Business Central & Power Platform Exams Experiences

Recently I’ve passed these two new exams: Business Central Functional Consultant Associate and Power Platform App Maker Associate and I would like to share some my experience about them. I’ll try to be brief and just to give you some basic directions.

First I need to admit that I’m not big fan of this kind of certification. Based on my previous experience 10+ year ago, it was more about getting certificate and less about proving a real knowledge. I had an opportunity to meet a lot highly certified persons, but they couldn’t implement even the easiest projects. But still, partners wanted to invest in certification as some kind of knowledge proof.

But with new exams in the last few years things are slightly changed and I had opportunity to check them. But with these two new exams I’m talking about, things improved drastically. And I can say I’m really positive surprised.

First what I want to say is that I didn’t prepare myself for these two exams. And when I say ‘I didn’t prepare’, I mean it for real. I wanted to see if it is possible to pass these exams with real experience and practical knowledge. And I succeed! From my perspective this is the most important fact – if you are waring with these technologies and have a real practical knowledge, you can pass them without any problem. It still means you should be focused on questions as they can sometimes be complicated, especially when it comes to the case studies. I didn’t want to say these exams are easy as they are not, but you don’t need to prepare yourself if you know topics. But to be honest, you can still find a couple of useless questions, you really don’t need in practice, but even if you fail on some of them you will still have big chance to pass exams.

What I want to mention about BC exam is to be prepared with SaaS topics as this is very important. It is not enough to know only features in system, as you need to understand cloud concept as well. On the other side, when we talk about Power Platform, you should know both Canvas and Model-driven Power Apps, Power Automate as well as other Power Platform features (AI, Chat Bots…) and CDS. But this is what we imply with the Power Platform knowledge.

If you are newbie, in this case you need to learn for these exams. But good thing is that if you want to start, you can find everything you will need on the Learning Path site. But one small note, when you start to learn from Learning Paths, I often hear that there are not enough information and some of people often fail on exams. This is because, you need to open every link you have in your learning path as often you can find basic information in this part of text, but when you click on some links, you will be redirected to Microsoft docs site with all necessary information with related topic.

On the end I want to say THANKS to all people involved in preparation these two new exams as they made a good result. And for all of you who didn’t register for these exams, do it… you will not make mistake.

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Licensing in Dynamics 365 for Talent

In a last period, I’ve got a lot of questions about how to make a proper licensing for Dynamics 365 for Talent. As it is a new solution, it is understandable. As I’ve already wrote a few articles about this product, I think I can help with some answers.

The first and very important, all users in this solution are named users. And if we speak about HR core part, we have two different user types and you can buy them on two separate ways. We have Full Users with total access to all HR core application and we have Team Members with very limited access (mostly, but not only for read tasks).

As I mentioned Full Users (Talent Users) can be bought on the following ways:

  • as a regular Talent User (you must take minimum 5 users) for 40 USD
  • buying Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, i.e. you will get full Talent Users buying Unified Operation (for 190 USD) or full Dynamics 365 Plan (for 210 USD); in both cases you will get much much more than just Talent, but Talent will be part of your completely system.

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If we are speaking about Team Members, you can buy them for 8 USD, but again you will not get only access to Talent with them, but also to all other Apps in Dynamics 365 package. As I mentioned, Team Member are not limited only with read rights, because you can use them for example as employee for Employee Self Service.

OK, but this is not the end. Recently, Microsoft announce two additional AI Apps for Talent (Attract and Onboard) and that means if you want to use them, you first must be a regular Talent User. Then, you can subscribe them. Price is 8 USD for each of them separately or if you want both, price will be 12 USD in total.

And again, this is not the end. Actually, it doesn’t mean it must be the end. Why? Because if you want to customize something. As you already know (I hope), this App is full SaaS and you cannot just open a code and change it. If you want to change something on forms and similar, you can do it using PowerApps. In this case person who will make these customizations must have PowerApps Plan 2 (40 USD) license, but other users who will use these forms, have to have minimum PowerApps Plan 1 (7 USD) license. That means, not all users, only these who will use these new features. And just to know, if you are buying some Dynamics Plan, you will get PowerApps for free.

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And again, it is similar situation if you want to use PowerBI for additional reports or Flow for additional workflows.

I hope I covered all models of licensing here. But just keep in mind, it is possible to be some changed, because it is a new App in Dynamics 365 family and with new releases, it is possible to be some changes. And I didn’t mentioned, but just to be sure: all pries are on monthly basis.

The future of NAV – a small wrap up

These days we got a lot of messages about the future of our product – Dynamics NAV. Now I’m seating in a plane and traveling to Nashville on NAVUG Summit and finally have found some time to make a small wrap up with all important things. I think now, after two Directions in North America and EMEA, picture is clearer.

Roadmap

The first thing I want to mention is roadmap of Dynamics NAV. I think it is absolutely clear that in this moment we have Dynamics NAV 2017 as ‘on prem’ and ‘on cloud ready’ solution, but as SaaS, we have Dynamics 365 for Financial and Operations Business Edition, generally based on Dynamics NAV. But this is just in this moment, because Marko Perisic announced in Madrid last week that we will have published Dynamics NAV 2018 at December 1st. This announced is mostly based on partners feedback and this is absolutely this what partners wanted. For now, SaaS solution will stay the same, with the same name and in the same countries (US, Canada and UK). But with this new NAV version, partners will get new solution and the most important, with this new NAV version they can start to use Visual Studio Code for Extensions v2. This is important because partners now can start immediately with new model of development and to be ready for the spring and new solution.

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At the spring 2018, we will finally get already announced new product – Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”, but only as cloud SaaS solution. As on-prem solution, we will get Dynamics NAV 2018 R2, but with the same code base as Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”. In this moment I don’t know a reason why we will still have the same product with the different names ‘on cloud’ and ‘on prem’. But very soon, we will continue with only one name – currently code name Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’. System will have new modern web interface, sandbox and lot of new features (more about it in another post).

And ant the spring, we will get Dynamics 365 for Sales App with less features (ex Business Edition) and Dynamics 365 for Marketing as preview. Both of these products was presented on Directions and they really look nice and rich.

New Package – New Opportunities

As I said, I don’t want to write about all new features in the future release, but what with the whole package. The main idea is to stop to implement ERP and/or CRM; but to continue to implement full business solution. This is what clients need; they don’t care what part of system it is, the just need to solve their problems and their requirements. And as the new business solution, we will have Dynamics 365 as business solution who cover most of the potential client’s needs. That means we will not sell e.g. ERP, but solution. In this solution we will see what real requirements client has and implement adequate Apps with adequate level of features. Price will depend of this, but we will don’t know prices, because of lot of changes. By my opinion, very important is that now we can combine Apps from ex Business Edition and ex Enterprise Edition. With this we will have more agility in implementation process. And of course, all of this will be integrated with Common Data Service. And even better, we can use CDS for our integrations. We can use not only Dynamics 365 Apps, but also PowerApps, Flow, Office 365, Power BI, 3th party Apps… as the same business environment.

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Conclusion

The final message is by my opinion very clear and very positive. For both partners and customers. Don’t afraid, Microsoft will not stop with this amazing product. Rebranding is not canceling. But with new name, we will get still the same powerful product, but with the great new opportunities as well.

I can write probably more, but I think this is more than enough as the first wrap up after two Directions. Future of our product is a clear.

D365 for Talent new Apps: Attract and Onboard

Microsoft recently announced new Dynamics 365 member for Human Capital Management – Dynamics 365 for Talent. I’ve already wrote about this new solution in my previous posts. On Directions NA in Orlando, we’ve seen that this SaaS App will still have an important role in new Dynamics 365 package. But now on Microsoft Ignite conference we got some new announcements related with this SaaS App.

We already knew that Talent will be integrated with LinkedIn, but now we know how. It will work using new Dynamics 365 AI solutions. This is not the first time we gave AI in Dynamics products, but this one will be really good. Based on this solution, we will have new SaaS Apps for Talent expanding:

  • Dynamics 365 for Talent: Attract
  • Dynamics 365 for Talent: Onboard

Both of them are designed for different phases of recruiting and hiring process.

The first, Attract is designed to help users to assess candidates and receive their insights and find the right candidates. With this App, as its name suggests, they can attract the right and the most qualified candidates more efficiently.

Onboard, as the name says, will make new employee onboarding process more easy, with different help in getting new hires, setting up in onboarding processes and preparing trainings for teams.

As we heard, these two SaaS Apps will be available through Dynamics 365 for Talent later this year.

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Contacts Photos in NAV as Cognitive Service

I’ve just wrote a post about Image Analyzer in NAV as Cognitive Service and recognizing attributes for Item, but now I’ll write about second part of using cognitive services in NAV and D365 for Financials. Now I’ll show you how it works with people photos. This feature works on the Contact Card.

When you create new contact and upload contact’s photo, you will notice notification that you can see result of the image analysis on the Profile Questionnaire Fast tab.

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I tried it with one of my photos and you can see result. System recognized my gender, but ages… 😊 System thinks I am 50 (just for the record, I’m 45 😊). I tried with a few different photos and unfortunately, system found my ages between 48 and 51. I don’t know if this is problem with system or with me 😊.

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OK, I tried with some other people and for example, my 25 years old sun has mostly 29, based on Image Analyzer (gender was OK again). My wife is female (thanks god 😊) and 7-8 years younger…

OK, I can conclude that gender recognition is 100% correct, but with ages – so, so. If we can accept 5-6 year more or less, it is OK. But mostly, we can use this age recognizer just as some nice funny reminder. And yes, I’ve tried with picture of my dog 😊… system took a time, but it could find anything (no gender, no ages 😊).

And, just not to forget… if you already have some photos of your contacts, you can run action Analyze Picture from Action tab every time when you need it.

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And if you want to know how it added technically to currently D365 BE, you can go to Extension Management and recognize Image Analyzer App. That means, this is made as an Extension and it can give you some new ideas how you can create maybe something similar.

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And of course, I hope we will have this Extension on Dynamics NAV installation DVD.

How to start with Accountant Portal in Dynamics 365

If you have accountant agency and want to take care about a lot of clients, you can use this new feature in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Edition (too long name: I’ll use D365FOBE). It is really good to encourage your clients to start with Dynamics 365. After that you can use your new Accountant Portal to manage all your clients using free license for external accountants.

To do it, you need to have your own D365FOBE subscription and install this App from AppSource. Open Extension Management and go to AppSource and choose Account Portal (click on ‘Get it now’).

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When you finish installation process, you need to sign out and sign in again. Then you will be noticed that Account Portal is installed and system will ask you if you want to accept user personalization changes to enable this feature (click Yes). Then you can continue with Next and Next to start 30-days trial.

After that, you will get a different home page, where you can add new clients, choosing one of the options: Enter Clients, Manage Clients…

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Then, you need to create client and the main details. The most important field is ‘Client URL’, where you need to enter the URL destination for your client’s instance for D365FOBE. When you finish with this, you need to click on ‘Test Client URL’ actions to check if everything is OK.

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After filling other details about your client, you can close this page and see your new client on your home page.

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Here, you will see the basic clients information and you can choose to go to the client. . From this page, accountants can drill down to their clients’ specific transaction details. These were only the basic steps how to start.

New App – Microsoft Invoicing

I’ll start this post with two phrases “Amazing” idea and App and “Unfortunately”.

First “amazing”, because it is really new cool App in Office 365. With this new online mobile App you can easy create and send very good looking invoices to your customers in PDF format. It is awesome application for very small business. And except creating and sending invoices, you can accept your payments, mark your invoices as paid or unpaid; add and edit your customers, view yearly and monthly sales and overdue payments… It is really cool and smart thing in your hands.

But why “unfortunately”? This “unfortunately” is for now, because you can currently try this app only if you are invited and of course if you are using Office 365… and not all Office 365 packages. Currently, it is possible only with Office 365 Business Premium Subscription.

If you are lucky, when you open your Office 365 dashboard, you will find Business Center and you will find Invoicing.

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And now, I’ll show you in few steps how to download and run this App. You can download it from AppStore for your iPhone or from Google Play for your Android devices. Just to know, I’ve tried only on iPhone.

When you find it on your store and download it, you will run App and find ‘Sign In’ button.

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O course, you just need to click on this button and to continue with logging. Of course, for logging, you must use your Office 365 credentials. System will the first ask for you Office 365 account and then open standard Office 365 login page to enter you password.

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And as I already said, if you are lucky one, you can try this App now. if you are not so lucky :(, you will get a message that App not accessible…

This is all for this post. In the next post, I’ll write more about features.

NAV 2017 Official Release Date and News from Directions

I’ve finished with a first two days on Directions NA. Both of these days I had sessions and I couldn’t prepare this article earlier. I wanted to say a lot, but I couldn’t.

First, NAV 2017 still didn’t official released, but finally we know when to expect. Not on Directions NA and not on Directions EMEA, but few days after that. Official release of Dynamics NAV 2017 will be at October 24th. And, Microsoft also promised that we will get official release of Dynamics 365 for Financials (ex. Project “Madeira”) shortly after. OK, we will wait these dates, but generally we already know what we will get with these releases.

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Some of these functionalities were presented by Marko Perisic and his team on Keynote, and some of them on other sessions. I’ll noticed some of the in this article, but I’ll write more about them in the future. Now, I want to speak more about future of Dynamics because I think this is something the most important in this moment. As you can see on the following picture, we have something very interested and Paul White said “This is an AND strategy”.

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Based on this strategy Dynamics AX and CRM will continue to live only as part of Dynamics 365 solution. Something is not clear enough because we expect CRM as part of both Enterprise and Business edition of Dynamics 365, but AX will be part only of Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition and on other side, Project “Madeira” will be on the same position in Dynamics 365 Business edition. But NAV (GP and SL as well) will continue to exist as independent solution, in this moment available on-premises and as subscription. On the first sight this is the perfect for all NAV fans, but I need more time to be sure.

In any case, we will get new opportunities and we have to learn how to make the most of them.

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And what about Project “Madeira” and licensing. We have some pictures earlier where we found recommended priced about 40 USD for each App. That is a true, for example if you want only Project “Madeira”, you need to pay 40 USD, but if you want some other app, for example PowerApps, you need to pay the same amount for this app per user per month. But if you want to have access to all apps (currently 4 of them), you need to pay only 50 USD for all of them as Plan model (and yes, this price will decrease with the number of concurrent users). And you can use Team Members for only 5 USD as some kind of limited users. And what is good more? If some of exiting NAV clients with Perpetual licensing model want to transit to new subscription model, he will get pretty big discount for every month.

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And I said that I don’t want to write about all features, but I need to notice few of them. I already wrote about Cortana Intelligence in Inventory Forecast, but now we saw Cortana Intelligence in Cash Flow Forecast; it is a perfect and you can use this in NAV 2017 and Project “Madeira” and the best is that it is very easy for using and configuring.

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End something more – new development environments. First you can use Visual Studio Code in the future as new code oriented environment (soon more about it). Marko presented live work with new tool.

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And on the end, new development tool for incredibly easy work. You just need to click on Edit button in your Web Client and you will get perfect logical environment where you can change pages, add fields to table and page… And on the end just click Stop and choose how you want to use this development… You can see all changes as preview in Web Client, Tablet Client and Phone Client. And all changes will be finished in Web Client and Windows Client, as well (of course, this is just short description – soon more about it).

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End again about dates, the new development environment preview will be available for Christmas.

Project Madeira Universal App

If you want to try Project “Madeira” on your devices (phone or tablet for example), you can download this App from App Store or from Windows Store.

When you run them, you will see that system requires Activation Code. This is not the same as you use App for Dynamics NAV (you don’t need to put it URL). You can find this Activation Code if you open “Get The App and Activation Code” page (you can find it using search pane).

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You need to type this Activation Code in your App.

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After that system will require to confirm your email as account with password and just wait few seconds. After that, everything will be fine. I’ve checked it with Windows Tablet and Windows Phone and with iPhone, as well. It looks fine.

Project Madeira – Configuration

When you open “Project Madeira” for the first time, you will get access to the Cronus demo company with a Business Manager role center. Of course, you can this change role center, but you have not all role centers as you can find in standard Dynamics NAV solution. There are “only” five role centers:ProMadeiraRCs.jpg

But for this kind of software, it is more then enough. It is really everything what you actually need. Of course, you can create your really company. When you open My Setting, you can find how to change companies. You can choose Cronus as you actually use and “My Company”. When you choose “My Company”, you need to log-out and log-in, and you will get the wizard for company configuration. When you click “Next”, you will see the standard configuration questions. These questions are very simply and everybody can finish this questionnaire (the basic company data, bank data, accounting period… and that’s it):

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You will get your production environment for your company. This wizard is simply and excellent and the most important, on this way you’ve just got your company in SaaS. You can continue your work.

This is just small intro about configuration. You can expect more soon.