We are at the end of this year. I could hardly say – good year as we have global pandemic and people dye. But new year is coming and there are some lights at the end of tunnel; vaccine appears and probably we will have better year as I think it is not possible to have worse one.
Let’s see what events await us in 2021. I (and probably nobody) don’t know if these events will go virtually as this year or on site if this is possible, but let’s see what we will have.
In the first half of year, we will start with Directions events:
NAV TechDays, Antwerp, Belgium – November 18-19, 2021
Of course we have more, but still not scheduled. What you can do now is to sign up and join mailing lists to be updated when they announce dates. Currently, I can suggest to do it for the following events:
On the end, I really hope we will win Corona virus and we will have minimum few events in live as conference is not only about content and it is about networking and building friendships. We as human beans still need live communications. Maybe we proved that a lot of things can be done in virtual environment, but some thing can be done only in real world.
I hope we will have healthier and more successful new year and I’ll meet some of you in person.
Directions EMEA and Asia has just started today. This is the first-time virtual Directions ever and I can just imagine how challenged it was to prepare everything in very short time. But based on what I saw today, everything is well organized. OK, this is not the same as live event and I would like to have an opportunity to meet all of you in person, but it is still the great option with not only sessions but with a lot of networking opportunities. And just to mention, this is the biggest Directions ever with 2775+ attendees. Great achievement!
Today we had the first day Keynote and after that I had my first session. Now I want to share my experience from these two parts of today’s event.
Christian Sega started with good news about numbers (2775+ attendees, 60+ countries, 147 sessions, 101 speaker…) and future of this event and finally we had an opportunity to see Mike Morton as a new GM on the Directions stage… unfortunately not in live, but again this is the first time on Directions stage.
Mike presented roughly the most important directions from this BC release and they are:
Deliver seamless service and performance
Design for compliance and security
Develop ISVs and globalization
Delight customers by exceeding expectations
Drive better together Microsoft experiences
Let’s talk about these directions in the next days. Now I want to talk more about numbers. First time we had an opportunity to see official numbers about BC SaaS customers – there are 10.000 BC online customers and by my opinion this is an amazing result. And only this, there are other impressive results…
I don’t want to forget great rest of the keynote with Claus, Jannik and other PM’s where they showed some new and really good features.
And finally, Mike announced roadmap and some new features ready for the next release. First let’s make a look at new roadmap:
Now make a look at some of the next release’s features:
Finally, we will get Report Extensibility as this is one of the highest voted idea from users and partners… this is something we are really missing.
We will get enhancement printing features in BC, improving complex hybrid setup, taking care about user access to printers, eliminating admin of print servers or printer drivers, printing from anywhere…
Easily onboard of new clients to BC using step-by-step guide how to configure and prepare your solution, and it will be possible to use for partner’s addons as well.
Better integration of BC with Teams as using BC directly from Teams.
What I wanted to emphasize… completely experience with the Directions4Partners platform was/is great (if I forget some minor technical issues… who knows, maybe only at my place😊 because of my connection). You could have a feeling you are really on a site. This is briefly my experience from my first session. After 30 minutes prerecorded session, we had additional 15 minutes for live Q&A. I have a lot of questions and I had an opportunity to have a live answering session and it was good experience. As we probably had more question, we needed to continue our chat somewhere. For this purpose, we could go out to the Q&A session room and continue with discussions about all specific topics. Really great experience. I had an opportunity to meet some of friends and big thanks to Arend JK who attended my session and who continue chat with me and few other attendees in the Q&A session room. He also helped me answering on some questions. Big thanks for you Arend as well as to Christian Sega who joined us in after session time.
I’m looking forward to see more sessions today and next two days and I really hope it will be great experience.
A few years ago, and earlier, every time when I attended some conference I’ve chose the topic I’m familiar with. For example, probably in 95% of my time I attended Dynamics NAV sessions or something very close with it.
But in the last few years I changed my attention to very different sessions. In these times, everything is different, and everything is changed. Now if you want to survive in your ERP or CRM world, you need to learn a lot of different topics outside of your primarily interest. Solutions are more and more connected and now nobody want to buy i.e. ERP, but they want to buy completely solution… and if you want to provide it, you have to me familiar not only with ERP, but with IoT, AI, ML…
Because of that, I want to write a small recommendation not-to-miss sessions for all Dynamics ERP or CRM experts on this Microsoft Ignite. As Microsoft Ignite will start in a few days (September 22-24, 2020) and registration is free of charge, be sure you registered and try to attend the following sessions:
Of course, there are a lot of other Dynamics topics and I can suggest watching sessions about solutions you don’t implement. You will expand your knowledge and in this era it is very important to know how to choose what to and when to implement; when to customize and when to integrate… Of course, this is just my opinion and prediction… if you think differently, do as you think. Definitely, try to enjoy this virtual event.
All Dynamics events until the end of 2020 will go virtually… or they are cancelled. I don’t know what to say… if it is a good or bad. Definitely virtual event cannot replace live one and I’ll try to explain why. But with given circumstances, I think that going virtual is the best possible option… on the first place because of our health and not losing community work.
Right now, we have the following situation with all our Dynamics events:
First, we will start with D365 Community Summit. It will go virtual instead in Nashville and it will be held in period October 7-9, 2020. Agenda is already ready and if you didn’t register, you can see details and register here.
Directions EMEA and Directions Asia, instead of Prague and Bangkok will be organized as a common virtual event in period November 3-5, 2020. More information here.
Directions NA, Orlando is unfortunately canceled for this year. But as Directions EMEA and Asia will go virtually, it means there is not any limitations for colleagues from North America to join this even.
NAV TechDays is canceled somewhere on the beginning of Corona crisis and we will not have opportunity to meet before next year.
OK, I wanted to explain why I’m not a fan of virtual events… but to be honest it is probably better to have them in comparison with cancelation all these events. With virtual event you can still have an opportunity to listen prepared content and this is good. But… attending conferences is not all about content… content is important of course, but more important is an opportunity to openly ask what you need and not to get an answer only from presenter. You have an opportunity for discussion on sessions, but probably more important during the pauses. All these networking is not possible to be created in a virtual world… minimum it is not possible in this moment. And communication between presenter and attendees actually doesn’t exist in the virtual event. And when I’m talking about all of these, this is not problem only for attendees, it is not inspiring for lecturers as well (it is not the same when you have people in the front of you and when you have camera and laptop).
But again, with these circumstances, this is much better to have virtual events than not having them at all. And I must admit in a few digital events I’ve already participated, organization was really the best possible what somebody can make in a virtual world… and probably beyond my expectations. But again, this is not the same ☹.
And on the end, our hopes for the next year are that we can see each other in a live. I hope we will have much better health situation and we will attend minimum these already scheduled events:
Directions Asia, April 15-16, 2021 – Bangkok, Thailand
Directions NA, April 25-28, 2021 – San Diego, CA, US
Directions EMEA, October 7-9, 2021 – Milan, Italy,
NAV TechDays, November 16-19, 2021 – Antwerp, Belgium
NAV TechDays 2019 has just finished a few days ago and I can
say this was amazing event and again the biggest one – with 1452 attendees. As
I promised the last year, I prepared session this time and made it together
with an MVP Renato Fajdiga. I hope to see you next year again.
In a meantime, all sessions from the first day are already published and I want to have all of them on the one place. As soon as we have sessions from the second day published, I’ll add them. There are all of them:
Opening Keynote
The road from C/AL to AL
Development Methodologies for the future
How to run faster in SaaS
Unlocking new integration potential for 365 BC with Azure Event Grid and Azure Integration
Give Business Central access to your data files
Control Add in development supercharged
Developing for Modern clients
Using Docker and the ContainerHelper to convert your C/AL solution to an AL solution
#MSDyn365BC new Era of Integration: Intelligent Edge, SmartLists, Azure Service Bus and more!
In a month, BCUG/NAVUG Summit in Orlando will start. There will be dozens of amazing lectures and if you are NAV or Business Central user, this event is probably something you must attend, especially if you want to continue with improving your knowledge.
I like to come back to this event every year as this is probably only one opportunity where you can get directly feedback from thousands of Dynamics users.
This time, I would try to explain why you should attend this amazing event using video message and I hope you will like it 🙂
This fall I’ll be active and attend to four conferences as lecturer. If you want to see some of my lectures or to meet me, register for some of these events:
Directions NA 2019 has just finished and I’m writing this
article in a plane on my way to home. It was great opportunity to meet 925 Dynamics
professionals and not only from North America. It was amazing event and I’m
happy because I had opportunity to speak here. We got a lot interesting
information regarding Business Central Spring Release and to listen about
experience of implementations of this solution here in US.
If you were there, you know what I’m talking about. If you
were not be there, you can find all that news on Microsoft official document here.
I’ll only emphasize some facts we hear from Jannik and Claus on a closing
session as well as they will have a big impact on a future of BC.
In the future, ISV scenarios will include 15 objects for Team Members
From July 1st, we will get device license – CSP pricelist = 40USD
For On-prem transition to BC, user ratio is changed to 1:3 (for each concurrent user in NAV/GP user, they will get 3 named BC users) and this time this includes limited users as well
On-premises partners will get more internal
users licenses
On-premises license will include one CAL for
external accountant and one CAL for a system administrator, the same as we have
in a subscription
If you read only these few facts, you can understand how
important it is for partners and for clients as well.
We also heard that we will get new certification exams for
Business Central functional consultants in FY20 as well as better
differentiation through the Cloud Business Applications Competency and/or the Small
and Mid-Market Cloud Solutions competency. Also, there will be secondary
transition journey for clients who want to stay on-premises and to use cloud
benefits or to migrate to the cloud (stay on BREP and purchase Midterm Offer).
And on the end, Directions NA 2020 (April 19-22) will be again in Orlando in Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress and for me it has a special place in my hearth, because in this place a few years ago, I had an opportunity to speak on Direction North America for the very first time.
Directions Asia has just finished, and we will continue with
spring conference season in Dynamics. The next Directions will be in North
America in Las Vegas in period May 5-8 in Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa. Registration
is still available.
This year I want to show you about benefits of integration
with different Dynamics 365 solutions. Why? Generally, I think we have great
features in Business Central, but possibility to integrate this solution with
other solutions using Azure tools or using different UI are the amazing
possibilities. These options are why it is important to have Business Central
in Dynamics 365 family.
Because of these reasons, you can find my sessions in agenda. From today (April 12th, the full agenda is available):
‘Dynamics 365 for
Talent’ is a new Microsoft Dynamics HCM solution. This solution is available
independently or through Unified Operations plan. Because we can use it
independently, it is interesting if we can integrate this solution with Business
central. You will see how to integrate Talent with Business Central and very
important thing – without coding. And of course, you will see different
integration options based on different user scenarios.
Although on the first
sight, there is no so common things between Business Central model driven
PowerApps, it can be very useful if we could use it with Business Central. Generally,
model driven PowerApps is a tool for CRM development, but there are many
reasons why to use it with Business Central. If you want to know why, come to
this session to see why to do it and how to do it… and maybe even more. As we
expect more and more CRM and ERP solutions in simultaneously work, it can be
very interesting.
OK, I will not write more, but if you think these topics are
interesting for you, you are welcome on my sessions and see you in Las Vegas.
And of course, my sessions are not only reason to come on
Directions 😊. You will find great sessions there… you will
see details about Business Central Spring release ’19 as well as amazing
sessions by MVP’s and other experts.
