Why User Groups are for everyone, wherever you are on your journey

I attended my first D365PPUG meeting last Thursday 17th November in Paddington, London.

?I've already commented on other attendee's posts how much I enjoyed myself and found it a welcoming environment.

?But I wanted to reach out to those of you who might be in the early weeks/months/years of working with #MicrosoftDynamics or the #PowerPlatform, or #SharePoint, #OneDrive, #Dataverse, #Azure… the list goes on, and have seen these posts and thought, that's not for me, that's for those who know what they're doing to have a get-together.

?No.?They're not.?User Groups are for everyone, wherever you are on your journey.?This is why.

?For the last 18 months this LinkedIn virtual world and its related offshoots have taken me far and given me much: #proudtobecertified, #fusionteams, #podcastlife. You can see this journey in my previous posts.

?But in that single day at the D365PPUG:

• ?I experienced the enthusiasm and energy that 微软 have for the innovations they're bringing to us through their road map for D365 and PP, and their commitment to help and support the #UserGroup and #community.
• ?In one session seeing how easy it is to achieve more integration between #PowerApps and #MSTeams by using the Teams' connector to bring its intelligence into apps,
• and then later on in another how you can use #PowerAutomate to create your own structures in SharePoint and Teams that can leverage the native integrations into #Dynamics and the wider Power Platform in multiple ways.
• ?Watching a live demo of the #Pipeline end of the #Azure #DevOps I use every day designing out solutions and being part of a candid conversation on its benefits and limitations.
• ?Taking a closer, and again candid, look at Virtual Tables, at a time when Microsoft seem to be strongly encouraging a move away from them towards Dual Write and the integration of #D365FO to the Power Platform environment and, in turn, with Dataverse and a #Datalake solution.
• ?And rounding off the day with a fun session pitting the XRMToolBox tool against the 'might' of Azure in a number of Taskmaster-style challenges.?On a personal note, I'm a great fan of the XrmToolCast #podcast, but until the UG meeting hadn't actually seen the product itself, so it was great to see the range of its features and the pro's and con's of the use of each to solve the challenges presented.?

?I'll certainly not listen to the XrmToolCast podcast in the same way again!!

??It would have taken me weeks (given the demands of the day job) of researching and reading blogs, articles and MS Learning documents on each of these subjects, all of which are meaningful and current in my work.?

?Now, with these #enabling bite-sized nuggets of condensed learning, I'm able to target my follow-on reading and make better use of that most precious of resources - time.

?Thanking Mark O. , Stuart Ridout , Peter Baddeley , Bj?rn Zahnow , Mark Carrington and Joe G. for their enabling this by giving their time to the User Group, the common theme to the responses I got back was that they were glad that their sessions had been valuable to me and that it was nice for them to hear when someone was able to take something away from it.

?This is why User Groups are for everyone, wherever you are on your journey.?You might not be ready to stand up and lead your own presentation yet, but you can contribute by engaging, asking those questions that are meaningful to you, and demonstrating the value you've taken away from the interaction.

?And if you do have knowledge and learning that you regularly share with colleagues and new team members where you work, come and share it with us too.?It could truly make a meaningful difference to your audience.