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Time budgets
When I worked for consulting firms before I was self-employed, there were benchmarks consultants had to meet for billable hours per year, and often some metrics for non-working time as well. As an independent consultant, I haven’t really set targets for myself in the same way. Last fiscal year, I booked all of my time,…
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Power of Attorney: lessons learned
I am a year-and-a-bit into my “on-the-fly” education of acting as Power of Attorney (POA will be used as the abbreviation for the rest of this article) for a relative, and let me tell you, it’s been a journey and a half. Let me share some of the things I’ve encountered, in the hope that…
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End of my MVP journey
It is said that all good things must come to an end. I did not apply for renewal [1] for the Microsoft MVP award, and as a result, I will no longer be part of the program as of the end of June 2025. Why am I not applying for renewal? There are many reasons;…
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CRA T619 change for 2025
It’s been a while since I have posted something on my blog, but this one might impact a few people and it is causing some confusion among those transmitting T4 or T5 XML files. The CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) has changed some of the schemas on the T619, which is the “header” of the XML…
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2024 year in review
Another year has flown by and I’ve been thinking about how last year went. In my 2023 year-in-review post, I wrote that I was ending the year on a high note, getting back into blogging after not writing a lot in recent years. I wrote 27 posts in 2024, but only 2 of those since…
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Dynamics GP End of Life announcement
Today is a sad day for those of us in the Microsoft Dynamics GP ecosystem, though we all knew it would come eventually. Microsoft has announced a “Support End Date” for the product, 31 years after its 1.0 release in 1993. RIP, buddy, it’s been a great run… Links (provided by Microsoft) For customers: aka.ms/customerGP-EOL…
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MVP Renewal for 2024/2025
This is quite delayed as I am writing this in September, two months after the fact! I was re-awarded the Microsoft MVP award, my 8th award, in July 2024. What’s new this time around is I am no longer a “Business Applications” MVP, I have been awarded instead for 2 categories – M365 (for Excel),…
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Planes, Trains & Automobiles!
I’m home from a 3-week business trip, and I thought I’d share some of the travels as I legitimately had a “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” experience, although not as chaotic as the movie! I didn’t post too much about it while travelling, choosing to wait for my return home to share this. It was 3…
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Decimal Places for HR Benefits
I’m calling this a #TipTuesday post but it really should be called a “Jen is writing about it so she doesn’t forget the next time she needs it” post. 😄 Fellow bloggers will be able to relate to that! By default, the Benefits and Deductions decimal places are set to 2 decimals, and it comes…
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New MS Learn AI Skills Challenge
A new Microsoft Learn challenge started today! It’s very similar to the previous one I posted about, but this time once you complete it, you get a FREE exam voucher. The previous challenge resulted in a 50% off voucher which is good, but free is better. 😄 Challenge Microsoft Learnpspier (Full URL: https://learn.microsoft.com/learn/challenges?id=b696c18d-7201-4aff-9c7d-d33014d93b25&WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5002186) If you…
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Restoring a copy of a GP company reminder
Several years ago, I wrote about a restore issue “that drove me nuts” as the post title says. That was written shortly after the “named system database” functionality was introduced in Dynamics GP and a new company table SY00100 to capture the company ID and system database name. What this post is about is a…
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Lessons learned from not trusting my gut
It’s been an expensive couple of weeks for me. I love/hate “life lessons”. They hurt, but make me stronger if I learn from my mistakes. I’ve been wrapping up two different small projects and on both of these particular projects, I completely underestimated the amount of effort it would take me. I made several mistakes…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 12
This post is the last in the series specifically about the modules in this Cloud Skills challenge. Yay! The deadline to complete the challenge is February 22, 2024, so I got there with 2 days to spare! This topic is also not covered on the exam, hence it is not being included in the Learn…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 11
This post is about module 9 of the Cloud Challenge series. Like the previous post in this series, it is a topic not covered in the DP-600 exam based on the study guide I read at least. After this, there will be one more post to complete the modules in the challenge, just before the…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 10
This post is about module 8 of the Cloud Challenge series. It’s the first of my series where there was no Learn Live video session for it. It is not a topic that is listed as covered by the DP-600 exam, although it is part of Microsoft Fabric and part of the skills challenge collection.…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 9
This post is the last of the 9 that had a “Learn Together” live video session. The posts after this will cover the modules I missed, numbers 8, 9, and 13 to round out the rest of the challenge. The deadline for the challenge is coming up quickly (ends Feb 22, 2024), and as of…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 8
This post is about module 11 in the Cloud Skills challenge. Previous posts in this series: Part 1 (Introduction, Lakehouses) Part 2 (Apache Spark) Part 3 (Delta Lake tables) Part 4 (Using Data Factory pipelines) Part 5 (Ingesting data with Dataflows Gen2) Part 6 (Getting started with data warehouses) Part 7 (Administration of Microsoft Fabric)…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 7
This post covers module 10 in the Cloud Skills challenge. This is where the video series and the challenge modules start to diverge a bit. Modules 8, 9 and 13 were not covered in the Learn Together video series, so I will be covering those last. Modules 10, 11 & 12 were covered in a…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 6
This post is about module 7 in the Cloud Skills challenge. Previous posts in this series: Part 1 (Introduction, Lakehouses) Part 2 (Apache Spark) Part 3 (Delta Lake tables) Part 4 (Using Data Factory pipelines) Part 5 (Ingesting data with Dataflows Gen2) Microsoft Learn Module Get started with data warehouses in Microsoft Fabric This module…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 5
This post is about module 6 in the Cloud Skills challenge. Previous posts in this series: Part 1 (Introduction, Lakehouses) Part 2 (Apache Spark) Part 3 (Delta Lake tables) Part 4 (Using Data Factory pipelines) Microsoft Learn Module Ingest Data with Dataflows Gen2 in Microsoft Fabric This module is about Dataflows Gen2, a cloud-based ETL…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 4
This post is about module 4 in the Cloud Skills challenge. Previous posts in the series: Part 1 (Introduction, Lakehouses) Part 2 (Apache Spark) Part 3 (Delta Lake tables) Microsoft Learn Module Use Data Factory Pipelines in Microsoft Fabric This module is about Data pipelines, which will be familiar to anyone who uses Azure Data…
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Canadian Payroll 2023 T4s
I received an email yesterday from someone I know via the Dynamics communities sites, asking me about the new Box 45 for Employer Offered Dental Benefits. The question was: is this new box supposed to be on the 2023 T4? In his case (or his client’s case, I’m not sure if he’s a partner or…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 3
This post is about module 3 in the Cloud Skills challenge. Previous posts in the series Part 1 (Introduction, Lakehouses) Part 2 (Apache Spark) Microsoft Learn Module 3 Working with Delta Lake tables in Microsoft Fabric This module is about the Delta Lake storage format in lakehouses, creating and working with delta tables in Spark.…
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Subscription options on this blog
[UPDATED February 15, 2024 – it won’t quite work how I initially described it.] Since moving my blog onto the Ghost platform – which I absolutely love by the way! – I’ve been learning about some of the new features it has that I didn’t have in my previous iterations of this blog. One big…
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MS Learn Fabric Analytics Engineer Challenge Part 2
In this post, I am covering module 3 of the Microsoft Learn challenge. Previous posts in the series Part 1 (Introduction, Lakehouses) Microsoft Learn Module 2 Use Apache Spark in Microsoft Fabric This module shows how to configure and use Apache Spark for data processing and analytics in Microsoft Fabric. Spark is frequently used in…
