Podcasts about common data service

Send me a Text Message hereFULL SHOW NOTES https://podcast.nz365guy.com/584  Discover the latest in AI-driven advancements and managed environments within Microsoft's Power Platform in our latest episode of the Copilot Show. We had an enlightening chat with Ryan Jones, a partner director of product management at Microsoft, who shared his incredible journey from the Common Data Service days to the robust Dataverse. Ryan's passion for enhancing enterprise-scale applications and integrating AI with Copilot shines through as he shares exciting updates on governance and security advancements made over the past year. Get an insider's look at the balance Ryan maintains between his professional life and personal time at his beach cabin or hosting large gatherings at home.Unlock the secrets behind Microsoft's extensive IP security investments specifically designed for financial institutions and enterprises. Ryan takes us through the alignment of security controls with established models, policy-based configurations, and the innovative environment routing that offers developers personalized environments with tailored security policies. These advancements reduce dependence on default environments, elevating overall governance and security. We delve deep into the specific measures like customer-managed key vaults, HSMs, and virtual network connectivity to ensure comprehensive risk management.In our discussion on licensing, we break down the tangible benefits of premium licenses over basic ones within managed environments. With examples ranging from historical hypervisor wars to modern tools like Power Automate Desktop, we illuminate the critical balance between fostering creativity and maintaining control. Ryan provides strategies for persuading organizations to adopt premium licenses, showcasing how they can harness richer security features and manage their environments more effectively. To wrap things up, Mark extends an invitation to listeners to suggest future guests from Microsoft, ensuring our content remains engaging and community-driven.90 Day Mentoring Challenge 10% off code use MBAP at checkout https://ako.nz365guy.comSupport the Show.If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.Thanks for listening

In today's podcast, Joel Lindstrom and George Doubinski talk about Dataverse, the new name of Common Data Service. Microsoft has also renamed some of the CDS components. Entities are now tables, Option Sets are now choices, and fields are not columns. These new names may be confusing for long time platform users, but they move the platform to be more consistent with other platforms and will help makers moving from SharePoint to Dataverse, as the naming is now consistent.

It's autumn in the the US, the leaves are falling, and we are back with another episode of CRM Audio. In today's episode, Joel Lindstrom, George Doubinski, and Shawn Tabor talk about George's new in-line code editor function for Power Automate--how does it work, why would you want to use it over plain expressions, and is it secure? We also get into Oakdale, the new light version of Common Data Service included in Microsoft Teams. After using it for several weeks, how does it compare with full CDS? Are there any performance differences? And what about storage capacity?

In Episode 198, Ben and Scott follow up on announcements from Microsoft Ignite, including Azure Resource Mover and SharePoint Syntex. Sponsors Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you're too busy to manage your inbox ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Second half of Microsoft Ignite will be in March 2021 What is Azure Resource Mover? Overview of Project Oakdale How are Project Oakdale and Common Data Service different? Project Oakdale Licensing SharePoint Syntex and 'Project Nucleus' Announced at Ignite What are Progressive Web Apps? Announcing SharePoint Syntex Microsoft Launches SharePoint Syntex To Automate Content Categorization And Build A Foundation For Knowledge Curation Take your communications to the next level with new offerings in Microsoft Teams New Add On: Microsoft Teams Advanced Communications About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That's a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

Last week at Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft announced DataFlex, a light version of Common Data Service that will be included with Microsoft Teams and make it easy to build low-code applications inside of Teams with simplified security. They also announced that CDS will be rebranded as DataFlex Pro. Joel, George and Shawn discuss what this change means, along with the confusion over the name. 9ejNL9yutzhpz0cyc6Ed

Audio version of my weekly update video (on YouTube). This week: Common Data Service is now Microsoft Dataflex, and it’s WAY more than just a name change. This changes everything. New Developer Platform support for Microsoft Teams meetings announced at Inspire 2020 I spoke to Mary-Jo Foley about Microsoft Inspire 2020, Microsoft Partners, Microsoft’s Coronavirus response, and more Microsoft Adds "Advanced Communication" License That Teams Users Need On Top of Existing Commercial Licenses to Use Recent Meetings & API Features TalkingStuff – I talk to Lyndsay Ansell about working at home Subscribe to all my videos at: thoughtstuff.co.uk/video Podcast: thoughtstuff.co.uk/itunes, thoughtstuff.co.uk/spotify or thoughtstuff.co.uk/podcast Blog: thoughtstuff.co.uk/blog

New in preview, Microsoft has released a CRUD API for Power Apps Portals. Why do we need this when Common Data Service already has a web API? Hint: It's not for integration, it's for user experience. See the official documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powe...  

I usually avoid discussing my products or services on the blog, people seem to get annoyed. But I was having a chat with an ISV the other day, who said he had found me via this blog. He asked me how much of my ISV opinions were "theoretical", and did I actually have any ISV solutions. So if you don't want to hear about my stuff, stop reading or listening now. AppSource As many of you know, I have had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft's AppSource. Apparently I must be a masochist, because I have still not given up... on the potential anyway. Anyone else would have, and many others have, given up, but I keep falling for the rhetoric. I am in frequent contact with the team behind it, and I keep pushing as hard as I can for improvement. At this point, I pre-date any of the current team's involvement with AppSource, since I was involved with it before it even launched a few years ago. Maybe that's why I just can't let it go, I have way too much invested. I still get excited when the revolving door spins and a new leader takes over, hoping I can accomplish some incremental change, before the door spins again, and the conversation starts back at square one. The Promise AppSource is more than just Power Platform and Dynamics 365 related. It has a few other doors for Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) apps, and Azure apps. But the impetus for the Business Applications door was frankly Salesforce's AppExchange. Basically Salesforce was kicking Microsoft's ass by leading with ISV solutions making their product look highly specific to industry customers. This was not new, this has been a Salesforce strategy for a long time. I can remember sitting through many demos, that included a lot of third-party I.P., where it was not clear where Salesforce stopped and the third-party began. But it didn't matter to customers, all they saw was a targeted, relevant solution. In the meantime, the Microsoft seller in the following demo showed the generic CRM solution, and talked about the ability to customize. Game, Set, Match to Salesforce. This was not lost on James Phillips, leader of the Business Applications Group for Microsoft. It's a Freaking Store The internet is full of online marketplaces, for all kinds of things. AppExchange of course, but also Amazon, Target, etc., almost everybody has an online marketplace these days. The online marketplace technology road is well-traveled at this point, the focus is now on UI, customer conversations, cross-sell, upsell, etc. For some reason, Microsoft decided to re-invent the wheel and ignore well established norms. AppSource is an example of a poor user experience, with no excuse for it. In spite of the obvious importance, and huge competitive advantage that Salesforce made out of their Marketplace, Microsoft has just not put in the effort. Why? I have no clue, but the revolving door has not helped. Still today, I do not see the level of commitment that I think there should be, not just with AppSource, but with ISV in general. But I can't help but continue to believe that eventually, someone will have the full brightness of the lightbulb go off over their head and become the hero to all. In the meantime... In spite of a clear lack of light at the end of the tunnel, I have pressed onward. It may well prove in hindsight some day soon, that it was a complete waste of energy, but for now I am cursed to be an eternal optimist. So we have doubled down on AppSource. Our RapidStartCRM App was one of the very first apps in AppSource. I would love to say that it was based on the success of that AppSource effort, that I was compelled to create more, but that would be disingenuous (fancy word for "Big Fat Lie"). If pressed for a reason to continue, I would say that I still feel there are unmet needs out there for I.P., regardless of AppSource. I still feel compelled to build I.P., even if the success of that hinges on everything other than AppSource. At this point, we'll also put it in AppSource, with zero expectations, but why not. Our Apps We currently have five apps in AppSource, all under our "RapidStart" app brand. These were all built by my team at Forceworks Global. Four of these are horizontal, targeting the concept that Dynamics 365 is simply more complicated than it needs to be, and always has been. It's no wonder the adoption of any CRM solutions is so low. We launched our first application, the Original RapidStartCRM in 2015, targeting SMB who was struggling mightily with the first party applications. Our churn rate was near zero, so we knew we were onto something. Microsoft noticed also and made a couple of moves in our direction. The first effort was "Business Edition" targeting SMB. I was annoyed, but not for long. Microsoft's appetite for SMB comes and goes, and it went out the door before Business Edition even launched. There was one survivor of that effort however, Dynamics 365 Marketing, which was originally going to be an SMB solution. More recently Microsoft took another stab at SMB with "Sales Professional", an effort that is still ongoing. Again, I was annoyed, particularly when they would ask me for feedback on their SMB app. But again, since Microsoft does not understand the SMB customer, they built a complicated SMB app. Their SMB appetite will wane again soon, as it does perennially. One of my favorite opportunities, is when a vertical customer wants us to customize our simple horizontal application. This was what led to our first vertical version: "RapidStartCRM for Homebuilders". The key challenge to building vertical industry applications, is being able to get the domain knowledge of that vertical. It's even better when you can obtain the domain knowledge, while being paid to apply it to your I.P.. Last year we recast our apps as "Accelerators". The idea that any app is going to work perfectly for any business out-of-the-box, is not realistic. In almost every case there was a "customizations" effort, sometimes small, other times quite large. I wanted to make sure that customers understood that our app meeting their needs exactly without any effort, was not realistic, so "Accelerator" seemed a better characterization. We have three other apps. RapidStartCRM Referral, is our app for referral model businesses, which are different than businesses who sell products or services. The three apps I mentioned so far are really offered as standalone applications. We also built two applications intended to be Addons to either our applications, or any other applications built on the Common Data Service. Our How2 by RapidStart is a simple application that we offer at no cost, that basically brings your internal video training content into whatever Model Driven Application you might be using. Lastly, we built RapidStart Project, after having deployed PSA enough times to know that for most customers' needs, it too is a monster. We have four more applications in our development pipeline, that I will talk about after we launch them. Consulting Services Offers Another facet of AppSource is being able to create Consulting Services Offers. Again, I was engaged with the team long before that concept launched, and we had one of the first consulting offers in the marketplace. This has also failed to meet expectations from a marketplace, and we have tried multiple types of offers and strategies. As of this writing, we have a total of eight consulting offers, both free and paid. So far the only ones that seem to generate any interest are, of course, the free ones. I would be very interested to hear of any partner who offered a paid consulting offer that a customer took them up on via AppSource. I can't decide of this is a doomed motion or not, because again, AppSource sucks at getting the right message in front of the right customer. Not wanting to rely on AppSource, we have our paid offers on our website also, so we'll see how that goes. So that about covers it for now. For anyone who thought my ISV opinions may have been "theoretical", you can now see that they are actually the result of continuous disappointment.

https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/crminthefield/posts/dynamics-365-daily-solution-backuphttps://aka.ms/crminthefield

I hope PowerPoint Live Presentations arrive in time for some of the #M365May presenters to use. It's arriving in targeted release tenants now. I'm keen to allow attendees to follow the slides on their own device with captions and send real-time reactions, much like in Facebook Live streams.    Also on the show:    - Planner integration for Message Center    - Intune role management coming to Microsoft 365 admin center    - New Yammer public preview plus additional administration controls and enhancements    - Planner app renamed in Teams to Tasks    - Spam notifications and alerts in shared mailboxes    - Outlook introduces Incident Notification for IT Admins    - Office 365 Portal rebrand in Service health    - Conditionally show or hide columns in a SharePoint list or library form    - New service plan, Common Data Service, added to enable future Office features    - Saved for later web part available on modern pages    - Group chat with up to 250 people    - Allow OneDrive account to sync only for specific organizations    Join Daniel Glenn and Darrell as a Service Webster as they cover the latest messages in the Microsoft 365 Message Center.    Check out Daniel and Darrell's own YouTube channels at:    Daniel - https://www.youtube.com/DanielGlenn     Darrell - https://www.youtube.com/modernworkplacescenarios     

On the show today, MVP Chris O'Brien joins us to discuss Power Apps. We cover topics including:What's included in the Power Platform?What's a citizen developer?How quickly can someone build their first app?What are the types of apps appropriate for Power Apps?What did people use to build apps on Office 365 before Power Apps?What makes a fully functional Power App?What are the different models of application?When should someone consider using premium functionality?What are some of the newer features and functionality available?What is the Common Data Service and when should you use this instead of SharePoint?What are some good use-cases for building apps?How do we deal with governance?How do we deploy applications to users?

Episode 89 of the #MVPbuzzChat series. Conversation between Microsoft Regional Director and MVP Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC, and 12-time Business Applications MVP Joel Lindstrom (@JoelLindstrom), a Principal Architect for Power Platform at Hitachi Solutions, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and podcaster based in Greer, South Carolina. Joel is the creator and editor of CRM Audio, the leading Dynamics CRM podcast (crm.audio), is an editor and frequent contributor to the Hitachi Solutions blog at http://us.hitachi-solutions.com/blog/ and is the co-creator of the CRM Tip of the Day blog which you can find at www.crmtipoftheday.com. Recorded in April 2020. In this episode, Joel and I talk about the beginnings of the Dynamics CRM platform, and its role in the Business Applications and Power Platform ecosystem. As a 12-time MVP, Joel has been there from the beginning, and is one of the leading community voices on CRM as well as the Common Data Service, which is Microsoft's premier data repository for the Power Platform. We talk about the evolution of the Dynamics space, growth of the Business Applications category, and some of our observations from the MVP community. You can watch this entire episode on the CollabTalk YouTube page at https://youtu.be/ynwsyJ_S1qE

Most people I am talking to today are starting to think about their businesses in these odd times. Many are naturally concerned about a reduction in revenue. But the counter-part to revenue is cost. Since the revenue side may be out of our control to some degree, the cost side is more critical than ever. Athletic I work with a lot of businesses of all sizes. From my first-hand experience, the smaller the business, the leaner they operate. That is not a result of smaller profit percentage, many have very high margins. The biggest difference is that from the smaller business owner's perch, they can see better. There is not much that is missed in a small a business. As businesses grow, layers are introduced that start to obscure visibility. Undetected leaks start to form... leaks that can be hidden by high margins. BBW At the opposite end of the scale are large businesses. While their margins may be smaller, their volume is huge, and of course their costs are also huge. Well beyond the scale that a single person can have any visibility; with layers upon layers, there are leaks all over the place. We are working with a Fortune 500 customer right now that discovered a $250K/month leak that had been unnoticed for quite a while. The solution was not complicated, we are plugging the hole with a Power App at a total cost of about $15K. Of course since this was a big ass company, it took 4 months to approve the expense, and about 90 days more so far, to mobilize their side. This leak could have been plugged in two weeks, but instead another $1.5m will have leaked out first. Such is the ineptitude of large business, this could never happen in a smaller business. A Few Extra Pounds Sitting in the middle, between small and large businesses, are the midsized businesses. While a $250k/month leak will not go unnoticed for a second, the midsized business has enough layers to have many leaks. Where are these leaks? Usually some faulty, or inefficient business process. What kind of leaks? Time not captured properly, customers not billed properly, vendors not paid properly, inventory not managed properly, inefficient project management or production line management... leaks are potentially all over. Every business has leaks, some are significant enough to warrant immediate attention, and others are just considered a "cost of business", absorbed by margin. But if margins compress, every leak will start looking pretty important. Plugging Leaks Depending on the leak, you may need to use a different set of tools, but many of these leaks will be occurring in your business processes. Microsoft's Power Platform is the tool to use for those. Unlike Salesforce.com or even Dynamics 365, both of which require significant time and cost to implement, the Power Platform can solve many business process issues in days. Built on top of the Common Data Service, the Power Platform includes a suite of tools including Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Power Virtual Agents. Each of these tools are low-code options that can be deployed quickly, and at a low cost, to plug leaks. If you would like to learn how you can plug leaks with the Power Platform, we offer a free briefing to get you up-to-speed. Go to Appsource.com and search "forceworks".

This episode is sponsored by ClickLearn. It's an important week for Microsoft's Dynamics 365 and Power Platform teams as 2019 release wave 2 begins to roll out to customers. To learn more about what this means for D365 Business Central, we are joined by Microsoft group program manager Chad Sogge and Microsoft MVP and chief operating office of Dynamics Southwest AJ Ansari. Chad explains the five key areas in which his team has delivered updates to Business Central and dives into some of the issues that partners and customers will be watching for as these updates roll out. Improving the upgrade and migration tools is top of mind. Even more urgent is the status of extensions, specifically their development and support related to compatibility with wave 2. It's potentially a big change for existing BC customers, and the timing is critical. Also up for discussion in this episode are topics including customer support, multiple production instances, submitting new ideas for the product team, and more. Show Notes 4:00 – 5 key areas of focus for the 2019 wave 2 release for Business Central 13:30 – Momentum around discussing NAV to BC upgrades, and what is still needed 16:45 – Are customers demanding that ERP vendors like Microsoft carry more of the burden of making upgrades easy and relatively low cost? 20:00 – Why the Dynamics 365 leadership team is aiming for more openness in the roadmap. 24:30 – Working in sandbox instances with production data. 27:00 – How will the latest updates to AL impact extensions? 34:30 – The shift to modules and componentization in wave 2 39:00 – Opening support tickets via the admin center, is customer access coming? 46:00 – Creating multiple production instances in a tenant 49:00 – How the community is influencing to new releases of BC 51:00 – Status of integration with Common Data Service, Flow, and PowerApps 54:00 – Is the dev platform now at an "AL 3.0" stage? And why the BC team might want to consider stronger branding on the changes. 56:00 – What's next in terms of diving into wave 2

This is the Power Platform Daily Brief for Sept 23 (brought to you by D365ug). Show notes/Transcript: News on the data flows—Common Data Service data integrations have been renamed Data flows "This month we’re introducing an enhancement that allows creation of Dataflows containing only Analytical entities. This option can be selected within the “New dataflow” screen. Analytical dataflows allow free-form entities to be created, but also provide built-in experiences for harmonizing those entities into standard Common Data Model entity schemas, using the “Map to standard entity” dialog accessible from the Power Query Editor. Dataflow entities are also stored in CDM Folders within Azure Data Lake, allowing integration with other Azure Data and AI services, analytics and insights scenarios." This update also adds support for new data connections like PDF files, Teradata, MySQL, and new data transformations. https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/whats-new-in-dataflows-and-data-integration-september-2019/   PowerApps checker now includes app checker results for canvas apps in the solution. The App checker lists any formula errors, accessibility warnings and now also performance optimization tips https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powerapps-checker-now-includes-app-checker-results-for-canvas-apps-in-solutions/  I had a positive experience on Friday—I found I could add existing flows to a solution. The flows outside of solutions area has been there for a while, but the ability to add existing flows to solutions hasn’t worked yet, but it does now. Let’s take a look at some of the new connectors for the Power Platform: SerwerSMS Azure Monitor: Connect to your Azure Monitor Logs solution to run and visualize various monitor queries. ModuleQ: ModuleQ's proactive AI technology equips you for success. Use the ModuleQ Flow Connector to trigger notifications when new recommendations are available. More details at https://moduleq.com (requires existing ModuleQ account). Service update 84 rolls out in North America on the 26th. Some highlights addressed by this fix: Bookable resources not visible from related records Flow approvals timing out When a mailbox was configured with a Gmail address, and "recent mode" was enabled, sending an email produced a duplicate email. When a queue's owner was changed, the new owner was not added as a member of that queue. Custom activity entity icons did not render. The Account Timeline displayed modified case resolution records as being "Resolved by ..." instead of "Cancelled by ...".   And finally, only 48 hours until Power Platform 24. Let’s look at some of the sessions: We start with Shane Young PowerApps, Flow, and Sharepoint, Oh My! "You probably know one, you might know them all, but do you know how they best work together? In this session, you will learn about how the three work together to help you build great solutions. The session will be demo heavy so come prepared to see the products in action. Topics to be discussed include: * How to choose when they all do the same thing * Real world use cases we are seeing * Some of the quirks of the trio * Discussion of some of the other data sources that may come up * How you can also incorporate your on-prem SharePoint"   Then we have Ben Vollmer talking about Field Service: Come learn in an hour how to leverage Field Service and PowerApps to meet your customers needs.

T-Bag returns to the podcast to discuss how developers can leverage the Power Platform and CDS in their business applications. Links Sales buddy video Todd's blog Microsoft Links Upcoming deprecation of Discovery Service API Office 365 Outlook connector: Important upcoming changes Announcing Bookmarks for docs.microsoft.com Community Links When creating a column with a space in the name, SharePoint now creates the internal name WITHOUT _x0020_!!! "Major update" to The Ultimate Guide to SharePoint Site Designs Announcing Graph.Community - Extending the Microsoft Graph SDK

It seems clear to me from listening to people on social media, comments on my posts, and generally having an ear to the ground, that too many people, including many who should not be, are still confused about PowerApps... and wouldn't they be? A Quick Quiz. What is a PowerApp?  A Mobile Application you built on top of SharePoint  A Mobile Application you built on top of the common data service  A Mobile Application you built on top of Dynamics 365  A Custom Application you built in Dynamics 365  A Custom Application you built on the Common Data Service  A Custom Application you embedded into a Dynamics 365 Form  Something Else If you answered "all of the above", you get a gold star, but you're no closer to clarity. PowerApps Camps There are three primary camps for PowerApps as I see it. There are campers that come from the productivity side of the lake, where Office 365 and SharePoint live. We also have campers from the Dynamics 365 side of the lake, busily extending the Dynamics 365 applications with their own canvas and model-driven apps. Lastly, we have the Platform side of this apparently three-sided lake, using both canvas and model-driven paths to build apps from scratch on CDS. While these campers can hear the sounds of other campers across the lake, they seem to have little understanding of what the other campers are doing over there, even though they are each called "Camp PowerApp". I want to go a little deeper into the two of these camps that are part of Business Applications that I am familiar with. Someone else can speak to those productivity campers. A Custom Application I think the biggest confusion, for those of us in one or both of the Business Applications camps, are the distinction between items 4 and 5 from the quiz. "Building custom applications in Dynamics 365" vs. "Building custom applications directly on the Common Data Service". But Steve, aren't those both on CDS? Yes they are, but they got there via two distinct pathways, from opposite sides of the lake. They are not the same thing and different rules and licenses apply to each. Dynamics 365 Campers Let's face it, Model-Driven PowerApps are just XrM renamed. Everything you ever did with XrM in the past is now called PowerApps. Along the way a few more things happened, like the separation of the first-party apps from each other, and the introduction of the ability to make new role specific "PowerApps" by mashing up parts of the other first-party apps into your own concoction. Dynamics 365 brings all of the power and advanced capabilities you could want, including A.I., MR, and all the other acronyms. This is the deep end of the pool! The separation of the Apps from the underlying platform was of less importance to this camp, but actually spawned a whole new camp. Platform Campers These campers could care less about Dynamics 365. They are building their own custom apps directly on the same platform that sits under Dynamics 365. Are they masochists or anarchists? I guess a little of both. The "Platform" is actually the old XrM framework sitting on top of a database that is now called the Common Data Service (CDS). It is but a hollow shell of Dynamics 365, containing very little in the way of usable items, yet everything that is required to build as powerful an application as Dynamics 365. This is the deep end of the pool. Deep Ends If you were reading/listening closely, you heard me refer to both of these camps as the "Deep ends of the Pool". Extending the complex out-of-the-box functionality in the first-party apps requires significant skill and knowledge. But building functional, powerful and comprehensive applications on the platform also requires significant skill and knowledge. The shallow water in the middle is where "Citizen Developers" swim, creating their cute little widgets. Fuzzy Rules When it comes to the rules, there is clear separation, but for many it still seems fuzzy. Some common examples: "You can't use a Restricted Entity in a PowerApp!" This is incorrect, a clearer way to phrase this would be "If you are building a PowerApp on top of Dynamics 365, and you include in your PowerApp a restricted entity (for example the Incident entity), the user of your PowerApp will require a license that includes that entity (i.e Dynamics 365 for Customer Service)." This does not mean that you cannot build the app! Also, Restricted Entities have nothing to do with Platform Campers. There are no restricted entities in CDS without Dynamics 365. Similarly, with Team Member and it's restrictions. Team Member licenses are a type of Dynamics 365 license. Again, Team Member has nothing to do with the Platform Campers, only the Dynamics 365 campers need to be concerned with Team Member. "You cannot replicate the functionality of the first-party apps in PowerApps." This was previously true, and relevant only to the Platform Campers, but is no longer the case. For Microsoft to succeed with their Platform aspirations, it was clear they needed to eliminate any artificial restrictions, and they did. Fuzzy Licensing The recent announcement about the Platform License changes that I discussed in my last post, referenced this blog post by Charles Lamanna. Note that this post, and these licenses refer to "standalone" (aka Platform), and have nothing to do with Dynamics 365. This post and these licenses are for the Platform Campers only. You cannot use a Per App License with Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 has it's own licenses. Similarly, the retirement of the bundled Plan licenses for Dynamics 365 has nothing to do with Platform Campers. A Fuzzy Line The line between these two camps is very clear, yet at the same time, not very obvious. There is way too much "assuming" and lazy interpreting going on, leading to way too much misinformation, leading to way too much confusion. One way to help would be, if you don't know that what you are saying is correct... don't spit it out to the world as a fact. There is an old saying, "Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt".

Brad Koontz sits down with Wayne Walton to discuss Power Platform options for near-real-time integration between Finance and Operations and the Common Data Service.   This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic. Music: www.purple-planet.com

Episode 79: Markus Erlandsson talks to Megan V Walker about Forms Pro and the difference between Forms and Forms Pro. Megan starts with explaining how you can use Forms Pro now that it’s based on Common Data Service and combine Forms Pro with Dynamics in new ways. She also explains how to use the net … Continue reading Forms Pro with Megan V Walker

What a wonderful invention spreadsheets were. For many things, I don't know how we even managed before them. Okay, I do know, because I am that old... we managed things poorly. Spreadsheets solved so many challenges, that they eventually created new ones. 1-2-3 The first spreadsheet software I actually used was called 1-2-3 from Lotus, back around 1985. I created all sorts of spreadsheets, Shortly after, I switched up to Lotus Symphony, which was basically spreadsheet software with a programming language. With Symphony, I built a complex job-costing system for my business at the time. It was really my first experience as a "Citizen Developer". Needless to say, Microsoft eventually launched Excel, and crushed all of the other spreadsheet applications out of existence. For good reason... it was better. Access Microsoft launched another product in 1992 called "Access". It was a relational database product, and also was not the first. Some users of Excel started looking to Access as a way to build business applications. Access was "accessible", and many "normal" users built things on it. While the term "Citizen Developer" may seem recent, the concept has actually been around for a very long time. Although the tools may have changed quite a bit since then, the fundamental concepts are still pretty much the same today with the Power Platform's underlying Common Data Service (CDS)... a relational database. Fast-Forward Before I put you completely to sleep, let's jump ahead about 3 decades, to today. While the popularity of Access has waned, Excel is still very much alive. If I had to guess the percentage of businesses that use Excel.. I would put it at... 100%. It is simple-to-use, requiring almost no training at all for creating basics lists of information, and basic calculations of those items. Excel's use in organizations is ubiquitous and prolific. It is the "go-to" tool for many users, for almost anything. In fact, in enterprise organizations, I would not be surprised if the number of active spreadsheets in use is in the tens of thousands. Even small businesses often have hundreds of spreadsheets. Spreadsheets have become... an infestation. Infested It sneaks ups slowly. A business or department is formed, and there is an immediate need to capture some data. Who cares what it is, there is some shit we need to keep track of now, and the reflex is to whip up a quick spreadsheet to throw it on so it won't get lost. Makes total sense. Maybe we got a contact page on our website throwing off 5 leads a day, probably going to someone's email box. Let's put them on a spreadsheet and save it as "web site leads", and then we'll just add to it as they come in. Forget about web leads, it could be anything, but this is an easy example. So having these leads on a spreadsheet is good... we won't lose them, but we need to act on them. Next step, send a copy to our two salespeople. Today, you could actually just share it with the two salespeople, but copies are still most often the default. So now have someone updating the spreadsheet daily with new leads, and sending it to both salespeople. The salespeople are getting a daily new copy of this spreadsheet, but they have been taking actions on the last one(s). So they create a spreadsheet of their own to track their activities, and just add to it when they get the daily update. The Sales Manager wants to keep track of what is going on, so she asks the two salespeople to send her their updates daily. She then creates a spreadsheet to consolidate the two she receives. So how many spreadsheets do he have now? To be fair, a lot of this could be simplified using a shared spreadsheet, but still a spreadsheet is being used as a database. 95/5 Rule Excel was not designed to be a database, but rather a data analysis tool. The number of capabilities in Excel are staggering, yet 95% of users only use 5% of the capability. But Excel actually looks like a database table... columns for attributes and rows for records... sounds pretty similar. But used as a database, Excel gets unwieldy quickly. Imagine the scenario I described above growing over time to 50 leads a day coming in, and 20 salespeople. In enterprise businesses, I have seen similar scenarios with thousands of people trying to coordinate a business process with Excel. Excel was never intended to do that. Have you done this? I often see spreadsheets that do not use any of the calculating functions. A tab is created for each thing, like a tab for each Customer for example. On each tab are areas for the customer name, description, etc. Maybe even a running list of Phone Calls or other activities. Basically using a Spreadsheet as a quasi-CRM. I can't say this is stupid; CRM systems have become quite complex and expensive, where spreadsheets are more or less free! Tipping Point When are you torturing Excel too much? I don't need to tell you, if you have read this far your Excel-based system is already breaking down. Sally, looking at the wrong spreadsheet, calls a customer to introduce herself, only to find out that Bob called them yesterday. Bill added a note that someone needs to send Acme a price list, and nobody ever did. Joe adds a new Lead to his own copy, without realizing that Mary was already working on it. The fracture points are various and numerous. When did it start? Actually, when the second person was added to the process, the seeds were planted for it's eventual implosion. But CRM is so expensive! Think ROI It's funny some of the rationalizations customers come up with to avoid a cost. I often hear stories of massive inefficiencies costing customers thousands of dollars, followed by, "Is there a way 5 users could share a license"... to save $160! I get it... you are moving from a shit system, but it's free. But is it free? Have you taken into account anything other than a free system vs a system with a cost? SMBs really struggle with this one, focusing 100% on the possible additional cost. Easily able to ignore the costs they are currently incurring like wasted time and lost opportunities, and in a worst-case lost customers. A Path Forward Microsoft gave you the tool to create this mess, and thankfully, they also created the tools to get you out of it. You need a "Business Application" to replace your spreadsheet(s), we both know that. If you are using Excel, you probably already have other Microsoft products, like Outlook etc, or maybe even Office 365, so it makes sense to look to the same company for a solution to your Excelplosion. The main thing is, that you don't want to find yourself down the road with the same problem. Microsoft has a couple of ways to avoid that happening, Dynamics 365 or PowerApps. Let's unpack them briefly. Microsoft Dynamics 365 This is Microsoft's world-class, enterprise-grade Business Application family. If you are an enterprise, it may already be in use elsewhere in your organization. It competes head-to-head with Salesforce.com, and is a very powerful platform for solving the most complex business processes. If you have sophisticated applications in place already and are looking to move to the next level, this is something to consider. But, moving from an Excel-based system, you could not possibly have been solving enterprise-grade problems, so it could feel like a pretty big hammer. It is a big hammer, and if you are reading this post, you should ignore it completely.  Trying to go from 50 Miles per hour, straight to 500 Miles per hour, will snap everyone's neck, and you will be in an even worse place. PowerApps Now we're talking. This is exactly where you need to be going next. It is the most logical step forward from an Excel-based system. It is also significantly less expensive than Dynamics 365, and it's "Citizen Developer" friendly. My choice for moving customers off of spreadsheets is what are called "Model-Driven PowerApps", they are like Dynamics 365's little brother. They sit on the same relational database (Common Data Service) as the monster applications, but without all of the tentacles of complexity. If your needs eventually become really huge, you can easily activate the monster without having to move anything. Back to Access? If you ever worked with Microsoft Access before, PowerApps is kind of like the new version of that, but at the same time, nothing like that. The similarities are that a person with some basic technical skills can build a usable application on top of a relational database. While Access was not specifically designed for non-developers, PowerApps has enabling "Citizen Developers" as a core goal. If you don't have a comfort with basic "techy" stuff, or you don't have the time to mess with it, a partner that specializes in PowerApps can help you get there. Shameless plug: my company, Forceworks is a PowerApps partner, but the army of PowerApps partners is growing fast. Another Shameless Plug As part of our mission to move Excel-based systems to PowerApps, we created an accelerator to help customers get there faster and save some money. We call it RapidStartCRM, and you can learn more about it at https://rapidstartcrm.com. So I think that about covers it, or at least starts the conversation. It's time to stop torturing Excel, and torturing your team... you have officially run out of excuses.    

So the buzz about the Common Data Service (CDS) has reached a deafening stage. It is the most exciting thing that has come out of the Microsoft Business Applications group in a decade. The possibilities jumped into the category of "endless". So how do you start with something that is endless? Quick Primer I previously wrote about the Common Data Service here, but let's have a quick primer for this conversation. The Common Data Service (CDS) is basically a database that runs under your applications. You can have many applications running on a single CDS, all sharing the underlying data. That is pretty cool. What are these applications? Well, the list is growing, but includes things like Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Applications, as well as Custom built PowerApps applications. Also, some other apps managed to get stood up on CDS, like Microsoft Forms Pro for example. Via connectors, you can also consume data from over 250 other sources into your CDS environment. Strategies We have what could appear to be an irony here. For the last several years, we partners have been on a mission to eliminate data silos. All of these multiple applications in use with our customers, that not only create similar data in different places, but usually don't talk to each other. There's been a whole lot of copying and pasting going on, which is not only a pain in the ass, but is inherently error-prone. It is not uncommon for an employee to have five applications open to do their jobs, and that's just silly. Part of our mission to date with Dynamics 365 has been to consolidate as many of these disparate applications into a single place. A noble goal to be sure, and a message that has resonated strongly with many customers, who suddenly found themselves sitting on a house of cards. The idea of a "Common" Data Service seems to solve all of that. But Microsoft recently announced some licensing changes, and one of the changes was that you can have as many CDS environments, as you have storage capacity to support. Wait a minute. Are we now promoting silos again? Not Common Think about a restaurant that promotes the "Best Burger in the World"... I want that. You go to get "it" and it's available in 20 variations. So wait a minute, is it the best burger, or the 20 best burgers? You ask the cook which one is the "Best burger", and he says, "it depends on what you like on it, but the beef patty, that they all come with is the best grade beef available". I ask if I can have all of the 20 variations of toppings on one burger... he frowns. But how awesome would that be? One awesome patty, with everything on top of it! Why would I want more than one? Well... maybe because peanut butter and barbecue sauce, while I like them both, don't taste good together? So let's see how I relate this scenario to CDS. Gaining Footing So CDS has been out long enough now for many of us to wrap our heads around it, at least enough to be able to explain it to customers. Now, many of us are actively deploying solutions built on CDS, and we are starting to see the scenarios forming. Scenarios that we had not necessarily contemplated before. For example, I am now being asked questions, that never were questions before like, "For this other department, should we add them to our existing CDS environment, or create a new one?" My knee-jerk response, having been a trained silo-buster, was "add them to the existing environment, or course". But is that always the correct answer? And it if was, then why is Microsoft offering them as many CDS environments as they want? Shared Data Back in the old days, if you wanted two different departments working in Dynamics 365, that did not share any data, you might have used Business Units. Or, sometimes a second production instance was used, but that had a cost. Today, you can have as many environments as your storage will support, so does that change the thought process? Today, my position on this is based on whether there is shared data. If these two departments will be sharing Accounts for example, then my recommendation would be to create a new app for department #2, specific for their needs, but add it to the existing environment. We certainly don't want to have two separate Account tables to deal with. This is the silo busting approach that we have been working towards for years now. So When? When might it make sense to create a separate environment? In my opinion, it is when the users are not sharing any data. This is a frequent occurrence in enterprise organizations in particular. Rarely have I seen HR for example, use any of the data that Sales does. In this scenario, I would take Microsoft up on their offer and spin up a separate environment. Could I accomplish this in a single environment? Yes, but it could get messy, and there is no upside any more. It is hard to completely isolate two apps from each other on the same environment. Changes to one, could potentially impact the other, if you are not paying close attention. Data segregation strategies can also get complex to maintain. Fiddle with a workflow condition for App A, and all of the sudden the records in the App B are doing weird things, if you aren't on your toes. There are a lot of ways to get in trouble if you are not right on top of it... and why bother? Licensing? On the licensing side there seems to be some confusion also, which is not unexpected. Let's say you have a sales team using the D365 Enterprise Sales app, they also have rights to PowerApps. Let's say a part of that team is focused on Lead Generation only, and not Opportunities. Clearly they will share some data, but they have different roles in the process. You can build another app on the same environment targeted to them, and they are already licensed to use it. But let's say H.R. pops up with a need for an app, and they won't be sharing any common data with sales. If those users also have a D365 Sales license, you can spin up an entirely separate environment for them and they can use that. Better yet, if H.R. does not need any of the sales related entities at all, those users could get by with PowerApps P2 licenses and save some money. However those PowerApps licensed users could not use the Sales App. There... that should be clear. Okay, I know it is not clear. Licensing is a tricky thing to navigate, but it is important to understand what licenses you need for what you are doing, or you could easily "over-license". Meaning you bought a license that allows for a lot more than what you need, and so you are paying more than you need to. I have found that Microsoft Support is often clueless to the nuances of licensing, and Microsoft Sellers are motivated to sell the most expensive licenses. Even partners struggle with this one sometimes, so it is definitely not something to figure out on your own. Your best bet is a "licensing knowledgeable" partner, which is also a rare find. I am sure there are other opinions and CDS strategies being used, let me hear yours in the comments.  

It seems that many people are confused about where Dynamics 365 Business Central fits into the landscape. Is it an ERP... a CRM... is it for SMB... Midsized...Enterprise? Is it part of the Power Platform? At the risk of annoying my BC Partner friends once again, I will take a stab at it. Origins It would be helpful to know the origins of Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", to understand how it came to it's current position, and then I'll discuss it's current position. Once upon a time, there was a product called Navision that Microsoft acquired. There is more to that story, but that is all that is relevant here. That product, since shortened to "NAV", is still alive and well and in use by many businesses around the world. Several years ago, Microsoft started their shift of Business Applications to the cloud, following the tremendous success of Office 365 and Azure. The first product to make that move was Dynamics CRM, and at the time it was launched as "Dynamics CRM Online". Dynamics CRM was not the only business application in the stable, it was just the first to go SaaS. Other products included Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV, each of which were different flavors of Enterprise Resource Planning or "ERP". Enterprise Resource Planning is a pretty vague term. It could include human resources, supply chain management, sales activities and many more, but all of these activities revolve around a General Ledger in an ERP system. GL, AR and AP are the common denominators for each of these systems... and every business must have these components. All enterprise sized companies have an ERP, and most Midsized businesses do as well. Smaller businesses may have a solution like Xero or Quickbooks, that fills this purpose at a smaller scale for simpler needs. Many Midsized businesses are also using these simpler products... some successfully, and some who have outgrown them and are considering an ERP. Darwin Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was not conceived for software. But similar rules apply. Basically the strongest will survive. What was strong yesterday, may not be strong tomorrow as the environment changes, and when previously strong players do not adapt, they are replaced by new strong players. This was what drove Microsoft to the cloud in the first place... seeing other players adapt, and become leaders. So Microsoft adapted as well, and given their war chest, they were able to adapt very quickly to a SaaS model. But along the way choices had to be made. One of those choices was, which ERP solution(s) would take the SaaS path. Shifting an on-premise product to SaaS is no small feat, and requires a significant investment. Having four on-premise ERP solutions, it was obvious that all four would not go SaaS. Microsoft drew a line across their customer base, dividing Enterprise on one side and everybody else on the other, and decided to pick one ERP for each side that would go SaaS. Why not just pick one? Well, I didn't have a vote, but I wrote about that here. Regardless, Microsoft selected AX for the Enterprise and NAV for... everybody else. It was pretty hard to argue AX as the Enterprise choice, but there was some debate about NAV vs. GP. GP is much bigger in the US, but NAV is actually bigger globally, so that decision made the most sense.... unless you were a GP partner. Cloudification I won't go into the cloud journey for AX, instead I will focus on the journey of NAV... which actually starts with CRM. Several years ago, Microsoft had an idea to create a specific offering for SMB called "Business Edition". It would be a scaled down version of the Enterprise CRM solution, better suited for the needs of Smaller businesses. Shortly into that initiative, the decision was made that this would be the best place to start the SaaS journey for NAV as well, and thus began the project code-named "Madeira". Given the SMB target segment, this was going to be positioned as a Quickbooks/Xero competing product. Understand that this was well before the idea of a "Common Data Service" was even on the future roadmap. BTW, another product that got it's start in the Business Edition effort was Dynamics 365 for Marketing. About a year into the "Business Edition" effort, Microsoft decided that the path they were on, was not going to reach the original goals as intended, and the goals had shifted as well. CRM itself was heading down a path of componentizing its parts, and separation from its platform... this ultimately led to what we now know as the Common Data Service. But what about "Madeira" and Marketing? Dynamics 365 for Marketing continued it's journey as an independent application, no longer bound by the "Business Edition" limitations. And Madeira? Microsoft Launches Business Central! Project Madeira, similarly became unbound from the Business Edition limitations, and was launched as an independent application called Dynamics 365 Business Central. There are a lot of side routes that this took that I won't go into here. Today, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is one of the fastest growing SaaS Business Applications in Microsoft's stable. A far cry from my earlier predictions that it would never see the light of day. Maybe the product owner at the time, Marko Perisic, made it successful just to prove me wrong. Nevertheless, it is on fire. So where did it go? Moving Uptown Once the Business Edition tag was removed, Marko quickly pivoted BC from a Quickbooks/Xero compete, into a product those customers could move up to as they outgrew them. While the CRM side of the house was going through a massive evolution into what we now know as the Power Platform, Marko was able to stomp on the gas pedal. BC was evolving at a faster pace than any other product, partly because it was in a lane by itself. Weekly updates were the norm, and the new northstar became NAV on-premise parity. A goal that I believe has been largely met. SMB might be a fine market, but this thing could go way beyond that... in some cases even standing toe-to-toe with AX for some enterprise customers. So what exactly is BC? What is Business Central? At it's heart, Business Central is a SaaS ERP. "Manage your financials" is at the top of the product's page of capabilities. As you would expect from an ERP it has the GL, AP and AR core functions, but it is much more than that. Like everything Microsoft is doing in Business Applications today, BC is infused with A.I. The next listed capability is "Automate and secure your supply chain", that sounds pretty "enterprisy" to me. Next up is "Sell Smarter and improve customer service", so BC also includes some CRM capabilities. After that is "Keep projects on time and under budget", so we can add some project management capabilities to the list. The last item is "Optimize your operations" for inventory and warehouse management. Clearly this product has grown up quite a bit from its humble "Business Edition" beginnings, and there is a growing number of partner extensions (ISVs) to extend the capabilities even further. The pricing is pretty straightforward, at least in comparison to the Customer Engagement applications. There are only three flavors: "Essentials" at $70/user/month, "Premium" at $100/user/month, and "Team Members" at $8/user/month. To figure out which licenses you need, you can review the licensing guide. You can also sign up for a free trial here. From the Pros Since I am not an expert on Business Central, I reached out to two guys who I know are knee-deep in the product for their thoughts. Andrew King is a Partner at WebSan, a Toronto based Business Applications partner. Since WebSan supports both Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement "CE" as well as Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", I thought he would be a great guy to contrast the two. Andrew shared that there is some confusion in the market, "The products are as different as Golf and Baseball, but we frequently see customers asking about the product that does not meet their needs. Like BC for CRM needs, or CE for Supply Chain. Would they work? I guess if you like playing golf with a baseball bat". James Crowter is the Managing Director of Technology Management, a UK based Business Applications partner. Technology Management also supports both Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement "CE" as well as Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", and has a long history with NAV. James talked about the amazing pace of innovation, "I can talk to a new customer in the morning, and have them using BC by the afternoon, which is amazing! For the right customer requirements, BC is a no-brainer... but not for sales workloads, there is not even a workflow capability (for sales), which is a key component for sales!" What Business Central is not? Both Andrew and James agreed that while Business Central is an awesome solution, it is not really a very good Sales tool. Both agreed that they would typically position Customer Engagement for any CRM type requirements, and they often position both products for a true end-to-end solution. They both had some choice words for the Sales Capabilities of BC, and clearly neither one had any interest in activating those, but instead would bring in Customer Engagement for any customers looking to transform their sales processes. So I guess it boils down to, what it is that you are trying to transform. If you are looking to modernize your financial processes, including supply chain and inventory, or have outgrown Quickbooks or Xero... Dynamics 365 Business Central is an excellent option, and you could reach out to Andrew or James for more guidance on that. If you are looking to modernize your sales or service processes, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is the clear way to go, and Andrew, James or myself can help you explore that further. But are these the only Microsoft options? Other Big and Small Options If your ERP requirements are really big, and include things like HR management, you might look at Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. This is Microsoft 's enterprise-grade ERP. Again, we have seen Business Central get into some pretty big businesses, but F&O is the next step up. Conversely, if your sales or service requirements are fairly basic, you may find that Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement is a pretty big hammer to start with. In that case, you might want to explore RapidStartCRM, our PowerApps based CRM solution. It is an excellent option for small businesses or enterprise departments, built on the Power Platform and running on CDS so you can never outgrow it. Hopefully I cleared up some confusion, but if I actually made you more even confused than before... please keep that to yourself.

Subscribe on your favourite player: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Sticher | Tunein | Soundcloud | TODAY'S GUESTSmith CodioSmith Codio’s entrepreneurial spirit, organizational agility, demonstrated leadership, passion and ability to leverage new technology are the core attributes that compose the foundation of his personal value proposition. He enjoys positions that will not only provide new challenges to tackle, but also enable him to define success in customer terms. Smith's objective, in any future role, would be to continue to focus on project management, build high quality solutions / products while establishing win-win customer and partner outcomes. His ability to be extremely focused, define problems, develop work skills and implement effective solutions are a few of the assets he can offer.  Linkedinhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/smithcodio/ WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Background – living in Seattle, moving to the Pacific North West from Philadelphia, working in Microsoft engineering team, interests outside of work  Thoughts on home automation, i.e. Alexa vs Google Home, and rundown of house automation devices  How Smith started working for Microsoft — internship in Redmond campus and working with the product, getting a job offer, working in different capacities, different teams and services  How long the Microsoft Industry Accelerator has been running  What’s an accelerator – Microsoft's viewpoint on what problems are being solved with Industry Accelerators, and what they are from a component level  Creating additional schema on top of the core Common Data Model, having a managed solutions that are going to be put in Github that one can consume on the CDS for App environment  Having multiple data models and how they are handled  Breakdown of what is included in the Microsoft Industry Accelerator JSON file  What is a schema – a way to represent a set of entities or tables and define the relationships between them  Difference between UML (Unified Modelling Language) and ERD (entity relationship diagram  How Smith decides what to leave out in the Common Data Model, and senior leadership team’s involvement  Why Microsoft sees the need to create Industry Accelerators  The rationale behind creating data models to enable the consistency across the industry  Biggest changes between version 1 and version 2  Various components on the visual layer, pre-packaging around flows, unique experiences (Canvas apps vs model driven), PCF controls unique to the accelerators  Who owns the IP — Microsoft, partner or ISV? How Microsoft supports what’s built from an Accelerator   Best practice or success stories of partners that have jumped on the Accelerators that Microsoft have a documented case studies on First party app dependencies for the Industry Accelerators outside of the Common Data Model Plans for Business Applications with regard to the Accelerator Programme RESOURCES Accelerator Overview - https://aka.ms/AcceleratorProgramOverview  Extending an Accelerator Overview - https://aka.ms/AcceleratorExtensionOverview   Health Accelerator Overview - https://aka.ms/HealthAcceleratorOverview  Nonprofit Accelerator Overview - https://aka.ms/NonprofitAcceleratorFirstLook  Higher Ed Accelerator Build with ISVs - https://aka.ms/HigherEdAcceleratorBuildISVs  Sign up to participate in the Accelerator Program - https://aka.ms/CDMengage  CDM Industry Link - https://aka.ms/CDMIndustry   Common Data Model - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/common-data-model/  Reach out to engineering team directly - https://experienceisv.microsoftcrmportals.com/engage/  What is Common Data Service - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/common-data-service/data-platform-intro  Unified Modelling Language (UML) - https://www.uml.org/what-is-uml.htm  CREDITSMusic by: StockSounds Title: Energetic Upbeat Pop Summer Licensee: Cloverbase Limited

In this episode we revisit some updates to the solution awareness of Flow and Canvas PowerApps when using the Common Data Service. Alert–podcast link updates! As mentioned in the episode, if you listen to Implement This through the CRM Audio podcast feed, make sure to update to the CRM Audio Network feed to continue receiving Implement […] The post Solution Awareness in Flow and Canvas PowerApps appeared first on Implement This.

There is quite a bit of information in the wild for technically savvy people, around the Power Platform and it's underlying Common Data Service. I want to see if I can make that understandable to us Normal people. Skipping History I know, many of you were thinking, "Ugh, here comes Steve's long, drawn-out 'How we got here' story". But this is for the normal people, who don't really give a shit how we got here, they just want to know if there is something here they can make use of... or not. Platforms on Platforms In a meaningless to you nutshell, the Power Platform is comprised of PowerApps, Power BI and Microsoft Flow, each of which are kinda their own platforms. Each of these is able, but not required, to run on top of yet another platform, the Common Data Service. Additionally, they can be used individually, or in any combination. A well-known example of a PowerApp, would be the Dynamics 365 Enterprise Sales Application built by Microsoft, but you can also build your own. Multi-View Where this fits, and your interpretation of what I am saying in this post, has a lot to do with where you are. If you are currently using Dynamics 365 it may mean something different, than if you are not. For this post, I want to focus on the person who is new to all of this. Multi-Path You have several paths that you can take with Microsoft Business Applications, which one you take, will depend on what you are trying to solve for, what kind of budget you have for solving it, and how sophisticated your users are. Let's crack them open one-by-one, starting with a critical concept. No Cliffs If you have heard this term, and your name was Cliff, you may have thought you were excluded from playing. But what this really refers to is the idea, that no matter where you start, you can keep going without hitting a wall. This is a pretty unique proposition that today, only Microsoft can fulfill. With most other platforms, you will reach a cliff, a point where you can go no further without switching platforms, migrating data etc. Microsoft Business Applications are used by one-person companies, all the way up to the largest companies in the world. There are no gates, you can start with the simplest need, and keep extending, and extending with no limits. You can literally grow from a one-person firm, to a 100k employee enterprise, without ever having to change platforms. No other vendor can say that today. Big Toys We might as well start at the top with Dynamics 365, a set of world-class, enterprise grade applications that deliver an incredible array of capabilities. From Marketing Automation to Sales Force Automation, Project Service Automation and Connected Field Service Automation, all with baked-in intelligence. No other vendor comes close to what the collective Dynamics 365 applications can bring to bear, on the most advanced business requirements on the planet. While Dynamics 365 applications may be the top of the mountain, they are also the tip of the iceberg. Even these world-class applications are cliff-free with the ability to tap into Azure for even more advanced capabilities, or Microsoft Flow, to connect to vast array of other services, including competing services, who does that? Nobody else does that. Small Toys There is a growing number of enterprise organizations that are making the move to Microsoft Dynamics 365, as well as smaller organizations with complex needs. So if you are not an enterprise organization or have complex needs are you out of luck? Hardly. Microsoft has a path for every business. Let's jump to the other end of the spectrum to Micro-Businesses. 1-5, Make me Alive For a micro-business, I am going to first make an assumption that you are already an Office 365 customer. It's not a requirement, but it is a no-brainer, and opens up even more doors. Personally, I think the easiest place to get started with graduating from spreadsheets, is Microsoft Flow, hands down. A no-code solution for activating automated processes in your organization immediately. Microsoft Flow has hundreds of connections to other Microsoft and non-Microsoft services and tons of pre-built templates. From something as simple as grabbing an incoming email, and auto-replying with a Dropbox attachment, all the way through to multi-step, multi-path, multi-vendor processes spanning your entire organization. Remember, No Cliffs. Mid-Size Businesses Personally, I think the best place for a mid-sized business to start is with PowerApps. A low-code way of building simple to sophisticated apps, that are highly specific to your unique needs. If you want a head-start, check out RapidStartCRM. PowerApps can of course leverage Microsoft Flow, to supercharge your automation, all with no developers required. Level Up Once you have started collecting data and information with your applications, you may want to start adding a layer of intelligence over it so you can really get a tight handle on what's going on. This is where Power BI comes into play. Another low-code capability for gaining insights into your business at a level you probably never had before. Make a Pizza No matter where you begin, you can add any of the other ingredients, at any time, in any order, to any degree. Went big with Dynamics 365 right out of the gate? You can easy add a simple PowerApp for some other department with simpler needs. Or the other way around, started with a simple departmental PowerApp, you can easily add Dynamics 365 Connected Field Service to that. Extending Microsoft Flow with a PowerApp, or extending a PowerApp with Microsoft Flow... all possible, and easier than you think. How did this all happen? The big pivot, that really opened up all of this possibility, was the introduction of the "Common Data Service" (CDS). For most of you, this will be invisible, kind of like the engine in your car. But it is this Azure powered substrate that sits under everything I mentioned above, that lets you effortlessly snap in additional capabilities, and provides this "No Cliffs" evolution. While you don't have to even think about it, it is Microsoft's not-so-secret super sauce, that has competitors either worried, or wanting to join the Microsoft Party. Steve the Shill As I re-read this, I am realizing that I am sounding like a Microsoft Stooge. Really it is just my excitement with the possibilities overflowing onto this post, maybe as a result of my recent Summit attendance and an even  further crystallization in my head of the possibilities. I promise, I'll get back to poking Microsoft in the nose... when and if, they do anything that deserves it.    

Fresh from a week of "drinking from the firehose" at the Microsoft MVP Summit, several things became quite apparent to me. MVPs like to drink, and the Common Data Service, is anything but "Common". It will continue... indefinitely It seems that whenever Microsoft announces a "new" way to do something, they are hesitant to say the the "old" way will be eliminated. "We have no plans to deprecate the old way in the foreseeable future". In reality, they can't wait to pull the plug on a whole slew of inefficient, or misaligned things; but they can't grab their customers' legs and swing them back and forth like rag-dolls either. Or can they? One Version? It's no secret that Microsoft is the final stages of snapping all online customers onto a single version of the product. With rare exception, most of us are already there, whether you knew that or not. This is the best place for Microsoft to have us, and for 99.9% of us, it is the best place for us to be. Why is that not as scary as it sounds to people who are slow movers? Because the old things, that have been replaced by new things, are still there. When will they be removed? ITFOT It can't remember exactly how long ago it was, that I heard Ryan Cunningham say in response to a question from an audience, that something will happen "In the Fullness of Time". I can distinctly remember trying to deconstruct that phrase; was it a month, year, decade? It was such a brilliant response, I adopted it for use with my wife and kids. When my wife asked when we could get a puppy, I replied "In the Fullness of Time", with a wry smile. Turns out, it equals exactly three days. Chunks of Fullness One of the awesome things about being an MVP, that I share with my fellow MVPs, is the ability to see into the future... in chunks. The fuzziest chunk is the 2-5 years out chunk. As MVPs, there is an expectation that we are all smart enough to "get it", so of course we all nod knowingly as we are being exposed to the distant future state. In reality, our brains are all scrambling between excited and terrified as we try to wrap our heads around things we never thought about. I'm pretty sure the team knows this, as there seems to be the occasional unnecessarily long pause for effect. I did take a look around the room for a two-way mirror that the team might be cracking up behind, but did not see one. It is reassuring as a partner, to know that the team is thinking that far out, but in today's world... 2 years is a long damn time. The Aw-Yay Chunks The upcoming release vs. the one after that. Let's face it, at any point of time, there is an upcoming release. As soon as it lands, the next release is now the "upcoming" release.. every six months. As a partner, your highest focus is always on the upcoming release. As a partner you are, or should be, in a continuous state of preparation. If you are not, you will be replaced by one who is... it seems Darwin was correct. As we are being presented with things that will be in the upcoming release, vs. what got pushed to the next one, it is an odd mix of "Awws" and "Yays". Since the release notes are now released 90 days before the release, there is a 3 month window for surprises. The best surprise is that stretch goal, that was not listed in the notes, that suddenly appears. Of course there is also that occasional listed item that lands, but not exactly as we had hoped. Yet, all clearly within the doctrine of ITFOT. Preparation Test The most critical chunk, is actually the present, which, not that long ago was a future chunk also. But now that chunk has landed. If it was a new "way", then it landed next to the historical "way" chunk... if it was a new "thing", it landed by itself. Even though we may have known it was coming, and had time to test, play and prepare for it, often we are still caught unaware... like we forgot. It's like sobering up real fast, when the blue lights flash behind you, when your customer asks, "Hey, what's this new button do?". No More Rag Dolls I wrote a ISV focused post a while back on Ryan's Five Things. This was based on a response from the Business Applications Chief Traffic cop, Ryan Jones when asked about what ISVs should focus on. Turns out it was from his own playbook for how Microsoft is running the Platform today. Ryan and his team may be the most important cog in the entire Business Applications team. Their job is not coming up with the newest whiz-bang feature, rather their job is making sure it will work efficiently, and reliably for end customers once it launches. I get the feeling that Ryan says "No"... a lot. This was not the case in the not too distant past. Less than two years ago I wrote about what seemed like a strategy of punching customers in the face... a strategy Ryan has clearly obliterated. Common Data Service Okay, so I know I veered off of the topic quite a bit, and I don't want to be accused of link-baiting. So this Common Data Service thing... yeah, it's pretty big. I will unpack it in a future post, but now I need to prepare for another week of firehose drinking at the Partner Advisory Council meetings... then can I go home?

Episode 74: Markus Erlandsson talks to Ted Ohlsson from DXC about Dynamics 365 Integration Flows. Where Ted starts with explaining how Common Data Service fits into Data Connectors and Integration Engines. He continues to describe three integration templates or Application Lays, Prospect to Cash, Field service and Project service Automation integration. What the difference between … Continue reading Dynamics 365 Integration Flows with Ted Ohlsson

On today's episode (sponsored by D365UG/CRMUG), Britta Rekstad and Matthew C. Anderson discuss date fields in the Common Data Service for Apps and the considerations for PowerApps and Dynamics 365 configuration. Discussed on the show The default behavior for new fields Date field options Time Zone offset, UTC date and time Time in date-only fields Matthew's first mistake with date fields Time zone and Canvas vs. Model PowerApps Calculated fields and "date math" Looking at the wider Power platform (Flow, Power BI) Grey areas for date field type in your data model (one of us says "willy nilly") Fun facts What's on your mind? Have a question you'd like answered on a future podcast? Submit one by visiting implementthis.org

On today’s episode (sponsored by D365UG/CRMUG), Britta Rekstad and Matthew C. Anderson discuss date fields in the Common Data Service for Apps and the considerations for PowerApps and Dynamics 365 configuration. Discussed on the show The default behavior for new fields Date field options Time Zone offset, UTC date and time Time in date-only fields […] The post Date fields in the Common Data Service – Ep 34 appeared first on Implement This.

Common Data Service for Apps and Future Investments on the Platform with Ryan Jones Full show notes available here: https://www.nz365guy.com/64

Happy New Year! This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic. This is our final "best of 2018" episode, and today we present our top episode of 2018. In CRM Audio 78, Charles Lamanna, General Manager for the Microsoft Business Applications Platform, answered our questions about what D365 and PowerApps coming together with the Common Data Service really means. Topics discussed in this episode: What does the new release of CDS mean for Dynamics 365 customers? What does the new release of CDS mean for PowerApps users? How does the new release simplify integration with Finance and Operations? Will ISV’s be able to extend the integration templates? How does PowerQuery fit in? Does CDS fulfill the vision of “naked XRM?” How does the CDS/Power Apps/Dynamics convergence account for security? How should customers decide if an app scenario is model-driven or canvas? Get in touch with Charles Email: chlama@microsoft.com Twitter: @clamanna This episode is a production of Dynamic Podcasts LLC. Subscribe to the  CRM Audio network of podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Player.FM, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, or YouTube. You can also listen via our app on iOSor Android.

In this episode (sponsored by mscrm-addons.com), hosts Britta Rekstad and Matthew C. Anderson discuss the easy to use (non-developer) methods to get data into Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Common Data Service for Apps. Discussed on the show Import methods File types Import process Working with exceptions Relational data import What’s on your mind? […] The post Importing data to Microsoft Business Applications – Ep 32 appeared first on Implement This.

In this episode (sponsored by mscrm-addons.com), hosts Britta Rekstad and Matthew C. Anderson discuss the easy to use (non-developer) methods to get data into Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Common Data Service for Apps. Discussed on the show Import methods File types Import process Working with exceptions Relational data import What's on your mind? Have a question you'd like answered on a future podcast? Submit one by visiting implementthis.org

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 look 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.    

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing has finally launched! It has been available for purchase since the first of this week. An awesome platform of modern technology, able to do things not even possible before. How many eager customers have clamored to jump on board this revolutionary marketing #FreightTrain of innovation? My guess...none. The Product is... Awesome! Compared to every other Marketing Automation platform out there, this one makes them all look like antiques. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing is a virtual showcase of everything Microsoft can bring to the table... and most of that, only Microsoft can bring to the table. It is built on the Modern Dynamics 365 UI, it runs on the Common Data Service, it utilizes the Custom Control Framework, it incorporates Azure Customer Insights, it leverages Voice of the Customer and Social Engagement. It makes all other Email-Centric Marketing Automation platforms look naked. More than just Marketing on Steroids, it also includes complete Event Management capabilities. The current list goes on, and the future roadmap is robust. Who was it for? Even the simplest of marketing automation platforms have some necessary complexity in order to achieve results. Successful marketing is a blend of Art and Science, and Dynamics 365 Marketing allows for both. But this ability to blend right brain and left brain creates some necessary complexity. So, it is not for the smallest of businesses. Nor is it for a larger business, with very simple needs. The sweet-spot is the mid-sized business, or a division of an Enterprise business, think 50-500 employees. Certainly there will be use cases for smaller or larger businesses, but this is the wheelhouse. It is also better suited for B2B than B2C. Fortunately for Microsoft, there are a ton of businesses that meet this criteria. The Grain of Sand "Steve, you seem highly impressed, why don't you think people will buy it?" Obviously, a tremendous amount of time, energy and resources were brought to bear by the engineering team in building this marvel. We have been engaged with this team for over a year, and have witnessed them methodically craft each aspect of this product to become the New Standard in Marketing Automation. An incalculable number of man-hours went into engineering this marvel... and then an extra 5 minutes was added to determine the licensing model. Umm.... So I am not exactly sure how this came about. In one picture in my head, I imagine an Intern, we'll call him Justin, who is called into is boss' office and told "Go figure out a way to license this new Marketing app, but don't spend too much time on it, you need to get back to more important things like sorting our partner list alphabetically". Justin thinks "Hmm.. marketing... maybe I will see how the other marketing apps do this". A quick scan of the marketing apps that show up in the first page of a Bing search reveals that, many of them are sold based on number of contacts. That makes sense, and 5 minutes later Justin is bouncing back into the boss' office. "Hey boss, I figured out that marketing app thing, we can base the cost on the number of Contacts". "Great job Justin! Now get back to something really important, I want all of the pens in my top drawer arranged by color, starting with blue... no... red". The Licensing Model Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing is available to customers right now. Like many of the Dynamics 365 products, it is available as both a standalone application as well as an addon to other Dynamics 365 products. The standalone version costs $1,500/month, for up to 10,000 Contacts in your Database. You can add increments of 5K contacts for an additional $250/month. When purchased as an addon to an existing Dynamics 365 app, the cost drops to $750/month for those first 10K contacts, and the same $250/month for each additional 5K contacts. In both cases you are entitled to send 10 times the number of emails as your number of contacts. Well, this is indeed a pretty simple to understand licensing model. In fact, it is one of the simplest licensing models that Microsoft has for any Dynamics 365 product. It is so simple in fact, that I don't even need a piece of scratch paper to see that none of my customers could even afford it. Contacts vs Contacts Contacts in competing Marketing Automation Platforms are quite different from Contacts in Dynamics 365. Yes, both records indicate a person, but in one case, the only reason the person is there is to market to them. In Dynamics 365 it is very common that the vast majority of Contacts in our systems are not being marketed to, and never will be. CDS promises to add even more non-marketable Contacts to that database from everything else it connects to, like ERP. Thousands of Vendor contacts for example. I have hundreds of Microsoft contacts. You may have customer contacts in your system that belong to your partners or resellers that you don't market to. Inactive contacts, deceased contacts, competitor contacts, your own employees.. the list is really endless. We have Small Business customers with over 100K Contacts, larger customers could have millions. Let's do some math. Let's say I want to market to 10K people, which is a lot, and I'm gonna bang them with a message 10 times a month, which is also a lot. I already have Dynamics 365 Sales, so $750/month is a pretty good price for me to be this level of annoying! However, I also have 90K other non-marketable contacts. I obviously can't just delete them, so I have to apply a force multiplier to my $750 number bringing my cost to $5,250/month. A non-starter. This is the point where the boss at Microsoft's palm smacks his forehead.. hard. "Justin, you Idiot!" I may be fat, but you're ugly, and I can diet. There is good news here. At least we are not working with a low cost offering that is actually crap. This is an awesome product... with a bad licensing model. Thankfully, this is fixable. I am sure that Microsoft was not counting in their projections that tens of billions of dollars would come in from this. This is a classic unintended consequence of a moronic action. Microsoft is not stupid. Well maybe Justin... and his boss, but everybody else is very smart. Based on their rising stock value, they clearly know how to grow a customer base, and also will recognize impediments to that, like for example an exciting product, that no one is buying. In fact, the simple fix is already within the solution. How it should have been licensed? Remember in the first paragraph, in the litany of features I rattled off - there was one called "Customer Insights". This is an Azure Machine Learning Service that is attached to every Marketing Deployment. What "ultra sophisticated" job does this do? It counts shit. Okay, it does a lot more than that, but counting shit is one of the things it does, in order to do everything else it does. What does it count? Outgoing Emails, Email Responses, outgoing event invitations, event landing page views, etc. It is counting every damn thing. Of the multitude of things it is counting, many of these could be categorized as "Marketing Touch Points".  You can probably see where I am going here. Dynamics 365 Marketing should be licensed based on the number of touch points. For example, for $750/month, you get 20K touches, or whatever the math is that makes sense. Associating Cost to Value The current licensing model has no more relation to the value received, than if Microsoft were to charge based on the number of hairs on your arm. A "Touch Based" model on the other hand, is directly tied to the value, at a one-to-one level. I send you a marketing email, boom, I touched you. I am more than happy to pay for that. Like cell-phone minutes, Touches should also rollover for seasonal businesses. Maybe my touches are lighter early in the year, but in November we blow out all our touches for the Christmas sale, etc. Touches are also what drive Microsoft's costs for the service, so they are getting a one-to-one return on their cost. I will now take a bow... {mic drop}.

In this episode recorded on June 29th 2018, Jeremy Thake talks to Casey Burke and Audrie Gordon from the Microsoft PowerApps engineering team on the new templates that are Microsoft Graph enabled. Jeremy discusses with them the balance of Power Users building line of business applications and the transfer over to full-time developers to add additianal capabilities. They discuss the benefits of the Common Data Service and the connectors to Microsoft Graph. News  Static web site hosting on Azure Storagehttps://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-storage-static-web-hosting-public-preview/?WT.mc_id=staticwebsites-twitter-antchu Managed Service Identity - GA for App Service & Azure Functionshttps://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2018/06/26/announcing-general-availability-and-sovereign-cloud-support-of-managed-service-identity-for-app-service-and-azure-functions/ Github acquisitionhttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/everyone-complaining-about-microsoft-buying-github-needs-to-offer-a-better-solution/ Community news SharePoint Site Designhttps://laurakokkarinen.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-sharepoint-site-designs-and-site-scripts/  Graph for Win32 and WPFhttps://office365university.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/microsoft-graph-api-how-to-use-in-windows-forms-application/https://office365university.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/wpf-application-with-microsoft-graph-api/ PowerShell Script Cloud Azure Functionshttp://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2018/06/powershell-script-cloud-azure-function-pnp.html Education Space : Intune device management for studentshttps://teams.rocks/2018/06/25/microsoft-365-automation-using-sds-attributes-intune-graph/ Show Links PowerApps Home PowerApps Templates PowerAPps Community PowerApps on YouTube PowerApps on Twitter Audrey Gordon on Twitter Casey Burke on Twitter  Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2018

This episode is brought to you by Ingenius. It's summer in North America, but things aren't slowing down. We talk about some of the recent news for the Business Application Platform: July updates to the unified interface, including Advanced Find Migrating personal views between D365 environments Do most users really use Advanced Find? Should new deployments use UCI or web UI? New admin and data read audit features in Dynamics 365 Using Microsoft Flow to notify you when your Dynamics 365 version changes Scheduling reports Updating data directly from Excel Links discussed in this episode Enable and use activity logging: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/enable-use-comprehensive-auditing Bob Guidinger's version checker for Dynamics 365: https://bguidinger.com/blog/version-checker-for-dynamics-365 Work with data in the Common Data Service using the Excel Add-in: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/cds-for-apps-excel-importexport/ This episode is a production of Dynamic Podcasts LLC. Subscribe to the  CRM Audio network of podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This is episode 45 recorded on April 12th 2018… where John & Jason take a deep dive on the announcements about the new Common Data Service for Analytics and the new Common Data Service for Apps. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

Episode 63: Markus Erlandsson talks to Jukka Niiranen from Elisa about Dynamics 365 Spring Release 2018. Jukka explains what the new Business Application Platform is all about and how it is based on Common Data Service and how that is the 2.0 of XRM. We speculate if there ever will be a next version of on-premise … Continue reading Dynamics 365 Spring Release 2018 with Jukka Niiranen

We are celebrating Women in IT this month and second up is Liz Sundet. All we can say is WOW! This woman has 4 lifetimes of accolades, certificates, etc. She plays over 9 instruments and then still drops some mad SharePoint and Office 365 skills and is now learning BI. We are not worthy! We also talk hub sites, the Common Data Service, Guest Access for Planner, Teams retention policies and Rod ONCE AGAIN schools us on all things PowerApps and Flow, and much much more.

Episode 50: Markus Erlandsson talks to Jukka Niiranen from Digital Illustrated about The State of Dynamics 365 Sales in 2017. The discussion starts with what is happening with the term CRM and how is the xRM going forward? Then what’s happening with the Common Data Service. How are the apps, Customer Service, Field Services and … Continue reading The State of Dynamics 365 Sales in 2017 with Jukka Niiranen