CRM Audio

CRM Audio: Wave 1 2024: Deprecation not depressionIn this episode, George and Nick dive into the latest updates for Power Pages in the first half of 2024. They discuss new features, enhancements, and important deprecations, providing insights into how these changes impact users and developers. From generative AI integrations and improved file upload capabilities to crucial security updates and professional developer tools, this episode covers everything you need to know about the upcoming Power Pages release.

Plus, they share their thoughts on the future of Power Pages and what they hope to see next. Tune in for an informative and engaging discussion on the evolving landscape of Power Pages.

Cover image by DALL-E (inspired by terrible prompts)

In this episode, George and Nick dive into Wave 2 2023 and what it's going to wash out for Power Pages. What's in store? 

Cover image by Matt Ragland on Unsplash

What you hear in the opening is a sound clip titled "money count bills". Not sure about that, sounds more like soliders marching on gravel. Why did I pick that sound? Because it was available in the sound effect library I have already paid for. If I didn't have to pay for things, I would have definitely included Pink Floyd. Classic. Or Jerry McGuire saying "Show me the money". In this episode of Refresh the Cache Nick and I talk about how to take the nice customer's money using nothing but Power Pages.

Cover Image by Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay.

Everyone misplaces things from time to time. Keys, airpods, sunglasses, wallet; anger, confidence, sense of entitlement... JavaScript in Power Pages is no exception. I know there is script, I can see that annoying debugger keyword, I just have no idea where the fuck did it come from. In this episode of Refresh the Cache Nick and I discuss all the possible locations where script can be hidden in Power Pages while contemplating using Dropbox as a source control alternative.

And remember - we never truly lose any material possessions. We only temporarily misplace them.

Cover Image by 2211438 from Pixabay. 

Raising kids is not an easy task. Nor it is cheap. If you need to talk to your bank about refinancing your mortgage to renovate the house according to the building permit you are yet to apply for and, in case your house is old and potentially has some led paint or asbestos, you would also be trying to keep the kids out of that very house as much as possible by enrolling them in the after-school classes THEN you are in pure luck. All your challenges can be solved by installing a trifecta of Power Pages scenario-based templates.

In this episode of Refresh the Cache, Nick & I dive into the Power Pages templates; the good, the bad, and the ugly sides, what they are good for and where they shouldn’t be touched. We also answer some important questions such as are there any assets with the prefix "new_", is numbering your pages bad, and who gets a participation medal? To find out, as they say, listen ’till the end!

Cover image by Christiana Mergan from Pixabay.

In the good old days (insert an old man yelling at the skies image) we didn't have release waves. Instead, every 2-3 years we had a tsunami.

Since those days Microsoft has transformed releases into a pacifying surf ranch with persistent but not exactly heart stopping waves. Starting Wave 1, 2023 Power Pages now have a well-deserved their own break in the release plan. Of course, Nick and I couldn't resist dusting off our surf boards.

But if you're not excited by Export to CSV feature, we have nothing to talk about.

Cover photos by David Cleverley and Eduardo Drapier on Unsplash

In today's episode (technically, last year's) episode of Refresh the Cache, George and Nick talk to Dileep Singh, Principal Program Manager Lead for Power Pages. We discuss Gimli Glider, security, and growing with the product.

Acronyms casually dropped in the conversation

 References

Copyrights and licenses

Artwork by @dreamstudioai

The following music was used for this media project:

Get in touch

Long, long time ago, in the universe far away, Nick Doelman and Colin Vermander had a dream of making a podcast about ADX Portals, I mean Dynamics 365 Portals, I mean Power Apps portals, I mean Power Pages that would rival the entire Microsoft's media department. As often is the case, Microsoft decided to put an end to it by buying out hiring the entire population of Canada both. In this episode of Refresh the Cache we talk to Nick Doelman about his journey from a humble IT guy to MVP to a portal go-to trainer, and now chief explainer senior content developer on Microsoft docs team.

Why the move, how did it change the work/life balance, what did Nick do for Canada (unlike his football team) - those are just some of the things we talk about. We talk pretty much about everything except curling. Which is a shame if you ask me.

Get in touch

Artwork by @dreamstudioai

Daily logins are like daily gym visits: everyone says they do it every day, but reality begs to differ. Nick and George talk about new Power Pages licensing, monthly active users and more in episode 29 (or 2 in "After Nick Doelman" era). 

https://powerpages.microsoft.com/pricing/ https://alexacrm.com/plugin 

Get in touch

One of the Nicks is back but Doelman variety decided to take a pill and has gone to greener pastures of the mothership. To fill in the void of his large shoes, George "The Enabler" Doubinski has joined the crew and broken all-Canadian camaraderie. Both Nick & George are rusty after a long break, so the only hot topic of the day is "Who moved my cheese and is it still cheese?" aka "Power Pages" and "I can do Power Apps portals - do I still have a job?". 

Also turns out, logins are like exercise - everyone says they want to and will do it daily but in reality...

Nick Hayduk @Engineered_Code

George Doubinski @georgedude

The Nick's are back after a brief break to bring you the news from the Power Platform 2022 release plans for Power Apps portals.

Nick Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Nick Doelman @readyxrm

The Nicks discuss the Power Platform 2021 Release Plan and how it relates to Power Apps portals, buying a car and Coke vs Pepsi.

Nicholas Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Nick Doelman @readyxrm

Nick and Nick are joined by special guest "Portals Super User" Oliver Rodrigues to discuss portal terminology changes and getting answers on community forums.

Oliver Rodrigues

@BrahmeiroDiary

https://oliverrodrigues365.com/

Nicholas Hayduk

@Engineered_Code

https://www.engineeredcode.com/

Nick Doelman

@ReadyXrm

https://readyxrm.blog

https://365.Training

Oliver's Scottish Summit Session:

Oliver Rodrigues - Power Apps Portals best practices

New portal terminology changes:

Terminology changes in Power Apps portals - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Nick and Nick are joined by special guests Ulrikke Akerbæk and Franco Musso to discuss what "Where's Waldo?" is called in different countries, new portal features and how to build a Power Apps portals that doesn't look like a portal.

Portal Entity Permissions Manager https://jonasr.app/2021/02/epm/

Power Platform Release Plan 2021 Wave 1 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2021wave1

Ulrikke Akerbæk @UlrikkeAkerbk https://ulrikke.akerbak.com/

Franco Musso @crmbizcoach https://francomusso.com/

Nicholas Hayduk @Engineered_Code https://www.engineeredcode.com/

Nick Doelman @ReadyXrm https://readyxrm.blog

https://365.Training

Colin Vermander @koolin_ Nick Doelman @readyxrm Nicholas Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Configure Azure AD B2C Provider: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-apps-portals-configure-azure-ad-b2c-provider-for-portals-in-a-new-way-preview/

JQuery Update: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4594428/portal-9-2-10-x-breaking

AlexaCRM: https://alexacrm.com/

Portal Connector: https://www.crmportalconnector.com/

Sponsored by 365.Training

Nick, Colin and Nick discuss the recent Fall into Portals Virtual Conference and recap the incredible content.

Fall into Portals Recording: https://365.training/Courses/Detail/Fall_PowerAppsPortals

Content Publishing on Portals using multi-language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6EDgqgk9G8&t=317s

Colin Vermander @koolin_ Nick Doelman @readyxrm Nicholas Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Sponsored by 365.Training

Colin, Nick and Nick are back from summer vacation and chat about the portals WebAPI currently in public preview.

Portals WebAPI (Microsoft Docs)

2020 is the year of virtual conferences, and Power Apps portals are no exception with Power Portals Saturday and Fall/Spring into Portals conferences.

Power Portals Saturday (YouTube Playlist)

Fall into Portals

Colin Vermander @koolin_

Nick Doelman @readyxrm

Nicholas Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Sponsored by 365.Training

While Colin is off in the wilderness on vacation, Nick and Nick discuss the features announced in the Power Platform 2020 Wave 2 Release plans.  

Nick Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Nick Doelman @readyxrm

Colin, Nick H and Nick D (CNN) chat with MVP Jim Novak about tools used when working with Power Apps portals projects.  

Jim Novak is a Technical Architect with deep experience with Dynamics CRM/xRM and custom .NET application development working in projects for the United States government, education and healthcare industries.

Twitter: @crmdevjim

Website: https://futurezconsulting.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesnovak/

Other links:

https://www.xrmtoolbox.com

https://www.bootstrap-live-customizer.com/

https://github.com/WaelHamze/xrm-ci-framework

https://abvogel.com/2019/08/13/Microsoft.Xrm.DevOps.Data/

Nick, Nick and Colin practice social distancing and chat from their home offices about MVP summit, Web Forms, Virtual Entities, Local Authentication and other Power Apps Portals stuff.

Show notes:

Colin's post on web forms: https://colinvermander.com/2020/03/09/power-apps-portals-web-form-ideas-desired-improvements/

Nick Hayduk's Portals Community Call: https://www.engineeredcode.com/portals-community-call

Nick Doelman's Power Apps Portals online class: https://powerplatformlearning.newzenler.com?affiliate=rVj6rb

Colin Vermander @koolin_

Nicholas Hayduk @Engineered_Code

Nick Doelman @readyxrm

Gus Gonzalez started a series of podcasts giving an overview of what he would do if he were the program manager for some of the Dynamics 365/Power Platform products.  This the portal edition where Colin, Nick and Nick discuss the new features and options they would add to portals if they were program managers (with unlimited budget and resources)

What is your wish list item?  https://ideas.powerapps.com

Our Twitters:

Colin Vermander: @koolin_

Nick Hayduk: @Engineered_Code

Nick Doelman: @readyxrm

CRM MVP Podcast: http://crmmvppodcast.com/

The Power Platform 2020 Wave 1 release plan has been published!  Also announced is the WS-trust and organizationserviceproxy deprecation, which as a big impact on xRM Community edition, Microsoft open source and Adxstudio v7 portals.

Join Nick Doelman, Colin Vermander and new permanent host Nick Hayduk as they discuss these new features and changes.

Release Plan:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2020wave1/

xRM Portals Community Edition Open Issue

https://github.com/Adoxio/xRM-Portals-Community-Edition/issues/123

Dileep Singh returns to the podcast with an update of the Power Apps Portals General Availability and some hints as to what might be coming in 2020 wave 1.  Also discussed is the new Configuration Migration Tool, Forms Pro and Web Forms.

Unified Interface Transition dates Portal: https://runone.powerappsportals.com/

Ideas site: https://experience.dynamics.com/ideas/

Colin's blog: https://colinvermander.com/

Nick's blog: https://readyxrm.blog

Nick's Portals Training at Scottish Summit 2020: https://scottishsummit.com/event/nd

Colin and Nick chat with Ted Pattison about his journey learning Power Apps Portals from a Power BI/SharePoint/Office 365 background.  

A great conversation of Ted learns new technology and applies to teach others.

Ted's MVP profile:

https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/PublicProfile/10712?fullName=Ted%20Pattison

Ted's training site (check out his classes!)

https://www.criticalpathtraining.com/

Colin's blog:

https://colinvermander.com/

Nick's blog:

https://readyxrm.blog

In this episode, Nick and Colin discuss the general availability of Power Apps Portals as well as updates from the Microsoft Ignite conference which they are enjoying from their office chairs in Canada.

This episode is brought to you by KingswaySoft.

Nick and Colin are joined by special guest Eugene Van Staden. Eugene, Colin and Nick discuss building a set of ALM/DevOps tools for PowerApps Portals deployments. Learn about the importance of healthy ALM, the available open-source tools and the challenges of applying automated DevOps to Portal projects.

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by KingswaySoft.

Today Dileep Singh, Principal Program Manager Lead from Microsoft, joins Nick and Colin to talk PowerApps Portals.

Links:

Music:www.purple-planet.com

This episode of Refresh the Cache is brought to you by Kingswaysoft.

Colin Vermander and Nick Doelman dig in to the PowerApps portals announcements--is the something new or the same Dynamics 365 portals that we know and love?

Download the release plan here.

Music: purple-planet.com

On this Episode of Refresh the Cache (brought to you by KingswaySoft), Colin and Nick play around with some of the new April ’19 release features.

Discussed in this episode: 

CDS Portals

https://community.dynamics.com/365/b/colinvermandermicrosoft/archive/2019/04/17/deploy-a-cds-starter-portal-preview

Portal Maintenance Mode

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/portals/enable-maintenance-mode

OAuth Implicit Grant Flow

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/portals/oauth-implicit-grant-flow

Music: www.purple-planet

This episode is brought to you by mscrm-addons.com.

BIO

Megan Walker is a CRM consultant with experience in web design, social media and marketing. She's a passionate blogger, writing about tips, tricks and ideas for non developer geeks. 

Show Notes:

This week Nick is joined by Megan Walker where we talk about the best way to a Dynamics 365/Power Platform career is through a degree in Hotel and Tourism management.  We also chat about learning and best practices around Dynamics 365 Portals and dive into some of Megan’s recent blog posts and videos.

 Links:

In this episode (brought to you by D365UG), Nick and Colin are joined by George Doubinski to discuss the Marketing Portal - did the Marketing Team go rogue?

Show notes: MS Learn: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/get-started-dynamics-365-portals/

Updated April 19 release notes: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/april19/

Marketing Portal https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/marketing/developer/event-management-web-application

Bad Masterclass https://crmtipoftheday.com/masterclass/

Portals Training UG Summit Amsterdam https://eu.usergroupsummit.com/conference-schedule/academy

In today's episode (brought to you by D365UG/CRMUG), Nick and Colin take a deep dive into the portals announcements in the Business Applications Platform/D365 April '19 release notes.

Links:

This episode is brought to you by D365UG.

Today Nick and Collin are joined by Nikita Polyakov, Senior Architect with the Microsoft FastTrack group. Nikita talks about his experience working with D365 portals and steps required to be successful with D365 portals.

Topics discussed in this episode:

In today's episode of the portals podcast (brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic), Colin Vermander and Nick Doelman talk about how to learn Dynamics 365 Portals

In this episode:

Links:

Got questions about portals for Nick and Colin? Email voice@crm.audio.

This episode is a production of Dynamic Podcasts LLC. Subscribe to the  CRM Audio network of podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

We are back with another episode about Dynamics 365 portals. This week Sheila Shahpari and Nicholas Hayduk join Nick and Shawn from D365 UG Summit in Phoenix.

Topics discussed in this episode:

This episode is a production of Dynamic Podcasts LLC. Subscribe to the  CRM Audio network of podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Details

In this CRM Audio podcast episode Elaiza Benitez talks to Luke Hopton based in Jersey, United Kingdom, and Matt Ngan based in Toronto, Canada. Elaiza, Luke and Matt previously worked for the same Microsoft Partner in New Zealand where Luke and Matt were CRM Developers. Since then, both of them have moved away from being Dynamics CRM developers and Elaiza talks to them about their decision and what they're doing now in their current roles. Elaiza also quizzes them to see how much they remember about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 as a developer. Note: Elaiza refers to Dynamics 365 as Dynamics CRM in this podcast episode to avoid confusing Luke and Matt. When Luke and Matt were developers, it was called Dynamics CRM at the time.

What we talked about Background to how Luke, Matt and I know each other.

Matt and Luke introduce themselves.

Matt worked for a product company in London that specialized in Wealth Management where Dynamics CRM was the platform and he now lives and works in Toronto for an HR software company that has nothing to do with Dynamics CRM.

Luke moved to a Senior .NET developer role before leaving New Zealand and then moved to London in 2015 where he joined two other product companies. Eventually he moved home to Jersey and is now a Solution Architect where he works with RegTech (Regulatory Technology) solutions – due diligence and KYC (Know your Customer) for Wealth Management companies.

The decisions Luke and Matt made to move away from being a Dynamics CRM Developer.

That last Dynamics CRM version Luke and Matt worked with was Dynamics CRM 2013, possibly Dynamics CRM 2015 for Matt.

Matt talks about the frameworks and tech he is using now.

Both Luke and Matt talk about applying what they've learnt in their time as Dynamics CRM Developers in their roles now.

What they use for source control now.

Matt talks about the differences in Application Lifecycle Management for product development compared to consultancy projects.

What Luke and Matt use for source control these days.

Who would be in their search results when Googling for issues experienced in Dynamics CRM and tools used.  

Who showed Matt the ropes in being a Dynamics CRM developer - Rex Wessels, Sophie Khun-Hammond, Maryse Botros, David Brown mentioned.

Elaiza quizzes Luke and Matt on their knowledge of being a Dynamics CRM Developer

What Luke and Matt miss about New Zealand.

On this episode, Elaiza Benitez takes over the CRM Audio podcast and brought Amey Holden and Matt Wittemann with her.

Elaiza, Amey, and Matt worked for Microsoft partners and have since made changes in their career. Elaiza and Amey went independent and Matt went to work for Microsoft.

We discuss the various career paths available with Microsoft Business Applications.

George, Shawn, and Joel are back with another podcast!

Topics discussed today:

In this episode of CRM Audio, George Doubinski and Joel Lindstrom discuss the business case for Dataverse for Teams. Who is it for and what does it mean for people who already have Dataverse and Dynamics 365? 

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?

Microsoft released a public preview of Connection References, which store Power Automate (and some Power App) connections in solutions, and prompt for connection when the solution is moved to another environment.

This is a big deal because currently connections are not moved with solutions, which means that Power Automate flows are not connected after the solution is moved, and editing flows in Production environments are tedious and cause problems with ALM processes.

This change is also significant because it brings the value of solutions and ALM to non-CDS connected flows. Since Sharepoint, SQL, and custom connections can be automated using connnection references, deployment automation and CI/CD can now appply to connections other than CDS.

Listen to today's podcast as George Doubinski, Joel Lindstrom, and Shawn Tabor discuss connection references.

We also touch on environment variables and how these changes work with environment variables. And we celebrate Shawn "Hobbit" Tabor's 50th birthday!

This week Jon Stypula from Dynamic Consulting joins CRM Audio to talk about the DynamicsCon virtual conference coming up on September 9-10.

Watch this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/lyL9dSO3wfc.

Find out how DynamicsCon is different than other Power Platform virtual events. Who is paying for it, and how the money will be spent.

RPA is getting a lot of buzz these days, but what does it really mean?

Today Cody Erickson from Microsoft (and formerly Softmotive) joins CRM Audio, along with Joe (Flow Joe) Unwin, to discuss RPA:

Links:

It’s been my observation that with a few notable exceptions, people in the Power Platform community primarily focus on Power Apps or on Power Automate. Lots of people will use both, but generally, people are more “app people” or “flow people.”

I don’t have a strong preference between the two, and I regularly use and enjoy both platforms, but I’ve had conversations with people in the community that say something along the following lines:

Flow Person: “I love Power Automate, but Power Apps (canvas apps) are confusing.”

Apps Person: “I can write canvas apps all day long but you need to be a developer to use Power Automate.”

I’ve also noticed that if you suggest a flow solution in the Power Apps forum or an app solution in the Power Automate forum at powerusers.microsoft.com, people will give you funny looks.

Intrigued by this phenomenon, I interviewed some of my friends in the Business Applications community to see what they thought was behind this divide. Why does one tool seem accessible and easy to some while difficult to others?

In today's podcast (and on Power Platform Tip Of The Day) George Doubinski and Joel Lindstrom explore this phenominon and what makes people gravitate toward Power Automate or Power Apps?

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.

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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...

MVP's Shawn Tabor and Joel Lindstrom review the top announcements in the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Release Notes Wave 2.

Julie Yack joins CRM Audio today to talk about brain dumps, and why you should avoid them when studying for Microsoft certification exams. 

Brain dumps are unauthorized copies of certification test questions and answers. If you use brain dumps you are violating the terms of your certification, and you are selling yourself short.

Julie talks about how Microsoft's certification and training options have improved over the years and how to prepare for certification the right way.

LInks:

In this episode, Shawn is joined by Dian Taylor, Director – TMC for Business Apps with RSM US to talk all about Field Service Mobile!  They talk about the key differences between the two apps (1st party Microsoft and the Microsoft Field Service Woodford based app), where there is a fit for both and what the future holds for the new Field Service Mobile app!  Dian and Shawn also talk about the Dynamics Community and how they both love being a part of this great family.

Dian on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/d365goddess

Dian’s blog article on Field Service Mobile:

https://d365goddess.com/field-service-dynamics-365-mobile-app/

Dian’s blog article on Inventory Transfers using the Inventory Dashboard:

https://d365goddess.com/inventory-transfers-using-the-inventory-dashboard/

Shawn on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/crmhobbit

Shawn’s blog:

https://crmhobbit.com

In this episode, Shawn (@crmhobbit) and Sarah (@SarahJND) talk about how to access Public Preview features within Dynamics 365 Field Service as well as how to enable the new Schedule Board, currently in Public Preview.

Watch this episode on the CRMHobbit YouTube channel (demo enabling the new Schedule Board at the 9:30 mark) : https://youtu.be/gohUVmO5vKc

How to install preview features for Dynamics 365 Field Service: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dyna...

How to preview the new schedule board in Dynamics 365 Resource Scheduling: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dyna...

Shawn Tabor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crmhobbit

Shawn's blog: https://crmhobbit.com

Sarah Jelinek on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SarahJND

Sarah's blog: https://sarahjelinek.com

At Build 2020, Microsoft highlighted Microsoft Teams as a platform, and announced lots of new enhancements to the integration between Power Platform and teams, including making it easier to build Power Automate flows for Teams and integrate model-driven apps with Teams, and more easily publish Power Virtual Agents with Teams. https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/05/27/spotlight-on-teams-as-a-platform-at-virtual-microsoft-build-2020/#12ce03631f14

On today's episode of CRM Audio, Shawn Tabor and Joel Lindstrom talk about why Teams+Power Platform matters, and how embedding apps within Teams can remove friction from user adoption of Power Apps.

We also revel in our recent victory in the Power Platform Virtual Pub Quiz.

In this episode, Shawn & Sarah talk about the pandemic and how it has affected opportunities to present to the community.  

Sarah discusses a virtual session she held at D365UG Focus on optimizing Customer Service implementations and the blog article that supports it:

https://sarahjelinek.com/2020/05/19/create-a-case-with-the-email-body-in-the-case-description-field-in-dynamics-365/

This is a special episode of CRM Audio with MVP's Gus Gonzalez, Neil Benson, and Joel Lindstrom. In this episode we dig into what the role of solution architect means and how it has changed in Power Platform projects with the shift to agile deployment methodologies.

This episode is being simultaneously released on their podcasts, the CRM MVP Podcast and Scrum Dynamics, and I encourage you to subscribe to both.

See full show notes at https://customery.com/50.

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic. Today we are joined by return guest Sean McNellis, Principal PFE with Microsoft. 

Topics in this episde

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic and D365UG.

This week we talk with Emma D'Arcy all about what it means to deal with Imposter Syndrome and how it does indeed get better! Shawn & Emma talk about their own struggles and how the Dynamics Community has helped them not only overcome, but flourish and help to elevate others. They also talk a little bit about cats...

Emma D'Arcy on Twitter: @tattooedcrmgirl

Emma's Imposter Syndrome session from Scottish Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh9NaNsvDxE

Check out the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Txc9kMYnEAI

This episode is brought to you by Inogic and their new Kanban Board for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

James Phillips recently wrote a blog post "Our commitment to customers to help ensure business continuity" where he detailed plans to delay mandatory end of support and deprecation deadlines to remove pressure from customers and partners during this stressful time. 2020 Wave 1 will still be released in April, but mandatory updates will be delayed until May or June. Team member license enforcement is delayed until September, and deprecation of classic UI is delayed until late autumn US.

Joel Lindstrom, George Doubinski, and Shawn Tabor discuss these delays and what they mean to you, as well as the following topics:

Links:

In today's episode of ProdCast, (brought to you by Inogic), Matthew Anderson and Joel Lindstrom share their tips for working from home and review some recent updates to their favorite productivity tools, including on how PowerPoint can help improve your speaking skills through AI.

Discussed on the show:

This episode is brought to you by Inogic and their new Kanban Board for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Wave 1 2020 for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 is right around the corner. In today's episode, Joel Lindstrom and Shawn Tabor cover what you need to know and how to prepare for the update.

Topics covered:

Check out the deck from this presentation  at https://ptdrv.linkedin.com/h80j3i2

This episode is brought to you by Inogic and their new Kanban Board for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

The coronavirus COVID-19 has changed the technology world. People are working remotely, conferences are canceled. On this podcast, we talk about the changes to D365UG Summit Barcelona, MVP summit, and other conferences.

To help organizations combating the crisis, Microsoft is making the premium push notification adapter for Power Apps available for free to all users, and they have also released a new template targeted at Crisis Communication. Find out more at https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/crisis-communication-a-power-platform-template/. 

Shawn Tabor just lead a hackathon, but it wasn't for adults. Shawn talks about how a class of fifth-graders used Power Virtual Agent to educate about climate change and fire safety.

We are only about a month away from the release of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2020 Wave 1. We talk about what is new with Field Service, sales forecasting, and team member license enforcement. If you want to learn more about what is coming with 2020 wave 1, check out our video tip series at crmtipoftheday.com.

This episode is brought to you by Inogic. Check out their new Kanban visualization for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Learning is important. Joel has started a bi-weekly LinkedIn newsletter about learning--why it is important to be a life-long learner, choosing a learning goal, and tools to help learning. On the podcast we discuss our learning goals. Matthew Anderson has also been pursuing certification, and he talks about his strategies for learning and test-taking.

Other topics in the episode:

Show notes:

[00:00:23] And Matthew. How are you doing day, Joel?

[00:00:27] I am excellent. Welcome to 2020.

[00:00:29] A little bit late in a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But we've been so productive we haven't had time for a podcast.

[00:00:36] Exactly. it's prioritization. And I think we both had that silent agreement that we have some things we're focused on right now.

[00:00:44] Well, actually, last week on my My Analytics for the first time I hit 42 percent of time for focus.

[00:00:53] Oh, congrats on that. I feel like I've graduated to new level.

[00:01:00] Yeah, I can say I have that much focused time scheduled. I am not hitting it, but I am getting more and more people to respect that time that I've got out there. So it's a it's a process. We'll say that.

[00:01:17] Right. So I've been putting a focus for 2020 on learning, trying to get some certifications as well as learn some other other things. I find that, you know, sometimes you get a little stale and you need to update your skill set, especially working with technology. You can do anything with learning in 2020.

[00:01:37] Yeah, absolutely. So the most recent certification I earned is the Azure A.I. Engineer Associate Certification.

[00:01:47] That's the A.I. 100. It was the exam. The core exam behind that one.

[00:01:53] So is this like super deep data science stuff for what is it?

[00:01:58] So it is a collection of cognitive services, including language, understanding and prediction, translation, and getting into machine learning pipelines. And how do you actually build and structure those services together to be able to meet the need for some sort of end user use case?

[00:02:22] Cool. So what what made you decide on that one versus all the other many things you could study?

[00:02:31] Yeah, so I had a stretch goal for myself around kind of getting outside of the business applications kind of silo within our product cloud, the different solution areas, I wanted to do something in Azure and I looked toward what are those things that are that I talk about the concept of in the biz app platform a lot, but I'd like to be able to go deeper and, you know, chat with folks about what's going on behind the scenes, talk intelligently around what some of those capabilities are and what really comes up a ton. Is these things around cognitive services and kind of improving those experiences using prediction automation around that. So it seemed like a really good fit. And then with the advent of the A.I. Builder Capabilities and power platform and some of what we have inside of customer insights and being able to make predictions about this kind of super set of information about customers, it just seemed like a really appropriate place to put some of that learning effort into.

[00:03:43] Definitely a hot area there. So how much time did you allocate to preparing for it?

[00:03:53] Yeah, so I have had this on my radar for about the last four and a half, maybe five months. I've been trying to go through some of the Microsoft learn capabilities or rather the learning paths that they have around that just to get familiar. But I really got serious about it when I put the I put my money where my mouth was and I scheduled the certification exam two months out. So it was mid-December. I made the decision to schedule it out for middle of February or rather early February. And just kind of use that as a way to pressure myself and really ratchet up the prep and training work that I was doing. And labs. Yeah.

[00:04:41] So that's that's key, I think. And I've been I've been writing a series of Linked-In articles about learning, because my focus has been on that since last year. I got the sales and customer service and marketing Dynamics 365 certifications and he first power platform certification. I didn't have to study at all for those because I've been doing it so long that I could just walk in and pass, maybe with just a cursory review, but the one I haven't had is field service because I just don't have as much experience with field service. I've dealt with it and worked with it. But I've never I've never taken the certification test on it before. So that was sure that was my goal. And my goal with this is just to broaden my reach outside of the normal projects that I work with. So with (the field service exam), that was kind of the first one I really had to study. And like you, I set myself a pretty aggressive goal of actually scheduling the exam. You put some teeth behind it. I've got people that are on my team or my mentor and they set a goal that “I want to get certified in xyz,” and then they never do it because they don't have a date. You got to have a date.

[00:05:59] What was going through my head the night before the exam, I was just panicking and saying I don't know if I'm actually ready. I went in and I was one click away from canceling the exam that I had for the next day. I didn't. Partially because I don't want to pay twenty two bucks to cancel this within the window. It's like five business days or something like that. You know what? I've done this much. I've put in the effort and I go take it even if I don't feel 100 percent ready. And I came out on the other side feeling pretty glad that I didn't spend the money to defer on something or I was going to pass it anyway.

[00:06:50] Right. I think when you take the more of those exams you take, you kind of recognize patterns. Not that taking more exams makes you more likely to pass another one, but it could. I've developed my own approach to taking a certification exam that helps me be more sure that I'm getting closer is the right answer. Doesn't always give me the right answer, but it gets me closer. I read the question backwards because the questions generally are set up with a scenario and a question. So the question is last and sometimes the scenario gives you extra details that you don't really need. So if you read the question, read it backwards. Read the bottom section to get the questioner and then look for the details in the scenario. You can be a lot more focused and avoid having the extra details throw you off. And then look at the scenario and then I look at the answers. And if it's not if I'm not really, really, really sure of which one's the right one, I start weeding out the distractors, and those are the ones that aren't right. And if you can weed out the ones that you know aren't right, then you have  a 50/50 chance and then you can pretty much narrow down if you if you have a cursory knowledge of the topic.

[00:08:26] I have a variation on that approach that I use quite a bit. And I think that definitely that that concept of narrowing down the field of possible answers to what's important and also not getting hung up on a bunch of potentially extraneous information is really important. And that's consistent even on the exam that I just took here recently, as well as certainly some of the dynamics ones that I certainly know well, just given my history with the platform and most of those questions you can get rid of to maybe sometimes three and you barely have to read the whole range of what it's going to be.

[00:09:18] And the new ones have introduced case studies, which is sometimes a lot of text to then get to the questions. And that can be kind of intimidating. You have, you know, the scenario, the requirements, the details. You've got half a dozen different tabs on that thing. Then you have questions. Here's one thing I found is on the and this is this is for the what is it Pearson view or whatever Microsoft uses for the testing centers as well as the proctored exams. You can ctrl+f to search the text. That's a little tip I found to where if you have a question about “what should the sales managers do” and you go to the scenario, do a ctrl+f to search for “sales manager” and if you find it. That usually leads you to the answer or enough detail to get the answer.

[00:10:13] Yeah, that's a good one, I was not familiar that you could actually do that. Very cool.

[00:10:19] Do you go to the test center or do you do the the proctored exam at home?

[00:10:25] I am a firm believer in going to the test center. That is the way I like to do it. There is no worry of someone walking into the room. I don't have to have the anxiety that comes off like shining a camera around to show that I don't have any cheating materials or anything I'm going to cheat with. And it's just one less thing that I have to deal with. Also, it feels official. I can actually protect that time. I don't have a. Now I have to travel to physically get to the test center so I can tell people, no, I need to be done with this call at 9 o'clock because my exam starts at 9:30 and I have to physically leave and get there. And I like having that little bit of buffer. How about you?

[00:11:15] I am the opposite. I do all my exam as online proctored exams, and a year ago when they first started doing it, it was kind of rough because you'd have to have a webcam to show all around the room. They've changed a little bit now where you they text you a little app or a Web page on your phone and you just take pictures of what you're facing, what's behind you. I've got to unplug my my external monitor and flip it around.

[00:11:44] But generally, that goes that goes very well. I lock my door. I do it from my house so I don't have co-workers walking in if my wife or kids are home. I make them swear that they will not try and get in the room because otherwise I'll fail. And maybe in Minnesota you have really nice testing centers. Frankly, the ones around me are all like dumps with computers that are 10 years old with desks that are falling apart.

[00:12:16] And I've had technical problems going to my local test center, so I think I trust it more doing it from home. And I get more flexibility. Like I have a meeting cancelled tomorrow. I'm going to take a take a certification exam and have more flexibility than when I do a testing center, usually it seems to only have availability a week out..

[00:12:39] Yeah, I'm I'm definitely scheduling mine more in advance, so that part's not an issue. Pearson is headquartered in Minnesota. So we have a million testing centers around here. There there's one that’s a ten minute drive from my house. Then I'm going to be moving soon, and the place I'm moving to there's a testing center one mile from the house. You know, I can walk there in under 20 minutes if I really needed to. And like all of them they have been reasonably nice.

[00:13:12] I mean, it's not crazy. You know, hardware quality of the machines that I'm on, but they've physically worked.

[00:13:19] The only argument or complaint that I have is I did try to take my customer service exam, which I just for whatever reason, hadn't taken previously. And this was in mid-January. And there was the threat, the threat of snow in Minnesota. Now, it hadn't actually started snowing yet.

[00:13:40] So that's like every day in the winter, right?

[00:13:43] Right. They were concerned that there was going to be snow later in the day. So they canceled at 8:00 in the morning. All the exams that they had. Now, my exam was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. I showed up at 8:45. They said, sorry, it's been canceled. You know, it's supposedly you get, I don't know, 210 minutes or something like that. Ridiculous amount of time for that exam at least.

[00:14:07] I'd never personally taken that long just because I have worked with the material so long. So I literally would have been out there out of there, even if I took that full time, by noon. Not a flake of snow fell from the sky until about 2:00 in the afternoon. I was just I was very, very frustrated with that. That was the biggest chink in the armor for going to an actual testing center.

[00:14:42] And people like Shawn Taber have this elaborate routine where he goes to the same Starbucks before he takes his exam and feels like if he doesn't do this he will fail. I don’t have this routine myself, I schedule and just jump in and take it.

[00:14:58] Sure. So I don't quite have that rigorous of a of a series of things I have to go through. It's not that regimented. I have a couple of different test centers I go to. I try to make it there about 15 minutes early. But beyond that, I just focus that energy on knowing the material and having that carry me through.

[00:15:21] Right. So the series I'm writing on LinkedIn has been a departure from the normal kind of content that I usually write. But it's been kind of an experiment because I got in on a preview of a new LinkedIn feature called newsletters. I like it because it's basically articles that are grouped into a series and people can subscribe to the series of articles. And currently I'm limited to just one newsletter, but I can see once this gets released then that I will probably have newsletters on different topics. And the really cool thing is I have people following the series that don't follow me or aren't connected to me. So it seems to have a little bit more of a life than just writing individual articles or LinkedIn posts. I created both like a WordPress blog and the LinkedIn articles. And by far, the LinkedIn newsletter is getting more traction than the blog version. So I really like that new feature of LinkedIn.

[00:16:31] Yeah, it's been great. I. As soon as I saw Joel Lindstrom is starting a newsletter, I said, oh, give it away. I'll try that out. See what it's all about. And yet I've continued reading.

[00:16:42] I don't know when they're going to release it as more of a general feature, but I would imagine it's coming soon. Once they do, I think you'll really like it. I think the problem with articles is they've just been kind of one off things. They have good findability because you can find them through Google and other places. But, you know, it seems like this is the missing piece to make articles a little bit more sticky.

[00:17:09] Yeah. If you have a topic where you have some authority or want to be able to communicate a lot without just doing a novel in a single post. It gives a way to be able to chunk that out and get good feedback from people, because when you are managing your own blog and that type of thing, you know how many people are going and leaving meaningful comments or interacting or sharing their views. If it's within LinkedIn and doing that, I think it will be a pretty cool feature. I'll take advantage of it once it is a little more prime time.

[00:17:50] So you mentioned you're moving. Where and why are you moving, Matthew?

[00:17:54] So I am moving within Minnesota. This is not weather driven. Actually, it will only be about a 10, 15 minute drive from where we are now.

[00:18:10] But so my kids are going to be in school age, coming up in the near future here. And we wanted to try to think through where do we want to be for them to go through all of their schooling and hopefully, depending on what happens, not have to move because of you need to go to a different school or not thinking that that far ahead. So we started the search. It was about eight months ago at this point that we started casually looking with a timeline of within the next couple of years, we want to try to move in. Sure enough, we found one that we were really excited about, with a good school district that we're excited about there. And a little more space. We like what we have. But as the kids start to get and a little bit more space to themselves, it'll give them that that space that they need.

[00:19:17] Great. I'm going to bring back a feature that we haven't done for for a while, which is “is that productive.”

[00:19:34] So for today's is that productive, I'm going to review my smart pen. This is something I have been using for over a year. I intentionally wanted to live with it for a while before I reviewed it. We have talked about Evernote and OneNote, and we have talked about physically writing your journal versus electronic notes. The idea of a smart pen is the merging of the two: a physical pen that can easily be transitioned into digital notes. So the pen that I started with is the Neo Smartpen N2, which is a pen that uses a specially coated paper. You can buy notebooks, such as the Moleskin notebooks, the ones that look a little bulbous, the paper sticks a little bit. It works with them. And the idea is you take notes like you would normally take notes, but you can sync those notes to your phone, to your computer, to your iPad, to almost any device. It will sync and OCR your notes. You can sync directly to OneNote or Evernote. And it's something that I found pretty indispensable. And I said my original pen because I broke my original path. I somehow damaged the sensor.

[00:21:04] I think I pushed the pen part too far in or something. And so I had to replace it because it actually got in 2018, it was out of warranty. So there's also the Moleskine version, which is the Pen+, which is basically the Neo Smatpen N2 and branded Moleskin. They're shaped a little bit differently. The N2 is more rounded where the Moleskin is kind of flatter. They have the same technology in them. But I find the Moleskine version feels better to hold In some ways, but either one are not are not bad.

And I had terrible handwriting. One of my goals has been, over the last year and a half, to improve my handwriting. And I've been successful with that. But it successfully transcribes my handwriting.

I'll give you a for instance, I was in a meeting where we were doing discovery and then transitioning the notes into user stories into Azure DevOps. So I intentionally just wrote in my Moleskine with Moleskine Pen + notebook rather than typing them into my computer. Then I was able to very quickly sync my notes, take the text transcrption, wordsmith it, and then copy and paste it into stories.

[00:22:26] And it it went very quickly. So I find it I find it extremely effective. Not every note I want to keep, but it's kind of per page I can choose. There's als a little checkbox. If you want email the notes to somebody, you can just check it. And when you sync with the app, it will email it. And what I find very useful about it is I can go into meeting and don't have to fire my laptop. I can be writing in my notebook and it saves me a ton of time transitioning that into OneNote, sharing the notes with other people, or taking an OCR of the notes. There are other things like the Rocket Notebook, where you use a regular notebook with specially designed paper to scan it with the phone. I find that the smart pen is better and there's other smart pens like I think there's one called the live scribe or something. I haven't tried those. But as for the Neo N2 or the Moleskine Pen +, which is basically N2, I would say that for me it is productive and saves me a ton of time.

[00:23:32] All right. Well, that's cool. I don't know. I mean, I still like my pen and paper for both journaling and for planning. And I'll call it more limited note taking. And my go to is still the Office Lens app to be able to pull that in, push directly into a OneNote notebook. And I can choose from either my work or my personal one notes or drop it into PDF or any of those kind of things. So that's that's still my go to I haven't graduated to trying that digital pen.

[00:24:13] Right. When (the digital pen) syncs, I don't know how it does it, but if I have a red notebook and a black notebook and if I write in the red notebook and I write in the black notebook, it knows which notebook that I'm I'm writing it in. So I don't have to deal with each page necessarily. I can just sync the pen. I've actually got three or four different notebooks, one to use for more of a journal, one I use for just personal to do type things, and one I use for meeting notes, And it keeps them separate. So you could you could do the same thing with Office Lens or whatever. So I’m not saying you have to use a digital pen. I'm just saying for me, it's very productive.

[00:25:03] The pen and multi notebook combo. Exactly.

[00:25:09] So kind of kind of related to that. Have you tried the collection feature in the chromium Edge Dev?

[00:25:19] So I have not tried that yet.

[00:25:21] I did write about that in one of my articles on my learning series, and it is something I find to be a very useful learning tool. Specifically, you can have multiple collections, you can drag and drop text and images. It's basically like the clip to OneNote, but having it in the browser and being able to build the collection, and then you can send the whole collection to OneNote or whatever you want to.

[00:25:45] I found that useful, especially for learning, because you go through Microsoft Learn, or whatever learning content you want and  just grab these snippets, put them in the collections, arrange it the way you want to, and then copy that to OneNote. It could be from different pages versus sending each snippet to one note. It's kind of easier to arrange it the way you want and build the build the collection, then send it somewhere.

[00:26:14] Sure. Now, as you're using that, are you finding that you get stuff that's like partially done in transition, sitting in that collection and hot? How do you not have orphaned content that sits out in those collections?

[00:26:32] I don’t have orphaned content. For example, when I'm studying for my field service exam, I have a collection for resource scheduling. So as I go through the multiple articles about resource scheduling, I'm grabbing sections or lists, such as the statuses of work items, because I know that's probably going to be on the exam.

[00:27:00] And then there's a diagram of the stages of work and I'll drag that over. And so then you can rearrange those pieces, drag them up, drag them down, delete them, whatever. What I'm building is kind of a study sheet that has all that detail that I want to remember on it.

[00:27:24] Got it. OK.

[00:27:25] And it's live. So if you have part of a Web site on there, you can click on it to go directly to that section of the webpage. Right in the browser.

[00:27:37] Yeah, I do like that concept, though, I feel I would have to try it, but I would still be worried that it would be one other thing to manage. I'd be trying to think back to where is that content stored, and I won't necessarily remember it was part of my learning that I was doing there. I'll try to go search one note. It's not there. It's one where I think I'd have to get hands on to figure out what the actual workflow would look like for me. That’s not a judgment, good or bad. I just can't see how that's going to land. Or I've maybe tried too many of those things and thought “oh, this is going to be great.” But it turns out it's just one more place to have to go look for something later.

[00:28:25] I don't think I'd make it my permanent home for anything. That's not what I did. I used it when I'm in a session learning things and collecting pieces about them. But I then moved it to OneNote.

[00:28:38] Yeah. And that's like a staging area.

[00:28:41] But also, I was recently researching mattresses, for example, and going to different pages that had different models and pages like Consumer Reports. Besides learning, I found Collections to be very helpful when compiling research amongst different pages for something you want to purchase as a way to collect all that information arranged the way you want. Maybe you're not keeping it permanently, it might just be for that specific focused time, then delete the collection. But I think if I was going to keep it in perpetuity and come back in and be able to find it a year from now, I would agree with you. I wouldn't keep it there permanently.

[00:29:27] Yeah. So it's important then to have that habit of actually moving it somewhere if you want to be able to get it, get it later. Otherwise, you have that challenge of one more place of contact. So either stick a fork in it because it's done or move it forward to a more permanent repository.

[00:29:45] The thing about me and taking notes. They're not so much for perpetuity. I have very few notebooks that I need to keep for long term.

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic and D365UG.

This week we are re-joined by MVP Sukrut Parab and Sr. Architect Satish Panwar to talk about what you need to know about ALM best practices for a Dynamics 365 F&O deployment.

Useful links:

 Build and Test Automation -https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/perf-test/continuous-build-test-automation  Sys Test Framework -https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/perf-test/testing-validation Azure dev ops Auto upload of package - https://community.dynamics.com/365/financeandoperations/b/newdynamicsax/posts/first-azure-devops-task-released Azure dev ops task to deploy code - https://community.dynamics.com/365/financeandoperations/b/newdynamicsax/posts/azure-devops-task-to-deploy-code Version control - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/dev-tools/version-control-metadata-navigation

This episode is brought to you by D365UG.

Sara Critchley joins Shawn Tabor to talk about customer service (after they finish talking about food).

Why is customer service important?

How has customer service in Dynamics 365 changed in recent years?

Where should you start?

The changing world of omnichannel.

Why can't Flow Joe get any balsamic vinegar kettle crisps in Canada?

Please join the conversation and tell us what you think. What have your best and worst customer service experiences been? Where do you start in a Dynamics 365 customer service deployment?

Follow Sarah Critchley:

Sarah on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahcritchley/

…and check out her blog at:

https://www.crmcat.co.uk/

…and her YouTube channel at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_qeQBj6-nQtALIWRBbqCQ

It's the final Power Platform Brief of 2019.  Bringing updates on Microsoft's Power Platform including connectors for components, improved unified interface, Teams domination and an interview with Yesflow co-founder Scott Millwood.  

This episode is brought to you by D365UG.

Today we have a F&O focused episode with MVP Sukrut Parab and Sr. Architect Satish Panwar

Discussed in this episode:

Links:

Sukrut Parab

Satish Panwar

We're back! The Power Platform Daily Brief is now just the Power Platform Brief.  We'll continue to focus on the news and updates related to all thing Microsoft Power Platform and we're still talking to the interesting people who make this community great.

In this episode, we discuss the death of Talent, new connectors, Unified Interface scheduling and we talk to John Gravely about his new business, SalesSpark.

Time for another personal productivity and effectiveness podcast  (brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic), and the goal of this episode is “limit your WIP (work in progress). With due credit to Personal Kanban, WIP is a concept from Kanban that refers to the number of things that you are working on at any one time. In your personal life, it can be easy to say yes to too many things and overestimate your capacity. This can increase your stress level and make you ineffective, and result in poor quality output.

This ties into re-evaluating what you are currently doing, as your priorities may change over time. Something that is low value now might be higher value tomorrow. This is one of the reasons we have changed our focus and release cadence at CRM Audio—by reducing the number of series and episodes we are producing, we can hopefully increase quality and value of the output.

We also discuss some of the latest updates to some of our favorite productivity tools. OneNote desktop is back from the dead, and Matthew is excited about the Microsoft Fluid Framework and its promise of making office documents and applications work better together.

We have discussed Microsoft MyAnalytics and how it can help you quantify how you are spending your work time by analyzing the digital dust of your meetings, emails, and conversations. But if you haven’t checked it out for a while, it has become significantly more useful—it will now proactively discuss focus time and block it off on your calendar, help you plan for upcoming meetings and see how what percentage of attendees have accepted and if you forgot to insert a web meeting link, and will block off time on your calendar to prepare for meetings or review documents that have been sent to you.

We end with a review of one of our most frequently used tools, Snagit from TechSmith. You know how great it is for making screenshots, but did you know that you can also use it to record video screencasts? And that it is easy to take high quality screenshots from your video?

In today's episode (brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic), we are joined by Sean McNellis, Principal Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft. Sean has worked for Microsoft since the release of CRM 1.0, and in this episode, Shawn talks about proven practices that he is using with enterprise customers.

Topics discussed in this episode:

What is a PFE How has Sean's job changed with the move to the cloud? The impact of canvas apps and Power Automate flows on enterprise customers Why you need a Center of Excellence (COE) for business applications success Modern integration patterns Simplifying integrations with Azure Service Bus Reliability with Azure Service Bus Traffic Manager vs. plugin Best practices vs proven practices Managed vs unmanaged solutions How unmanaged solutions are like water damage CI/CD and process automation Sean's Powershell libraries and PowerShell cmdlets Why you need to use Application Users Dealing with API limits

Links:

This episode is brought to you by Power Platform UG.

Microsoft is giving away Surface earbuds to one lucky listener–register at https://aka.ms/PodcastSweepstakes for your chance to win.

This is our last episode from Microsoft Ignite 2019, and today we talk with Vivek Bavishi (That API Guy) about what it means to be a #PowerAddict and best practices for development of Power Apps.

Topics discussed on the show:

This is our second episode recorded at the Microsoft Ignite podcast center. Today's guest is Stephen Siciliano, Principal Group PM for Power Automate. MVP Jerry Weinstock also joins us to discuss his white paper "A guide to building enterprise-ready flows." 

During Ignite 2019, Microsoft announced the rebranding of Microsoft Flow as Power Automate. During this episode, we delve into the rebranding of the platform and some best practices for Power Automate flows.

Reminder: Microsoft is giving away Surface earbuds to one lucky listener–register at https://aka.ms/PodcastSweepstakes for your chance to win.

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

Show notes:

What is Power Automate?

Power Automate in one sense is a new name for what we know and love as Microsoft Flow. We decided that now was the perfect time to make it part of the Power family, along with Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agent.

What was the thought process behind the name change?

Another factor driving the change was the introduction of Robotic Process Automation. With RPA you can now build automation that uses the user interface of applications to be able to automate them. So you can write data to them, read data from them, and simulate mouse clicks. There are a bunch of applications out there that don’t have any api—even with custom connectors, you have to have some kind of rest api to be able to work with something. Our goal with the new UI flow capability is to open the door to anything that you can do on your PC you can now automate with power automate.

The way that RPA works is you have to directly interact with the UI. There are two types of RPA, one is attended RPA. That means somebody is actually sitting at the computer and has the UI in front of them and presses a button and it pulls the data from the application, the other type of RPA is called on attended RPA, which runs somewhere else without a human interacting with it. The best place to run that is in an Azure VM. For on attended RPA, you need to make sure that the automation does not depend on any type of human interaction, including things like login, getting credentials, handling error handling, for example you might have a dialog box pop up. The benefit of unattended RPA is you can scale it and have multiple operations happening in parallel.

How do you manage performance with RPA?

When you record a UI Flow, you record everything, including delays waiting for things to pop up and for jobs to complete, and you can adjust the amount of time that it takes. Say you have it save a file, and sometimes it takes twice as long, we have built-in retries, so if the dialog hasn’t appeared yet we will keep retrying to look for that control for some period of time until it pops up. You need to make sure that as you are building your flows you are testing them across a variety of file sizes and data types to make sure that it works, so that when it takes longer the retry policy will catch it, otherwise you may find yourself in a situation where your process times out and fails.

Will there be an RPA custom connector?

Today we support two types of technology: for Windows applications, we use the UI automation framework that is included in modern versions of Windows and is the same framework that all of the accessibility features in Windows use. As long as the application supports the UI automation APIs, we can automate it.

For web applications, we use a framework called Selenium, which is a very common web automation framework. As long as your web app is scriptable via Selenium, that works as well.

There are some applications that don’t work with the Windows UI automation framework and are not web-based. For those applications today we don’t do a very good job of handling automation for them. For example, if you hover over Java-based application, you will get a warning that we don’t support this application yet. Over the next few months we are going to add a few more application types that we can support, and someday even having a custom connector equivalent where we can have our own custom application type is something we’ve thought about, but we think that the UI automation framework and Selenium will cover the majority of applications, and what we are looking at doing is leverage Computer Vision to provide automation, even if there is no API at all.

How will this help on-premises customers?

The Power Automate service runs in the cloud, but with the on-premise data gateway, which we have had for almost five years, you can connect to anything running on-premise, and the UI flow itself executes locally on the machine. So theoretically, if you have a long-running process, you could unplug the ethernet cable while the process is running and if you plug it in again before the process finishes, it will just work. We don’t support offline yet where I could queue things up and send them down to the machine and replay them later, but that’s another thing that we are looking at in the future.

Do we still say we are building “flows?”

Absolutely—“flow” is like the parent class, the base for everything. The core thing is a flow. There are different types of flows:

You use Power Automate to create flows.

What does this mean for Logic Apps? Any plans to bring RPA functionality to Logic Apps?

Not exactly—even before these announcements we had functionality in Flow that was not in Logic Apps. Business Process Flow and building on CDS solutions are some examples. We are going to continue to invest in types of flows that are not the automated flows, which are the Logic Apps equivalents. As we continue to invest in Business Process Flow and UI Flow, these are additional types of abstractions that continue to build on top of that layer, and these won’t necessarily be brought back into the Logic Apps code base.

Other topics discussed in this episode:

We are podcasting from the Ignite podcast booth this week. You could win Surface earbuds--register at https://aka.ms/PodcastSweepstakes for your chance to win.

Today Ben Vollmer from Microsoft joins Shawn Tabor, Sarah Jelinek, and Joel Lindstrom to talk about how AI in the Power Platform has advanced and exploded into all areas of the Power Platform and Dynamics 365.

Discussed on this episode:

Watch the Ignite Vision Keynote with Satya Nadella | Microsoft Ignite 2019 ...

Join us later this week for episodes about Power Automate and Power Apps.

In this episode, I announce some changes going on at CRM Audio and share my thoughts on self-service license purchase options for the Power Platform. This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

Microsoft recently posted a notification in the Microsoft 365 Message Center this week notifying customers that starting in mid-November, end users would be able to start purchasing licenses directly without Administrator approval.

This has resulted in the typical doomsday reaction by some people in the community. It seems like whenever Microsoft announces some change to the way that software is sold or licensed, somebody will be outraged. This speaks to the breath of Microsoft’s customer bases, and you can’t always make everybody happy.

Predictions are made that CIO’s won’t trust the platform and won’t use it. Yet, based on Microsoft’s latest financial numbers, they are doing something right and the sky is not falling.

I think that, like usual, this outrage is overblown, some arising from misunderstanding what is happening, and some from people who work for very large enterprises not recognizing that the majority of companies' environments are not like theirs.

The Power Platform is just that—a platform. Saying that end users can buy their own licenses does not mean that they can buy access to data—it means that they can buy licenses—using their own money—to build their own apps, flows, and reports. It doesn’t give them the ability to bypass any corporate data governance.

So here is why I think that self-service license options are nothing to fear:

Users can do it anyway. Even before the self-service option is introduced, if an employee or department wants to build PowerApps or use Power BI, they can buy their own licenses outside of your tenant. With the self-service option, at least you get visibility for who is using Power Platform and your data and access policies still apply. Also, many Office 365 services and add-ons can be purchased and used without admin approval today, so what is the difference? Users can do it with most competing systems. Slack, Salesforce, and Lucidchart grew to what they are today by selling their services directly to individuals and departments without corporate approval. In many companies, these grew to be corporate standards based on the number of people in the organization that were using them. Saying that CIO’s will not use Power Platform because they offer self-service license purchases is a fallacy because what alternative are they going to use that doesn’t also allow self-service license purchases without administrator approval? Why should Microsoft be held to a different standard than equivalent services? You still maintain control—DLP rules determine what connectors can be used in end-users’ apps and flows, security roles in SharePoint and CDS grant or block what records they can access and actions they can perform in corporate systems, and Active Directory SSO limits where users can log in to Power Platform apps and services. Plus you have full visibility for who have purchased licenses and what they are doing with them. And most importantly, just because an end-user buys a license, that doesn’t give them access to your precious corporate data. How is someone buying a license and building an app with their own data any different than someone doing the same thing with an Excel spreadsheet? If your organization has a policy against people buying their own licenses to build apps, you can see who is doing this and go knock them in the head or cut off their access to the other services.

Based on these reasons, I feel this is nothing to worry about. Would it have been better to give the option to disable self-service license purchases? Maybe. Will some admin somewhere not know about this and have users build ninja IT? Likely. Is it reasonable to say Microsoft shouldn’t do this when it would put them at a competitive disadvantage in many situations? Absolutely not.

This episode is brought to you by mscrm-addons.

Microsoft Ignite 2019 is two weeks away, and Anna Chu from Microsoft joins us to share the excitement.

As Microsoft 365 Product Marketing Manager, Anna is responsible for working across the Microsoft Tech Community and MVP communities to engage with the IT Pro audience. This involves driving partnerships between engineering and marketing that influence product roadmaps and leading community strategy to enable best practice sharing between customers – in turn facilitating a natural feedback loop between the people who build Microsoft Office products and services and the people who implement them. She is also the Community Strategy Lead for major Microsoft events such as Microsoft Ignite and Microsoft Ignite | The Tour. 

Discussed in this episode:

Can't attend Ignite in person? You can still make a schedule and watch sessions via live stream when they happen at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ignite. This year you can also interact with presenters and submit questions.

This episode is brought to you by mscrm-addons.com.

Tony Stein from Dynamics Communities joins us to talk about what you can expect from next week's user group summit.

Music: Ben Vollmer Song

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

Next week is User Group Summit 2019, and to help get ready we have Nick Doelman, Darly LaBar, Jonas Rapp, Jim Novak, and Sara Lagerquist join Joel Lindstrom and George Doubinski to talk about their sessions. Even if you aren't attending the conference, you will learn something from this episode, as each panelist shares some of the tips that they are going to present in their sessions.

Sessions mentioned on this episode:

DEV03 - Developing XrmToolBox Tools https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/summit-orlando/fsPopup.asp?embedded=true&pfp=D365CEcrm&Mode=presInfo&PresentationID=583336

DEV08 - Working With Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/summit-orlando/fsPopup.asp?embedded=true&pfp=D365CEcrm&Mode=presInfo&PresentationID=583335

PP11 - Building Canvas Apps - Time to Jump on the Bandwagon https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/summit-orlando/fsPopup.asp?Mode=presInfo&PresentationID=583381

NAAP06 - 5 Steps to Create PowerApps for Any Device https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/summit-orlando/fsPopup.asp?Mode=presInfo&PresentationID=583382

EXCE03 - Let's Build an XrmToolBox Tool! https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/summit-orlando/fsPopup.asp?Mode=presInfo&PresentationID=583380

DEV07 - Creating a Plugin With Unit Tests From Scratch https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/summit-orlando/fsPopup.asp?Mode=presInfo&PresentationID=583252

ADM15 - Improve Your Dynamics 365 Data Quality With a PowerApp https://cdmcd.co/Rz6Z4

UI04 - Tips to Help Drive an Aggressive CRM Roadmap at Your Organization https://cdmcd.co/baqKJ

Music: Ben Vollmer Song

This episode is brought to you by ClickLearn.

In this episode:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

Mark & Iain talk about their recent visit to DynamicsPower Dublin! With a rundown on the sessions, Mark talks about his recent run on the PowerPlatform24 event and we cap it off with the new Surface Gadgets.

Remember that user group summit is coming up in Orlando October 15-18. Register now.

This episode is brought to you by KingswaySoft.

In today's Power Platform Daily Brief:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by  Maplytics by Inogic.

Jon Levesque, Microsoft Flow evangelist, joins us today to talk about how to demo Flow. You know Flow is awesome, so you want to demo it at conferences and user group meetings--what are some of Jon's tricks for successfully demoing Microsoft Flow?

Topics in this episode:

Plus how you can use Microsoft Flow to prank your friends.

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:

Service update 84 rolls out in North America on the 26th. Some highlights addressed by this fix:

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.

Time for a CRM Audio episode with George Doubinski, Shawn Tabor, and Joel Lindstrom (brought to you by ClickLearn). In this week's episode we talk about the following topics:

This is the Power Platform Daily Brief for September 16, 2019. This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

Topics and links for today's daily brief:

Plus, Joel is preparing for the PowerPlatform 24, D365UG summit, and other conferences. He shares his process for how to prepare to deliver a conference presentation.

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by ClickLearn.

Today Mark & Iain talk about the end of the classic UI, Marketing Segments and the Ignite World Tour

Links

24 Hour XRM Virtual Conference - https://www.xrmvirtual.com/

Charles Lamanna Blog - https://community.dynamics.com/365/b/365teamblog/posts/announcing-the-timeline-to-move-to-unified-interface-2137660788

Marketing Segments Update - https://365community.online/segments-explained

Dilyana Radulova – Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilyana-radulova

Twitter https://twitter.com/DilyanaRadulova

Ignite World Tour - https://www.notify.msignite-the-tour.microsoft.com/

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This is the #PowerPlatform Daily Brief for Sept 9, 2019 (brought to you by KingswaySoft).

In today's daily brief:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

Brad Koontz sits down with Malin Donoso Martnes, the first D365 for Talent MVP, to discuss Dynamics Talent and monster trucks run amok in Sweden. 

Links:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This is the Power Platform Daily Brief for Sept 5 (brought to you by ClickLearn).

Today Mark and Iain review recent community blog posts:

Links:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by D365UG.

Topics in this episode:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

In today's daily brief:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode of CRM Audio is brought to you by Clicklearn.

Today is classic CRM Audio, with George Doubinski, Shawn Tabor, and Joel Lindstrom

Topics in today's episode:

Have any topic suggestions? Send them to voice@crm.audio.

Michal Guzowski talks about his Delegation Learning app, and 10 things he wished he knew before becoming a #PowerAddict

Link:

https://michalguzowski.pl/

This episode is brought to you by mscrm-addons.com

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by D365UG.

Daryl LaBar brings today's daily brief, and he lets us know about an upcoming change from Microsoft that might break your workflow assemblies. Check your code and be prepared.

Read more at:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/common-data-service/best-practices/business-logic/remove-unsupported-code-using-reflection-workflow-activities

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by ClickLearn.

In today's daily brief:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by Maplytics by Inogic.

On today's Power Platform Daily Brief we are happy to announce a new Power Platform and Dynamics 365 conference called Power Platform 24. This world-wide virtual conference will be 24 hours of great content about Microsoft Flow, Dynamics 365, PowerApps, and Power BI September 25.

You can be a speaker--submit your proposals now at https://sessionize.com/power-platform-24/.

We also discuss some of the great enhancements to Unified Interface and model-driven PowerApps, including enhancements to error messages, improvements to the activity timeline, and the return of save and new.

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by KingswaySoft. Sukrut Parab joins us to talk about the early release of D365 F&O. Sukrut is frequently one of the top contributors in the Dynamics 365 F&O community forums, and he is the subject of this month's community spotlight. https://community.dynamics.com/365/b/spotlight/posts/sukrut-parab---community-spotlight-883753866

Topics in this episode: F&O vs. Unified Operations Self Service Deployments F&O monthly updates Dual write and the phase plan Export data NRT to Azure data lake Flow triggers for D365 F&O business events Product catalog F&O vs. CE What existing customers need to do to get ready for wave 2

Links:

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by ClickLearn.

Today Mark is Joined by Mike Hartley (@Hart365) to talk about License pricing, Reference Sections & TDI Hack For Good

You Can find the blogs and sites referenced

https://TDI.Rocks

https://stevemordue.com/reduce-your-dynamics-365-license-costs-by-92-percent/

And you can find Mike at the following

Twitter @Hart365

Linkedin linkedin.com/in/mikebhartley

Website https://hartofthemidlands.co.uk

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode is brought to you by mscrm-addons.com.

Topics in today's daily brief:

Music:www.purple-planet.com

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

This episode is brought to you by ClickLearn.

Mark Christie and Iain Connolly discuss some recent previews and licensing updates.