Steve Endow's Business Central Podcast

I Need Coffee - Episode 198 - Weekly BC Review! (january 23, 2026)
1. Weekend & Personal Life 
   - Oil change + mobile office setup at dealership (good remote work test via SonicWall & tethering).  
   - Weekend mostly a blur due to cold; little memory of non-work activities.

2. Weekly Work & Projects
   - Preparing Vibe conference presentations (co-presenting with Tanya & David Ler).  
   - Progress on Partner Dashboard app, Teams Planner, maintenance/service agreement pricing.  
   - New AppSource app now live in production → surprises (obscure permissions, out-of-sequence user actions).

3. AI / "Vibe Coding" Experiences* 
   - Discussion of agentic/AI development tools & efficiency (podcast appearance on "Window on Technology" with Jeremy Vyska).  
   - "Vibe coding" experiments → fast prototyping but bad code ("Michael Jackson" style), bugs in PTEs, performance profiler revealing excessive events.  
   - Critique of viral "live stream to $1M revenue" vibe-coding project (crypto coin pivot turned him off).

4. Time Zone Challenges in Business Central  
   - Job queues, tenant time zones, DST issues → built custom time zone management with nightly refresh.  
   - Surprising bug: one Mexican time zone causes 1-hour offset in license validation timestamp.

5. Edge Cases & Production Surprises  
   - Repeated theme: bizarre, unforeseeable sequences of events and bugs appearing only in production/real usage.  
   - Philosophy shift → "bugs are actively finding us".

6. DynamicsCon Session Review  
   - Reviewing hundreds of submissions → humorous observations on self-awarded titles ("world-renowned", "expert", "wizard").

7. Cybersecurity & OSINT  
   - Mind-blowing OSINT webinar (Anti-Cyphon / Michelle Khan): doxing via voter records, insurance databases, hotel Wi-Fi room enumeration, GitHub email exposure, etc.  
   - Ransomware hitting a partner → reminder of real risk.  
   - Recent attacks: Fortinet firewalls/portal bypasses, Cloudflare WAF zero-day.

8. Security / AI Critique 
   - Zach Corman interview breakdown of MCP servers (Anthropic-related) → horribly insecure single-endpoint design, prompt injection risks.

9. Integrations & Pain Points
   - Nightmare Salesforce → BC integration (customized, messy data model, years-long project).  
   - Completed painful but successful Bill.com + Multi-Entity Management (MEM) integration.

10. Team & El Salvador Updates 
    - ERP Center of Excellence in Berlin, El Salvador: team studying (MB-800), building Partner Dashboard, payment portal, custom reports.  
    - Fatima passed PMP exam; planning local Dynamics user group.

11. Upcoming Events & Personal 
    - Partner & Vibe conference (next week, Texas).  
    - Directions NA (late April, Orlando?), DynamicsCon (May, Las Vegas), etc.  
    - Personal: prom escort practice with daughter, standing desk experiment, at-home AI-generated workouts, key person insurance research.

12. Closing Notes  
    - Shout-out to Mauricio (podcast producer).  
    - Light-hearted sign-off: cats, coffee, Claudebot/AI lobster project.

I Need Coffee - Episode 197 - Weekly BC Review! (january 16, 2026)
1. Tech setup struggles & camera troubleshooting 
   - Live camera aperture/shutter/exposure hacks during stream  
   - $1,000 Sony camera repair (gear grinding failure) → new backup body ordered

2. Personal weekend activities  
   - Detailed engine bay cleaning (inspired by ChrisFix YouTube videos)  
   - AGM battery testing, sulfation concerns, OptiMate 7 charger upgrade  
   - Emphasis on small, satisfying analog/mechanical projects

3. Vibe coding & agentic AI development 
   - Voice coding on watch/phone fantasy  
   - Prompt Requests > Pull Requests philosophy  
   - Junior developer blown away by live vibe-coding demo (wireframe → AL page in ~1 min)  
   - Limits of AI in complex Business Central AL scenarios (PTE event cascade problem)

4. Business Central / Dynamics 365 pain points 
   - Teams Planner UX disaster (tedious, fighty interface)  
   - Business Central V27 1099s configuration = “absolute user experience disaster”  
   - Reverse voided check + bank rec + credit memo mess (no easy undo button)  
   - 1,440+ events firing in customer PTE sandbox (debug nightmare)

5. Microsoft 365 Copilot / Excel agent mode  
   - New-ish agent capabilities in Excel (data cleanup, fill blanks, etc.)  
   - Limited without full M365 Copilot license → creates new workbook instead  
   - Potential use-case: cleaning messy customer migration data files

6. Cybersecurity highlights
   - Anti-Phishing / Black Hills DNS C2 threat hunting masterclass (highly recommended)  
   - Fortinet FortiSIEM RCE actively exploited (CVE)  
   - Browser extension takeover attack vector (Paste Ready → malware in 3 days)  
   - SignToolEx – using expired/stolen certs without clock tricks  
   - MCP servers = massive security risk (“The S in MCP stands for security”)

7. Nearshore / outsourcing discussion  
   - Building in-house nearshore practice in El Salvador  
   - Researching outsourced nearshore providers (Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia)  
   - Strong opinion: outsourcing fails without new customer-side skills

8. Team / company updates (ERP Center of Excellence – El Salvador)**  
   - Partner Dashboard app ready for deployment  
   - Vibe-coded PRs flowing fast from junior devs  
   - MB-800 exam prep (Joselyn, David)  
   - Fatima taking PMP exam next week

9. Upcoming events & pricing 
   - Vibe Conference (South Padre Island, < 2 weeks away) – 3 sessions  
   - Pricing updates 2026 (AppSource, consulting, support plans)  
   - Session idea: modern SaaS support / managed services for cloud BC

10. Cultural / philosophical notes
    - Difficulty explaining current AI reality to “normies”  
    - Growing preference for human-made, analog, low-budget, hands-on content  
    - Vibe-coding rabbit hole → 15–20 unfinished side projects instead of 2–3

I Need Coffee - Episode 196 - Weekly BC Review! (january 9, 2026)
1. Clawdbot / CLAWD explosion  
   - Viral open-source personal AI assistant (“space lobster”, pun on Claude → CLAWD)  
   - Exploded in days → thousands in Discord, huge community excitement  
   - Runs locally (even on old ThinkCentre tiny PC or Raspberry Pi), connects to WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord/email/calendar/Amazon/etc.  
   - Described as “what we wish Siri was” — real action-taking agent  
   - Some chaos when updating (flooded WhatsApp with thousands of messages)

2. Vibe coding / AI-agentic development experiences 
   - Heavy use of AI (Claude, Copilot, Cursor) to generate AL code, PTEs, tests, docs  
   - Very fast prototyping → but extremely weird, unintuitive bugs (counting log lines instead of invoices, conflating headers/lines/logs)  
   - Testing vibe-coded apps is a completely different skill — no rational assumptions possible  
   - Huge productivity gain once you accept looping “fix your bugs” cycles  
   - Copilot sometimes breaks known-good obscure AL patterns (while Claude/Cursor handle them fine)

3. Business Central development & AppSource reality 
   - Struggles with registration/licensing system (self-built after bad experiences with third-party providers) → geo-redundancy, heartbeats, failover  
   - Mysterious production-only issues debugged with in-client Performance Profiler → traced to Microsoft Subscription Billing app blocking field changes  
   - Very close to finishing major AppSource app release (classic “halfway to the finish line” feeling)  
   - Adding visible version info directly on pages for easier support

4. Challenges with rapid AI iteration & bleeding-edge risks 
   - Claudebot project architecture changed multiple times in days → update broke things badly  
   - Accidental high-volume spam to contacts during bug  
   - Senior developer quits team when shown agentic coding (sees only bugs, not fix speed)

5. Tools & productivity workflow observations
   - Pandoc + Markdown Monster for AI-generated documentation → Markdown → Word/PDF pipeline  
   - GitHub Copilot now doing git staging/commit/push/PR creation  
   - Upcoming VS Code improvements (agent skills, centralized chat sessions/archive)

6. Security & cyber news highlights 
   - IP-based KVM devices extremely insecure (backdoors to critical systems)  
   - Tailscale config auditor (Tail Snitch) — found outdated nodes  
   - Massive alleged leaks (1.2B Chinese citizen records)  
   - n8n CVE-10.0 full host compromise vulnerability (~100k exposed servers)

7. Business / operations notes
   - Need better contract lifecycle management (considering PandaDoc) after clause dispute  
   - Upcoming talks: nearshore consulting setup, avoiding million-dollar lawsuits, modern SaaS support models

8. Light / humorous recurring motifs 
   - “Crustacean power” / lobster memes  
   - “It works fine in dev”  
   - Drive failures (Steve is “the luckiest administrator in the world”)  
   - “Vibe coding warning”

I Need Coffee - Episode 195 - Weekly BC Review! (january 2, 2026)
1. Personal & Weekend Recap
   - Went on a 6-mile hike with wife and daughter in Orange County; mostly paved trail but exhausting (sore feet/legs); beautiful beach views on a sunny day during rain break.
   - Experimented with "poor man's" ceramic coating on wife's 10-year-old unwaxed car (Griot's spray-on wax hybrid, ~$100–150 range); based on Project Farm YouTube tests; clayed half the hood as test.
   
2. Vibe Coding & Productivity Insights
   - Non-stop vibe coding all week; learning tools' capabilities (good/bad at certain tasks); described as a new career/industry/toolset.
   - Released two fully vibe-coded PTEs; discovered GitHub Copilot bugs/flaws (e.g., ignores instructions, bad design patterns like exposing internals, missing permissions, skipping Excel headers); workarounds: Prompt for best practices, double-check/refactor.

3. Business Central Issues & Projects
   - BC v27.2 1099 bugs: Confirmed broken (doesn't calculate vendor amounts correctly; reports/useless overviews); recommend avoiding until fixed; configs different, mess likely to last a year.

4. Cyber Security News & Insights
   - "Agentic hacking" demo at Black Hat: Exploited LLM vulnerabilities (e.g., prompt injection via hidden image text); implications for AI agents (e.g., reading emails, executing commands).
   - LastPass breach: Fake Chrome extension stole $16k in crypto; advice: Download from official sources, enable 2FA/hardware keys.
   - Password manager extensions: Full browser access (security trade-off) but convenient (auto-fill, detects suspicious fields); AL syntax highlighting 

5. Upcoming 2026 Events
   - Partner in Vibe Conference: Jan 28–30, South Padre Island, Texas; register at partnerin.io (price increase soon); sessions on building nearshore practice from scratch, avoiding $1M lawsuit, agentic AI considerations, modern support/managed services contracts for cloud Dynamics.
   - Directions NA: April, Orlando.
   - Dynamics Con: May, Las Vegas.
 

6. Team & Office Updates (ERP Center of Excellence, Berlin, El Salvador)
   - David & Joselyn: Wrapping BC implementation tasks; studying for MB-800 certification.
   - Ronald: Managing 1099 "war room" (abandoned v27.2 due to bugs); beta testing/ops for partner dashboard (bulk tenant management/upgrades).
   - Franklin: Finalizing partner dashboard releases; daily PTE vibe coding practice (improving skills).
   - Fatima: Scheduled in-person PMP exam in San Salvador (2-day process: drive/hotel night before); planning first Dynamics user group meetup (late Jan/early Feb).
   - Furry team: Mama ERP cat and 3 kittens healthy/well-fed; bought $70 Wi-Fi enabled cat feeder for automated care (team traveling, manual feeding tiring; limited El Salvador options).

7. Q&A/Recommendations
   - Art restoration channel: Baumgartner Restoration (Julian Baumgartner, ~2M subscribers); fascinating process (e.g., restoring shredded painting); meticulous, patient work; not AI/robotics-replaceable soon.

8. Misc & Closing
   - Quiet New Year's week overall.
   - Holiday wishes: Happy New Year 2026; cheers to surviving the week; go learn something, vibe code.

I Need Coffee - Episode 194 - Weekly BC Review! (Dec 26, 2025)
1. Vibe Coding / AI-assisted development (central theme)
   - Heavy promotion of "vibe coding" with GitHub Copilot (and similar tools like Claude, Cursor)
   - Rapid creation of complex deliverables via prompts
   - Repeated call: "vibe code all the things" – adopt this workflow urgently as a competitive edge

2. Extremely fast document generation examples
   - 19-page design document / PRD created almost instantly from one customer call scenario
   - 16-page functional requirements document (incl. process flows, data mapping, wireframes) after 15-min call
   - Full AppSource app user guide first attempt = 520 pages → refined down to ~135 pages

3. GitHub Copilot bugs & limitations identified
   - Specific bug in AL language coding: fails repeatedly on certain tasks (verified; works in Claude/Cursor)
   - Output length limit frequently hit on large documents (>15–20 pages) → requires chunking / section-by-section prompting

4. Business Central v27 – serious 1099 preparation issues (critical warning)
   - Major problems printing 1099 forms (missing dollar amounts, unreliable functionality)
   - Strong recommendation: STAY ON VERSION 26 if possible
   - v27 users expected to face significant pain
   - LLMs give dangerously wrong advice (mix v26 and v27 behavior) → do NOT rely on AI for v27 1099 guidance

5. DevOps automation breakthrough (~75% automated)
   - Previously: 1–2 hours + 25-page manual guide to create new PTE/project in Azure DevOps
   - Now: Copilot-generated PowerShell + DevOps API automation → target <5 minutes
   - Goal: reduce errors to <5%, increase capacity from 1 PTE/day → 3+ PTEs/day per developer

6. AppSource app development & production surprises
   - Many issues only appear in production (not caught in dev/sandbox)
   - Hidden BC feature: list pages/subpages have built-in "Open in Excel" option
   - New app release stuck in AppSource pipeline over Christmas period

7. AI-powered wireframing of Business Central pages
   - Copilot generates usable page mockups (incl. custom fields) in <60 seconds
   - Now standard in all design documents instead of manual drawing

8. Team productivity & nearshore updates (El Salvador CoE)
   - Juniors (Joselyn, David, Franklin, etc.) highly productive very quickly
   - Franklin: zero BC knowledge (Nov 2024) → now building internal partner dashboard + full vibe-coded PTEs in one day
   - Partner dashboard: bulk upgrades, tenant management via BC Admin API

9. Other technical / business notes
   - Starlink satellite anomaly + Vantor imaging capture (impressive 12 cm resolution from 241 km)
   - Config package import performance: 72,000 rows very slow → workaround by splitting files
   - 13-year-old