Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
Discovering what Mary actually uses her time at (American) football game practices for, as well as finding out about her professional background. We chat about how she kept going when working at an end-user, and what happened when major accounting errors in the system were discovered!
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
Finding out from Linn Zaw Win about his hobby of online RPG gaming marathons (mostly using PS4 and Nintendo Switch), iterating on projects with minimum viable product sprints, & the need to have people familiar with the actual way to use low code in the Power Platform as well as having code reviews carried out within the team!
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
Andrew brings a personal halo to the discussion, where we covered wine, book writing, and his first job involving pulling cabling through ceiling spaces! We may have also discussed fires – watch the episode to find out more!
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
Discussing marathons, triathlons, and how Dave got into these. Also discussing the joys of bulk deletion jobs with appropriate scheduling timing, and the ‘joys’ of unmanaged patches with managed solutions!
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
This is a slightly different post to the ones that I usually do, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do a post on for a while. Secondly, the release notes for Wave 1 2020 drops today, and I’m obviously wanting to do a write-up on the details from it as soon as I can!
So, the Not For Profit (NFP) sector. Well, organisations within this sector can vary, of course. There are classic examples such as Greenpeace and the National Trust (for those people outside of the UK, take a look at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ for more information on what this is, and what it does.
There are also many other examples, namely charities. Now there are a great many types of charities, ranging from the Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity (Great Ormond Street Hospital, or GOSH as it’s known for short, as a world-renowned children’s hospital based in London, UK) to local small community charities.
Where am I going with all of this? Well, it’s quite simple actually. Microsoft provides low cost access to their software and offerings, as well as some free items as well. In fact it’s incredible how extensive this can be! (there are of course other organisations that provide similar offerings too, which shouldn’t be forgotten).
As part of my involvement in my local community, I’m the IT administrator for several community charities/organisations (yes – I’m the one they call to reset their password when they’ve forgotten it!!). In my role for them, I’ve used Microsoft offerings such as Office 365, as well as PowerPlatform apps sitting on the CDS to get things working more efficiently.
I had known for a while about the discounted software offerings that were available, such as Office (desktop & cloud versions) and other software.
There’s a global company called Techsoup (https://www.techsoup.org/) who’s mission is to build a dynamic bridge that enables civil society organisations and social change agents around the world to gain effective access to the resources they need to design and implement technology solutions for a more equitable planet. Companies such as Microsoft partner with Techsoup, and once a charity is qualified and confirmed by Techsoup as meeting all of the necessary criteria, they can sign up for and purchase software. It’s really amazing to see the extensive catalogue available, and can really help the smaller organisations (who otherwise would be paying a lot for software licensing).
However, Microsoft takes this to another level. There’s a specific Microsoft NFP website (https://nonprofit.microsoft.com/) at which NFP organisations can sign up for, to gain access to resources that they wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere.
Microsoft states there that ‘Microsoft is dedicated to making the benefits of world-class cloud technology accessible and affordable for nonprofits. We offer discounted and donated industry-leading solutions for nonprofits.’
There are currently 5 areas that are offered against:
This is all really great and amazing. What’s even more amazing is that there’s special licensing available around things like Dynamics 365 & the Power Platform, where I’ve been seeing so much growth recently in.
NFP organisations knowing about all of these things could then work forward to use the technology to enable & empower them (yes, this is sort of a catchphrase of me, I know…). They could do this either themselves, with their existing IT people, or super/power users who understand technology. These people could quite easily start learning the skills to use such tools as PowerBI, PowerApps, etc, and see how they could bring the technology to the best usage cases for the organisation.
Alternatively, they could partner (if they’re not doing so already, of course) with implementation providers who specialise in the NFP sector. In the UK, one of the main ones in the Microsoft solutions space is m-hance (https://m-hance.com/). They are well known within the UK for their attention to detail, and their passion for the NFP sector.
Note: For sake of clarity, I have not/do not work for/with m-hance, nor gain anything from any work that they carry out, nor from any company that may wish to engage with them from having read this post
I also personally know one of the people who work there – Mike Hartley (oh yes Mike, I am indeed mentioning you on my blog!). I’ve known Mike for a while now, and he’s one of the most passionate people that I’ve met within the Microsoft communities. I’ve chatted with him one-on-one around both technical and non-technical concepts, and have always been really impressed with how he approaches things. I’ve also attended sessions that he’s presented on, and always walked out with new ideas in mind! He’s just one example of the way in which passion and drive can really TRULY help with social and community items – we’re not even talking major scale, but rather on a local scale to help the people around us.
I have spoken to several organisations that have benefited greatly through services from Microsoft partners who work in this space, and heard how incredible the journey has been. It’s really a wonder to see their technological journey, and see how they’re making people’s lives better, one day at a time.
So….if you work in a charity, or know a charity that you think might benefit from this – speak to your company, mention this to them, and spread the word. One of the concepts that I try to practice daily is the concept of ‘pay it forward’ – do/help someone else, not because you’re wanting them to then do something for you, but altruistically. This can have an immeasurable effect over time!
Discussions around diving, cats (lots of cats!), and children. Bringing important thoughts to the conversation on why it’s so important to have ‘safety barriers’ in place for things in life, especially when you don’t have control of the environment
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
The last week has been somewhat hectic – I was at Ignite for 2 days, started on a mentorship program (as a participant), and have been investigating some of the new functionality for Omnichannel, etc.
As a result, I’ve decided to post a video that I came across a little while back. It’s from the mid-2000’s, and takes place with Satya Nadella, who at the time was the CVP (Corporate Vice President) of the Dynamics team.
Nowadays the Dynamics and PowerPlatform space is just so large, both in terms of breadth as well as depth, that it’s almost unbelievable. At the time of writing this post there are over 30 ‘First Party’ apps – I remember when there was only one!
When watching this video, I can see the beginning of how Microsoft was planning on invigorating & expanding the Business Application side of the company, along with how important and key it was being envisioned to be at the time (and still is, of course)
Now Satya is the CEO of Microsoft, and offerings such as the Power Platform have had billions of dollars invested in them over the last few years. It’s really incredible how far things have come over the last 15 years…and who knows how they’ll continue to develop!
Well, firstly this isn’t about Omnichannel. Or any specific deep dive into technology. What is IS about is the first time I’ve gone to a Microsoft conference/exhibition. And it was amazingly awesomely wonderful.
Having seen several other write-ups from people who visited it, I thought I’d write my own, to share my perspectives and thoughts on it.
Now, it’s not the first time I’ve been to exhibitions and/or conferences. Far from it – I go to several each year (in fact these are usually where I get my t-shirts and pens/pencils from – I rarely buy these at all! My wife despairs sometimes of my very ‘tech-orientated’ t-shirt collection). I’ve frequented Service Desk (https://www.servicedeskshow.com/) for over a decade, as well as InfoSec (https://www.infosecurityeurope.com/), Counter Terror (https://www.ctexpo.co.uk/) and DsEI (https://www.dsei.co.uk/) as well.
I’ve even been to CES (https://www.ces.tech/) in Las Vegas a few years back. Now if there’s ever a place where consumer technology is showcased, that is truly the place for it. I even managed to get myself upgraded to a Press Pass there, which came with a cool backpack, early access to the exhibition floor, and free WiFi.
Ignite was different. True, it included people speaking about Microsoft technology (and these were really and truly awesome people, some of whom I know personally), showcasing and demoing it.
But what it also included, and had a deep emphasis on was Community. There were many different User Groups present, talking about how we can all enable and support each other. There were mini-sessions by speakers, un-conferences, Q&A sessions, etc. Many people from all over the UK, as well as abroad, took part in this. It really emphasised for me just how important our technical communities are, and how much we can learn from each other from them!
Of course, I attended many of the sessions that were happening. I tried to mix these up, aiming to attend both professional learning as well as personal development learning. My schedule was as follows:
Day 1:
Day 2:
There were fabulous speakers – really too many to mention (especially as I also managed to network with various others). From FINALLY meeting Samit Saini (it’s only taken 6 months) in person to hearing Dona Sarkar and Dux Raymond, from Rory Neary to Mark Wilcock, it truly was a pleasure to listen to what they had to say.
The networking opportunities available were also unbelievable. With an estimated 5000 people attending, I met up with others who I had only corresponded with digitally to date. Even more wonderful was meeting new people, sharing ideas and concepts, and already keeping in touch and corresponding with in the short time since Ignite finished here.
The sense of community involvement was indescribable. People were sharing resources, suggesting who to follow online, and who to reach out to if they had any questions about anything.
It was also truly great to see the launch of the #PowerPlatypus. I’m going to unashamedly take full credit for this marvellous creature coming to fruition (well, until anyone official from Microsoft can prove otherwise), due to the Twitter poll that I put out last year:
I’ve come away with so much learned in such a short space of time, and many notes on much more that I need to look into. Best of all, I’ve come away with many further connections, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what we can all come up with.
One really useful thing to note as well about Ignite – everyone who attended gets a free Microsoft Exam voucher that they can use to take any exam with!. To redeem this, find the exam you’d like to take, log in to schedule it, and then you should be given an option to use it:
This is so wonderful, and I really do appreciate Microsoft providing this (especially as Ignite the Tour is free to attend!).
I’ve already made a note to attend the tour next year (as I won’t be able to attend the main Ignite conference), and are looking forward to seeing what it brings, and who I’ll be able to meet there. Perhaps even, I might apply to speak at a session!
Talking about our shared love of motorbiking, touring around Europe (with ad-hoc repairs) & the importance of getting key people (knowledge holders) together with ‘sweating the details’ for projects!
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
Speaking with ‘The Power Automate Guy’ himself!
Touching on important points such as drones, the renaming of ‘Flow’ to ‘Power Automate’, and being yourself within a role.
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.