Over the past week, the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community came together for two exceptional events: DynamicsMINDS and Days of Knowledge Central. These events provided a platform for enthusiasts, experts, and industry leaders to connect, collaborate, and dive deep into the world of Microsoft’s cutting-edge technologies. As a participant and speaker at both events, I had the privilege of experiencing firsthand the energy, innovation, and knowledge-sharing that took place.
In this blog post, I will take you on a journey through these extraordinary events and share my insights and highlights.
As a speaker at DynamicsMINDS, I had the opportunity to share my insights and experiences with the audience. It was truly exhilarating to connect with like-minded individuals who are passionate about leveraging Dynamics 365 to drive business transformation. The enthusiasm and eagerness to learn were palpable, creating an electric atmosphere throughout the event. From deep dives into the latest product updates to exploring real-world use cases, DynamicsMINDS served as a catalyst for innovation, empowering attendees to unlock the full potential of Dynamics 365.
Days of Knowledge Central provided a unique opportunity to gain deep insights into the various components of the Dynamics 365 Business Central & Power Platform. From hands-on workshops to expert-led sessions, attendees were exposed to the full breadth of possibilities offered by the Dynamics 365 & Power Platform. As a speaker at this event, I had the privilege of sharing my knowledge and expertise, demonstrating how the Dynamics 365 & Power Platform can revolutionize business processes and empower organizations to achieve digital transformation at scale.
Networking and Collaboration: The events fostered an environment of collaboration and networking, allowing attendees to connect with industry experts, Microsoft MVPs, and fellow enthusiasts. The opportunity to exchange ideas, share best practices, and build meaningful connections was invaluable.
DynamicsMINDS and Days of Knowledge Central were two remarkable events that brought the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community together for an unforgettable week of learning, networking, and collaboration. As a participant and speaker, I was inspired by the passion, expertise, and commitment demonstrated by the attendees and fellow speakers.
As we look to the future, it is evident that these events have further solidified the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community as a hub of innovation and knowledge. The insights gained, connections made, and experiences shared will undoubtedly propel individuals and organizations towards continued success in their digital journeys.
Now, when chatbots are becoming a more and more popular way of communicating with customers, all users would like to do more via chatbots. As Microsoft’s response to tools that can make chatbots, there is Power Virtual Agents, and the real power of Power Virtual Agent (PVA) is enormous.
But as business application specialists, we always try to think about how to connect it to some of our Business Applications. This time we plan to connect PVA to Business Central (BC). More precisely, we want to create New Sales Order from PVA and directly in BC.
How we can achieve that, and not to say it is easy, but it is not so complicated. In a concise explanation, we will create PVA with typical questions, and then we will ask some specific questions to our users so that they can give us order-specific data. After collecting data, we will use Power Automate to connect all.
But let’s stop talking hypothetically and start creating our PVA connected to BC.
The critical thing to mention is that I will not explain how to create PVA nor suggest which questions to use to trigger it and which flow you will make. I will focus only on the essential steps you must implement to create a Sales Order in BC using PVA. You can start as you like and do it in the best possible way so that it fulfills all of your requirements.
So, let’s start.
First, you will have to get three essential pieces of information from your PVA users:
Account/Customer No.
Item No.
Quantity of Item which customer wants to buy
You can work with Item Name and Customer Name, but be aware that this can make your process more complicated because we have a few things to take into consideration before using this approach:
Human error
Similar names
Many more questions for users
Many more variables to consider
Etc.
If you want to try this approach, consider this problem, and you can do it. The process is similar, only with some more steps.
But with our approach, let’s create three questions in Power Virtual Agent and define Variables for them:
Choose Add Node
Choose Ask a Question
In Question, define:
What is your company account number with us?
Identify the User’s entire response
Save response as
Click on the Pen icon and name it VarCustomerID
choose Add Node
Choose Ask a Question
In Question, define:
What Product No. are you looking to purchase?
Identify the User’s entire response
Save response as
Click on the Pen icon and name it as VarItemNo
Choose Add Node
Choose Ask a Question
In Question, define:
Can you tell us which Quantity you would like to order?
Identify Number
Save response as
Click on the Pen icon and name it as VarItemNo
And now we have our questions and variables. What we have to do from here is to add a new action in our PVA, but this time is going to be active for triggering Power Automate.
To do this, you will have to:
Navigate to Add node in a Topic editor in Power Virtual Agent
Choose to Call an action
Choose to Create a flow
And from here, you will be redirected to the Power Automate editor, and you should start creating a new Power Automate.
You will see immediately that you already have trigger and Output predefined for PVA. Just keep it, and we will use it in the process.
From here, you will have to create some Variables and, most important Sales Order Header and Line.
As you probably know, in BC, Sales order contains two tables:
Sales Order Header
Sales Order Line
We will have to use both. First, we will create Header, and later we will use the Find Record action to find our Item, and then, in the end, we will fulfill Sales Order Line.
Don’t worry. I will now list all actions one by one and in the order in which you will have to create them so that you’re Power Automate works at the end.
Before you start with Sales Order Header and Lines, as I sed, you will need to do some setup in Trigger and initialize some variables.
For the trigger, what you would need to do is to add you’re Inputs. You will probably understand now whose inputs are values we will get from Questions we have asked users in our PVA.
So let’s create three inputs:
Text:CompanyName
Text:Item
Number:Quantity
And after inputs, I will list all variables you have to Initialize, and all of them will be STRING. Just create them, don’t assign any values. We will do that later in the Power Automate.
Order ID
Currency Code
Item No
Quantity
UOM
Total Price
Now that we have created Variables, we can continue creating records in BC. For better understanding, our Variables are here so that we can collect output at the end and show Sales Order info in PVA so that users can understand what they have created and get some information about orders they had made automatically.
If you want to create Sales Order and not use data back in PVA, you don’t need all these Variables. But when making PVA, it is always lovely to show values at the end to users of PVA.
Now let’s continue with Power Automate, and finally, let’s create a record in BC.
We will now perform three actions; you must do this in this order.
Create Record V3 (Business Central)
Environment Name: SANDBOX (if you are working with a PRODUCTION environment, choose PRODUCTION)
Company Name: CRONUS USA, Inc.
API Category: v2.0
Table name: salesOrders
customerNumber: CompanyName (from trigger)
Find Records V3 (Business Central)
Environment Name: SANDBOX (if you are working with a PRODUCTION environment, choose PRODUCTION)
Company Name: CRONUS USA, Inc.
API Category: v2.0
Table name: items
Filter Query: number eq ‘ItemNo’ (ItemNo Variable form dynamic value)
Create Record V3 (Business Central) (Apply to Each will be created automatically)
Environment Name: SANDBOX (if you are working with a PRODUCTION environment, choose PRODUCTION)
Company Name: CRONUS USA, Inc.
API Category: v2.0
Table name: salesOrderLines
documentId: id (from Create Record (Header) dynamics value)
itemId: id (from Find Records (Item) dynamics value)
quantity: Quantity (from the trigger, dynamics value)
And now, after we have created Sales Order in BC, we need to get data and show them back in PVA so that users can see what they have done.
We will do this by assigning values to our Variables. For this scenario, it is best to use Append to string variable action.
Again let’s see what we have to do here.
Append to a string variable (in Apply to Each)
Name: ItemNo
Value: description (from Create Record line)
Append to a string variable (in Apply to Each)
Name: Quantity
Value: Quantity (from Create Record line)
Append to a string variable (in Apply to Each)
Name: UOM
Value: UniteOfMesureCode (from Create Record Line)
Append to a string variable (in Apply to Each)
Name: Order ID
Value: number (from Create Record Header)
Append to a string variable (in Apply to Each)
Name: Total Price
Value: amountIncludingTax (from Create Record Line)
Append to a string variable (in Apply to Each)
Name: Currency Code
Value: currencyCode (from Create Record Line)
When we have assigned values to Variables, we are only left with a few steps till the end of this scenario.
Now we must create one more Variable and append value to it.
This time we are doing this to format our Output result in the best possible way because formatting output values from Power Automate in the PVA is not the best, so we want now to do it in Power Automate and later show this value in our PVA.
To do this, we will create the following Variable:
Initialize variable (Out of Apply to Each)
Name: Order
Type: String
Value: (none)
Append variable
Name: Order
Value: You have created a sales Order with ID: Order ID (Variable dynamics value)
With total price: Total Price (Variable dynamics value) Currency Code (Variable dynamics value)
And now, we are just two more steps to the end in Power Automate.
This time we must use two actions and keep in mind that one of them is already there, so in reality, we must create one more cation (COMPOSE) and, in the end, assign that value to our PVA output.
Compose
Inputs: Order (Variable dynamics value)
Return value(s) to Power Virtual Agents
Inputs
Text: Item
Outputs
And now we are finished with Power Automate. All that is left here is to Save it, jump back to PVA, and map Variables in PVA so that our inputs in Power Automate can work. Your Power Automate would look like the one on the Screenshot if you created it with the exact steps I described.
To do this, you will have to go back to your PVA and inaction, which you have called Power Automate. You have to choose one which we have created just now.
Choose Power Automate, Which you have created
Setup Variables
CompanyName (text) -> VarCustomerId
Item -> VarItemNo
Quantity -> VarQuantity
Add Node
Show a message
Dear customer VarCustomerID (add a variable from the list),
Your order has been created with the following details:
Item(variable from the list)
Now you can Save your PVA and Test it to see if it works. If everything is fine, the result will look something like this.
This is not the end. You can continue playing with this PVA and add one new branch where you will create one more Power Automate for users who are not Customers in BC and first create them so that they can make an order. But this is the end for this scenario, How to create a Sales Order from PVA in BC.
In conclusion, when we can use Power Automate with some other tool natively, SKY IS THE LIMIT in what we can do.
I know that this scenario has a bigger number of steps, but in total, it is not so complicated. Still, it gives an excellent perspective on what you can do and gives you an idea of what some other Power Automates should look like if you are using them from PVA. Enjoy creating this Power automate and Power Virtual Agent.
As I have told you in the previous blog post for part 3, I will introduce you to the Data Synchronization feature, and I will try to explain all capabilities of Data Synchronization.
Before we start creating and explaining how it works, one step needs to be made before we Synchronize Sales Professional and Business Central. You will need to create Synchronization between Dataverse and Business Central first. The procedure of making it is the same. The difference is in the number of tables and the type of synchronization. In Dataverse Synchronization, you will get full sync of Contact, Customer, Vendors, and Currency. It is important to mention that this data sync is easy to set up and work with. As was the case a few years back, you don’t need an Admin User and Integration User (Non-Admin) in Dataverse. Now everything is done through a wizard in Business Central. All you have to do is go to the Assisted Setup in Business Central, choose Set up a connection to Dataverse and follow the steps. You have to pay attention to this setup at the beginning, where you have a question: Would you want to create a Virtual Table? It is up to you. You can switch it off or on, but we will not need Virtual Tables for our Dynamics 365 Sales Professional Synchronization.
Now that we have created Dataverse Synchronization, it is time to focus on our Sales Professional Data Synchronization. After you have created Dataverse Synchronization next step is to choose on the same page in Business Central Set Up connection to Dynamics 365 Sales. What will welcome you is almost the same wizard you got when you were created previously, but as you go through the next page, you will see the possibility of going to the Advanced setup of Synchronization. If you click on advanced, you will see the option to choose some of the tables for sync, my recommendation is to select all of them except Enable Legacy Sales Order Integration, but you will see that if you choose to Enable Bidirectional Sales Order Integration, you will not be able to select Enable Legacy Sales Order Integration.
Now when we choose Finish and let the system do its job, we will end that now we have a much more extensive list of synced tables than previously whit Dataverse synchronization. For example, we have Items, Opportunity, Sales Quote, Sales Invoice… etc. And of course, we see here which type of connection is made to which table, Bidirectional or To Integration Table or From Integration Table, but leaving this on the side more important is now to do coupling criteria. What are we doing here exactly? We are setting which field we want to do, checking duplicates, setting case-sensitive fields, and deciding whether we want to create e New record if he can’t find an existing one.
So, we now have to define Coupling criteria for all tables where the system asks us to do it, and when we finish, we will choose Run Full Synchronization. And the system will do its job, create all records, and match all already existing records on both sides.
Now that we have synced systems and what can we do with them?
In conclusion to this whole blog post, I will give you some examples of what you can do and how you can use the synchronization on and, of course, one CRM (Dynamics 365 Sales Professional) and one ERP (Business Central) for SMB altogether and use the best of both software and to get the best value at the end.
For example, as I have mentioned leads in previous blog posts, this is Sales stuff, and it is good not to mess with Business Central Customers as you may create some Invoices or a lot of financial transactions. So, let’s keep our ERP clear, and those data where we have some contact with somebody, let’s keep it in CRM. But this Lead is getting more interested, and we are getting the possibility to sell something to him (Athens Desk 1896-S, 😊), and he is becoming an Opportunity. We now have Synchronization between ERP and CRM and customer info in both systems. Still, what we can do more from Sales professional because we have Items, UOM, and Sales Quote Synced, we can create a quote in Sales Professional. Now when we want to do Invoicing, we can go to BC and get out the Quote that we made in Sales Professional (because of synchronization), and from that Quote, we will create an Invoice and successfully sell our product to our client. But this is not the end, because we know that in CRM works Salespersons and that for them it is important to understand what we have sold to somebody. This Invoice will be synced back to our Opportunity, and when it is on Opportunity, it will automatically be attached to the Account Table. Each Salesperson will know in the future what this client has bought for what amount and when. This process is called the Lead to Opportunity to Cash business process in two software which works together perfectly.
And one more thing, I’m not persuading you to start using and buying Sales Professional, but I just wanted to show you all the good stuff which comes for you for only 20$ per user per month as an Attached License if you are already a BC user.
And finally, there is always one more question. What if I need to add more tables to the synchronization? The answer is YES! I will stay on this answer because I would not like to rewrite your Microsoft Docs, but I’m giving you the link. In short, you will need a bit of BC development, but you will get it and make extra tables available in synchronization.
So, after introduction to this topic, it is time to continue with it and say when you would need to consider extending your Business Central with a license for Sales Professional.
First, what I would like to introduce you to is a small dictionary. The reason is that we have a few of the same, but they have different names. The reason is that Business Central is a financial-focused system, and all data you see in it are focused on your financial transactions with your clients. On the other side, Sales Professional is a Customer-Centric system, and all data in it is focused so that you can have a better view of your clients and make better relationships with them.
Business Central
Sales Professional
Contacts
Contacts (only person)
Customer
Account
Vendor
Account
Items
Products
Unit of Measure
Unit Group
After the dictionary, you probably already have a perspective of the focus of each system, as I have previously mentioned.
But why should we stay on a dictionary when we can split all of the things and dive deep into the actual capabilities of a Sales Professional? You will have a better perspective after seeing what is different and when it would be nice to consider extending your Business Central with a Sales Professional license.
Contacts
So, first of all, if we focus on a Contact table, we will see that Contact can be both Company and Person in Business Central, but in the Sales Professional, Contact is only based on a Person.
But besides this difference key difference is the data that we see in both solutions. Sales Professionals have all data which is essential for a salesperson, for example, all recent Opportunities, general information about clients (Name, Email, Preferred Method of Contact, Address, Marital Status, Contact Preferences, Marketing Information of origin of Contact… etc.) and Timeline which I will explain in a separate section because it is on of the main features which are focused to the Sales Professional users.
We have some of the same information on the Business Central side, but all focus on different users. All data in Business Central is focused on a client’s financial data. Still, of course, it is not only financial stuff, there is some of the information that a Sales Professional has, but the whole UI is different and makes users first see relevant data for one ERP system.
Accounts
If we look at the Accounts (Customers/Vendors) situation, it’s like the Contacts. But the main difference is in the gettering Customer and Vendors to the one record, which is the crucial difference from where we can understand the different focus of these two solutions. As previously mentioned, several times, besides UI focus difference whole solution is for another type of user, and each of the solutions makes you look to the specific data which is most important for key users of each of them.
To better understand the difference, you can see that Sales Professional focuses on the Annual Revenue of the whole company, how many employees the company has, what is the company’s industry of the company… etc. Regarding all of this data, you can see that a Sales Professional focuses on adjusting your sales team to make even better sales to this client.
Lead
Lead does not exist in the Business Central, and Lead is our introduction to the Business Process Flow.
Let’s first start with the actual usage of the Leads, specially Leads for Business Central users. Lead is the first contact with some Account or Contact. This means that the salesperson has just talked with somebody, but they are still unsure if they can make actual sales, so we are creating Leads for the starting status. One of the most important things with leads is that they can be used with existing clients and those you don’t have in the system. Suppose contact has been made with someone you don’t have in the system. In that case, another does not create a Contact or Account until you qualify them for the next stage of negotiations, not synchronized as a Contact/Vendor/Account. You will not have several useless clients from whom you have never sold or bought anything in your Business Central. But for the salespersons, this is most important because they will start to negotiate and negotiate sales from here. While salespersons are trying to make as many sales as possible, there is a graphical process that takes them through precisely defined steps to focus on essential communication with potential clients. This graphical leading is called Business Process Flow.
All salespersons can Qualify or Disqualify a Lead. Qualification takes us to the Opportunity, where Contact and Account will be created if they don’t exist in the system already. And important is that Business Process Flow will continue regardless we are getting on to a different table.
Opportunity
From Opportunity, we are returning to the familiar thing we have in Business Central. Still, from the side of a Sales Professional, it depends on how far we will go with the Opportunity. Would we go to the moment to create a Quote inside Sales Professional, or will we leave all financially focused data to the Business Central?
Sales Professional is fully capable of giving a quote, order, and invoice, but as recommended, we should provide a quote from Sales Professional or leave only on the Opportunity level and go to the Business Central and make a Quote from here.
This is all up to you and your use case. It is important to know that all Items and Units of Measure are synced between both systems. All data is available on both sides, and you will receive it back to Sales Professional if you create Quotes in the Business Central. From the perspective of Business Process Flow, it is always there until you finish with this Opportunity and close it as Won or Lost.
Timeline
Timeline is one of the greatest strengths of Sales applications because you have it on all tables and can see all communication with a client. It doesn’t matter if it is regarding just Account or Contact communication or sales regarding the Opportunity or Lead. You can write it manually or make a Phone Call or Email Appointment. Still, more important, if you connect your Outlook with Sales, what can be created in just a setup connection, you can automatically generate all communication with clients and be informed about every and each communication that happens with a specific client.
And with the new release, you have Teams integration based on the table, which means that you can start the conversation which stays connected to the record, and everyone can see it and be informed of what you have to say about the Client or Sales Opportunity.
Conclusion of part 2.
We have passed key differences in some of the tables most used in collaborations for both systems. In the next blog post, I will explain to you how it is possible to make Data Synchronization and make basic integration of them both so that users can get full capabilities of both solutions and get the correct data in the right solution so that users of both solutions can have the best possible information’s which are related to them and that each company which has both of the solutions can make even usage of them both.
Recently I finished my session about using Dynamics 365 Sales professional with Business Central at Directions EMEA. But there were many questions about D365 Sales Professional capabilities… what is possible, where are limitations…
First, Sales Professional is a CRM solution for SMB companies targeting businesses with more straightforward sales needs with basic sales force automation and limited customizations. But it is still a powerful tool, and I wanted to show you what this app includes using an infographic model. You can see details here:
What more is essential to know? You cannot mix a Sales Professional license with Sales Enterprise (and other Sales licenses)… if you decide to use Sales Professional, you must use it for all Sales users. But if this is not enough for you (at some moment, your company has grown), you can upgrade this license to Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.
If you like this infographic, I’ll add a similar one for Sales Enterprise.
We know that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (previously NAV) is primarily an ERP solution. But even so, this product has some customer relationship management capabilities. And name ‘Business Central’ probably comes because this solution can provide all business activities in one solution. But as this is primarily an ERP solution, the biggest strength comes in ERP, and in other areas, such as CRM or HRM, the level of functionalities is significantly lower. But let us make an overview of what is already in Business Central, but we can say it can be treated as CRM.
First, what we can find are a good customer and contact management. Still, as customers play an essential role in every ERP solution, we can emphasize more about contact management where we have some basic information about contacts and some segmentation.
You can also find some level of creating and tracking opportunities and sales quotes and interactions. You can also have some possibilities to make direct phone calls from BC or send an email. This is more or less what we have, but this is not a small number of functionalities.
Today I’ll not go into details about all these features. I just wanted to show some basic information about them and explain on a high level in which situation you should think about an additional and full CRM solution. As a full and independent CRM solution, I’ll focus on Dynamics 365 Sales Professional:
First, naturally, if you don’t have enough functionalities, you will take a specialized CRM solution, but let’s talk in detail on another occasion.
Second, the price can be an issue. If you have pure CRM users, they still need to pay $70 or even $100 for the license as they must pay a BC license even if they need only CRM capabilities. Sales Professional full license price is $65, and you can get full CRM. But with the new attach license for Dynamics 365 Sales Professional, BC clients can add a full CRM solution for an additional only $20.
Third, as I mentioned in the beginning, Business Central is still primarily an ERP solution, meaning its UI is built for ERP and not for CRM. Even if you have many CRM features, when we compare usage of these features, this is definitely not even close to being useable as in a regular CRM solution.
Dynamics 365 Sales Lead to Opportunity Business Proces Flow
Today I wanted just to make a high-level overview, but in future texts, I’ll try to be more accurate about when CRM in Business Central is enough for you and when you should think about integration with Dynamics 365 Sales.
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.
It is the first day in 2021 and I just want to put some numbers on the paper. If you don’t agree with my conclusions, please send me some feedback and I will appreciate it.
Looking back I analyzed some numbers in my blog and found interesting that the most read articles were not related with technical topics and I was surprised with this. Because of that I want to share what topics was the most interesting for you in the past year.
If you didn’t find these topics, you can do it here:
Looking in feedbacks, I can also recognize that these three topics were between the most popular. Ok, there is still 72% other reads, but there are consisting from hundreds of other topics. That means you still want to read technical topics, but you are interested in some other as well.
To be honest I was surprised in one moment that many of readers didn’t know that i.e. BC has some of features before my map of functional areas. An for sure, I’ll do more in this direction to make all of this areas more closely to all of you.
I’ve got some other statistics as well, but this is something I’ll use for my internal research. I just want to say thanks to all of you who read my posts and especially to ones who sent some feedback as this is extremely important for me. All the best in 2021!
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.
Totovic Dynamics 365 Blog 