Microsoft 365 vs Dynamics 365 vs Office 365 terminology and branding (hopefully) explained

Microsoft brings all of their cloud offerings under the '365' branding. There are many different offerings under 365 but not all of them are truly meant to be used together. What do I mean by that? How do you know what expert is an expert in what product? Do you know what you're licensing? Hopefully this will help explain a little bit more.

When I say Microsoft 365, that technically doesn't encompass Dynamics 365. Microsoft 365 is Office 365, Windows 10, and the Enterprise Mobility + Security. When we say Office 365 then, we're actually saying its part of Microsoft 365. Its a sub-offering under a licensing/branding package.  

When I say Dynamics 365, its all of the Dynamics 365 'for' products, such as D365 for Retail, D635 for Finance and Operations, D365 for Sales, D365 for Marketing, etc. But its also good to know that these Dynamics products are still technically 3 or more 'products' brought together under the Common Data Model which allows all of them to communicate. Its AX, CRM, and new applications such as 'for Talent' if we're looking behind the scenes. Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Dynamics 365 for Retail are really the same code base (AX) but licensed differently.  Dynamics 365 for Sales/Marketing/Customer Service/etc are all traditionally CRM. 

So it can get tricky when people refer to Microsoft Dynamics 365 as Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 when the terminology really spans so many different titles. And that can be a problem. When going to a trade show and I ask which Dynamics 365 products their XYZ integrates directly into, they say Microsoft 365: all of it. Thats an interesting response that doesn't tell me anything. Especially when we are talking about business workloads. When we talk about things like a tax engine or rate shopping and they say that it will take care of all my worries, I want to know if its going into the Common Data Model and exposed to other mobile apps, is it natively integrated with Finance and Operations, is it a CRM-side ISV, etc. 

These are massive things to consider when evaluating a solution and sometimes the branding can make things a little more difficult. This post is not meant to solve the issues but hopefully raise a little awareness. Let me know down below if you have any questions about the above!

Create an AX 2012 R2 AIF Webservice: Step by Step

Check out my new DAX Dude YouTube channel.

Kicking this off with an old demo of creating an end to end AX 2012 R2 AIF (Application Integration Framework) webservice. https://youtu.be/pjqqDrDxuWQ

The quality isn't stellar but I'll get back to that sometime.

Getting up to speed on D365/AX

For those who may not be aware, the Dynamics space is growing rapidly. For example, in the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (FO) area, its had a couple names and several different official twitter handles in the past year or so... Names asided, new modules are being added, upgrades being streamlined, Retail processes and installations optimized, and a focus on proactive over reactive system maintenance are being implemented.

While all that new functionality is great for Dynamics 365 FO, the entire Azure stack and other Dynamics products (Sales and Marketing, Talent, etc) are now pieces of the overall puzzle to your deployment. Ignoring them from your solution is going to be a mistake.

Its near impossible to keep up with it all. You need a solid baseline on the systems (all of them) and then be able to translate the updates that come out to know what is changing on the almost monthly basis. So how can you and your org ramp up in your knowledge as quickly and efficiently as possible? There are a few options and all of them can be used in conjunction with each other:

Option 1: Documentation
You can read all the documentation. Thats a total snooze fest and you'll forget most of it by the time you actually jump into the software. Documentation lacks the application of the concepts and real world scenarios.

Option 2: Dig in. Experience
Roll up your sleeves and dig into the application. Nothing beats getting into the application and making things happen. This can be a bad first step if you are unfamiliar with the application, best practices, typical configs, etc. You can set something up for given business scenarios but what happens when those scenarios inevitably evolve? You don't want to config yourself in a corner... And its easy to do...

Option 3: Conferences and tech sessions
Conferences and tech sessions are a great way to learn from experts and get an understanding of the content. You can ask questions and attend sessions that typically have experience levels for the sessions so you can get the right content. But more importantly, you can network with others. Thats critically important as the community seems very small at times...

There are a few conferences you should try to go to if you're serious about being in the AX/D365 space: AXUG Summit and MS Business Applications Summit.

AXUG Summit is run by users but has become an authority summit for everyone in the community to convene at. Sessions are put on by end users, partners, and Microsoft. It is here where you can get some of the most candid information from everyone from execs to developers. #1 tip is to not go back to your room at the end of the days' sessions. You'll do a lot of networking with great discussions around the hotel and at the restraurants/lounges.

The Business App Summit is new and has never existed. It seems to be a combination of both the old Convergence which was like a sales-y summit with the MS Tech Conference which was put on by the Microsoft product group and had about as detailed information as you could get about the bits and bytes of the applications.

You can register for AXUG here: https://www.axugsummit.com/register 
You can register for the MS Business Applications Summit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/businessapplicationssummit 

Option 4: Social Networks (and blogosphere)
Subscribe to blogs, RSS feeds, email newsletters from ISVs and partners, etc. There is valuable information in sales materials as well. Remember, there is never an obligation to buy services but you'll get a lot of free useful information as long as you can parse through the sales stuff...

Summary
So to round this up and reinterate, the above options are things you should do in conjunction with each other, but are NOT mutually exclusive. Hopefully this helps everyone! Let me know if you're at a conference and want to network!

Export Power BI dataset to Excel PowerPivot

The Power applications are hitting the Dynamics 365 space by storm. Lots of interest there. 

Whether its a customer wanting to set up some Power BI dashboards or trying to figure out how to get data out of my own company's Power BI 'dataset' there can be some hurdles. 

When I jumped into PowerBI, I was overwhelmed. Its easy to create reports when you know the application as well as the data that you need to pull from. Problem is, if you don't know the data, you can't get very far. 

I can figure out how to create BI if I know the table structure and have an idea of what the tables are and how they link together (Figure 1). But if I don't, what now? I can click on these fields one by one and see them in PowerBI UI but I don't have the freedom to copy and paste the data for further analysis. 

I export the datasets to Excel (where I'm more comfortable) and use PowerPivot type concepts through the below. I'll go one by one and see the data and how they interact with the other datasets to really learn what we have at our disposal.

Hopefully this short but sweet technique will help get you up and rolling with your Power BI data. 

D365 Retail MPOS login error "The request passed to the service is not valid"

Dynamics 365 for Retail error that occurs when attempting to log in to the Modern POS (MPOS): "The request passed to the service is not valid"

This occurs when an existing shift is trying to be opened by the MPOS but it cannot.

This issue is usually because the user’s shift is open on another terminal and the user can only log into a single shift.

To recreate this, have two POS terminals for the same store. Open a new shift on terminal 1. Then, while the first shift is open, log in to the second shift. If you have your system configured to allow a single user, single shift, it will ask you to resume an existing shift, the one that you have open on terminal 1. The system will give you the error “The request passed to the service is not valid”.

This can also occur if you find yourself in a ‘stuck shift’ issue. That can happen when your system allows for shared shift drawers (hardware profile) and you are switching terminals. I am not sure in what order that you’ll have to do things to receive this ‘stuck shift’ issue, but it will result in your user, and the others who were using that shared shift that is now stuck, to receive that “the request passed…” error. Those users on that essentially hose them from the system. They can’t log in to any POS terminal for that store. Not fun...

For this stuck shift issue, look at the crt.RetailShiftUsersStagingTable and crt.RetailShiftStagingTable tables in SQL Express for the stuck shifts. You may need to do some magic here. Be extremely careful in what you do to fix the issue. While our team was able to resolve the issue, you may want to use Microsoft Support to assist with the issue. Shout out to the team for figuring out this issue! 

UPDATE 6/12/2018 - Check out my buddy Duc Le's blog post about this very issue: http://ducdax2012retail.blogspot.com/2017/02/cant-close-shift-error.html. Duc was a colleague of mine a while back so check out his blog! He focused on retail as well. Thanks for the comment below and miss working with you, dude. Hope all has been well!

Microsoft Paint 3D - The new Paint?

One of the most valuable tools to me as a consultant is Microsoft Paint. I will use Photoshop or GIMP (open source: https://www.gimp.org/) for more complex image creation/editing, but Paint is about 75% of my time.

MS added a new paint program called Paint 3D. Its being highlighted in the new 3D Holiday campaign so I thought I would check it out. There was always a rumor that Paint was going away and would be replaced by something new. Paint is not gone (nor heard rumor of it going away) but it is replaced by the equally capable and enhanced Paint 3D. It was released in Windows 10 Creator Addition sometime in Q2'17.

Paint 3D is a windows store app (.appx) so it'll have that look and feel. Its nice to have that native feel especially when using the pens in the Surface family. But it'll take a bit of time to get used to I think. 

I haven't done much playing around with it yet outside of the below picture but it does appear to support transparent backgrounds and a (somewhat inaccurate) magic wand. There are predefined objects you can turn 3D as well as build in a 3 dimensional area. 

There is a 3D model search capability built in which appears like a clip art-like place for 3D models. That'll be handy I think. And textures you can use in images right out of the gate. 

I'll post more about this as I find more applications to use it for my work. This is part of what I want to learn in 2018. That and focus on VR/AR. How can this help with business processes and ERP consulting? Probably not much outside of sales and button images but who knows now with new applications and envisioning stores, displays, etc. 

Here is what I made tinkering around with it. You can export things out in 3D or 2D. 

Stay tuned.

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Certification Exams

Microsoft finally has new certification exams out. There are new ones that are usually released without any major announcement or fanfare. You basically have to keep your eyes peeled on their official list to see new ones when they come out.

If you are using Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Enterprise Edition, you probably noticed there weren't any certifications for that. Microsoft had plenty for the other D365 exams, but nothing for FOEE. 

Here is the official list. Check it often!

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-list.aspx 

currently, these are the exams out there:

• MB6-894: Development, Extensions and Deployment for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations [GETTING RELEASED 12/5/2017 apparently]
• MB6-895 - Financial Management in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
• MB6-896 - Distribution and Trade in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
• MB6-897 - Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail