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Attend Showcasing Dynamics 365 Demos - 2 Dates Only!

Monday, February 12 @ 8 pm PST l Tuesday, February 13 @ 8 am PST

As a follow up to the November 2017 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Blitz, we invite you to attend Showcasing Dynamics 365 Demos. Product specialists are excited to share the demo strategy, resources available, and how to deliver the content for the following Dynamics 365 business applications:  Sales, Adobe Experience Cloud, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance and Operations, Talent, and Retail.

Please join us at 8 PM PST on 12 February or 8 AM PST on 13 February. Subject matter experts will be on hand to answer your questions and on-demand sessions will be available on-demand following the live-streamed event.

Register Now!

Any good business analyst has a go-to way to extract requirements for your Dynamics implementation. There’s the standard how many users, show me your process collection of questions. But that’s not where the real useful info comes from.

Requirements gathering and planning is not a one-way conversation. If all you had was a list of “go make this” you should just do it yourself. Successful requirements planning needs to be a negotiation. You tell me what you want/need/like. I tell you the most effective way to make that happen in Dynamics. You agree, great. You don’t, then we dance a bit and agree on an approach. This is actually the best value an experienced consultant can bring you.

For me the most important question is simple. It’s “Why?”

Customer: We need to see all of these things on one page.
Julie: Why?
Customer: It’s how we do it now, so we need to do it that way moving forward.
Julie: Why?
Customer: Our users are afraid of change.

What I get from the conversation:

· I need to be very aware of making things easier for users. Adding extra navigation steps will hurt user adoption in any engagement but maybe even more so here.

· Use the OOB features that make this less of an issue. Editable sub-grids on the forms. Quick create forms. Business process flows.

· Remove the stuff they don’t need. The business doesn’t care about freight terms for their account records? Gone!

· Maybe I need to investigate other people in the organization to help me get requirements, this one is afraid of change. If we aren’t changing, why am I here?

I posed a question online and the responses were often sarcastic (I know, big surprise). But, the underlying result of these sarcastic responses will help make a better implementation.

What inflated expectations did the sales guy promise would be simple to do?

I would hope that it doesn’t need to be said, but sales and implementation really (really) need to talk. Yes, sales should be selling what’s possible. But sell it in the right context and the right size/effort.

May I have a list of any medications you may be taking?

We’ve all had the customer that made us feel crazy. Changing requirements. Meetings that go off the rails. If only we could know in advance the obstacles.

How often will this requested custom feature be used? By whom exactly? What's his or her name? Is it a real person or an imaginary friend of yours?

Do we really have users that will DO what you’re asking? Are you sure? Did you ask them?

Is this your ACTUAL business process or just how the system we are replacing forced you to do it?

All too often what you see is a list of the old functions from the old system. If all we’re doing is wrapping Dynamics to mimic the old system, meh, I’ll pass.

Why do you need a wolf?

This goes back to my favorite XKCD, the logic boat. The premise is here’s your task list, it seems impossible and illogical. So, you question it.

Do you like cats?

I got nothing.

Do you know the muffin man?

Again, nothing.

**Here are the genuine responses, of good straightforward questions to ask to get to what you need to make a good implementation of Dynamics.

· Who holds the final decision card on cost to develop the request and priority of the request?

· How is what we are about to build going to generate value for you and your company?

· What are you expecting this to do for you? How can I improve upon the last one you had?

· What would you like to accomplish? How can we help meet your business goals?

· Which license will you be using?

· How will you measure success? Followed by, will your answer be the same in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year?

The Dynamics Learning Portal is a great resource. But how can you get the most out of it?

This is the first in an occasional series of tip and tricks and tidbits to help you, and your team, get the most from the DLP.

This first post will be my recommendations for a Learning Plan take for someone in their first 90 days of being a Dynamics professional.

You’ll notice I didn’t call out a developer or an architect or a user or any particular role. That is because I feel there is a particular set of skills, knowledge and awareness that each participant needs to have. Regardless of role.

You can find the custom Learning Plan here, and add it to your DLP profile.

(There are several pre-configured Learning Plans already available and they are great, this is just my take for this particular scenario.)

The Learning Plan is in sections, and each section has learning resources I selected. For the most part, each item is less than 6 months old (at the time of this writing).

I loosely placed the sections in the order to be followed. However, if you can get a workshop on your schedule, go for it. Then come back and backfill any gaps. Within each section I also ordered things based on my suggested path for you to complete.

First, let’s go over some basic DLP Learning Plan functionality.

Each section can expand and collapse. If you’d like to re-order, or remove, any item from the Learning Plan once you’ve added it to your profile, that’s easy to do. From the Learning Plan, you can see your progress for each asset. You can also add learning time to your calendar.

From the workshops section, and any workshop/live event you can see two links. You might see a Register Me link, and you should always see the Invite Me link.

The Register Me link will appear if there is a currently scheduled delivery that you might be able to attend. Some events are in person, some are online. If your selected workshop is not currently on the schedule, or the scheduled delivery doesn’t work for you at this time, click Invite Me. That gives the team insight to course demand and gets you notified when the course does get scheduled.

So, this First 90 Days Learning Plan shows at nearly 60 hours of time needed to complete. And that’s a lot. However, as I go thru the sections in more detail, you’ll see some of those items coming off for many of you. I think a more practical estimate is around 40 hours of time, not including any labs you may take from online courses.

The first section is the Demo Series. It clocks in at over 4 hours. I put this at the top so it was easy to find, but don’t expect you to watch every minute of it. This is a great reference for you to go back to, even after 90 days. It will help by showing you some of the possible.

Next we have Topic Pages. Easy peasy. The first three are role focused, and even if you’re not a presales resource, you should know what presales cares about and so on. Then there’s Power BI and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Both are great additions, and common additions, to many Dynamics projects. I have never seen Dynamics exist on its own, there’s ALWAYS something more. You need to learn a little about some of the more.

From there we see Blitz. Blitz is an event put on by product resources, the folks designing and making the actual application. CDS (Common Data Service) is here. And it’s great foundational knowledge.

And now we see E-Learning. This is where you’ll spend some time. Here’s a quick matrix of the portions of the course you need in your first 90 days. By all means, watch all of the modules. But, for the purposes of our first 90 days, here’s my suggestions.

Course	Modules in first 90 days
Introduction to Microsoft Dyn365	all
Learning LinkedIn Sales Navigator	all
Microsoft Social Engagement	all
Sales Management in Microsoft Dyn365	0, 1, 2, 3, 6
Customization for Dyn365	0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Configuration for Dyn365	0,1,2,5,6,7,
PowerApps and Flow	all

For workshops we have two in this Learning Plan. Dynamics 365 University for Sales Professionals is a good foundational course. If you an make this happen, you’ll not need several of the e-learnings above. As far as the Extensible Platform course, you need a little bit of foundational knowledge before you’ll get a ton out of it. Consider that one your stretch goal.

And now Assessments. You’ll notice none of this has talked about, or targeted any exams. That’s not the goal. However, I know many individuals are motivated by testing their knowledge, even if just for themselves. So, here’s the assessments that most closely represent the knowledge here. The reality is that if you are in your first 90 days, you will not likely do well on the assessments. However, you will continue to build the knowledge needed to pass the assessments soon.

Finally, we have the specialization section. Not everyone needs an intro to Field Service, or Talent, or Project Service Automation. But if you have an interest or a need, these are a good starting point for you.

If you do not have access to the Dynamics Learning Portal, contact your organization’s partner rep or manager.