Tag: mvpbuzz

FTRSA ’26/27 – Information to know

If you don’t know what FTRSA stands for – don’t worry! It’s a Microsoft acronym for ‘Fast Track Recognised Solution Architect’. This is an award that Microsoft bestows on people working for Microsoft Partners who have demonstrated clear technical expertise & understanding of the Microsoft Business Applications Platform at (enterprise) scale. There are currently around 175 FTRSA’s globally (across Dynamics 365 & Power Platform capabilities) from a little under 100 partner organisations!

To quote from the Microsoft documentation for the program:

The FTRSA program honors solution architects who consistently deliver high-impact solutions using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, recognizing technical excellence, customer success, and architectural leadership across Microsoft’s partner ecosystem.

As a Microsoft Partner, having an FTRSA working for you can (at times) give you the edge, given their exposure to Microsoft Engineering & Leadership, and the ability to ask questions directly into Microsoft about things. It’s also something you’re able to promote to clients

The application process starts by going to the FTRSA homepage (yes, the program now has its own URL!), and then following the instructions. I STRONGLY SUGGEST reading through the FAQ’s on the site in detail before starting your submission. Alternatively, have them open in another tab whilst you’re working through the application (as they’re not linked on the application pages). This will ensure you understand the KEY information as to how to fufill the requirements.

Broadly speaking, there are several stages to an application:

  1. The team carry out an initial review of the information provided, ensuring that it meets the program requirements. Applicants who have not provided the information to meet the program requirements/criteria, or who do not pass the initial review threshold as evaluated by the team (this is why applicants are recommended to ensure that they’re focusing on quality of information being submitted), are not progressed and are notified.
  1. Applicants who pass the first stage are then invited to an interview. This is carried out with one of the wider team members, based on region & availability. The interview usually lasts around one hour, and is an evaluation of the technical skills & expertise of the applicant. During this interview, candidates are required to present on a project that they have implemented, and to demonstrate their in-depth knowledge & role that they played on the project. Materials for the interview need to be submitted in advance by the person applying.
  1. Finally, the team reviews the interviews, and decides as to which applicants have successfully shown their skills & expertise. Applications who have not met the level required are notified, along with feedback and areas that they could look to work on for a future nomination.
  1. Successful applicants are notified as well directly, though the news is not publicised until May or so, when the public announcement takes place with the relevant FTRSA websites being updated with their information.

Note: Existing FTRSA’s will go through the same general process, though if they currently hold the category that they are applying for, they will not have to interview for the application. However if they are applying for a different category that they are not currently awarded in, they will have to interview for it. For example, a Power Platform FTRSA applying for a Dynamics 365 FTRSA recognition WILL need to go through the interview stage.

Note: Being an existing FTRSA is no guarantee for being able to renew successfully. Renewals are reviewed in the same general way (except for the interview stage, as mentioned above), to ensure that they’re at the same high quality level as new applications.

For the upcoming year, there have been some IMPORTANT changes in the program, which are very important to take note of:

  • Previously there are been separate categories under Power Platform (eg Power Apps, Power Automate, etc). For the upcoming 26/27 award year, there is just a SINGLE Power Platform award category. Dynamics 365 will remain as two award categories (Customer Engagement/Finance & Operations)
  • All product feedback (whether to product engineering, advisory boards, focus groups etc) have been removed from the submission consideration, and are no longer valid

Now there are a lot of questions that people may ask when considering to apply for it (or even for renewing their existing FTRSA status).

Over the last 2 months, I’ve had numerous calls with organisations & individuals to try to help them understand the program and the application process. Below I’ve included a list of commonly asked questions that have come up- though it’s important to note that the FAQ’s on the site are actually REALLY good, and answer most of the obvious ones already (thank you to the team for doing this!):

+ Do I need to be working at a Microsoft Partner, or can I be employed by the end user organisation?

You need to be employed by a Microsoft Partner. The application process will require you to sign in with your business domain email address, along with the Partner ID for your organisation.

+ Can I use my own personal email address? I already have access to the Microsoft tenant with it

No, you need to use your corporate email address, regardless of whether your personal email address has existing access to the Microsoft tenant. Personal email addresses are blocked from being able to be used in the application/renewals process.

+ Does the Microsoft Partner that I work for need to have the Business Applications solution designation, or be of a certain size?

No, there are no requirements for specific solution designations and/or specific size. As long as you’re employed by a Microsoft Partner (which to be clear, could be your own organisation, and have a total of 1 employee – yourself!), then that’s absolutely fine. During the application process, you will be required to provide the Microsoft Partner Number (MPN) ID.

+ How many people will receive the award for the upcoming year?

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are around 160 current FTRSA’s. Whilst I’m obviously not privy to the number of applicants, or the (ultimate) decision by Microsoft as to what the number for the upcoming award year will be, I’d venture to suggest that the number isn’t going to increase significantly. Microsoft (& the people owning the program within Microsoft) really want this to see seen as the ‘Best of the Best’, so having many more people is unlikely to achieve that.

+ Does the award belong to me, or my company?

The award belongs to you – it’s awarded in an individual capacity. What this means is that if you’re changing employment, it will go with you.

+ Do I need to be working in a Delivery capacity? I only do Pre-Sales?

Yes, you need to be actually working on/delivering the project. FTRSA is about people who are absolutely hands-on with the technologies, and implementing them. Pre-Sales is an important function (and to be clear here, pre-sales is part of my role), but if you’re not doing an implementation function, you can’t get FTRSA.

+ The project/s I’ve worked on are confidential, and I can’t share details of them (eg architecture etc)

This is something I’ve heard a few times. Firstly, I’d remind you that Microsoft owns the platform, and is aware of them. Secondly, the information that you need to share can be obfuscated (eg referring to the customer sector or vertical, rather than the customer itself), and doesn’t need to go into absolute detail for every single column & data point. I know of existing FTRSA’s who work on HIGHLY confidential/government projects, that have no issue with submitting enough information about the project to be able to get awarded FTRSA.

Alternatively, if this really WILL be an issue, then you can create & submit a Technical Sample instead (more information under Section 10 of the FAQ’s).

+ I don’t know what to include in my reference architecture – HELP!

DON’T PANIC! (yes, I do love this Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy reference). Under Section 9 of the FAQ’s you’ll find links as to how to submit, but ALSO templates that the team has VERY helpfully & nicely created for you!

You don’t have to stick to the provided format, of course, but I’d suggest to strongly take the suggested sections/items within them as recommendations for what you’ll need to include. Think of it this way (in my opinion) – it’s not just about the actual architecture, but also about things like integrations, security/authentication, application lifecycle management, disaster recovery, data loads, reporting, scalability, usability, and the list goes on…and yes, AI is likely to be included too on that…

Note: Whilst I wouldn’t specifically expect licensing to be included, I tend to find that FTRSA’s are highly likely to understand & drive licensing considerations & conversations. It would do you well to include these as well if you’re handling this side too

+ Do the reference architecture & customer story need to be for the same project?

They are able to be for the same project, but you’re able to submit the information across different projects. For example, you may still be in the middle of delivering a project that you’re doing the reference architecture for, or the project has just finished, and therefore a partner/customer story wouldn’t yet be able to be done.

+ Can I wait until the last moment of the application window to submit?

Well you can, but I wouldn’t recommend it – plus the team aren’t likely to love getting an avalanche of last minute submissions. Given that there’s just under 2 months to go until the application window closes, I’d say to get everything ready & submit ASAP – this is especially relevant for the reference architecture it can take 6-8 weeks to go through the review process!

+ I’m too snowed under with work – can I get an extension to the timeframe?

No, unfortunately not. If you’re too busy with work (& that your employer doesn’t seem to understand the kudos of the award, and help remove some of the work), then wait & apply for next year. Don’t bother the team to ask them for an extension – they’re really busy enough as it is!

Hopefully this will be helpful to you – if you or others in your organisation are considering applying for this, and you have questions that aren’t answered above, I’d be more than happy for you to post them here, or feel free to contact me on LinkedIn directly if you’d prefer.

And finally, if you do decide to go for it – GOOD LUCK!!!

Exam AB-731: AI Transformation Leader

What better way to start 2026 then to talk about a Microsoft certification, especially one for a totally NEW type of user!

Following on the steps of the other AB exams I’ve been writing about my experience with (see Exam AB-730: AI Business Professional, Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect and Exam AB-900: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals ), this article will cover the AB-731 exam.

This exam is focusing on the Microsoft AI capabilities from a Business Leader perspective, and to the best of my knowledge is the first time that Microsoft has ever created an exam from a ‘Business Leader’ perspective. Taking this exam was a complete mindset shift to me, especially when seeing the questions – it’s not about understanding the in depth technical capabilities, but more around the breadth of technology options (spanning Azure, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio & other tools), and what they bring/enable from a BUSINESS perspective.

The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:

As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you should understand how to recognize opportunities for AI transformation, identify the right AI tools and resources, plan for AI adoption, optimize business processes, and drive innovation by using Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI services.

This Certification is designed for business decision-makers at all levels who are responsible for guiding transformation and innovation within their teams or organizations. In this role, you’re expected to demonstrate AI fluency, strategic vision, and the ability to lead AI adoption across teams and functions but are not expected to write any code.

As a candidate for this Certification, you should be able to evaluate AI opportunities, champion responsible AI practices, and align AI investments with business goals. You need experience leading adoption or change management in a business context. You must also be familiar with Microsoft 365 services, Azure AI services, and general AI capabilities.

The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft Certified: AI Transformation Leader, and there is an official Learning Path available for it.

As I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change for when it comes out of beta.

Overall, the exam approach was quite different to me – though I do talk with organisations frequently around general AI matters, I’ve never taken an example written in this way beforehand. However, I do feel that it’s very helpful to have this in place, to ensure that business leaders can demonstrate that they actually do know what they’re talking about 😉

I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

  • Azure Components & Capabilities
    • AI Vision – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Language – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Document Intelligence – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • Machine Learning – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Foundry – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Search – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
    • What license is needed
    • What data does it have access to
    • What security controls are in place
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot
    • What is it, what can it be used for
    • What can it do
    • How does it connect to data
    • What are the connectors for it (standard & custom)
    • Benefits of using it (vs 3rd party AI tooling)
    • Different agents (eg Analyst & Researcher) within it – what they do, how to access and use them
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio
    • What is it, what can be used for
    • What can it do
    • What license is needed
    • What data can it access
  • Microsoft Security Copilot
    • What is it, what can be used for
    • What can it do
    • Benefits that it provides
  • Security & Governance
    • Content filtering controls within Copilot
    • Policies
    • Handling requirements to prevent inappropriate language & responses
    • Responsible AI principles
    • Governance ownership, responsibility & requirements
  • Generative AI
    • AI model hallucinations
    • Grounding in data
    • Improving response quality
    • Prompt engineering
    • Pre trained models vs fine tuned models
    • Reasoning models vs non-reasoning models
    • Understanding usage costs (including different pricing models)
    • What is RAG, and how can it be used for business scenarios
    • Adoption throughout organisations – personas to involve in adoption team

    I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!

    Exam AB-900: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals

    Following on the steps of the other AB exams I’ve been writing about my experience with (see Exam AB-730: AI Business Professional & Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect), this article will cover the AB-900 exam.

    This exam is focusing on the Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities from a user & administration perspective, and doesn’t cover/include anything from Copilot Studio.

    Now, though it’s a Fundamentals exam, to be honest it’s the HARDEST fundamentals exam that I’ve ever taken!

    The approach is around being able to demonstrate understanding of how to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as a lot of focus on how to control & administer it.

    The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:

    As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you should be familiar with Microsoft 365, including core services, security, identity and access, data protection, and governance, along with Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.

    Additionally, you should be familiar with the admin centers used to access Microsoft 365 workloads, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. You need to have experience with AI-driven productivity tools and modern IT management practices.

    You must be able to identify the roles of the core features and objects available in Microsoft 365, such as users, groups, teams, sites, and libraries. Plus, you should understand the core security features of Microsoft 365, such as authentication methods, conditional access policies, and single sign-on (SSO).

    The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft 365 Certified: Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals, and there is an official Learning Path available for it.

    As I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change for when it comes out of beta.

    One thing to keep in mind about this exam – though I do mention Microsoft Purview in the list of items below, I haven’t gone into it extensively. However, there were a LOT of questions that touched on Purview (& other governance stuff as well) – you REALLY need to be knowing & understanding these capabilities to be able to take & pass the exam. Just guessing the answers is not going to help at all!

    Overall, the exam seemed to me to be pretty decent, though with indeed a heavy focus on security & governance (as I’ve mentioned above). I don’t see this as a bad thing though, as it can help to show that administrators really do know what they’re talking about.

    I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

    • Agent types
      • Native Microsoft 365 Copilot agent
      • Native Microsoft 365 Copilot advanced agents (eg Researcher & Analyst). What they are, how to access, what to use them for
      • Custom Microsoft 365 Copilot agent
      • SharePoint agent
    • Creating/using Agents
      • Using natural language to create agents
      • How to handle/perform multi-step reasoning
      • Use of notebooks
      • Custom instructions
      • Scheduling prompts
      • Querying data types
        • Structured
        • Unstructured
    • Governance & security
      • Blocking access to different types of searches & collateral
      • Blocking access to specific agents
      • Tools to use for blocking
      • How to share agents with other users
      • Assigning licenses to users
      • Data retention policies
      • Data labelling policies
      • Use of Microsoft Purview, covering capabilities, tools, auditing, how to use, etc
      • Use of DLP
      • Data source permissions
      • Conditional access policies
      • Microsoft Defender – what it is, capabilities it has, how to use it, etc.
      • Types of authentication
    • Reporting
      • Licensing & usage
      • Adoption & interactions
    • Payment options & capabilities
      • Credit usage – internal vs external users
      • Pay As You Go Billing, and scenarios you can use it for

    I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!

    Exam AB-730: AI Business Professional

    Following on from the recent launch of the new Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect exam, Microsoft has now developed & released other exams in the AB series – this post is on the AB-730 exam.

    The approach continues to be around how to use AI within technology for business purposes, rather than needing to be able to create AI or code. This exam focused on the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience, how to use it within various Microsoft Office applications, etc.

    The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:

    As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you should have experience using generative AI–powered productivity tools, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Researcher, and Analyst. You take advantage of AI to improve daily work, drive business outcomes, and make informed decisions in business contexts—without building AI apps or writing code.

    You should have a basic understanding of Microsoft 365 and should be comfortable navigating core apps, such as Outlook, Word, Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, and Excel. You should also be familiar with common business processes, including drafting emails, creating presentations, generating images, and managing documents.

    The overall information for the exam can be found at at Microsoft Certified: AI Business Professional (beta) – Certifications | Microsoft Learn, and there is an official Learning Path available for it.

    As I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change for when it comes out of beta.

    One thing that I found I didn’t like about the exam is the new question type of ‘Best Answer’. This question type gives various options, whilst telling you that more than one answer choice may achieve the goal, but asking you to select the BEST answer. I believe that questions like this are subjective, and the answers will vary based on each person’s knowledge, understanding & experience, so I’m not quite sure why Microsoft have decided that this would be good to use. It will be interesting to see what happens when the exam comes out of Beta, and if these questions are still around or not then.

    Overall, the exam seemed to me to be pretty decent – I initially thought it would be quite generic, but you really do need to know how all the Copilot offerings work including Copilot Chat and Copilot in the Office applications.

    If you’re new to Copilot, and/or not really sure as to how it actually works & the capabilities, I’d suggest not to take the exam yet. Instead, go and take a look at the learning paths, and look to find out how it actually works & operates.

    I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

    • Microsoft 365 Copilot vs Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
      • What each one does/doesn’t do
      • When to use each one
    • What to include when prompting Copilot
    • Copilot security framework
      • How data is used
      • The different data controls that are in place
      • How data protection works, different data protection capabilities & using them
      • Removing data & prompts from Copilot,
    • Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Word
    • Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Excel
    • Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Outlook
    • Copilot capabilities in Microsoft PowerPoint
    • Copilot capabilities for Teams
      • Using Copilot within Teams for queries
      • Using Copilot within Teams for meetings (preparing for them, during the meeting, after the meeting)
    • Collaboration with Copilot report outputs
    • Copilot Researcher agent – getting access, capabilities & use cases, inputs & outputs
    • Copilot Analyst agent – getting access, capabilities & use cases, inputs & outputs
    • Using custom instructions within Copilot – how to do this, how it is used/applied, etc
    • Using documents with Copilot for answers & generating material. Updating new versions of documents, and how Copilot will behave
    • Microsoft 365 agents – creating, configuring, sharing, security etc
    • Creating, sharing & scheduling prompts, including limitationsent

    I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!

    Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect

    It’s always interesting when Microsoft release a new type of exam, especially when it’s not tied to specific functionality, but rather to an overall approach. The AB-100 exam (don’t pay too much attention to the ‘100’ designator, in my opinion) follows the approach that we’re seeing Microsoft taking – needing to use technology (& here, specifically AI in technology) holistically across multiple solution.

    I took the exam in Beta as soon as it launched, though due to preparing for the Power Platform Community Conference (which I’m currently writing this at), it’s taken a bit of time to get this blog post up and published.

    As an architect, AI isn’t new to us – we know of multiple different capabilities (spanning Microsoft 365, Copilot Studio & Azure AI Foundry), which we need to use appropriately to handle customer scenarios. AI isn’t new to exams either – there are multiple Azure exams with AI in them, we have multiple Business Application exams with Copilot Studio in them, etc.

    However, exams to date focus on a specific part of the technology stack. For example, the PL-600 focused on Power Platform & Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. The MB-700 focused on Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, and so on and so forth.

    This new exam is somewhat of a paradigm shift – needing to understand AI holistically as an architect across multiple parts of the technology stack, what & how it’s used for and where, etc. This is most definitely a new approach, and it will be interesting to see how it users react to it.

    Truthfully, having taken it, I’d personally say that it feels a bit more like an enterprise architect exam approach (which also doesn’t exist in the Microsoft stack), albeit focused around Business Applications. Given the way in which Microsoft partners have specialists in each technology part of the stack, it will be interesting to see if this approach will pivot the way in which people are trained/skilled, and deliver projects. I think that there’s likely to be a lot of feedback to Microsoft that it’s not the way that the partner landscape currently works – though perhaps Microsoft is specifically trying to influence this itself to change. Only time will tell…

    The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft Certified: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect (beta) – Certifications | Microsoft Learn, though there is NO learning path that’s been created (at the time of writing). I think that this is because Microsoft may want to see the reaction to this new approach, and pivot appropriately, rather than needing to create a lot of content that may potentially need to be re-done.

    The official description of the exam can be found at the link above (it’s too long to post here), so please go take a look!

    So, as I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change for when it comes out of beta.

    I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

    • Business usage of AI
      • Different agents usage and results
      • How to use appropriately for business/agent analysis
      • Different types of metrics and results
      • Best practices for building Copilot Studio agents, and using Copilot Studio agents
      • Looking at the ROI for using Copilot Studio agents
      • Designing the usage of different AI and agent capabilities for business needs
    • Building agents
      • What Copilot Studio agents need to work
      • Data types that agents can use
      • Data sources that agents can use
      • Use of knowledge sources for agents
      • Usage of custom connectors
      • Handling token usage with Azure AI Foundry
      • How to handle testing for Copilot Studio agents
      • Different testing types & approaches
      • Extending Microsoft 365 Copilot
      • Using Power Automate with Copilot Studio agents
      • Speech to Text/Text to Speech
      • Handing conversation to live customer service representative using Dynamics 365 Contact Centre
      • Using RPA within an agent
    • Models
      • Different types of models that could be used within Azure AI Foundry
      • Orchestration
      • Improving performance
    • Security
      • How to handle Copilot Studio security
      • Governance & compliance tooling (eg Purview)
      • Handling/restricting connectors for Copilot Studio agents
      • Ensuring user security when using agents (ie not able to retrieve data that the user cannot access directly)
    • Reporting
      • Monitoring tools for Copilot Studio agents
      • Metrics, usage & analytics for Copilot Studio agents
      • Investigating Copilot Studio agent transcripts
      • Monitoring tools for Azure AI models
      • Evaluating Azure AI Foundry model outputs
    • Application Lifecyle Management
      • Focusing on AI Agents for Dynamics 365 CE, Finance & Operations, and Power Platform
      • How/what components to use and include
      • What tooling to use for ALM

    Overall, the exam seemed to me to be pretty decent – I was worried that it would focus just on Copilot Studio, with not much else in it, but there’s a good balance across other AI capabilities as well.

    The big change, for me at least, were the questions around Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations – this isn’t an area that I’m an expert in generally, and most definitely not for AI tooling. I think that this, as I mention above, is what may get the biggest pushback/feedback into Microsoft.

    I’m going to be quite interested in seeing how the exam is actually launched (as it’s currently in Beta of course). Having chatted with a few others who have taken the exam (whilst obviously respecting the NDA!), they also think that this is an approach pivot from Microsoft, and are wondering about the real world application of it.

    I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!

    Dynamics 365 Contact Centre – worth it or not?

    As quite a few people are aware, my background is decently embedded in customer service capabilities. In fact when I launched this blog, I did a massive number of articles around the new Omnichannel capabilities that Microsoft had just released for Dynamics 365 Customer Service!

    Since then, Microsoft have been releasing new & updated functionality over the last number of years, and it’s been really great to see the journey & roadmap that’s been implemented. It’s now absolutely possible to have a full customer service experience, across many different channels (first party provided by Microsoft, as well as through 3rd party solutions).

    Last year, Microsoft brought out a new offering called ‘Dynamics 365 Contact Center’. This is an interesting angle on the products being offered by Microsoft. I’ve recently had the opportunity to dig deeper into the offering, and want to share my thoughts below as to whether it’s worth it or not.

    Before I start, I’m going to be quite clear – having spent several weeks deep on this, including talking to various senior technical people at Microsoft, my general conclusion is that this is more of an outlier/edge case product, rather than being something that most organisations will look to adopt.

    Personally I also think that this is more of a political consideration to be able to get on the analyst charts/reports for Contact Centre (given that organisations need to have their technology be able to connect into multiple platforms).

    With that said, let’s take a look into WHY I say that (though I’m happy for my mind to be changed!).

    Offering

    The way that Microsoft pitches the product is as follows:

    Deliver intelligence, automation, and efficiency across channels through a Copilot-first contact center that works with existing CRMs.

    What does this actually mean? Well, it’s Microsoft offering communication capabilities across multiple channels, which is essentially the Omnichannel capabilities that Dynamics 365 Customer Service has already. What it doesn’t have is the actual underlying Customer Service functionality that service functions need.

    For the eagle eyed amongst you, you’ll have noted the part of ‘existing CRM’s’. What this means is that Microsoft has enabled the technology to be be able to connect into third party CRM systems (eg SalesForce, Service Now, ZenDesk, etc). More on how this is being done further below.

    The thinking behind this that this is now an offering for organisations to be able to use Microsoft as the Contact Centre solution whilst continuing to work with their existing systems. This is because larger scale customers are often not able to look at replacing/migrating for both CRM & CCaaS at the same time. Being able to have this as an offering therefore can enable organisations to make use of their Microsoft investment, and possibly using it as a ‘stepping stone’ to migrating to a full Microsoft CRM solution (ie Dynamics 365).

    Other providers such as Genesys, NICE, Five9 & Amazon all have similar sorts of companion Contact Centre solutions as well, so Microsoft is obviously looking at competing with these now too.

    Integrations

    So integrating with other systems are at the absolute core of the product. This is because, as I’ve said above, this is not a complete customer service/CRM solution.

    There are two types of integrations that are currently being facilitated by the product:

    • SalesForce. There is a native integration to SalesForce, using the Microsoft SalesForce connector. This is actually connecting directly from Contact Centre to SalesForce through the SalesForce API, without any other components needed
    • All other CRM systems. Connecting into other CRM systems, such as Zendesk & ServiceNow etc, use Power Automate. More specifically, a single Power Automate flow, which needs to be set up, connected & configured. It does allow the ability to use either one of the provided connectors or API calls through HTTP action, but there’s some manual work required. The drawbacks of course of using Power Automate is that it’s not actually a (proper) integration tool, and could possibly run into challenges when handling data at scale – throttling or timing out.

    Note: Microsoft teams may also say that it’s possible to deploy Contact Centre on top of Dynamics 365. Though this is technically feasible, it does require its own environment to be deployed, and then using Power Automate (or another data integration/sync technology) to move data backwards & forwards, and is not the way that the product is actually being positioned.

    Environment (& storage considerations)

    When deploying Contact Centre, it requires its own environment to be set up in. It is not possible to deploy Contact Centre on top of an existing Dynamics 365 (Customer Service) environment.

    It’s important to consider the amount of data that’s needing to be synced in to this environment, the ongoing data storage within it, as well as the storage that usage of Copilot will take up. One of the concerns that I’ve seen, especially when at scale in organisations with hundreds or thousands of users, as the amount of storage that the Copilot logs actually takes up (which customers are charged for). These can of course be cleared down, but then the analytics from these won’t be useful for longer periods of time.

    Embedded Experience

    It is possible to embed the conversation widget from Contact Centre directly into other CRM (or other) systems. This allows users access to this without needing to switch systems. It’s a very nice item to have – it’s something I wish that were possible with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, but unfortunately that’s not possible (at least not at this point in time)!

    Licensing

    From a practical perspective, I don’t believe that the numbers actually show a positive approach towards adopting Contact Centre on top of other applications.

    If we take SalesForce as an example, there are possibly 3 licenses that larger organisations would have (all prices are current list price in USD):

    • Pro Suite – $100 per user per month
    • Enterprise – $165 per user per month
    • Unlimited – $330 per user per month

    Adding on Dynamics 365 Contact Centre would then add an additional $110 per user per month. That means a minimum of $210 per user per month, though the likelihood is somewhat higher (as most large organisations would be on SalesForce Service Cloud Enterprise) at around $275 per user per month. Those prices also don’t include additional Dataverse storage that may be needed for large amounts of data being handled.

    Compare that with the new Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium offering (wrapping up Customer Service Enterprise, Voice & Digital Channels into a single SKU) at $195 per user per month. In my mind, going native Dynamics 365 all the way is a no brainer (especially as Copilot is native in the product – with SalesForce, you need to pay more for AI!).

    Existing Dynamics 365 (Customer Service) deployment

    To be clear – if organisations already have Dynamics 365 (Customer Service) deployed & in use, then the specific Dynamics 365 Contact Centre solution is NOT the solution for them. Customer Service is designed to be the complete end to end solution for CRM/Case Management/Ticketing/Omnichannel etc, and Customer Service Premium (as mentioned in the licensing section above) is bringing together Customer Service together with Contact Centre capabilities within a single environment.

    Also as pointed out above under Environments, it’s not possible to deploy Contact Centre into an existing Dynamics 365 deployment – you need to set up another environment, and then syncronise the data backwards & forwards, leading to more storage costs, API calls, technical setup/infrastructure, etc.

    Summary

    In summary, I think it’s an interesting (lightweight) product, and will keep an eye on it to see how it possibly evolves. Time will tell as to whether it takes off at scale or not.

    I’d also like to thank Peter Ruiter for his time & expertise on some of the finer nuances on the product.

    If you’re considering deploying Dynamics 365 Contact Centre, or have any questions around it, please do drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!

    Ignite ’24 – Power Platform Governance Announcements

    Being at Microsoft Ignite ’24 in Chicago is an amazing experience. Even MORE amazing are the announcements that the Power Platform Governance team has come out with. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given early access to some of the features, and they’re really awesome. Below, I’ve summarised what I believe to be the top picks to look at

    Power Platform Admin Centre.

    We’ve all been used to the PPAC experience that’s been around for a number of years. It’s been useful, but limited in various functions. Well, there’s not just been a facelift, but an entirely NEW PPAC experience for us. Here are some screenshots:

    There’s a massive amount of stuff to look through (& play with) – my overall impressions are that this will definitely help move forward with security, governance & everything that’s needed. More importantly, especially with the focus & mentions of Copilot & Copilot Studio, there’s a section reserved for that, which is going to be critical for IT admins:

    The new PPAC experience is also taking over the role that was previously played by the Power Platform CoE Starter Toolkit. Functionality is (slowly) being shifted into the main PPAC experience. One of these that’s already a great start is the Inventory capability:

    Behind the scenes, this is data being captured at the tenant level, which is being stored in Dataverse (no, we don’t YET have access to the data natively, though I’m told it’s on the roadmap to be able to query). The performance of this works extremely well, though there are still a few little bugs that are being worked out 🙂

    But more importantly, this also covers Copilot Studio components – to date there has not really been anything around to report on this properly…but now there is!

    Managed Environments

    We all know the conversation around Managed Environments, and sometimes needing to persuade organisations that premium licensing will actually give ROI to them. Well, with the new features that have been announced this week, this just got a WHOLE lot easier! Let’s take a look at some of these items

    Environment Rules

    Initially when Managed Environments launched, there were just a few rules that could be applied. We were told that more were coming….and indeed they are! Still more to come that the team is working on, but the number of rules has increased massively:

    Some of my favorites here are the ability to manage Copilot – it’s going to be SO important as to how these are handled (especially with all of the emphasis on it coming out of Ignite). Being able to set/enforce authentication options, sharing options & various other settings is going to be KEY to proper Copilot governance.

    It also now gives options for backup retention policies. I’ve written previously about how to ‘hack’ longer backups for environments (Environment types, capabilities & backups) – we’re now able to set longer backups for pure Power Platform environments within needing to enable Dynamics 365 applications within them (though of course you may still want to do this if you can see yourself using Dynamics 365 in the environment in the future – it’s still not possible to upgrade the environment type at a later point).

    However there’s also something else new around environments. Previously if just looking at an environment from the main list of environments within PPAC, it wasn’t easy to see if it belonged to a Managed Environment group or not. Now it is – more so, you’re not able to tweak any settings on the general environment page that are being managed at the Environment Group level!

    DLP Capabilities

    One of the main challenges to date with DLP has been around the inability to block certain connectors (eg the Microsoft standard connectors). With Managed Environments, the team has now enabled organisations to be able to block ANY connectors that they wish to! If you’re not running Managed Environments, the existing limitations will still apply – you do need to be using Managed Environments for this! This will also be made available through the Power Platform API & Admin SDK tools in the coming weeks.

    Preferred Group

    Whilst we’ve had environment routing around now for a while (being able to auto-route new makers to a specific environments, which could be within a Managed Environment group), we haven’t had the ability to handle new environments being created & auto populated into an environment group.

    Well, this is now changing. We’re now going to have the ability to auto set policies, so that when a new environment is created, it can automatically be added to a Managed Environment group. Obviously with this happening, the rules & policies applied at the group level will automatically be applied to the new environment as well! This will be a decent relief to Power Platform administrators – to date we’ve been able to set up things like DLP policies to auto-apply to new environments, but managing them otherwise needed to be done manually…well, no more!

    Security Personas

    Until now, security & governance within Power Platform have been a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Different types of people would access PPAC etc, but there wasn’t really a way to differentiate the different personas. This is now changing:

    In summary, incredible steps forward, and I know that there’s a LOT more in the works that should be coming in the next weeks & months. I’m really excited about all of this, and using the capabilities to continue enabling & empowering organisations from a security & governance point of view.

    Error in Customer Insights – Data

    Not a long blog post, but something that may come in handy for some people!

    I was recently playing around with Customer Insights – both the Data & Journeys side of thing for a Proof of Concept I was creating for a customer. It’s definitively interesting to see how Microsoft have been evolving the product over the last year or so (which was the last time I played around with it).

    One of the components that we were very interested to play around with specifically is the ‘Discovery’ part of Customer Insights – Data. As shown in the screenshot below, this is where you’re able to use natural language to query your data, to then get results using AI. This means that you don’t have to understand any specific query language (SQL, R, M etc), but rather just ‘converse’ with it as you would another person.

    You’ll perhaps note that there’s NO mention of Copilot here, though perhaps Microsoft may at some point decide to call this Copilot functionality as well?

    The team had loaded in the data – we had a fair few number of rows (multiple millions of them!), gone through the unification process, enrichment process, etc etc. All of this was set up & working properly.

    However, when I tried to go to the ‘Discovery’ tab in my own browser, I was getting an extremely strange error:

    As you can see, it’s incredibly informative…NOT!!! I mean, what does ‘Value cannot be null. (Parameter ‘key’)’ actually mean to the average person?

    At first, I thought it was something to do with the underlying data, so went back to check that. However the data seemed fine. Furthermore, other people on the team were able to access Discovery in their own browsers without any issues.

    Having no other option (turning it off & on again didn’t work), I raised a support ticket with Microsoft. This was responded to in a timely fashion, and I found myself working with Rohan, the Microsoft Support Representative.

    In my initial ticket submission, I had included details of what was going on, what I had clicked on, that others in the team didn’t have the problem, the Organisation ID, URL’s – you name it!

    Rohan jumped on a call with me, and it turned out to be the shortest support session I have EVER had. He asked me to change the system language to another language (I had been using English, to decided to change it to German). Once the language change had been applied, we navigated back to the ‘Discovery’ tab (all in German, I may add), and when the screen loaded, there was no error! Holding our breath, we then changed the language back to English (more complicated than I had imagined, with navigating in a different language).

    Once this was done, and everything was back in familiar English, the ‘Discovery’ tab then loaded without issues (again!), and I was able to go ahead and start running queries in it using natural language. It was great!

    In fact, it’s actually taken me longer to type out the above than the length of the support call – it was indeed that quick! Obviously lots of praise to Rohan (he did mention he had seen this once before, which is why he knew how to fix the issue).

    The bigger question in my mind is what exactly was happening/going wrong underneath – I have asked this to Microsoft, but haven’t gotten a response. My guess is that something in the user/language settings hadn’t been populated properly, and therefore resulted in that error message. Updating/changing this forced it to then populate properly, and it worked.

    Have you ever seen something like this, where changing a system setting (such as language) helped resolve an issue? I’d love to hear more about it –

    MB-280: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Analyst

    It’s been a while since taking a Microsoft certification exam, but with the new MB-280 exam being launched in the last few days, I’ve obviously needed to take a look at it! It felt a little strange, as I’m now used to the certification renewal process (which is why I haven’t taken any exams in a while), but thankfully things went alright with the overall exam.

    For those who haven’t been following the news, Microsoft made an announcement a few months back that some exams would be retiring, and the new MB-280 exam would be the replacement for this. In short, this is supposed to replace the MB-210 (Sales), MB-220 (Customer Insights – Journeys) & MB-260 (Customer Insights – Data). Malin Martnes wrote a good blog post in June – I’d suggest to take a look at it at for more general information around it.

    Now I’m all up for new certifications being created & made available. However, and I know this could be considered controversial, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA as to why this exam was created in THIS specific way. If an exam had been created, for example, to bring together the two sides of Customer Insights (ie to cover both Data & Journeys in a single exam), I think that would have been quite good.

    But with having taken this, my thoughts (& feedback to Microsoft directly) is that they should un-deprecate (if that’s a word/phrase?) the MB-210 exam, and continue it forward. There’s no reason that I can see having Marketing & Sales together in a single exam – it feels like two (or technically 3?) lego bricks lumped together without any rhyme or reason.

    The learning path for the exam was also launched in the last few days, and can be found at Study guide for Exam MB-280: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Analyst | Microsoft Learn

    The official description of the exam is:

    As a candidate for this exam, you’re a Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer experience analyst who has:

    • Participated in or plans to participate in Dynamics 365 Sales implementations.
    • An understanding of an organization’s sales process.
    • An understanding of the seller’s perspective (user experience).
    • The ability to demonstrate Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data and Customer Insights – Journeys capabilities.

    You’re responsible for configuring, customizing, and expanding the functionality of Dynamics 365 Sales to create business solutions that support, automate, and accelerate the company’s sales process. You use your knowledge of customer experience capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Power Platform to inform the following design and implementation tasks:

    • Configure Dynamics 365 Sales standard and premium features.
    • Implement collaboration features.
    • Configure the security model.
    • Perform Dynamics 365 Sales customizations.
    • Extend Dynamics 365 Sales with Microsoft Power Platform.
    • Deploy the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook.

    As a candidate, you need:

    • An understanding of the Dataverse security model and features, including business units, security roles, and row ownership and sharing.
    • Experience configuring model-driven apps in Microsoft Power Apps.
    • An understanding of accounts, contacts, and activities.
    • An understanding of leads and opportunities.
    • An understanding of the components of model-driven apps, including forms, views, charts, and dashboards.
    • An understanding of model-driven app personal settings.
    • Experience working with Dataverse solutions.
    • An understanding of Dataverse, including tables, columns, and relationships.
    • Familiarity with Power Automate cloud flow concepts, such as connectors, triggers, and actions.

    More can be found at the exam page itself, which is located at Exam MB-280: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Analyst (beta) – Certifications | Microsoft Learn

    Now during my exam, I was looking forward to seeing the ‘new’ capability around being able to use Microsoft Learn during the exam (new to me – as I haven’t taken any other exams in the last year or so since it was announced!). However there didn’t seem to be any capability to launch Microsoft Learn – I’m not sure why it wasn’t available, as this isn’t a Fundamental level exam

    Questions also used the older terms of references rather than the newer/accepted terms – ie using ‘field’ instead of ‘column’, and ‘entity’ instead of ‘table’. Again, I have no idea why this is – all other exams (including the renewals for them) are using these properly (in my summary below I have ensured I use the correct terms).

    So, as I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change.

    I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

    • Sales Apps
      • Configuring forms, columns & tables
      • Configuring security roles & access to records
      • Configuring relationships between records (including deletion properties)
      • Sales Mobile App – security & deployment
      • Forecasting – setting up & configuring
      • Configuring Goals
      • Configuring Opportunities
      • Handling currencies
    • Copilot for Sales
      • Setting up & deploying to users
      • Configuring access
    • Outlook App
      • Deploying & setting up
      • Configuring forms & information
    • Exchange
      • Connecting to mailboxes
      • Configuring folder permissions
      • Configuring multiple domains
    • Product Families & Catalogue
      • Creating & setting up
      • Configuring options
      • Adding items to be used
    • Price Lists
      • Creating & setting up
      • Configuring options, including discounts
      • Using time-restricted price lists
      • Handling currencies
    • Document Management
      • Different document management capabilities
      • Usage of SharePoint in different ways
    • Data Import
      • Usage of Power Query
      • Data manipulation
      • Handling duplicate records
    • SMS
      • Setting up & configuring SMS provider
    • Journeys
      • Different triggers to use based on scenarios & requirements
      • How to trigger journeys
      • How to set up emails to be used within a journey
    • Segments
      • Different types of segments
      • Creating & modifying segments
    • Searching/Filtering
      • Using Advanced Find
      • Setting up/modifying queries to include/exclude records based on conditions
    • Business Process Flows
      • Modifying business process flows
      • Handling conditions within business process flows

    As a Sales exam, it seemed alright. But as mentioned above, the Customer Insights questions just seemed strange to me – I’d expect a consultant to be very technically skilled in Customer Insights, but not in Sales (& vice versa), so I’m not understanding bringing these two sides together.

    I’m going to be quite interested in seeing how the exam is actually launched (as it’s currently in Beta of course). Having chatted with a few others who have taken the exam (whilst obviously respecting the NDA!), they also can’t really understand the landscape. Personally, I think that if it continues like this, Microsoft is going to hear quite a few complaints around it.

    I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!

    Environment Grouping

    One of the main ‘complaints’ that Power Platform administrators have is around how policies are applied to environments. Within Azure, it’s possible to set up security policies and apply them in bulk, or group together components under a single set of policies. However when it comes to Power Platform, this has not been possible – each environment has needed to be configured on its own.

    I’m not talking here about DLP policies, as these are set up and then relevant environments selected/deselected as needed. I’m talking about things like setting Canvas App sharing limits, welcoming new makers, and other items.

    Well, Microsoft has now made this possible to do – though the current first iteration (now in Public Preview) only has a few options within it, I’m quite certain that many more items will be coming down the line to fall under the new Environment Grouping feature.

    At the moment, there are 6 options available for Power Platform administrators to be able to set and configure. Note that you do need to have the M365 security roles for either Global Tenant Administrator or Power Platform Administrator to be able to access and carry this out.

    To be clear, Environment Grouping is a feature of Managed Environments. I’m not going to go into the debate about whether you should or shouldn’t adopt Managed Environments (at least not here – I may be speaking about it publicly later on this year), but you do need to have these in order to use this functionality. More specifically, you will ONLY be able to add environments that are set as ‘Managed’ to Environment Groups (though they don’t have to have Dataverse in play):

    So, what exactly is the purpose of Environment Grouping? Well, it’s to minimise the amount of time that Power Platform administrators need to spend in setting up & applying policies.

    Think of the users within your organsiation. You’re going to have different personas, such as developers, testers, end users, etc.

    You’re also likely (especially in larger organisation) to have different business units & functions requiring different items. For example, you may lock down access to social media, but Marketing and Recruitment may indeed need access to social media to be able to carry out their jobs.

    With these personas in mind, you can then start to look into building out different rule groupings, which will apply to all environments that are included under the Environment Group. It’s somewhat similar to the way in which DLP policies work – you create a DLP policy, and then everything that comes under the DLP policy gets the DLP policy setting.

    There are many ways to manage pockets of environments within your tenant using environment groups. For example, global organisations can create an environment group for all environments in each geographic region to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. You can also organise environment groups by department or other criteria.

    One of the other features around Environment Groups is the ability to use Environment Routing. I’ve talked about this previously when the feature was first released (Developer Environment Routing!) – Environment Groups now takes this to the next level, by being able to automatically set the Environment Group that new developer environments will fall under (so therefore policies will be automatically applied). Important to note here that all developer environments created through this WILL be set as ‘Managed’.

    More information on the new capabilities can of course be found on Microsoft Learn, at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/environment-groups.

    I think that this is a great new feature to have in place for Power Platform administrators, and look forward to seeing new functionality rolled out within this to enable organisations in a better way. Being able to cut down on administration/governance time, whilst being able to be more effective is, in my view, a win-win for ALL of us, and I can’t wait to see how it will develop over time.

    So, my question to you is how would YOU look to use such functionality? What features might you like to appear within Environment Grouping to enable you and your organisation? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!