The Microsoft Fabric Tour has over 500 people with four overflow rooms.

Data is Big!

Thanks to seattledataai.org for organizing!

Plus extra thanks to iLink Digital and Lumel for sponsoring the event!

The Microsoft Fabric Tour has over 500 people with four overflow rooms.

Data is Big!

Thanks to seattledataai.org for organizing!

Plus extra thanks to iLink Digital and Lumel for sponsoring the event!

Kicking off a wonderful Saturday at the Microsoft Reactor building. The topic of the day is Microsoft Fabric! People are buzzing around, and it is like watching the opening of the Olympics. Music is playing, banners are being hung, and gallons of coffee are walking through the front door. Given that I generally attend Microsoft Dataverse, Power Platform or Microsoft Dynamics 365 events, it is fun to be surrounded by a different set of people and energies. I am very much looking forward to the day. 

Model Context Protocol servers or MCP Servers

Just a few of the many to choose from

Awesome MCP Servers

Best MCP Servers and Clients List

"The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that acts like a universal connector for AI applications. MCP allows AI to access external tools and data sources, such as cloud storage or code repositories, in a standardized way. This makes it easier to build AI-powered tools that can interact with the real world, from automating tasks to fetching live data."  retrieved from 10 Best MCP Servers You Need To Know About – Bind AI May 23, 2025.

BUT TELL ME MORE 

Okay so I really appreciate articles that "Explain it like I am Five" so take a deep dive into this one Explain It Like I’m Five: What the Heck Is an MCP Server? - Phase 2

Now if we put our Microsoft Hat on and look at the Microsoft growing Stack 

Introducing the Azure MCP Server - Azure SDK Blog

Securing the Model Context Protocol: Building a safer agentic future on Windows | Windows Experience Blog

Copilot Studio ! Extend your agent with Model Context Protocol (preview) - Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn

and why are these changing everything?

What are MCP Servers And Why It Changes Everything 

Last year when I was listening to MS Build 2024 and I must admit a lot of it was so technical and so focused on foundation that I wasn't very excited. It was a bit like swimming through the mud. Technology changes daily and although this continued with big changes, it was still the cement of the foundation.

This year listening to MS Build 2025 reality struck a huge "Wow" for me, there really are huge changes that solve real needs and frustrations.

Across the global customer engagement landscape, AI "prompts" are redefining how professionals can engage with customer data. As someone who has implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE across diverse markets, I’ve seen firsthand how organizations are balancing innovation with responsibility. There are data initiatives, privacy alignment, balancing access and overall talking about how to use these new tools while people are using them.

The opportunity is substantial: "according to IDC, organizations that integrate AI into their customer engagement workflows are improving customer lifetime value by 25% on average, while reducing time spent on administrative tasks by up to 40%. These gains aren’t just about efficiency—they’re about accessibility."

For UI/UX designers and solution architects of "heartbeat applications", such as business applications that manage a huge asset pool of critical information, the focus is shifting to building interactive and collaborative access. This evolution doesn’t mean abandoning control—it means creating interfaces that surface the right data at the right time to the right person, without overwhelming the person. It also means building transparency into AI suggestions, so users understand why a recommendation was made. The way we interact with systems is changing and it is changing fast.

As technologist, bridging the gap between business think and technology think, this is not an unusual ask. It is extremely exciting to be able to learn and interact with the software we have long championed AND training and learning curves are reduced. 

One of my favorite tips for anyone diving into learning AI, is to use AI to learn AI.  Ask your favorite AI tool how to write the best prompt or ask AI to build out a training plan for you using your favorite way to learn. The options are endless.

1.  What is the real purpose of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement? 

The goal and purpose of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is to organize everything that you know about any given customer and all of their related contacts while also managing every touchpoint with each contact. Many people also track the relationships between each customer and other customers so that they can find additional opportunities throughout your network for successes and growth.

• There are also the new budding seeds of relationship where a new "lead" might become a potential prospect that then grows into a new customer.
• If you then layer in the AI features via Copilot, you can also use the intelligence engines of AI to find opportunity from this data. Opportunity to create more for your customers, opportunity to solve more issues or opportunity to sell more solutions.
• and given that we are never really starting from scratch, you also get the ability to communicate your well tested processes to those who might not be masters and once communicated, why not automate eliminating human rework.

2) What does it mean to be a Platform? 

We often think of Customer Engagement in terms of sales or customer service or even project management, but Microsoft has built the Power Platform to meet hundreds of different needs. All Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps are Model-Driven Apps, but there are thousands of more possibilities for the platform and millions of solutions in the market. If you need to capture data, organize that data, relate that data to other data, filter the entry of the data against business rules, report on the data, visualize the data, predict future data, use AI (Copilots) to do amazing things across data. The Power Platform has some incredible tools.

• Configure - Answer the questions that developers have embedded into the Model Driven apps to fine tune the choices and features that fit your industry and company.
• Customize - Add fields, data entry forms, business rules, charts, dashboards, lists/views, related and unrelated tables supported by the Power Platform and expected by the continuous development team.
• Extend - Develop on the Power Platform using high code or low code to do even more with the platform. Create custom solutions within a framework of expected patterns (aka following the software developer recommendations and kit (SDK)) All with the ability to tap into or use even more of the Microsoft Framework and stack of awesome or to interact with third party options.

And questions from ChatGPT with my answers in Spring Green.

1. "How customizable is the system to match our unique processes?"

Clients often have distinct workflows and want to know how well the CRM can be tailored without heavy coding. They may also ask about what’s configurable out of the box versus what requires development.

The Power Platform is BUILT to be customized and configured and integrated too.

2. "How do we ensure user adoption?"

Resistance to change is common. Clients want strategies to get buy-in from their team—often asking about training, ease of use, and how to align the CRM with existing habits to increase engagement.

Adoption is driven by a need and a product that solves pain points. Sometimes when we take the first step (MVP) there are still pain points. Given great configuration, good listening, long term scheduling for growth with the platform and organization, the Power Platform solves pain points and provides organization.  You also have tools in the Power Platform Administration to see who is using the system providing even more opportunity for user communication, training and listening. 

3. "Can it integrate with our other systems?"

This includes ERP systems, marketing platforms, customer service tools, and third-party applications. Clients are especially interested in real-time data flow and avoiding silos.

Yes, Integrations are expected with 100s of "API" connectors and the entire Microsoft Stack of options for connecting. There are also out of the box integrations to applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word and Microsoft Sharepoint and Teams and more of the Modern Workplace.

4. "What reports and dashboards can we get out of the box?"

Decision-makers want visibility and insights. They usually ask if the CRM can provide actionable reports without requiring a developer or BI specialist for every update.

The ability to get data out of the Dataverse is part of the heartbeat of the application. Quick views of related data easily seen in a view or a quick click to Excel.  User created charts or dashboards and tight integration with Embedded Power BI.

5. "How long will the project take and what will it cost?"

Even with agile approaches, clients want estimates. They are concerned about scope creep, unexpected expenses, and when they’ll start seeing value from their investment.

The sweet spot would be that a first project run between 3 and 6 months with a team of experts who can extract the business wants, needs and requirements and translate them into the right choices based on the hundreds of different choices. This team would also bring to the table, "been there and done that" in many different situations, so that the choices are easily refined by knowledgeable fit / gap discussions. Consider that 100s of millions of people are using the Power Platform and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps. After the first project, new apps and continuous improvement can be .. well continuous. 

Microsoft DynamicsCon 2025 is in Chicago this week and the buzz is exciting. 

The power of knowledge shared is so incredible. In this world of faster and faster change and more and more to learn, sharing knowledge allows you to learn organically while also doing formal learning through various channels. It also helps to reinforce what you learn through peer conversations. 

If you are unable to attend this year, I am very much hoping that some of the speakers will repost their sessions on YouTube or through other channels of learning.

In today's world of fast paced change and increasing reliance on data it is important to focus on the other side of complexity. Make sure your data is aligned and accessible using the least complex and yet highest quality solution.

Seamless integrations that are technically put into place with considerations such as. 

1) Is the data secure?

2) Is there quality and data review processes in place so that the data is clean and accurate?

3) Can you access the data at the desired speeds?

The Microsoft Stack of technologies continues to deepen and is sometimes hard to explain. Take for instance the "Common Data Universe", Dataverse. More than a Microsoft SQL Server database with layers and layers of role-based entitlement, external security tying deeply into the entire infrastructure using Entra (formerly Active Directory) and so many choices. Choices such as being able to split the database using Business Units which can significantly increase performance. 

If you take Dataverse and then consider that Azure extends the options, you end up with so many technically beautiful possibilities 

• Azure Data Factory: Ingest and transform data from Microsoft and non-Microsoft sources. Azure Data Factory is a managed cloud service that's built for complex hybrid and non-hybrid extract-transform-load (ETL), and data integration projects. Introduction to Azure Data Factory - Azure Data Factory | Microsoft Learn to read more.

• Azure Synapse Analytics: A bit of a learning curve for the technical folks (seen that first hand more than once), but Azure Synapse can be used to create a customer data lake and analyze large datasets.  "Azure Synapse brings together the best of SQL technologies used in enterprise data warehousing, Spark technologies used for big data, Data Explorer for log and time series analytics, Pipelines for data integration and ETL/ELT, and deep integration." retrieved from What is Azure Synapse Analytics? - Azure Synapse Analytics | Microsoft Learn What more do you need? 

ACCESS TO APIs, Of course! 

• Azure API Management: Securely expose data services. Azure API Management. "Azure API Management is made up of an API gateway, a management plane, and a developer portal, with features designed for different audiences in the API ecosystem. These components are Azure-hosted and fully managed by default." Azure API Management - Overview and key concepts | Microsoft Learn Not always required, but really good to know about as the technology options either are layered or are in parallel.

In the Common Data Universe (Dataverse) there are features that came from painful experiences. I remember a number of these gaps that are now happily resolved with choices. One of these features includes all of the different options around the type of date fields that can be created in the Dataverse.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales (and other Microsoft Model Driven Apps) are built to be localized. This means that a person sitting in London and looking at the same database that their peer is looking at in Chicago can see the same data represented in their local area time zone. This is the power of personalized settings, and this is awesome in many situations; however, there are times when you do not want a date to be localized.

Critical in the Insurance industry

The ability to track a date on a claim based on the actual location and date and time at that location that a claim occurred and I want to view that information from anywhere in the world as the location specific information. If I am in London, I don't want that date and time represented in London date and time. I actually want to see the date and time in Chicago date and time, where the claim and incident occurred. 

Partners have the ability to setup Date/Time fields in many different ways. Date Only, Date and Time, Time-Zone Independent ("Not Localized"), and more.

If you want to test your junior resources, ask them about the date and time zone settings in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Power Platform / Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps. 

If they don't know the answer, the following information can be helpful.

The following table contains information about the date and time field behavior and format.

 " Retrieved from Manage date and time data type in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) | Microsoft Learn

and for additional information on localization settings Set personal options in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) | Microsoft Learn

Delivering all of the awesome of a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Project - It is nice to have a full team and ChatGPT did a pretty good job of summarizing some of the roles, definitions and responsibilities. I also popped in and added even more experienced love. 

🔹 1. Product Owner

• Definition: Represents the business and end-users, responsible for defining the product vision and prioritizing features.

• A role held by the customer, aka the SME experts in the industry.

• Responsibilities:

• Defines business requirements and goals.
• Brokers relationships to other business teams whose solutions integrate or need alignment with the project
• Maintains and prioritizes the product backlog (on a regular cadence).
• Clarifies business questions or aligns with the people who can clarify the business questions
• Makes decisions on scope and features in coordination with the budget.
• Owns the project budget and is a key decision maker in change orders
• Acts as a bridge between stakeholders and the delivery team.

🔹 2. Project Manager (PM)

• Definition: Oversees the entire project lifecycle to ensure it is delivered on time, within scope, and on budget.

• A role held by the consulting firm, aka the SMEs who delivery thousands of projects

• Responsibilities:

• Creates and manages project plans, timelines, and budgets.
• Coordinates team efforts.
• Manages risks and issues and mitigation options
• Communicates progress with stakeholders.
• Develops and presents change orders as necessary

🔹 3. Functional Consultant / Functional Lead

• Definition: Translates business requirements into system functionality using Dynamics 365 configuration and customization.

• Responsibilities:

• Gathers and analyzes requirements.
• Designs business processes and customizes and configures the application.
• Conducts workshops and training sessions.
• Serves as the subject matter expert (SME) on Dynamics 365 Sales features (or specific model driven app features including xRM).
• Shares and Enforces team customization standards for long term success
• Communicates Fit/Gap on features in alignment with business requirements
• Estimates level of effort and provides choices

🔹 4. Solution Architect

• Definition: Designs the overall technical and functional architecture of the solution.

• A role held by the consulting firm, aka SMEs on overseeing the delivery of hundreds of projects

• Responsibilities:

• Defines system architecture and integration strategy.
• Document system architecture in business and technical detail
• Aligns technical design with business goals.
• Oversees configuration, customizations, and extensions.
• Guides developers and functional teams.
• Overall responsible for the functional performance of the system and the alignment to business requests

🔹 5. Technical Architect

• Definition: Focuses on the technical components like infrastructure, integration, and data migration.

• Responsibilities:

• Designs technical architecture and environments.
• Plans integrations and security models.
• Coordinates with IT teams and manages system dependencies.
• Participates in peer review and supports the development lead in code reviews
• Overall responsible for the technical performance of the system

🔹 6. Developer (Dynamics 365 Developer or Azure Developer)

• Definition: Implements extensions, plugins, workflows, Power Automates, and integrations using code. An extension is above and beyond what the Microsoft Development team plans to build and is not unexpected from Microsoft. 

• Responsibilities:

• Develops custom logic (C#, JavaScript, Power Automate).
• Builds integrations with other systems via Connectors, APIs or custom.
• Implements custom UI components using Power Apps or PCF or other UI/UX tools.
• Performs developer specific testing
• Supports deployment of extensions and solutions possibly being involved with ALM automation or testing automation.
• Develops Azure Function Apps or Azure Logic Apps leveraging Azure Service Bus (if also trained in custom development on Azure)
• Works with middleware tools 
• Can potentially also have skills in Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory and Data Migration technologies such as Microsoft SSIS

🔹 7. Data Migration Specialist

• Definition: Responsible for extracting, transforming, and loading data into Dynamics 365.

• Responsibilities:

• Works with legacy data systems.
• Coordinates with the business to understand transformation requirements
• Provides options for cleaning data or transforming data, but always in coordination with the business Solution Matter Experts
• Maps and migrates data.
• Has a deep understanding of the Dataverse and Data Modeling and Schemas
• Ensures data integrity and provides checksum validation.
• Coordinates with the business on SME data testing after migration

🔹 8. QA/Test Lead

• Definition: Ensures the solution is thoroughly tested and meets quality standards.

• Responsibilities:

• Creates and manages test plans and test cases.
• Manages the Test Team
• Performs/Coordinates functional and integration testing and works with the business on UAT Testing.
• Validates acceptance criteria to confirm that it is testable
• Identifies bugs, issues and new user stories and ensures bug fixes are prioritized and implemented.

🔹 9. Change Management Lead / Adoption Specialist

• Definition: Drives user adoption and manages the human side of change.

• Responsibilities:

• Mitigates change impact
• Works with the business users on potential pain points
• Developers SME Champions
• Develops training materials and user guides.
• Conducts training sessions and user onboarding.
• Manages communications and stakeholder engagement.
• Ensures user feedback is gathered and addressed.

🔹 10. Business Analyst

• Definition: Bridges the gap between business needs and technical implementation.

• Responsibilities:

• Analyzes and documents detailed requirements.
• Documents workflows and processes and builds out current and future flow charts
• Supports functional consultants in refining user stories.
• Supports the business in writing testable acceptance criteria for requirements
• Assists in functional and user acceptance testing (UAT) testing and validation against testable acceptance criteria.

🔹 11. Integration Specialist

• Definition: Focuses specifically on connecting Dynamics 365 to external systems.

• Responsibilities:

• Designs and develops middleware and API-based integrations.
• Ensures secure and scalable data flow between systems.
• Develops and aligns on data volume and related performance needs based on volume
• Works closely with architects and developers.

🔹 12. Support / DevOps Engineer and Administrator

• Definition: Provides operational support and manages deployments.

• Responsibilities:

• Manages environments and CI/CD pipelines.
• Monitors usage, performance and logs.
• Manages ticketing and Power Platform Administration
• Coordinates the administration of onboarding users per environment
• Sets up automation for Role Based Entitlement security role alignment
• Supports go-live and post-go-live phases.

Taking a dive into Sora (https://sora.chatgpt.com/) today to see what it can do when it comes to translating words to pictures or videos. It did an interesting job with a vague topic. I asked it to create a picture of change management and what continues to be critically important is the way you put your prompts together. A slight change in the prompt created two very different experiences. The first is the futuristic version and the second was the simple ask. 

We can live in PRESENT, but the Past or the Future is also sometimes a choice that people don't realize they are making.

There are two project areas that often get overlooked in the excitement of rolling out a new system.

The first is the journey and roadmap from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow. Most understand the vision, the excitement and the potential, but they forget about the stepping stones and the road to success. As part of your latest project, take a few minutes to outline the steps along the road. It is rare for individuals to jump the gap, usually people prefer to walk along the right path making minor adjustments as they move forward. 

Another hard part of this initial area and journey is that you might not know all the options that are available until you take a few of the first steps on the road towards tomorrow. Microsoft offers so many choices, give yourself the Phase I, Phase II, Phase X time to learn, master and make the choices.

The second project area is change management. A change management consultant focuses on the road from current to future. Really understanding the individual groups of people who are working hard today in specific patterns and thinking about how to manage the impact of changing those patterns.  There are usually pain points that get resolved, but also potentially new pain points that are introduced. These might be temporary but are better managed with mitigation. Who has time for learning curve frustration or temporary pain point yuck projected all over the company? 

After 21 years of living and breathing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Power Platform as CRMLady, I’m taking a moment to explore what’s next. It is an incredible journey—working alongside amazing partners, teams, and clients to solve real business challenges with the Microsoft Stack of offerings, Business Apps, CRM and a swagger of digital transformation.

I’m now open to new opportunities where I can bring my experience, creativity, and passion for helping organizations get the most out of their Microsoft investments. If you know of a team looking for someone who understands both the tech and the people side of CRM and has the learnings from real life involvement with Partners, Customers and Microsoft let’s connect!

Individuals will always have a preferred method for working.

Some individuals will push their comfort zones and always dive into the latest and greatest tooling and options and others take the stance of if it is working for me, I am not changing unless I have a huge reason to change or if I don't have a choice.

We are living in a world of more and more choices.

One of the hidden ROI benefits of Copilot is that the various consistent Copilots roll across all of the Microsoft products and stack of available technologies. This not only includes products within Modern Workplace (Excel, Word, Teams, etc.) or Business Applications (Dataverse, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Power Platform), but also a wave across all of the various "more developer or IT centric" tooling (Visual Studio, Github, Azure DevOps, etc.).

• Copilot has the ability to silently break down silos while also maintaining individual choice.

Data here, data there, data everywhere. Everyone is creating data on a daily basis, good data, bad data, helpful data, temporary data.

• In the world of noise, Copilot can be the saw that cuts through to the answers.

Speaking of data, the culture of a company contains a huge amount of proprietary data. Tribal Knowledge is a company asset that is rarely harvested and yet this knowledge can be the differentiator for a company. The difference between a "WOW" experience where issues are quickly discovered and successfully resolved and an "average" experience where people do their jobs and go home. Using AI to tap into Tribal Knowledge is an untapped goldmine. 

• Tribal Knowledge, the gold that is often untapped.

There are most likely areas of the business or processes that happen like clockwork every month or quarterly or even daily. Employees go on autopilot and get the work done that always needs to get done. They don't have to think too hard about this if they have been at the company for a long time.  Most probably don't like this type of work. It is mundane, repetitive and yet drives other dependencies so has to get done. 

• Agents might make your Employees happier. 

Speaking of employees. You might be surprised to learn that they might be using AI already. ChatGPT is right at their fingertips and although helpful might not be where you want proprietary customer or company specific questions being asked. Many a risk was taken in pure innocence. I just needed a quick image, the question was pretty generic, I didn't use any names.

• Providing people with the right AI options, that give them even more, mitigates people using tools that might introduce company risk.

In the world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement projects, you have three choices. Configure, Customize or Extend. 

1) Develop Standards: Like any art form from coding to painting, individuals have their own style of delivering specific needs. This offers diversity in options but also can quickly become an unsupportable nightmare. 

• Configure Standards: The question might have a companion question, answer in pairs, understand the bigger picture that your answer drives.
• Customize Standards: Define how you name, update all components of a table, decide on form consistency, add UI/UX design love, label what is not in use ZNotinUse - [xxx].
• Extend/Development Standards: Document (someone will have to support this code in the future), don't get into cut/paste mode, organize to optimize, plan for the future, always consider performance, follow the Microsoft SDK.

2) As you are working on Phase I, plan for Phase II, Phase III, Phase IV etc. The idea is that the deliverable lives for many happy years to come. Include more than just BizApps, consider all of the Microsoft Stack.

3) Memorize, Read, Re-Read the Microsoft Roadmaps so that you don't build something that needs to die tomorrow. Include some review of the other Microsoft Stack product roadmaps. 

4) We rarely have just a BizApps project (Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE Apps)), adopt the Microsoft Stack mindset. Modern Workplace integration (MS Teams, Phone, Excel, SharePoint, Outlook, Word, OneNote), Azure Components (Azure Key Vault, Azure Service Bus, Azure Synapse, etc.), Copilot across all data (All of the 140+ Copilots in or for and all the Agent possibilities with Copilot Studio), the world of Data and Big Data (MS Fabric, Azure Synapse, Power BI, Predictive Analytics, access to data).

5) Know Who's Who in the Zoo: Relationships provide more than just opportunity. They offer bridges to success. Get to know your Microsoft team members and their goals within the many, many different teams focused on the Microsoft Power Platform including the Microsoft CRM/CE Blackbelts, the Microsoft CAT Team, the Microsoft FastTrack teams for CE, Azure, SQL, etc. The Microsoft Support teams and so many more above and beyond the individual Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE app development teams. 

6) Community: Stay in touch with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE and Power Platform communities. They are the ones that will communicate the latest issues, alert you to the pitfalls to avoid until fixed, scream at you the latest and greatest fits and why they are excited about it.