 12' cube, so that's amazing, but hard to top an
entire Home Depot. Looking around I think, Wow, I can probably stop
right here, and just live in this cube. Beautiful hardwood floors,
a grand staircase to I don't know where, a black lacquered Grand
Piano by the front window, and I'm still in the foyer. Wait.. I
didn't see any windows from the outside of the cube! But
never-mind, this is really beautiful, and huge! I stroll down a
wide hallway with many openings on each side, and I come to one
that has a plaque above it that says "Leads". Walking past, I can
see luxurious seating fills the room, it looks like a waiting room
for meeting a King. But there is no one in there. I see more
openings for Opportunities, Contacts, Accounts, etc., but as I am
walking I am starting to think that the style is not exactly me.
Everything is Gold-Leafed, and the Crown Moldings are exquisite,
but this would take my own "touches" to make it really what I would
want. I head back and exit through the door. I am thinking that
beautiful mansion would be great, if I could just fiddle with it,
maybe move some walls around, or at least paint it in colors I
like, and it hits me.... I have a Home Depot Right here. I walk
over to the PowerApps cube and push the re-order button. It jolts
upward and flies over the top of the Enterprise Sales App cube and
settles smoothly on top of it. A roughly 4' square platform slides
out from under the door on the upper cube. A ladder, that I had not
noticed before starts to extend from under the platform. It is
going straight out horizontally, then stops after about 12'. Just
as I am wondering how I will reach it, it starts to pivot downward,
and the bottom of it touches the slab right in front of me. I
decide I will check it out, but as soon as my hand touches the rung
in front of me, I am standing on the platform facing the door, 12'
above... my stomach feels a jolt, like you get from a trampoline.
Okay, that was freaky, but I notice that while still confused, I'm
not scared anymore. I walk through the door into the now familiar
Home Depot, but see immediately that the floor is transparent. I
can see the whole interior of the Enterprise Sales cube below.
Actually, I can't even see the floor, but it must be there as I am
obviously standing on something. I reach down to touch it, and my
hand goes straight through. How is this possible? At this point, I
decide to stop asking myself How, and just roll with it. As a test,
I walk over to the paint department and grab a gallon of Deep Blue,
which is my favorite color. I walk across the clear floor to over
top of the Leads room I saw before. Now what? Maybe that is not how
it works. I put the can down to think, and a second later it starts
to wiggle and then poof, it disappears through the clear floor, and
I can see the entire Leads room is now painted Deep Blue. Okay,
that is pretty damn cool. I think I am figuring out how this works
now, using everything at my disposal in the Home Depot, I can
remodel whatever I want in the Enterprise Sales App Manson to fit
my tastes. This is going to be fun. I decide to head back out to
the truck and see what else is there. I go back out the door on the
platform and instead of taking the ladder I decide to just jump the
12'. But as soon as my feet leave the platform, the slab actually
shoots upward... I only traveled like an inch. I look forward,
expecting to see myself 12' above the street, but I am at street
level, and I have that odd feeling in my stomach again. Back at the
trailer, I go ahead and climb up on the bed and start perusing the
items. I now know that some of these, once installed will become
12' cubes, even though none of them are more than 4' here. At the
front of the bed I see some crates, so I meander though the cubes
to reach them. The first crate has "Flows" printed on the side of
it. The lid is hinged, but not nailed shut, so I lift the top open.
Inside are what appear to be small hand weights, so I reach down to
pick one up. As soon as my hand encircles the grip, some metallic
claws shoot out from either end of it. It's a good thing I did not
have my face down there, I could have lost an eye. The claws seemed
to be reaching for something that was not there, just snapping
wildly. I loosened my grip and let it fall back on top of the
others. I am not sure what the hell I do with those. Next to the
Flows crate is a plastic 55 gallon drum with a sticker on top of it
that reads, "Steve's Data". They had my name! I'm actually a little
annoyed, but I decide to check it out. After loosening the cinch
holding down the lid, I grabbed the lid on each side and quickly
lifted it straight up. I was half expecting one of these spring
snakes to pop out like one of those toys with the fake soup can.
But, it was nothing dramatic, in fact it seemed to just be a barrel
of water. l started to move on, but heard small noises coming from
it. I gripped the two sides of the rim, bent a little and peered
down into the water.. listening. I could faintly hear what sounded
like thousands of conversations, all going on at once. Yes, there
was definitely something in there. I put my hand on the top of the
water and swished it back and forth. As I did, a face shot up to
within an inch of the top of the water, and scared the shit out of
me. But I kept looking and noticed there were a bunch of faces
rising into view and then slowly fading as they descended back
down. I am scared again, this seems really creepy. I take two steps
back away from the drum, backing into something else that is just
below the height of my butt, so I sit on it... thinking. The drum
is sitting on a small raised platform with a button on it. Bending
over I can read that is says "Migrate". I am not touching that...
at least not from this position. I jump off the truck bed and scan
the dirt yard and see a stick. I grab it, and inch my way down the
left side of the trailer bed, peering around the corner at the
barrel. I carefully reach in with the stick and push the Migrate
button, and duck. I am leaning against the trailer, just out of
view of the barrel, and I can feel a vibration in my shoulder where
it meets the trailer. Suddenly, whoosh, I look up and see water
flying straight up, then arching over towards my house. As it
starts to descend, it's spray widens like a garden hose nozzle, and
it seems like way more than 55 gallons. It comes down all over the
slab, on both sides of the wall, but does not make a splash or any
puddles. It just disappears into the slab, on both sides of the
wall. It all happened in literally 10 seconds. I'm panting, but
decide to get a grip, and go see what happened. Walking back up to
the slab, on the left side of the house, I stop short of stepping
onto it, I immediately notice that it looks different. It appears
transparent... not as transparent as the slab on the other side of
the wall, but I had not noticed it before. It's like one of these
geometric pictures that if you stare at long enough, and trick your
eyes into a different focus you suddenly see a ship or something.
Staring at the slab, I started to pick out those faces again, just
under the surface. But they weren't swimming around like they were
in the barrel, they were now fixed into neat rows. But there was
odd movement. I stuck my head out over the slab to look straight
down at one, and saw it appear to shoot way somewhere, but it was
still there. Most were not moving at all, but some appeared to be
talking... to whom, I have no idea. Taking a closer look at the
next one I realized that I knew this person, which caused me to
take a step back. Then I tripped on something and fell flat on my
face in the dirt. Ouch, I think I landed on a stick. I turned my
head towards the slab and was looking the edge of it. Still
transparent, something looked different from this angle. The faces
looked like they were made up of a bunch of layers... thin slices
stacked on top of each other with a tiny space in between them. I
lifted my head a little higher to get an oblique angle, and could
see that the bottom face layer seemed fixed, but the face layers
above it were all talking and shooting off in different directions,
and also coming in to the layer stack from other places I could not
see. The entire slab seemed like it was alive! But the faces did
not seem to notice me. I stood up and dusted myself off and thought
"this is the weirdest house I've ever seen". I stepped onto the
slab. It took me a bit to get my balance walking on a slab with all
these faces shooting around under my feet. Even though the slab was
not moving, it felt like it was. But once my brain locked into
that, I was able to walk around. I noticed that a lot of these
talking faces where heading in a similar direction. I followed the
path over and found myself watching a bunch of them coming in
and out of the pipe to the Productivity Applications
neighborhood. It was like watching ants, with as many going into
the pipe as were coming out of it. All shooting in different
directions when they arrived. This slab was more than just alive,
it seemed to be umbilically connected to the other neighborhood. I
stood there for about 5 minutes, mesmerized by all the talking
faces, shooting around under the floor, and I decided to explore. I
walked over to the big pipe in the wall that said Power BI and
stuck my head through again. Looking down, I could see on the now
completely transparent floor all of the faces, but no movement. I
thought, that's odd, over here they're zinging around, and over
there they are all static. Oh well, I guess it will make sense
later, and as I withdrew my head and turned around I was facing the
Enterprise Sales Cube again. I hesitated, and then thought, what
the hell, and opened the door. The beautiful mansion, that was so
quiet before, was now a buzz of conversations, it sounded like
there was a cocktail party going on down the hall... in my house. I
started to make my way back to that wide hallway. Looking up, I
could see that the ceiling was now clear and I was walking under
the Home Depot store. I was in the main foyer of the mansion, but I
was also under the paint department above. Just for kicks, I put a
chair on top of the grand piano and climbed up on the piano, and
then the chair. I reached up and could put my hand right through
the clear ceiling. But I could not quite reach the first shelf in
the Home Depot above. I climbed back down and noticed a ladder in
the corner of the room. I know this was not here before... maybe it
showed up when put the PowerApps cube on top. I pulled it over next
to the grand piano and climbed up. Now I could easily reach the
first shelf and grabbed a can of paint and pulled it down. It got
stuck coming through the clear floor and I had to tug on it, then
suddenly, it broke free and disappeared. Ugh. I started to loose my
balance on the ladder so I looked to grab the top and steady myself
and I noticed that the entire foyer was now painted in a shit brown
color. So it worked, but clearly I need to pay closer attention, or
I could make this mansion into a mess. I hopped off the ladder and
continued my walk towards the wide hallway. As I got closer to the
hallway, the voices were getting louder. As I reached the end of
the hallway, I stopped as I could now clearly make out many of the
conversations. Somebody was talking about their sales process,
blah, blah. Someone else, farther down the hall, was complaining
about something, and from the first opening, the one I peered into
before that said Leads, I could hear lots of conversations going
on. I crept along the wall so as not to be noticed, and peeked
around the edge of the opening. There was a cacophony of
conversations going on, I could not actually understand any of them
since everybody seemed to be talking about different things all at
once. Looking into the room, I saw hundreds of floating,
two-dimensional faces.. all talking. I wondered for a minute what
the purpose of the nice chairs was, since these faces were all
floating about 5 or so feet above the floor. I tried to focus on
one of the conversations, I was able to pick out a familiar voice,
and concentrated on it. Some guy was asking about licensing costs,
and I realized, this is a conversation that I had a week ago with
Riley Thomas, and that was Riley Thomas talking, as I turned my
eyes to where it seemed to be coming from, there was Riley's face
floating in the air. I shifted my focus to others, in turn, and
realized, these were all conversations that I had had! Some from
years ago, and others from as recently as yesterday! As I was
digesting this I noticed one of the faces starting to head towards
me, then it accelerated so fast I could not even duck. The floating
face hit my face and exploded in to a cloud of smoke that kept
going, I didn't feel anything, but I swung around to see where it
was going and saw it re-assemble itself into a face and shoot into
another room. The plaque over that room said "Contacts". I stepped
across the hall and peeked into the Contacts room to see where the
face had gone. This room was also full of floating, jabbering
faces, but I knew them all. The room was full of faces that I was
currently working with in my job. Looking back down the hallway, I
saw the other openings and heard more conversations going on, but
decided I need to take a break and absorb this, so I headed back
out of the Mansion, er, cube. I stepped off the slab on the left
side, and looked over at the slab on the right side of the wall.
The faces were all still there, but still were not moving. I walked
back to the trailer. Scanning the items on the truck bed, my gaze
landed back on the Power BI thing again. I thought, "I wonder if it
would actually do anything now?". I pushed the Install button, and
like before it vanished. At least this time I knew where it went. I
walked back to the slab, and sure enough around the corner up on
the wall like a crab, there it was. Like before, all of the wires
on the other side of the wall had slithered out and gone into all
of the pipes, but unlike the last time, now on this side of the
wall, the wires that were previously just dangling, had leapt out
and connected to the Enterprise Sales App Cube. I also noticed a
bunch of them had shot down the Productivity Applications
Neighborhood pipe. Looking down at the floor, it seemed to be about
the same amount of busy movement. I could not put my head through
the Power BI pipe anymore since the now fully lit up Power BI thing
was crabbed over it, so I walked around the end of the wall to the
other side. The previously static faces were now all moving, but in
completely different patterns than on the left side of the wall.
Something different was happening, but I could not tell what it was
exactly. On the left side everything looked the same, but clearly
something was different, I was just not seeing it. I decided to
take another peek inside the Enterprise Sales App Mansion. The
walls of the foyer, that I had previously painted shit brown, now
looked like the Sports Book at a casino, lined with monitors all
the way around. But instead of showing some horse race, they were
all displaying charts and graphs. I walked up to one that a small
sign under it that read, "Lead Generation Rate", it was showing a
bar graph by month of new leads. I assumed this was linked to that
Leads room down the hall. Every kind of "metric" you could think of
was displayed on all of these monitors in the foyer, and they were
all constantly changing, in real-time. I was starting to get dizzy,
and decided to get some air. As I was walking back out towards the
truck on the street, I saw the driver walking back. I assumed he
must have forgotten something in his truck, like his phone or
something. He walked right up to me and said, "
Are you
done?" I said, "
Hell no, you only left an hour ago!".
He said, "
Nope, it was two days ago like I said". I
said "
That's impossible", and he said, "
It
happens a lot, people start messing with this stuff and time flies
by". I knew it was only an hour, but he seemed convinced, and
he was wearing different clothes. I said, "
Well, if you have to
go, can I just install everything, and then figure it all out
later?" He smiled and said, "
Let me show you
something", and he walked over to the trailer motioning for me
to follow. "
Do you see that?" he said, pointing to the
corner of another thing with a label called "Field Service" on it,
I said "
Yeah, Field Service, whatever that is". He said "
No, I mean there in the top corner". I looked and saw a
price tag that said "$95/user/month", I looked at the other things
and now noticed that they all had price tags. Shit! He said
"
Are you sure you want to install all of it?" I said,
"
No... damn... I need time to figure this out". He said,
"
I got you covered" and disappeared around the front of
the truck. A moment later I heard the truck engine start and
thought, this asshole is leaving. The rig started backing up, and
continued for about 100', then stopped. A second later it started
to move forward again and I thought he must be feeling sorry for
me, but instead the truck started to veer towards me. I moved out
of the way, and he drove right across my future lawn and stopped. I
heard the door open, and then some hissing sounds. I saw the front
of the trailer lift up a bit and stop. Then the truck started to
move forward again, but no longer connected to the trailer. He went
down the street and turned around, and stopped on his way back by.
He leaned out of the cab and said "
I'll just leave this here
for you, for as long as you want, just don't forget those price
tags", then he waved and drove off. I sat on the slab, aware
that my butt was covering at least one person's face, and looked at
the trailer sitting in my front yard. After a few minutes, I
thought, what the hell, and walked back over to it. I saw another
crate labeled "Insights", next to the "Flows" crate. I climbed up
to take a look at what was in this one. I lifted the lid, and saw
what looked just like the flows... little barbells. I reached in
and grabbed one, and of course the claws came out of each end. I
turned my wrist over and saw printed on the side, "Sales Insights".
Looking down in the crate, it seemed like an awful lot of
"Insights" were in there. I felt something, and opening my palm
slightly I noticed there was an Install button on the grip. I
pushed it. The barbell flew out of my hand and started heading
towards the house. It flew right into one of the smaller pipes in
the wall, and I saw a claw extend from the end of it to the
Enterprise Sales App cube, and connect to something I had not
noticed before. The claw on the other end shot down some hole in
the slab on the right side. So now, I guess I have to check this
out. I went ahead and grabbed a handful of Flows and put them in my
pocket. Then I headed back toward the slab, into the
Mansion, and again made my way down to the Leads room and
looked in. The faces were all there like before, but there was
something new. In addition to the two-dimensional face, there was
now a three dimensional box floating above each of the faces. I
ventured in to take a closer look. It did not seem that any of
these faces were aware of my physical presence, which was
reassuring. In fact, I walked right up to a face I recognized, that
was blathering away... a conversation I had last month. I looked up
at the box, above the floating head and saw there were words on
each side of it. I stepped back slightly so I could read it, it
said "Chances of Qualification: 33%". I leaned to the left, and
read on the side of the box, "You have not made contact with this
Lead in 2 months". There were more words on the other sides of the
box, but I think I got what was going on here. I decided instead to
figure out what these "Flows" did. I headed back out of the cube
and onto the slab and walked to the edge, looking at the duplex
next store that was already built. Man it was nice. Lots of great
additions, a perfect yard, and listening closely I could hear that
it was quietly "humming". As I was about to turn, the neighbor's
front door opened, and a guy came walking out with a cat on a
leash. He spotted me and waved, and then tripped on a bush and
landed flat on his face. I thought, what a dumbass, who walks a cat
on a leash? It occurred to me, that if that dumbass could build
such an awesome house, I will certainly be able to figure all this
out. I smiled and waved back as he was standing back up, his cat
was looking at him, probably also thinking he was a dumbass. I saw
his garage door opening. He stepped into it, and there was some
chatter I could not make out, and then a pickup truck slowly pulled
out of it, my neighbor was waving goodbye to the driver. I saw the
sign on the door of the truck said, "PartnerCo Construction", and I
realized then how that dumbass was able to build such an awesome
house. I really hope I won't need help too. I pulled one of the
Flows out of my pocket, and gripped it so the claws would come out.
As I was looking at it, I felt a tug downward, that got stronger.
So strong in fact that my arm was being pulled down. A claw shot
out and clamped onto the Dropbox connector, I had forgotten that
they lined the edge of the slab. It sat there, motionless now, in
my palm. I checked, and like the Insights, there was an Install
button so I pushed it. The other claw shot out the other end and
started flailing wildly. I thought it was heading towards the
Enterprise Sales App cube, but then it veered off and started
towards the Productivity Applications Neighborhood pipe, but
skipped right past that and started hovering over all of the other
connector pipes in turn, for about a second apiece. It did not grab
onto anything, it just repeated this cycle. I started to walk and
noticed the cable from the grip to the claw on the DropBox
connector let out slack as I walked, the other end continuing to
flail about, but as I walked, I noticed it started to check fewer
points, seemingly understanding where I was heading. When I got to
within about 3' of the Enterprise Sales App cube, the claw flew
past my head and latched onto it, and I felt a pulsing in my palm
which startled me and caused me to let go of it. The handle just
hovered in the air, suspended by the claws and the cables tightened
from each end of it. It was as tight as a guitar string. I guess I
need to head back into the Mansion to see what this thing did.
Looking back into the Leads room, I saw the now-familiar floating
faces, with the floating boxes over them, and something new. A
filing cabinet was now floating over each box, on the side it said
"DropBox Files". Simple enough, I guess I know what these flows do
now. I'm exhausted. It still feels like it's only been a few hours,
but in this world, if that trucker was correct, it could have been
a week. I head back out to the trailer. I think to myself, man
there are a lot of things on this trailer, as I scan my eyes across
the deck. I walk up and notice a little gold plaque on one of these
things, engraved in fancy script was, "Packed with Pride by J.
Phillips"... that's a nice touch. I lay down on a small hill of
dirt under the trailer, in the shade, and look back at my house. My
brain is racing. The trailer bed above my head is still so full of
things, I have not even scratched the surface yet. My eyelids clamp
shut... I'm so tired.. I try, but I can't even open them, I give
up. I am thinking about all of the things I can do with this
hou.... zzzzzzzzzzz.