Steve reads his Blog

In this episode of "Steve has a Chat", I was able to catch Muhammad Alam before he headed out for Inspire. Muhammad is the General Manager of the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (F&O) team, and recently Microsoft Business Central was added to his list of responsibilities. He has been with Microsoft since 2005, so he knows where the bodies are buried. We covered a lot of ground, including these...

I recently tweeted a link to an obscure Microsoft post I found about eliminating IUR. I thought at the time, "this is going to get messy". I followed up with a post on it myself, which promptly blew up, and now there is actually a petition someone started. Just to be clear... I did not sign this petition, and I will not be wielding any pitchforks at Inspire. Why not? It Had to Happen The vaunted "...

The news media and investor market is certainly embracing the "Softer" side of Microsoft introduced since the appointment of Satya Nadela as CEO. While the company's stock is at an all-time high, it seems Microsoft's network of Partners are being gradually introduced to a new "Harder" side. Update: You can still read this, but Microsoft reversed this decision. Partners Pummeled In recent months, p...

Originally posted on March 7, 2012 Some of you younger whippersnappers may not remember the days when data was stored in file cabinets. That's not a metaphor, I mean actual metal file cabinets. It's true! In the olden days, we used to have rooms full of them. We had a cabinet for employee records, another one for customer records, and others for tax records, financial records, payroll records, mar...

One of the sessions at D365 Saturday Philadelphia this past weekend was "Managing a D365 CE Project" by Jennyfer Hogeland , it was a great session. On one of her slides she described "Definition of Done", and that phrase stuck in my head. Done I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "Done", I assume something has completed. When I am "done" with a meal at a restaurant, they take my plate...

I am currently in the software consulting business supporting Microsoft's Power Platform. As you may know, I write about it a lot, but for this post I wanted to veer off a little bit from my typical subject matter. Instead I wanted to talk about customers, and their experiences with companies that provide services. Epiphany I was talking to one of our customer-facing people a few months ago, who w...

What a wonderful invention spreadsheets were. For many things, I don't know how we even managed before them. Okay, I do know, because I am that old... we managed things poorly. Spreadsheets solved so many challenges, that they eventually created new ones. 1-2-3 The first spreadsheet software I actually used was called 1-2-3 from Lotus, back around 1985. I created all sorts of spreadsheets, Shortly...

So the buzz about the Common Data Service (CDS) has reached a deafening stage. It is the most exciting thing that has come out of the Microsoft Business Applications group in a decade. The possibilities jumped into the category of "endless". So how do you start with something that is endless? Quick Primer I previously wrote about the Common Data Service here, but let's have a quick primer for this...

It seems that many people are confused about where Dynamics 365 Business Central fits into the landscape. Is it an ERP... a CRM... is it for SMB... Midsized...Enterprise? Is it part of the Power Platform? At the risk of annoying my BC Partner friends once again, I will take a stab at it. Origins It would be helpful to know the origins of Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", to understand how it cam...

I recently wrote a post about the coming Revenue Sharing model for Microsoft Business Applications ISV's. As expected, there is some screaming going on about forking over some of your revenue to Microsoft. But there is another side of that story... what Microsoft will be doing in return. Recap Starting soon Microsoft will be moving to a pay-to-play model for ISVs. The first reaction I am hearing f...

I usually wait a week or two to weigh in on new announcements from Microsoft. I like to let the noise die down a little, and see how others are responding to the news. But I am way too excited about the Public Preview launch of the PowerApps Component Framework . What's in a Name? The journey to Public Preview has been a rather long one. Originally coined the "Custom Control Framework" (CCF), whic...

Let's be real... the Business Applications ISV motion from Microsoft to date, has been a shit show. Many budding ISVs struggled to navigate the program(s) only to reach the conclusion that there was not much there. For all the talk about how important ISVs are, Microsoft's actions to date have failed to live up to their words. I want to personally apologize. The Boy who cried Wolf! I am usually pr...

There is quite a bit of information in the wild for technically savvy people, around the Power Platform and it's underlying Common Data Service. I want to see if I can make that understandable to us Normal people. Skipping History I know, many of you were thinking, "Ugh, here comes Steve's long, drawn-out 'How we got here' story". But this is for the normal people, who don't really give a shit how...

My fellow MVP, good friend and co-collaborator on PowerISV , Mark Smith (aka @nz365guy) is on a "Shock and Awe" campaign that opens with the phrase: "Dynamics 365 is Dead!". But is it? The House that D365 Built At the recently concluded MVP Summit, Mark had the opportunity to lob his "D365 is Dead" grenade at Charles Lamanna for reaction. Charles seemed legitimately puzzled by the thought, and sim...

Fresh from a week of "drinking from the firehose" at the Microsoft MVP Summit, several things became quite apparent to me. MVPs like to drink, and the Common Data Service, is anything but "Common". It will continue... indefinitely It seems that whenever Microsoft announces a "new" way to do something, they are hesitant to say the the "old" way will be eliminated. "We have no plans to deprecate the...

As I have been exploring the Power Platform, I continue to make new discoveries every day. I am not a developer, but I have developers on my team. Lately, I am noticing that we are pulling them into projects much less often than in the recent past. I wonder what the future-state of this will be... Power Platform We are in that fuzzy time, between something "new and significant" being launched, and...

In this episode of “Steve has a Chat“, I called Steven (Guggs) Guggenheimer , who was not surprised that I had the Record Button on when he answered. "Guggs" is the Corporate Vice President - AI & ISV Engagement at Microsoft. Among other things, he is responsible for engaging with Customers on AI, as well as assisting Partners with ISV Motions focused on Microsoft Business Applications. We chatted...

I was recently at Extreme365 in Austin, I even had a role in Keynote! One of the sessions was a "Fireside Chat" with the Bizapps product team. Aside from there not actually being a fire that I could see, there was some great conversation. Ryan Jones , who works with Charles Lamanna on the platform team, said something that stuck in my head. Five Things When asked about what ISVs can do better in w...

Let me caveat this post with a couple of things; first, I am not an ERP partner, so I don't actually have a dog in this fight at the moment. Also, none of the following came from anybody at Microsoft, it is purely out of my own head and my opinions from my reading of the tea leaves as I see them. I am also sure I will piss a few people off, but that has not stopped me before. The Emperor's New Clo...