Tag: thecrmninja

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!!!

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!

Developer Environment Deletion!

Strong title for a blog post, right? Well, I did want to catch your attention! So what exactly are we talking about here?

For the last few years, it’s been possible for users to sign up for a ‘Developer’ plan, which gives them a full capability Power Platform environment for free (though with some limitations to them). This used to be be called the ‘Community’ plan, and is an amazing resource for everyone, whether they’re a professional or citizen developer, to have their own personal ‘sandpit’ to play in, and try things out.

Let’s wind back a few months in time now – earlier this year, Microsoft announced that users would be able to create THREE of these Developer environments, rather than having just a single one! This was mind blowing news, and something that has been extremely welcomed. If you’re wanting to see more on the announcement, Phil Topness has a great video on it at Dataverse Environments For Everyone – New Developer Plan – Power CAT Live – YouTube.

Incidentally, I’m curious as to how much storage space Microsoft has in the background to handle these. After all, each environment takes up a minimum of 1GB of space (& can grow to 2 GB). That means that each user could have 6GB of storage being used….which when multiplied, gives a VERY large number!

Microsoft has now announced that these developer environments, however, need to be utilisied. Ie if they’ve been created, but aren’t being used, Microsoft is going to delete them! Now, from a certain perspective, this is actually quite good – after all, there are all of the storage considerations for environments that have been created, but not being used. However from a different perspective, this could be a problem. What about if you’re doing something occasionally in an environment, but not too often? What about if you decide to go on a ‘Round the World’ cruise for several months?

So let’s look at the definition for this. Microsoft states that an environment is considered to be inactive when it hasn’t been used for 90 days. At that point in time, it is disabled, and the administrator or environment owner is notified. If there is no action taken within the next 30 days, then the developer environment is automatically deleted.

Now, how does Microsoft define ‘Activity’? It goes something like this:

  • User activity: Launch an app, execute a flow (whether automatic or not), chat with a Power Virtual Agents bot
  • Maker activity: Create, read, update, or delete an app, flow (desktop and cloud flows), Power Virtual Agents bot, custom connector
  • Admin activity: Environment operations such as copy, delete, back up, recover, reset

The above is all user driven – ie a user needs to interact with something within the environment. However, it’s also important to note how automation is viewed:

  • Activity includes automated behaviors such as scheduled flow runs. For example, if there’s no user, maker, or admin activity in an environment, but it contains a cloud flow that runs daily, then the environment is considered active.

It’s also important to note that at this point in time, the above only applies to Developer environments. Other types of environment (Production, Sandbox etc) don’t have any auto-deletion policies called out for them – well, at least not yet (if something does pop up around these, I’ll definitely look to talk about them too!).

So to answer our question above about what happens with a (developer) environment that is only being used infrequently – the way to stop it being auto-deleted is to put some automation in place. This doesn’t need to be lightweight – it can be something simple & easy, just to ensure that the environment registers activity happening within it.

In my view, it would be nice to have some granularity & control over this as well – allowing organisations to set their own deletion policies. We have this in place for things like audit log retention – it would be nice to have have it in here too.

Justin Wilkinson on The Oops Factor

Finding out from Justin how he got into his love of watches, starting off with on-premise systems, and learning the importance of saying no rather than taking on/helping everyone out.


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.

Kartik Kanakasabesan on The Oops Factor

Talking to Kartik about his love of reading & science fiction (Isaac Asimov, anyone?), as well as touching on development tools, capabilities & limitations. Technology moves on in interesting ways!


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.

Adam Belak on The Oops Factor

Talking to Adam about how he decided (together with the AMAZING Kaila) to start up a new Microsoft conference, and the MAJOR twist that they’re bringing with it! Also covering a vehicle accident that he was involved in, & how it changed his life

Make sure to also check out https://www.iberiansummit.com/ and register for it!


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.

Daniel Laskewitz on The Oops Factor

Finding out from Daniel about his love of beer & getting into brewing (he just ‘may’ happen to have decided on a name to use for the brand if it goes commercial), how he first started to technology, & what he is REALLY an expert in!


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.

Eswar Prakash on The Oops Factor

Talking to Eswar about his dual love of AI & music (some interesting correlations!), & covering what could happen with specific commands being used on a NON-Microsoft system…


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.

Damien Bird on The Oops Factor

Talking to the community legend that’s Damien about his vegetable garden, how he got into gardening in the first place, and a sudden medical condition coming out of nowhere that has an impact on life moving forward


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.