Today was a half-day for the official part of the conference, except for post-conference training offerings. I chose to sign up for post-conference training, as I always take advantage of something interesting if I can while I am here. I figure this week is an investment in my self-development and it's worth taking advantage of any face-to-face training I can take that will help me be better at what I do.

Opening Session

The day started with the Silver sponsors presenting their wares in a similar 3-minute per partner approach.

Next was a brief wrap-up which was mostly a big thank you to the Association of Dynamics Professionals and those who were instrumental in giving up their time to create certification exams and work behind the scenes. Everyone who wrote the first exams this week was encouraged to stand up to be recognized. I'm proud to have been one of that group.

Pam Misialek announced that next year's conference will once again be in Fargo at the Hilton Garden Inn, and will be September 19-21, 2016.

After that, the "keynote" was different from prior years in that it was split up into the sales & marketing vs developer & consultant groups. I attended the one called Techies Unite. To be quite honest, I didn't pay a lot of attention to all of the speakers except for the very first speaker, Tim Brookins, who talked about the Internet of Things (more on that below). The others were talking about the Microsoft hack-a-thon and other topics, and while interesting, I was finishing my blog on yesterday to get it off before the regular sessions continued! My bad…

The Internet of Things

Tim Brookins talked about the insurance industry, and data gathering via things like dongles in a car measuring how we drive. He tied that into privacy and how we need to be willing to pay for keeping it. It was interesting to me as it was something I'd never really thought of in this way.

The gist of the presentation was that the purpose of the dongles is to reduce our insurance premiums if we are a good driver since they track and send back to the insurance companies all sorts of data on driving habits - time of day, speed, braking habits etc. Bad drivers would not voluntarily use the dongle, why would they? Also, those who are concerned about data capture and lack of privacy wouldn't use the dongle either.  On the insurance premium side, in general, rates are driven based on what kind of group a driver falls into. In this case, it could be the group of drivers using the dongles and those that don't are two rate groups. If, statistically, the drivers who use them are good, then it makes sense that, collectively, their premiums go down. As more good drivers take the dongle as a way to have lower insurance premiums, that means that the non-dongle-using group has premiums that are going to increase over time, as the drivers left in that group are high-risk bad drivers. The way Tim was bringing this full circle was for those with privacy concerns, who choose to stay in the non-dongle-user group, effectively one may be paying for increased privacy as they are also in a group where the poorer drivers are, with higher premiums.

The other analogy he provided was that of email. He asked for a show of hands, who paid for their personal email. Barely anyone put their hand up, which wasn't much of a surprise. He pointed out that users of a free email service like Gmail. outlook.com or Hotmail are getting what they pay for in terms of privacy, which is having little expectation of any, as those providers have to make money somewhere.

General Sessions

There weren't that many session slots today and to be honest, I didn't find many of the options that appealing. I was "clouded" out which was the main focus of the non-sales & marketing sessions. I sat in on Andy Snook's session "Navigating Microsoft like a Pro". It didn't necessarily apply to me, as I'm not a reseller or an ISV, but it was interesting to listen to nonetheless.

The key points I took out of this session were:

  • Build a business plan. Know what drives revenue and who the audience is (whether it be market, industry, vertical, size or geography). Know where Microsoft fits into that plan and also know if it would survive without Microsoft. Then stick to the plan, it's your business, not Microsoft's.
  • Know that what motivates Microsoft isn't going to coincide with what motivates you and your business. It would seem that market share (customer adds) and revenue go hand in hand but they aren't synonymous.
  • Build a network. Reach out to your network. He put his contact info up on the screen and encouraged people to contact him. If he can't help, he might know someone who can, and that is the point of a network.
  • Attend events and participate. Getting in front of people at Microsoft may not be easy, but also recognize that during an event, it is nearly impossible. Stay late, and plan the conference around including extra time to meet with those you want to meet with after the conference is done. Most are more than willing to spend the time, but, during the event, when they are already stretched thin as it is, isn't realistic.

After that, I chose to skip the last time slot of sessions. I had to get to Microsoft for the afternoon and I simply wanted to get into more comfortable clothes and get something to eat first. Since the shuttles were cancelled back and forth, I was fortunate to run into Terry Heley whom I'd known for a long time, and she gave me a drive back up to the campus which was awesome.

Advanced Workflow Training

The afternoon session I attended was on workflow. I haven't done much with it yet, only configured it briefly to test the basic functionality. I learned more about it of course, and had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions. I also learned that yet again, the knowledge one must have is increasingly complex to fully implement some of the solutions available now. For example: if a client wants to be able to approve workflows via email from anywhere, they need web services installed of course, but they also need a publicly available server address. For instance, they described setting up a public DNS record (specifically a PTR record on the web host), pointing to a static IP address on the router (which they might have to request through their ISP). Then on the router, forward port 48620 to the server where web services are installed. Without it, approvals via email have to be done on devices on the network only, via VPN or local. How many clients will want "everywhere"? Hard to say but there are security concerns to address and the configuration side which are more skills needed by the partner implementing this (or on the client's side).

Some other things I learned:

  • When creating conditions for workflow steps, be careful with and/or commands. Brackets will not be used in evaluating an expression. The example in class was a condition for a step triggered only when the vendor = "X" and the originator was either Bob, Doug or Mary. The way to configure this wasn't intuitive at all to me, but because brackets are effectively ignored. You would have to set up the logic like this:
vendor = x and originator = bob OR 
vendor = x and originator = doug OR 
vendor = x and originator = mary
  • It would never occur to me to configure it this way as it seems very ineffective, but there is no other way to make this example work in the current workflow logic.
  • When modifying email messages, to display line item information on the approval request emails, one needs to do 2 things, which aren't included by default in the out-of-the-box message:
    • On the body section, add the field Document Line Fields to the body somewhere, where the lines need to be displayed
    • On the lines section, mark off each of the fields to be displayed in the lines section.
  • When using the approval assign-to option "hierarchy", it refers to the Active Directory hierarchy, as in, whatever is in the "manager" field is where the approval will flow next. The challenge is if IT doesn't populate this field, it's something else to potentially add to the scope of configuration of a GP implementation. Also to be considered would be whether the hierarchy in A/D is representative of the actual hierarchy you wish to have in your workflow. Sometimes the literal manager isn't the person to whom the hierarchy might suggest it should go, based on say payroll hierarchy, or the A/D hierarchy isn't as up-to-date as what Payroll has for instance.

Post Training Fun

After the training was done, and my official reImagine agenda was complete, I joined up with the MVPs and friends to go out for dinner at a local Indian restaurant. A fun time was had by all and it was nice to unwind and tell stories and have some laughs.

It's been a fun conference, and tomorrow I'll post a "wrap-up" post with any final thoughts.