Reflections on a wonderful day at UK Dynamics 365 Power Property User Groups meeting, June 2023

I had the pleasure of returning to 微软 's London offices for the UK Dynamics 365 & Power Platform User Groups meeting yesterday, 7 months after my first ever User Group meet there.

?Much has happened over this time.?Back in November I wasn't sure where I was going and very much felt my "first time attendee" status.

?Yesterday, I walked more confidently into the building and was almost immediately engulfed in a welcoming hug from AJ Zafar (for those who haven't met me in person yet but know AJ, I barely come up to his shoulders!).

?This is the power of .

?

Re-reading my very first LinkedIn article - 'Why User Groups are for everyone, wherever you are on your journey', which I wrote following that November day, also brought much reflection.

?Most of the sessions I attended gave me "enabling, bite-sized nuggets of condensed learning" on , , Microsoft Azure DevOps Pipelines, and a personally satisfying first proper look at the in Mark Carrington and Joe G. 's fun Taskmaster-style challenge against "the might of Azure".?

?Whereas yesterday, as you will see in this article, my schedule had a discernible pivot towards sessions about how we can do things differently - different tools, different approaches, different mind-sets.

?

?

We wouldn't have been at 微软 if there hadn't have been some sort of technical hiccup, but Andrew Bibby coped with having to do his keynote to the joined rooms with just one projector screen like the pro he is.

? Mark O. followed in style, and as Dan Barber ???? called out with his LinkedIn post at the time, managed to last a whole minute before mentioning AI in his Microsoft Road map for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform session; and also book-ended it with a courageous live demo of using copilot to build Chris Huntingford ?? a Birthday Party App!

?

Fortunately Mark had his own copilot Ana Welch back alongside to bring some common sense grounding inbetween, reminding us that copilot is all about the quality, safety and security of the data.?More on that later…?

?From global innovation I went into a session about local innovation, with celebrated founder of the Tech Trump Cards initiative Laura W. showing us the power of the new PowerPoint for PowerApps tool.

?

Yes - that's right; Powerpoint .

?

Yes, I know it's not a "new" tool, but from the amount of practical and creative content Laura showed us was possible, from functionalities I had no idea had, it might as well have been.

?I was particularly blown away by its ability to produce when designing Power Apps.?I should have taken a short video instead, as the picture below doesn't do justice to the way Laura had the proof of concept mobile app on the left cycling through its main screens - in !!?

?

Thankfully, Laura said that she's intending to produce a series of to share her knowledge with us, and I'd like to think that I make a compelling business case (aka I said "that one first please!" repeatedly whilst holding my phone under her nose) for 'creating wireframes' to be up there as one of the first she does.?

?

I hadn't realised that there was a further session immediately after Laura's, which had been one of the new-to-be-trialled 20 minute sessions, so Areti Iles ' session on Making the most out of Customer Voice was a pleasant surprise.?

?Very much another tool that many of us have included for free with other licences and/or applications we have, that we don't make the most of:?

? Vlad Sarov 's pre-lunch session on Can you move from Dynamics 365 to the Power Platform worked through the pro's & con's, barriers and risks, of moving down to Power Platform and its lower-cost licences.

?Unfortunately for those few of us in the room who were on or straddled into the side of things, at the moment this isn't recommended.?The same applied to anyone using the Restricted entity, due to the need for Dynamics'-using Customer Contact Centre agents to be able to create, read, update and delete self-created cases (e.g. employee self-service) or those created on behalf of customers.

?This isn't a Boolean all-or-nothing choice, however; and there's nothing stopping you from carrying out an options appraisal on all the ways you currently use (or, as Vlad pointed out, don't fully use) ' Out of the Box (OOB) features.

?

And if the cost savings somehow aren't enough and you face pushback from arguments that the transition would be too difficult, the has a suite of tools to counter any such naysayers:

?Now where have I heard of the XRM Toolbox before…

?

?I was lucky that Areti Iles and I bumped into each other as we went into the final Q&A panel, as it gave me the opportunity to apologise for missing her session on Getting Started with Power Automate and Dataverse.

?Having popped down to the ground floor for a post-lunch coffee with AJ (please 微软 , a post lunch pep-up coffee surely wouldn't be too much to ask?!), we lost track of time getting a spot of fresh air and brainstorming.?A hugely valuable 'session' for me in its own right!

?

Fortunately we managed to get back upstairs in time for Chris Huntingford ?? 's The Importance of Data Driven Solution Design session.

?Everything that Chris said during his session on User and Data-driven design screamed common-sense to me.?But I recognise that I have the privilege of:

1. being a 'Business' Solution Architect, with an inherent understanding of the user's story,

and

2. having the DP-900 Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals certificate behind me, the learning from which is been built on and reinforced by many of the modules I'm currently working through.

?

If you're not lucky enough to be in such a privileged position, I strongly urge you to get hold of Chris's slide pack when it's available.

?Chris might claim that he doesn't do 'pretty', but what he's produced is a striking, evidence-based Value Statement and Guide.

?At the beginning of his session, Chris kindly said when I didn't put my hand up to his question on who in the room was a consultant, that whilst I might not think it, I was one.

?The definition of consultant is "a person who provides expert advice professionally".?

?Every one of us in that room needs to become experts in putting users and data first, to make sure our applications - safely containerised in their solutions - get productionised!

?As Andrew Welch said at the beginning of his and Ana Welch 's final main session of the day, he couldn't have asked for a better opening act to this third time of presenting the Enterprise Architecting an Ecosystem, than Chris' on the importance of Data in the .

?

Anyone who reads my articles will know I'm a big fan of Andrew and Ana's work, so I'd encourage you to have a look at those articles if you're interested in my thoughts in this area.

?What has changed since then, and what Andrew drew our attention to, is the change to their with Microsoft's announcement of as the Single Source of Truth and, whilst not yet included, the introduction of Microsoft Fabric .

?Is it nothing more than a marketing wrapper around that bottom right hand corner??

Or will it be something far more enabling and transformative?

?

I'll let you know in my write up of the next London UK D365PPUG meeting in six months' time!

?