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.
The queues to get in!
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.
The famous Keith ‘I’m a Ginger’ Whatling
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:
Enabling everyone to digitize apps and processes with Power Apps and the Power Platform
Intelligent automation with Microsoft Power Automate
#HumansofIT with Tech Superpowers: How Heathrow’s Security Officer Launched 12 #PowerApps
Connecting Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, Power BI, and the Common Data Service with data
Practicing Kindness in Tech: 5 Steps to Build a Culture of Giving Back and Helping Others in the Community
Supervisor experiences in Omnichannel
Day 2:
PowerPlatform London User Group sessions
Humans of IT Empower Breakfast Panel – Interconnected Data for an Interconnected Planet: The Future of Agritech
Imposter Syndrom Banishing Spell
Azure AI & Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Property and Real Estate Market use case: Delivering significant cost reduction and tangible revenue growth
The Power People of London Town: Power Apps and Power Automate
Configuring and managing Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing – Establish connected Sales and Marketing
Responding to incidents
From Geek to Chic: Build Your Brand & Elevate Your Career in 5 Steps
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.
Dona, Samit & Duc
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.
Don’t worry – someone added me to this later on!
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!
I’ve been contacted by several people over the last few days who have been experiencing an error when trying to get Omnichannel configured. It looks something like:
The actual text of the error is: AADSTS65001: The user or administrator has not consented to use the application with ID ’18cc9627-776c-4142-b8f5-9cd83517e3bb’ named ‘Omnichannel for Customer Service’. Send an interactive authorization request for this user and resource. Trace ID: 36dd2358-2d41-463c-a2f6-013038636400 Correlation ID: 9ac093cd-e525-4bb4-b277-3ac8e7478b6b Timestamp: 2020-01-07 12:14:15Z
No matter what people tried, they still got it. I went through the process of setting up a completely new environment – lo and behold, I got the same issue! (the screenshot above is actually from my system). Incidentally this is why it’s so important to be able to replicate an issue, so that you can confirm what’s actually causing it to happen.
Reaching out to some very helpful people at Microsoft, I (thankfully) got a quick response from them
Essentially, there are some issues with Azure Active Directory (AAD) consent flows for applications at the moment (it’s not specific to Omnichannel). There’s a fix that’s being worked on, but no idea when it will be finished and rolled out.
They were nice enough to share with me how to address it, which is what I’m now sharing here! To fix this issue, carry out the following steps to manually grant permissions to the application:
Click it to open, and you’ll see a list of the enterprise applications that use AAD.
2. You’ll then want to search for the application that has the issue (in this case, Omnichannel)
You’ll want to double-check that the ‘Application ID’ is the SAME as the Application ID that you’re getting in the error message, especially if there are multiple results coming up in the search list!
Once you’re sure that it’s the correct application, click it to open it.
3. You’ll see a section in the left bar called ‘Security’, and under this should be an entry for ‘Permissions’. When this opens, you’ll see a button in the main window called ‘Grant admin consent for User‘.
4. Click this – it’ll cause a window to pop up, where you’ll grant permissions for the application. Once granted, the window will automatically close.
You can then go back to the place where you were experiencing the error, and it should work!
Having recently completed several exams, including the new MB-900 Fundamentals for Dynamics365, I thought it would be useful to set out how the new exam structure works, and what paths can be taken within it. This post is meant to be for D365 CE, not for F&O (I’m hoping to do a separate post on that another time).
The first question that usually comes up around certifications is ‘why should I take the exams – I know how to use/configure/deploy the system!’.
The answer to this is actually quite easy – if you know the stuff, then the exams won’t be too hard for you. They’ll also give you a better overview of things, especially due to the new curriculum (eg including cloud offerings, etc).
Not only is it rewarding for you to take (and pass!) them, it shows that you’re able to do so (and you get cool badges…thanks Microsoft for gamifying things lol). Additionally it can also help your company to qualify for different Microsoft Partner tiers, which can be quite important in the grand scheme of things (I am NOT going to talk about the recent IUR situation…)
It can also help when applying for a job position, as recruiters will check to see if you’re current with the latest exams. Experience is great of course, but they’ll want to know why you may not have any (recent) exams to show your knowledge.
The first exams in the series that I’d recommend to take are:
The MB-900, as per the name, goes over the fundamentals of Dynamics 365, and also gets you used to the new format (it’s now 60 minutes, with approx 25 questions). There are now drag’n’drop questions, multiple choice answers, and ‘journey style’ questions (these are when the question presented depends on the answer given for the previous question)
The MB-200 exam covers the different deployment types, configurations and integrations, and click-based customisations. It expands on the base that’s set out in the MB-900.
The next question usually asked is ‘what area/app should I specialise in’? That’s ALSO quite simple to answer – there are (currently) 4 options available for exams (after the MB-900). These are:
So, pick which one you think would be most suitable to your role, and take them. Of course, that’s not stopping you taking some of the OTHER exams as well – why not try to get the whole set in!
Study tips:
Read the syllabus! Microsoft doesn’t just draw them up randomly – they cover the material needed. They’ve also been through Beta phases where feedback has been given (which Microsoft usually take some note of). It will give you an idea of where the focus is, what’s needed to check, etc
Practise – hands on experience. You really DO need this now. Fire up a trial, start playing around. Use the syllabus as a guide for this – if it says that you need to know about cases (eg case management, case routing, case rules, parent/child cases), then make sure that you DO know how to do these!
Talk to others who are studying at the same time – perhaps try to make a study group. I was fortunate enough to join twice-weekly session for one of my exams, hosted by an amazing Microsoft Trainer.
When taking the exam, if you come across something that you don’t know, and are guessing the answer to – DON’T CHANGE THE ANSWER LATER ON. In this sort of scenario the gut reaction is usually 85% correct, and it’s better to leave it than try to second guess yourself.
Also, don’t stress out about the exams. They’re not the Big Bad Wolf – once you do them, you’ll see that they’re not absolutely crazy. Sure, you may have to guess a question or two, but even very experienced people do that.
As as tech guy, I immediately know what someone is referring to when they’re talking about environments (within a technical context, of course). However there are a large number of (non) technical people who have absolutely no idea what the word ‘environment’ means, leaving aside how they are used.
The aim of this post is therefore to demystify what environments are, the different types, how they’re used, etc.
Caveat: There may be specific circumstances in which these may differ, eg for Dynamics F&O
So firstly – what is an environment?
This is simple to answer – an environment is a full (technical) system. There may be multiple different systems contained within the same environment (or they could be split out). There will be different environments used (more details below) in any company
Incidentally, people may also use the word ‘instance’ instead of ‘environment’.
The next question is – how are environments used?
Thankfully this is also simple to answer – environments are used to enable different parts of the technical system roll-out process. Each environment is unique (and should usually not be connected to each other
Types of environments
There are quite a few different types of environments needed. Listed below are the ones that are usually considered to be MVP (no, not Microsoft Valued Professional….in this context it means Minimum Viable Product)
Development This is the environment that the development team will use for coding and configuration, as well as initial testing of code Once code is stable, it will be promoted to the next environment
UAT (User Acceptance Testing) This environment is where the client/business will access to test the system. Each development item will have a logged story, and these will be tested against. They will either pass (and then be signed off) or not pass (with explanations given as to why they haven’t passed) and be sent back to the development team
Note: It may be possible to use the UAT instance for training, and all client/business users to access it. This will depend greatly on the resources needed, project timeline/progress, etc. It is not usually advised to do this though
Staging This environment is where data migration is tested out, to ensure that all data from the previous system/s are successfully migrated (with any transformations that may need to take place).
Note: It may be possible to combine the UAT and Staging instances, if the proposed system is very simple and not complicated/large
Production This is the actual LIVE system for the company
Customisations, code etc are promoted through the different environments with releases. It’s important to ensure that these are carried out properly and scheduled in, especially when applying a release to a production environment. I’ll cover how this should be done, and what things to bear in mind, in a future post.
There are also several other types of environments that may be being used, depending on the type/scale/scope of the project:
Training This is an instance with all customisations and code (to date) along with data that is used to train all client/business users. Any updates in functionality to test environments would need to be replicated to this environment as well
Integration Depending on the other system/s that D365 will be exchanging data with (both in and out) it may be necessary to have a specific instance set up to test out the integration with these other components
Support A clone of the Production environment for use in support cases eg attempting to recreate issues/bugs that have been raised
If you’ve come across any other types of environments, please do comment!
Microsoft Office 365 is a
software-as-a-service which allows access to a suite of applications through a
subscription-based model. Office 365 can be used for both home and business
use, and is available on premises and through the cloud (note that some of the
extended functionality is only available through desktop applications; access
to these will depend on the level of license purchased).
Word
Word is a word processing application which is used to create, edit and format written documents for both home and business use, and it is available in every subscription level across the Office 365 platform. It can also be purchased separately outside of a subscription.
Word has wide applications in the business world as it can be used to create any sort of business document, such as proposals, reports, plans and memos. Templates for these documents can be found in both Word itself as well as online, allowing users to create their documents without having to waste time formatting documents. Also, due to the range of design options available in these templates, users can choose templates which fit the culture of the organisation.
With collaboration, it is
possible for multiple people to be viewing and editing a single document at the
same time.
Excel
Excel is a widely-used
spreadsheet software that allows users to calculate, analyse and visualise
data. Like Word, it is part of the core applications suite and is available as
part of every subscription package for both home and business use. It can also
be purchased separately.
At the most basic level, Excel
can be used for entering and storing data. The program, however, has far more
capabilities than this, and contains around 500 functions to carry out a vast
amount of different tasks, ranging significantly in complexity. The functions
available range from simple, everyday functions such as sum, average and count,
to more complex and specific functions such as the ACCRINTM function which
calculates the interest accrued on a security which only pays interest at
maturity. Due the vast capabilities of the program through the functions
available, Excel has wide application in the business world and can be a
powerful tool for organisations.
Excel also has the ability to use
the data within it to create graphs, charts, pivot-tables and other items. This
allows for data to be able to be presented visually, enabling people to quickly
see an overall picture of the data.
It’s also possible to connect
Excel to other data sources (either as a once-off, or with a continual link).
This can allow data held elsewhere (e.g. Dynamics365) to be manipulated further
within Excel itself. Examples of scenarios for this include comparing and
utilising multiple data sources to create an overall dataset.
With collaboration, it is
possible for multiple people to be viewing and editing a single spreadsheet at
the same time.
PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint is a program
which offers users the ability to create presentations to display information.
PowerPoint come with a wide range of templates for a number of different kinds
of documents which can be used to customise the way in which information is
presented on the slides. This allows staff to focus their time on the
information and data rather than on formatting.
Further information can be found
in the documentation for ‘Microsoft Presentations’
OneNote
OneNote is a notebook software
which enables users to capture ideas, take notes and create task lists. Notes
can be created using text, audio recordings, videos and highlighting and
annotating text. Users can organise their notes into pages and sections and
notebooks, and can easily share their work with others.
Benefits of OneNote include:
Taking notes & gathering information on any
device.
Synced on all devices for anytime access to
notes.
Create notebook sections inside books.
Create notebook sections inside notebooks
Create pages & subpages inside sections
Handling mathematical formulae natively
OneNote is also optimised for
touchscreen and tablets, allowing users to enter data directly without using a
keyboard. Benefits of this include being able to draw diagrams directly into
documents, placing flow diagrams easily, etc.
It’s also possible to directly
implant other files that can then be referenced, such as saving images from the
web, articles from news-sites, and other items.
Access
Access is a database software
which allows users to collect, store, sort and manipulate databases. Access and
Excel are similar in that they both store data in columns and rows, and can carry
out similar tasks, but there are important differences between the two
applications and how they are used by organisations. Access is more focused
towards for working with databases, and as a result it has a much greater
storage capacity than Excel, which is not designed for storing large amounts of
data. It is also preferable to use Access to handle large amounts of records,
for example, as the manipulation of the data is more productive and it can ensure
consistency and accuracy.
When looking at implementing
database systems, it could also be useful to consider using Microsoft SQL
Server as the database layer for large/complex solutions.
Access is available in the more
premium subscriptions for home and office use. Alternatively, it can be
purchased separately outside of a subscription.
Publisher
Publisher is a publishing
application (only accessible through a desktop application, not as a hosted
product) that comes with the more enterprise Office365 licenses, or as a
stand-alone application. Publisher differs from Word, which is Microsoft’s
flagship word processing application. Word is for writing documents, whether
they be long or short with the tools to add page numbering, footnotes, tables
of content, indexes, references and annotation. Publishing on the other hand
specialises in creating newsletters, brochures, and greeting cards that have
graphically rich content and require precise positioning of text and graphics.
Publisher comes with many
templates specifically designed for most printed media with pre-positioned
placeholders for text and graphics. This makes it easy to choose the layout
that best suits the application, for example a newsletter and then start adding
text and graphics to suit.
Everything that Publisher does is
about creating an aesthetically pleasing layout, formatting and the control
that the designer has over objects on a page. Images and even blocks of text
are all elements to Publisher and they can be positioned anywhere on the page.
Additionally, all these elements are independent of one another. Changes to one
element’s position, colour or size doesn’t affect any other element.
