IN 2018 A field technician working for Telstra, an Australian telecoms firm, built an app that unified 70 messaging systems for reporting phone-line problems. The technician did this despite having no coding experience. The interface may look cluttered: the landing page jams in 150 buttons and a local-news ticker—the app equivalent of an airplane cockpit, quips Charles Lamanna of Microsoft, who oversees the software titan’s Power Apps platform that made it possible. But it has been a hit. Some 1,300 other Telstra technicians employ it, saving the firm an annual $12m.
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