Steve Endow's Business Central Podcast

I Need Coffee - Episode 209 - Weekly BC Review! (April 24, 2026)

1. Weekend Activities

Vibe-coded a full new website in ~4–6 hours (Astro + Cloudflare).
Learned a lot, but decided to scrap the complex architecture.
Planning a simpler vanilla HTML + CSS version (cleaner, no heavy frameworks).

Attended a Chinese dance performance and did amateur photography (technically challenging low-light conditions).
Sniped a Canon R7 mirrorless camera on eBay (~$980) to upgrade photography gear.

2. Marketing & Business Development

Received a $7,000 quote for a new website → decided to vibe code it instead.
Vibe-coded a 35-page marketing plan for ~$4.35 in tokens (emails, blogs, webinars, conferences, brochures, etc.).
Acknowledges marketing is outside his comfort zone but sees value in letting AI generate ideas and plans.

3. AI Tooling & Experimentation

Opus 4.7 released (goodbye 4.6).
GitHub Copilot / Pro subscriptions paused due to major changes in pricing model.
FFmpeg mastery via AI: Compressed large Teams recordings (285 MB → ~150 MB), trimmed dead space using VTT transcripts, GPU acceleration (very fast).
Training Session Analysis Prompt (based on Dimitri + Jeremy’s work):
Fed 1-hour Teams video + VTT transcript.
Produced a 32-page metric-based report with educational, psychological, and communication metrics.
Examples: Words per minute (135.5, optimal range), filler words, speech clarity, jargon density, pause timing, CFU (Check for Understanding) rate, participant talk ratio, etc.
Detected privacy issues (visible Outlook inbox, sensitive PDFs on screen).
Recommended improvements (define terms upfront, presentation mode, remove distractions).

4. Business Central / Development Wins

GL Account Filter foresight by AI saved a project: Predicted and solved 1 MB JSON payload limit in Flowcast integration.
Complex support fire drill (issue since April 6th):
Recorded troubleshooting call with customer.
AI analyzed video/transcript → narrowed down root cause.
Built and deployed a diagnostic PTE → fixed the edge-case data issue same day.

Lesson: Record calls, narrate clearly for AI analysis — massive time saver on complex bugs.

5. Challenges & Observations

Customer mindset frustration: Customer with 11-year-old shadow lot tracking PTE only wants one lot fixed, not the root bug or full cleanup.
GitHub issues: Merge queue commits randomly reverting previous merges.
AI font rendering bug in Perplexity (bad dollar sign font confused PowerShell $PSVersionTable).
WordPress still hated (security vulnerabilities, complexity).

6. Upcoming Events

Directions NA – Next week (prepare & pack).
Dynamics Con – May 12–15.
Directions Asia – May 13–15 (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam).
DUG Meetup El Salvador (likely in Spanish).
Dynamics Minds – May 25–27 (Slovenia).
Vibe Partner Conference 2.0 – Sept 21–23, Provo, UT (Call for Speakers open until June 15).

7. Team Updates

Joselyn & David: Continuing MB-800 study + config packages.
Ronald: Document Capture training & implementation; guinea pig for training analysis.
Franklin: Debugging + new PTE work.
Fatima: PMP study + experimenting with Page Scripting + AI.

I Need Coffee - Episode 208 - Weekly BC Review! (April 17, 2026)

1. Weekend – World of Coffee Conference (San Diego)

Attended with friend Gabe from San Salvador (his coffee business ranked #69 in North & Central America – huge achievement).
Massive event: thousands of hardcore coffee nerds, huge convention center, top roasters (Onyx, Weber, Probat, etc.).
Highlights: premium packaging, wild processing methods (double fermented, anaerobic, nitrogen infused, co-fermented lychee, etc.), latte art competition, high-end light roasts.
Bought premium specialty coffee (~$30 per small box).

2. Customer AI Stories & Warnings

Customer used ChatGPT to justify reusing check numbers in BC → team had to intervene with real risks.
AI responses should be taken with a grain of salt — especially for ERP/accounting decisions.

3. Legacy PTE Nightmares (Inherited Lot Tracking)

11-year-old PTE (from ~2015, migrated from C/NAV) that bypasses all native BC lot tracking.
Automatically assigns lot numbers to everything while keeping items as non-tracked.
Causes quantity discrepancies and breaks standard inventory adjustments.
Decision: Do not try to fully fix/migrate — just patch bugs. Classic “shadow system” horror story.

4. Hardware Upgrades

Ordered Mac Mini (M4 base) for heavier AI workloads (replacing eBay tiny PCs).
Used OpenClaw + custom “lobster shopper” script to monitor Apple refurbished store every 30 mins.
New Human Scale G5 keyboard tray (Rolls-Royce of trays) — tilt/height adjustable, very happy.

5. AI Tooling & Vibe Coding Insights

Stefan Moron’s AL Symbols/Dependency MCP + Jeremy’s BC Code Intelligence MCP installed but inconsistent tool usage in agents.
Improving AI-generated user guides/documentation — Joselyn’s brutal (and valuable) feedback led to much better prompts.
New strict grounding rules: no hallucination, tie everything to actual code/pages/fields.

Corto vs Pandoc: Corto is mostly a wrapper; sticking with custom Pandoc + Word template workflow.
AI is terrible at time/duration estimates — completely hallucinates. Added custom hooks for real timestamps.
Claude Code + Tmux on Linux for running multiple agents efficiently.

6. Major AI Disruption Example (Survival Mode)

Friend’s company: 2.5-year, multi-million dollar custom .NET project with 8 developers.
Customer vibe-coded the entire system in 12 days (including missing features + improvements).
Result: Laying off 6 developers, major contract renegotiation.
Steve’s warning: Everyone should be in survival mode in 2026. The world is changing extremely fast.

7. Microsoft Account & Access Frustrations

Microsoft login dialog hell (no account specified) → accidentally created personal account conflict with M365 business account.
VPN/Conditional Access blocks for international team members (geolocation + other policies).

8. Open Source Contribution Fun

Helped Stefan with ALRunner project (super-fast AL unit testing, no Docker/container).
Ran multiple Claude agents via Tmux on Linux box → 100+ commits/PRs.
Cleared 1,100+ issues with several people contributing agents.

9. Model & Tooling Updates

Opus 4.7 released — even better, but very expensive on GitHub Copilot (7.5x → 15x multiplier).
Local models (LM Studio, Qwen, etc.) tested on RTX 3080 → disappointing for BC work.
Overlay VPN experiments (UniFi Teleport = garbage, Tailscale = okay but slow).

10. Team & Other Updates

Team studying MB-800, working on Document Capture, PMP, weather cam project.
Upcoming events: Directions NA, Dynamics Con, Dynamics Minds, Vibe 2.0 Partner Conference (Provo, UT – Sept 21-23).

I Need Coffee - Episode 207 - Weekly BC Review! (April 10, 2026)

1. Keyboard Tray & Personal Life

Old Human Scale ergonomic keyboard tray (27–28 years old) broke → ordered Gen 5 replacement.
Paper usage metric: 500 sheets lasted almost exactly 1 year.

2. AI & Vibe Coding Breakthroughs

Reproduced a complex Dynamics GP partner application (17 years of work) in 12 hours with a partner using AI (3 phone calls + cleanup).
New version is better and features are now trivial to add.

Bitter Lesson Engineering (Daniel Mistler essay) – Highly recommended.
Stop micromanaging models with detailed instructions/frameworks.
Describe desired outcome + constraints (or remove constraints for creativity).
Let emergent behavior shine.

Preference for minimal abstractions: Direct LLM interaction over complex agents, MCPs, custom prompts, etc. (to better observe model behavior/changes).
Emergent behavior examples in Business Central apps (clever implementations he wouldn’t have thought of).

3. Claude & Tooling Wins

Uploaded Teams video transcript (VTT) → Claude generated perfect PRD/FRD.
OpenClaw fixed OAuth issue with OpenAI.
OpenClaw transcribed 83MB Teams video using FFmpeg → then analyzed with Claude.
Considering upgrading OpenClaw hardware (Mac Mini).

4. Business Central Development Notes

Consistent AI struggles:
File/object naming.
Number Series setup.
Factbox refresh issues (needed full page reload initially).

Stefan Moron’s AL Dependency MCP Server – Excellent for schema understanding (set up via Copilot).
Central Gauge (Torben Leth) – Great AL benchmarking site.
Check layouts: Finally delivered after weeks (now building AppSource app for common formats to avoid per-customer PTEs).
In-flight / halfway-done transactions design flaw (discovered twice) – Important to anticipate in new apps.
Lot tracking shadow system horror story (2015 PTE) – Wild independent lot system on non-lot-tracked items.

5. GitHub / DevOps Migration

Transitioning from Azure DevOps to GitHub + ALGO.
Massive speed gains (scaffolding in minutes vs. 30+ mins).

6. Tools & Productivity

Pandoc + Word template workflow for beautiful MD → DOC conversion (via Copilot scripts).
Windows + H for voice typing (excellent in VS Code).
Logan Legacy MCP for legacy code analysis.
GitHub Copilot iOS app praised for full agentic capabilities (issue → PR without cloning).

7. AI Hype vs Reality

Warning on performative engagement bait and hard-to-benchmark “tips.”
Claude Mythos hype largely overblown (context-heavy benchmarks).
Models change daily; stay humble and test.

8. Team & Company Updates

Joselyn: MB-800 studying + painful config package / 1099 work.
David: MB-800 + report layouts.
Ronald: Document Capture implementation + Berlin English Academy (intermediate/advanced).
Franklin: Released 2nd AppSource app; learning in-flight issues.
Fatima: PMP studying + partner dashboard.

9. Upcoming Events

World of Coffee Conference (San Diego) – This weekend.
Directions (Orlando) – Soon.
Dynamics Con (Las Vegas) May 12–15.
Dynamics Minds (Slovenia) May 25–27.
Vibe 2.0 Partner Conference (Provo, UT) – Call for speakers open.
Various SummitNA Roadshows.

10. Fun / Memorable

College photo shoot (dresses + cowboy boots in flower field).
Unpredictable users as perfect (unintentional) QA.
Mila Jovovich doing open-source AI work (Claude memory system) → “Best timeline.”

I Need Coffee - Episode 206 - BC Weekly Review! (April 3, 2026)

1. MVP Summit Reflections  
   - Microsoft product managers are exceptionally sharp and operate 6–18 months ahead; they run circles around most technical discussions  
   - Microsoft is uniquely positioned for comprehensive end-to-end AI (Office, Teams, Excel, BC, GitHub, etc.)  
   - Even PMs and MVPs struggle to keep up with the pace of AI changes  
   - Strong emphasis that Microsoft is investing heavily in making AI actionable and integrated across the entire stack

2. Prompting Philosophy Shift  
   - Key realization: **Less is more** — heavy guardrails and overly constrained prompts often produce worse, lazier results  
   - Removing excessive constraints allowed Opus 4.6 to “spread its legs” and deliver far better outputs (e.g., numbered wireframes with referenced requirements and user stories)  
   - Coincidentally reinforced by a tweet from Jonathan Smith (Microsoft) about reducing constraints to let the model use its full intelligence

3. AI Tooling & Workflow Updates  
   - Defaulting back to GitHub Copilot in VS Code for coding tasks (Opus models were extremely slow this week)  
   - Added GitHub Copilot event hooks (PowerShell) to automatically timestamp prompts (start time, end time, duration) — very useful for tracking performance  
   - Claude still preferred for high-quality Word documentation  
   - Experimenting with Playwright for automated BC UI screenshots (for user guides) — generated 21 screenshots with inline references; created full 35–40 page documentation of the setup

4. Marketplace (AppSource) Progress 
   - Published **two apps** to Microsoft Marketplace this week  
   - Created detailed 20–30 page step-by-step procedures so any of the three devs (Steve, senior dev, Franklin) can reliably publish  
   - Now treating Marketplace publishing as a repeatable, low-overhead process

5. Networking / Infrastructure 
   - Ordered UniFi Cloud Gateway Max to test as potential replacement for SonicWall (focus on Teleport VPN for better customer conditional access compatibility)  
   - Goal: create clean exit nodes (Los Angeles + Utah) to avoid IP-hopping alerts and commercial VPN blocks from customer tenants

6. Team & Operational Notes  
   - Franklin & Steve published Marketplace apps  
   - Joselyn & David continuing MB-800 studies  
   - Ronald on Continia + iSolutions implementations  
   - Fatima reviewing the 500-page Prospect Discovery Questionnaire  
   - 1099 procedures for BC v27 still painful and complex

7. Upcoming Events  
   - Directions NA – Orlando, April 27–29 (preparing presentations with Brad)  
   - Dynamics Con – Las Vegas, May 12–15 (3 sessions)  
   - Directions Asia – Ho Chi Minh City, May 13–15  
   - DynamicsMinds – Slovenia, May 25–27  
   - Partner Vibe 2.0 – Provo, Utah, September 21–23 (submissions due June 15)  
   - Summit NA – Nashville, October 11–15

8. Fun / Personal Note 
   - Weekend: washed garage door and daughter’s car, cleaned sunroom to resurrect home theater (now shared with pottery wheel and a cat using the center channel as a perch)  
   - Watched *Shallow Hal* with wife (laughed a lot)  
   - Forgot laptop on flight day → wife delivered it to the airport  
   - Biohacking note: decaf experiment showed no noticeable difference in sleep/energy

I Need Coffee - Episode 205 - BC Weekly Review! (March 27, 2026)

1. MVP Summit 2026 Recap (Seattle)  
   - Attended via Southwest flight (felt luxurious compared to Avianca)  
   - Highlighted how smart Microsoft product managers are; they operate months/years ahead and run circles around most people in technical depth  
   - Key insight: Microsoft is uniquely positioned for comprehensive AI across its ecosystem (Office, Teams, Excel, BC, GitHub, etc.)  
   - Strong impression that Microsoft is investing heavily in making AI actionable and integrated, not just chat-based  
   - Noted that even hardcore MVPs and PMs struggle to keep up with the pace of AI changes

2. AI Experimentation Highlights  
   - OpenClaw nightly self-improvement**: Prompt “scan yourself and suggest top two improvements” — running every night  
   - Claude still dominant** for professional Word documentation and large structured outputs  
   - Playwright automation project**: Built a system inside an AppSource app to automatically log into BC, navigate, prepare screens, and take named screenshots for user guides (21 screenshots generated with inline references)  
     - Created 35–40 page documentation of the entire setup, lessons learned, troubleshooting, and scripts so the team can replicate  
     - Next step: test Chrome MCP as alternative for BC UI automation  
   - AI Project Management**: Continuing to use OpenClaw + Teams Planner for task analysis, risk assessment, daily top-5 reports, etc.

3. AppSource & DevOps Migration  
   - Actively packaging multiple apps for AppSource (registration, licensing, pipelines, testing)  
   - Decision to migrate from Azure DevOps to GitHub (Microsoft’s clear direction; DevOps pipelines have become too painful with 32+ pages of procedures)  
   - Expect GitHub to have its own pains but better AI integration (Copilot CLI, agentic PRs, code review from mobile, etc.)

4. Microsoft Ecosystem Observations  
   - Hopeful for better model selection and harness control in M365 Copilot, Teams, and Office tools  
   - Wants true agentic behavior (e.g., meeting summary → auto-create & prioritize tasks in Planner, not just show to-dos)  
   - GitHub Copilot now model-agnostic in VS Code → should be competitive with Claude Code / Cursor

5. Team & Operational Notes  
   - 1099 procedures for BC v27 still causing pain (complex setup, poor usability)  
   - Franklin publishing first AppSource app  
   - Joselyn advancing MB-800 practice exams + financial reports  
   - Ronald on Continia + iSolutions  
   - Prospect discovery questionnaire (500+ pages) now under review by Fatima for project use

6. Upcoming Events  
   - Directions NA – Orlando, April 27–29 (preparing presentations with Brad)  
   - Dynamics Con – Las Vegas, May 12–15 (3 sessions)  
   - Directions Asia – Ho Chi Minh City, May 13–15  
   - DynamicsMinds – Slovenia, May 25–27  
  
  7. Fun / Personal Note
   - Weekend chores: washed garage door and daughter’s car, cleaned sunroom to resurrect home theater (shared with pottery wheel)  
   - Forgot laptop at home on flight day → wife delivered it to airport  
   - St. Patrick’s Day dinner: Korean soon tofu + galbi + ice cream (traditional Irish meal)  
   - Watched classic movies (Days of Thunder, What Women Want)