October 13, 2024

For those of you that come back frequently to the site (or even if you don’t come that often), you’ve noticed that I haven’t posted anything for a while. There are many reasons for this, and I will describe a few, but before I do that, I want to apologize. I created this website to give back to the community, and I’ve not been doing an excellent job at that. If you’ve sent me an email or commented and I haven’t replied yet, sorry about that.

So let’s take a look at what happened and what’s next.

Reason 1 – Clients

The short answer is that I’ve been fortunate to have a few more clients, and my time has disappeared. If you don’t know, I’ve created a new company called SKILLFUL SARDINE (If you’re curious about the name, you can check it out here), so it’s great to have some clients that are allowing me to keep things afloat and especially having my job to help people automate and save time. It’s incredible when people say, “Oh my god, now I don’t have to do that boring thing anymore.” But the side-effect is that to focus on that I didn’t have time to write articles. So I’m now blocking times in the schedule so that I can work on articles and give time to work on other projects.

Reason 2 – Growing Pains

The second reason I’ve alluded to is that creating a company alone is difficult. When I had a job, I didn’t need to worry about many things required to keep a company running. I did my job and got my paycheck at the end of the month. Now I have to work on many extra things, which surprisingly take time. I know I can hire someone to help me (and I did in some cases), but that doesn’t remove all the tasks only I can do. It’s been an aggressive adjustment period, but I’m slowly adjusting. And before you ask, yes, I have many Flows automating when possible; otherwise, things would have been much harder!

Reason 3 – Level up the site

I’ve been organizing many of my ideas and putting them into a plan for products to launch here on the website. As I’ve always said, the site will always continue to be free and with the main focus on helping the community, but I also have some excellent ideas for products that I think will help you. I’m still working on them, so you can expect some news in the coming weeks/months, depending on how fast I can develop them.

Reason 4 – Volume

As I said, the main objective of this website was to help the community. I’ve been receiving many emails asking for help, and I tried to answer all of them for a while, but it became apparent quickly that it was impossible. In most cases, I need time to write a reply with the steps to help people, but that takes time. So my solution has been to put the questions in a list and write an article about them, but other things can be done. I’m already working on some ideas to help solve this problem, where you can get the answers you need, and I can provide the help while being able to work on other projects. More on that soon!

Reason 5 – Personal Life

Yeah, I know. Having a life outside of work interferes with a lot of things 😀. But, on a serious note, the whole reason that I quit my job and focused on building a company was to have more free time to spend with the family. I know that most of you think it’s the worse thing to do, and based on what I’ve written so far, you’re probably right, but I want to make it work. Like the “Growing Pains” part, it’s been an adjustment, and I’m working on it.

What’s next?

First things first, Monday, I’ll go back to the “usual” posting routine of 1 post a day with the following lineup:

  1. Mondays (one per day) – PowerApps, SharePoint, or OData Reference.
  2. Tuesdays – Power Automate
  3. Wednesday – Power Automate Function Reference
  4. Thursday – Power Automate Action Reference
  5. Friday – Power Automate Trigger Reference

I want to bring back PowerApps and SharePoint because I got some great questions from the community that I want to explore and publish. I’m sure they will help many people and allow me to learn a bit as well.

Also, according to my analytics, the OData Reference is helpful to many people, so I’m also bringing it back. I initially published it because it was excellent support for other articles, but now I see that people struggle with it, so let’s improve upon it.

The lineup changes a lot depending on how many ideas I have for a specific topic or if I have something from another category that I want to explore and publish.

New Social

If you’re into Mastodon, you can find me here. I’m not the most social person (I know, big surprise, right? 😀), but I’ll post there occasionally and try to post the articles as soon as they come out. Automation here is my friend, but since Mastodon is quite new to me, I don’t have anything in place to post there. Probably another section to the website? 🤔

Final thoughts

More things will be deployed here on the website. I don’t want to promise anything because things may change, but I’m excited about the possibilities. If you have any ideas of things you want me to explore, please email me, or if you’re a social person, you can reach me on LinkedIn or Mastodon.

So see you back here on Monday for a new post.

Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash

 

Manuel Gomes

I have 18 years of experience in automation, project management, and development. In addition to that, I have been writing for this website for over 3 years now, providing readers with valuable insights and information. I hope my expertise allows me to create compelling, informative content that resonates with the audience.

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