Dynamics 365 Tech Conference General

Topics from the conference

Based on the sessions I will write more posts in the future. The drafts are already available and you can find them here:
Deployment options
Upgrade
Common Data Service
Extensions
Developer environment best practices
Integration
Continuous delivery
Performance

General

I am a hobby runner and will have a half marathon on 2nd April, so I created a unique photo for the readers who are interested.

Dynamics 365 for Operations as AX is called now was based on Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU11. ISV solutions are available and downloadable from AppSource.

You can follow what Microsoft is working on on the Roadmap.dynamics.com site if you filter by operations. Power BI is embedded now and you can drill down and see the transactions behind.
“PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile – without the time and expense of custom software development.” [https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/] You can work on your mobile in offline mode, when you are on an airplane for example and synch your work to AX later (from 2017 spring release).

Deployment options

There will be 3 deployment options.
  1. The suggested way is a full cloud deployment. Here is where Microsoft will make everything new available first.
  2. The hybrid solution is the Edge + cloud. Here you can have a mixture of cloud and local installations to have the best of both. Separation is based on DataAreaId at the moment.  This is planned to come available in H2 2017.
  3. The third option is now called Local Business Data. This is what was earlier called on premise. The name is quite descriptive, you will have your business data locally, but still you will have other parts in the cloud. There are a lot of limitations with this. This is planned to come available in Q2 2017.

Extensions

Everyone should stop overlayering. Extensions will be the only way to customize ax in the future. Overlayering is still allowed, but not suggested because later you will have to rework them to extension. At the moment there are limitations of extensions, sometimes you still have to overlayer currently, but future is only extension.

Common Data Service

Common Data Service is for visibility across product lifecycle. Data from different sources brought together and you can build customizations on them. CDS is not available on local business data deployments, there might be a way to upload your data to the CDS cloud service from your local business data and this way be able to use CDS.
PowerApps and PowerBI know about CDS so this could be really useful.

Built for Agile

“AGILE refers to an iterative, incremental method of managing the design and build activities of engineering, information technology and other business areas that aim to provide new product or service development in a highly flexible and interactive manner” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_management]
“Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing product development” [wikipedia]
We have an LCS-based ALM. Dynamics 365 for Operations is built for Agile. Get familiar with sprints and continuous improvement.

AXUG

http://d365ug.com/: special interest groups, on demand trainings, academy courses (similar to hands on labs), discussion forums, AXUG volunteer program. They organize EMEA summit Amsterdam 4-6 April where JJ Food Service will also be on the stage.

Customer stories

Maersk, the well-known container manufacturer is live on Dynamics 365. They have sites in China, Denmark and Chile. They have the data center in US east coast and they have good latency across all sites. China is accessed through ExpressRoute. “ExpressRoute is an Azure service that lets you create private connections between Microsoft datacenters and infrastructure that’s on your premises or in a colocation facility.” [Azure ExpressRoute FAQ | Microsoft Docs]
Peet is an Australian land and property management company and they are also live with the new version from 1st July. There are about 100 customers live and 200 becoming live.

Real Madrid and Metro Bank UK is using D365 CRM (Sales).
Rolls Royce Jet Engine implemented IOT sensors to check parameters of the engines like temperature and oil level for example. When they land, they upload the data to Azure and they know when to have a maintenance or if they had issues.
Citta Auckland agile implementation was started with a prototype than refined. They are technology led and reworked their processes. This way the implementation took only 70-90 days and their IT team is only 2 people.

Differentiation from competitors

SQL azure team, PowerBI team, Dynamics 365 team sit at the same table and collaborate. This is why Microsoft is unique.
For example using machine learning with exchange and D365 we can have complex scenarios like we send out emails from D365 and we can have information about are they opening those emails?

Other

Just some other topics the touched:

  • LinkedIn data can be in D365
  • Partnership with Adobe
  • They talked about Microsoft Flow. I found a 1-minute demo here: https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/.
  • Powerapps.microsoft.com
  • CDS power: Bring data together from D365 ops and D365 sales and service using CDS and build apps on it with PowerApps, PowerBI and Microsoft Flow

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