I have had some really interesting conversations as I reach out to see what various contacts are up to and as I have new conversations with people who reach out to me - Through these conversations, I realized something today.

There are companies who buckle down the hatches and hold onto their hats to ride out the storm and wait.

• We need to wait and see what happens.
• We need to reduce change and limit risks.
• We need to steer the ship straight in these stormy waters battling against the waves. 
• We will be fine, we can grow later

AND then there are those companies that realize that the storm is churning up potential opportunities that they would not get at other times.

• We have the opportunity to hire some really experienced resources (not usually available).
• We can introduce those much wanted and much discussed changes now, change is everywhere.
• We can steer the ship with the stormy waters pushing us forward.
• We can jump ahead of our competitors and position for even more success while they catch up.

In my humble opinion each of the above has its merits, pluses, negatives and alignments.

Neither is "Wrong" or "Right" - They just exist.

One of the key needs on any Microsoft Business Applications (BizApps) project is the ability to quickly understand the industry in which the project is focused. This does not only include documenting business processes (possibly) but also recommending slight shifts to processes for efficiencies or increased profits.

The Functional Lead and Functional / Solution Architect has a number of key skillsets that are not always found in the focuses of the Technical Architects. 

1) There might be a configurable answer to the need. 

Consider that Microsoft has 1000s of Microsoft developers working on the Microsoft Power Platform every day. All Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps are built on the Microsoft Power Platform and are considered Model Driven Apps. If the feature doesn't do exactly what you want it to do, there might be a configuration or customization that can meet the need. 

2) It is hard to think "business" first if you also live in the complexity of Code and Extensions.

There is a reason why we do technical design and translate business needs into the language of the developer. When an "extension" to the Microsoft Platform is of interest, then the developer needs to consider the 1000s of Microsoft Developers changing code daily, the Microsoft Software Developer Kit (SDK) and recommended practices and the latest technologies and versions in the world of development languages. They have their hands full of detailed awesome and are MUCH needed.

3) Development is an Art, Solution / Functional / Business Focused work is also an Art 

AI has already added to these Art Forms, but despite the radical news our worlds have always been in transition. This is the nature of technology. In some of my greatest projects the synergy between technical, business and teamwork has been incredible. These are the projects that make me smile. The ones that were life changing. 

4) Do you know the long-term cost of the option being selected?

It is easy to get mixed up in the ideal solution to the immediate problem, but are you always aligning to the constant change and the effort to maintain?

5) Performance matters! 

Sometimes the easy solution is going to cost you in the long run. An API Call is not necessarily the right answer to heavy load. Leverage the power of the architects to understand all of the variables surrounding your choices. Performance is often one that is forgotten until it is too late to make an easy shift.

6) It might look really pretty, but is it Accessible? 

We have incredibly diverse audiences. Color blindness (Are you using Reds and Greens?), adaptive keyboards, different sized monitors and 1000s of other unique configurations. UI/UX DOES matter, but so does accessibility. The two don't always align in the same way for every person. The Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Modules meet 100s of compliance regulations. 

Well it took 10 years longer than we all anticipated, BUT you can now purchase a 1 Terabyte Solid State Drive for less than 100 dollars. 

The first Thursday of the month the Dartmouth Lake Sunapee Linux Group meets over at Dartmouth to share knowledge and to geek it up a bit. They kick off their meeting with a meet up at Ramunto's in Hanover, NH and then the group wanders on over to a very cool room on Campus. (White Board, Black Boards, Projectors, Ivy League Classroom) 

Over pizza we discussed NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, files with embedded metadata and general buzz in the world of tech in the Upper Valley. We really do need more opportunities to do more of this around here. There are SO MANY hidden disconnected gems.

Once over at campus Lloyd presented nifties, first on what he has been doing with Python and (dare I mention the word, Microsoft) Azure. It is so thrilling for me to see these two worlds starting to bubble together in the quest for empowering great technology. There were questions, discussions and mind shifts, but good discussions. Even little old me was able to offer contributions.

We also discussed Jupyter .

"Project Jupyter is a non-profit, open-source project, born out of the IPython Project in 2014 as it evolved to support interactive data science and scientific computing across all programming languages."

With a heavy bent on large, concurrent, mathematical and statistical analysis needs. I was not able to add much to the discussions, but I love a chance to push myself out of my comfort zone. My Mom had her doctorate in statistics so in my baby years the word SAS often kicked around our household.  

Other Tidbits Shared 

Information on BASE

More Python Tips

working with distributed data and

using Selenium for things other than testing web applications. 

Put on the hat "Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement" and the dimensions explode. There are so many different angles to think about such as 

• The Product
• The CRM Industry
• The Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and their extensions, applications and products
• The Project Methodologies
• The Communities
• The Support Resources
• The Training Options
• Certifications
• Industry Uses
• Usability and Adoption 
• Integrations
• Mobility
• IoT
• CRM -> ERP : Bridging the teams, the products, the features and more
• Failures and the Why behind them 
• Working with the Microsoft teams (product, support, services, executives, sales, etc.)

and the list goes on! 

I recently completed a Solution Architecture Assessment engagement and was amazed at all of the categories of discussion and knowledge sharing that bubbled out of a three month, intense, team empowerment project.

So where to start??

1. Workflows can be REAL TIME (Synchronous) or ALMOST REAL TIME (asynchronous) and if you are a business user creating workflows you want to coordinate the timing. In the world of plugins and extensions timing coordination of steps is all part of the job, but in the world of workflows sometimes it is easy to forget about what we are really asking for.

2. Deleting and Cleanup in the world of customization and multiple environments are a specialized thought process. The system supports a merge mindset so when you want to do cleanup (and you are using unmanaged solutions) you want to make sure you cleanup all your environments. I like to use the technique of naming fields, business rules, forms, views and other such configurations in DEV with a prefix of something like ZToBeDeleted so that after a deployment to TEST and PRODUCTION it is easy to do house cleaning.

3. You are not the only one extending and configuring. Coordination equals huge successes and incredible power and depth. It is a product that is always evolving from the power and insight of the incredible team at Microsoft and then there are the other new features that are purchased, reviewed, updated, coordinated and released. If you are writing unsupported code you are asking for headaches OR if your hired gun is writing unsupported code. Take the time to get it done right. Take the time to vet your resources. A low hourly rate does not mean long term reduction in cost.

4. Software as a Service (SaaS) in the world of Dynamics CRM means that you are continuously getting the chance to improve your businesses cutting edge differentiator through the use of the newest technology and business techniques. Get the Learning Mindset and embrace the wave while also taking bite sized, very manageable growth steps forward. Setup your environment so you have a DEV, TEST and PRODUCTION instance so that you can have DEV upgraded first, then TEST (with a release to TEST and Regression Testing) and then roll to production. For smaller firms perhaps only two instances, but always give yourself that learning arena for the larger feature releases.

5. Just because it looks pretty, and has a really cheap initial price does not mean that you won't be paying more in the long run. In the world of ONLINE and the CLOUD do your research with other customers. Understand the 1, 2 and 3 year average costs and understand what you get for the money. The models can be very different.  There are hundreds of applications that can be replaced by Dynamics CRM and with the right resources (trained helps) the price is right. Just because Access and Excel are available with office, doesn't mean they are the right solution for a multi-user environment where people need to share real time data across many different devices. Oh and then there is the Out of the Box integration to the Office 365, SharePoint, Microsoft Excel E-Mail, and so much more. 

It really is mind blowing.....  

Calling All CRM Users: Please send feedback on the new DYNAMIC HELP Features!

"This feature was introduced in the Dynamics CRM 2015 for Outlook Client and is referred to as “Dynamic Help”.   Prior to this feature, the Outlook Client included a help link that always directed you to the same troubleshooting page regardless of which error you encountered.  For each error code that occurs during configuration, Dynamic Help can now direct you to a KB article designed to help resolve that specific issue.  This feature was also backported to CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1 for Service Pack 1 and CRM 2011 Update Rollup 18.  The Dynamic Help feature is also included in the new CRM App for Outlook. "

To Read More and To provide Feedback CLICK,

One Person Can Change the World!

"Oh, it is just a richly built custom .NET application"

There is probably a better way to do this, but alas there comes a time when you just do it. So the following is a running historical list of interesting tweets from Dynamics CRM Convergence sessions. Starting today and running backwards in time.

If you are a "CRM Administrator" have you looked at your System Jobs recently? Now for all those working on various projects ... Have you checked out the System Jobs in your development environments?

Choose SETTINGS

Choose SYSTEM JOBS

Immediately you will see a list of various information regarding various "system jobs" that might have run or might be "waiting".

Make particular note of the items in the waiting state. Do you know what they are waiting for? Should they really be waiting? Do they need to be cancelled?

Next Question: Are you managing your system job log? Has it been purged lately?

Did you know that Duplicate Detection is a System Job?

Know of any great new Dynamics CRM RSS feeds? or web pages that shouldn't get missed? It is time to update my blogs left navigation.

Everytime I offer kudos I realize all the other people who are related to those little things that make a difference. For instance David Jennaway, who actually wrote the plugin I mentioned in my earlier post and SHARED it.

Jeff Reiser, Premier Field Engineer who continues to be an incredible resource as I watch people ramp up and Microsoft in general who despite their size still manage to digest the huge amount of field feedback that travels the back channels.

What you don't feel heard? Next time you are reading a knowledge base article that doesn't meet your needs use the comment box at the bottom of the screen. In the world of Dynamics CRM I am often surprised by the responses to my comments posted in what sometimes we assume is the infinite black hole.  

I still need to get these into the Microsoft Request engine, but here are a couple of the hot ones on my plate that bubbled up in thought when I was reading Richard Knudson's blog post today on the same subject.

What would be great to see in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0

1) Business Unit Ownership
2) Enterprise scalability for Team ownership
3) Performance Tuning/Improvement for Form Assistant
4) Outlook Client Configuration Flexibility including the locking down by user of configuration options
5) Menu management/Navigation Pane management without editing XML files
6) From a "It is a CRM application" support for common field functionality so programming doesn't have to bother with this such as Country lookup, SIC and NAICS code management, Zip Code options, etc.

7) From the perhaps this would be a cool utility category: a tool to rename all the New_ prefixes to something else.

8) A super easy, don't need to be technical advanced find option to create views. Yes, the one we have today is powerful, but it is still "techie" and frustrating for some business users. In this same light let them pick any field from any entity to include in the view.

9) A really advanced report writer with a really super easy interface. There are some pretty cool third party  BI tools on the market that meet this need, but talk about a blow a few users away feature.

10) User definable portals and dashboards

11) For the developers: The Developer toolkit which is so cool that traditionally trained advanced software developers can't keep their hands off it. Creating a situation where they would rather write in "xRM" than in .NET only ;)

In the world of XRM and training experienced developers to think "CRM" one of the key nice to haves would be a place to show the new developers all the entities that exist that CANNOT be modified. These are the core Micrsoft Dynamics CRM Development Team building blocks.

I have continued to test the  "Request a New Feature" on Microsoft Connect. Recently I requested that a view be added to the Entities view to include a view of all entities that are locked. (I can then show this to new developers and say - you can't change these, learn what they are and work with them ;)

I had the strangest response back  - First they didn't understand what I asked for, second they said that a feature I didn't ask for was in the next version and lastly the fearture they indicated was going to be in the next version is in the existing version. Sigh - sometimes I wonder why I keep trying... here is the response.  

Greetings from Microsoft Connect!

This notification was generated for feedback item: Custom Entities view: All Locked Entities which you submitted at the Microsoft Connect site.

Thank you for your suggestion. The next version of CRM will only show entities that can be customized. All other entities (for internal use only) will not be displayed. Regards

You may receive a general "Feedback Item Updated" notification as well, if any other changes were made by Microsoft.

Thank you for using Microsoft Connect!

Regards,

the Microsoft Connect Team

Please do not reply directly to this message, as it is generated from an unmonitored email account. If you have comments related to your Feedback, please enter it in the Comments section (post a comment to Microsoft) of your Feedback item by navigating to the Feedback item in the link above.

If you are having trouble accessing the Feedback link above, please go to the http://connect.microsoft.com/help/ page to report the issue, In your submission, please make sure to paste a copy the link above into the report.

Part of me thinks it is wonderful that I am being alerted that my CRM Online database is going to have maintenance, but after seeing the below message every time I logged in for the last few weeks and then once the maintenance was completed seeing a new message with a date two weeks later I started to get a bit annoyed.

First the Dynamics CRM database does not need maintenance every two weeks even if it is hosted (onPremise database might get touched once every six months) and second this is just one click through that is a bit much if displayed every time someone logs in!

Adding insult to injury you get another message if you default to the administration tab on entry.

- Sigh -