These are two products that I love; Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn. Back in the day, I wrote a step by step guide on how to get them both working together – long before Microsoft started flirting with the idea of owning their own social network.

Dynamics 365 for Sales has been on my mind lately and the role that technology plays in evolving the sales arena. Over the past 20 years, I have worked with various sales applications including Maximizer, Goldmine, Act! Sales Logics, SugarCRM, Pivotal, and Salesforce.com, as well as bespoke applications built for specific industries such as banking and training.

For years, businesses and organizations have needed custom software applications to carry out day to day business. Applications that are unique to an industry, and sometimes unique to the way a company operates within that industry, are commonly known as Line of Business Applications.

Now that Microsoft has launched the Power Platform with Common Data Service (CDS) at its core, it’s time to evolve how we build line of business applications.

Live streaming at Microsoft Business Applications Summit Atlanta 2019. I was chatting with my buddy Steve Mordue months leading up to the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, just throwing some ideas around.

Why choose the Power Platform as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV)?Well, first, let us look at what Microsoft has done with the Power Platform. Over the last 24 months, they have separated Dynamics 365 applications from the underlying platform. De-coupling Dynamics 365 applications like Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing means that the platform now exists as a standalone tool, called the Power Platform.

Dynamics 365 is not a new technology per se, as it was created on the shoulders of Dynamics CRM, which is built on the shoulders of Microsoft CRM. There is a history dating back to 2003 of multiple iterations over time resulting the current product we have, Microsoft Dynamics 365.

I recently returned from a business trip to Beijing, China and was blown away by the massive opportunity for Microsoft Partners wanting to grow a Power Platform or Dynamics 365 business in this region.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) is an annual award that Microsoft presents to individuals that are an outstanding contributor in the community for a specific Microsoft product. Some feel that the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award should not only be for a Microsoft product speciality, that if you are an MVP you are an MVP period. Currently, though, Microsoft awards Most Valuable Professionals in relation to a specific product area. In my case, I am now a Microsoft Business Applications Microsoft Valuable Professional and have held the award for the past 8 years.

I am excited about where Microsoft is moving with Mixed Reality. The Microsoft Business Applications Group has brought Mixed Reality under its umbrella as part of the Dynamics 365 Suite of products. We are moving into a very interesting time where we are able to interact with ideas using technology, as well as overlaying the physical world with digital information.

In this post, I want to talk about my observations of the potential career opportunities working for Microsoft in Microsoft Business Applications. First of all, when considering a career or ultimately going and working for Microsoft, there are some things that you need to understand. My goal here is to discuss what you should be thinking about if you want to work for Microsoft in Microsoft Business Applications.

Is Microsoft Dynamics CRM is best for you? What exactly is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?Microsoft Customer Relationship Management, CRM is not a new technology. In fact, it's been around since the early 1970s.

If you’ve been working in Microsoft Business Applications for more than a couple of years you may be aware that Microsoft moved Microsoft Dynamics 365 to Azure. In the past, this resided in the same data-centres as Azure but did not run on Azure.

For those partners and customers who pay very close attention to the Dynamics ecosystem, last week’s announcement from Steve Guggenheimer concerning a new ISV partnership program that is launching in July was big news.

Around 18 months ago I decided to start a podcast. The reason for doing this is I had taken a year off work to travel the world with my wife, but I wanted to develop a new skill while travelling and that was to become a good listener. I contacted Joel Lindstrom and talked to him about my plans and he invited me to syndicate my Podcast on CRM.Audio and so I recorded my first show in Nottingham UK at my cousin’s house. One of my aims in podcasting is to learn how to create a connection between the guests I was interviewing and the people listening so that the audience felt like the guest was speaking directly to them as an individual. The format of my podcasts has always been a guest interview scenario with me and one other person on the call.

“Be passionate and bold. Always keep learning. You stop doing useful things if you don't learn.”

Recently we have seen a lot of change in the Microsoft Business Applications space. Microsoft moved James Phillips into the role of Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Business Application suite of products and that has created some massive upturn and scaling of the ecosystem we have come to know over the past years.

In any Dynamics 365 project that you implement, if the solution you've constructed is not adopted by the individuals in that organization, fundamentally, the project is a failure. The customer still might be happy, but if after some time the system is not being used and people have started using other software, this means the project has not really been that successful, and user adoption hasn't been achieved.

This is the last part of this blog series on Dynamics 365 career. Here I have listed what are perhaps some of the most overlooked practices of people wanting a career in Dynamics 365.Don't be like many who have become shortsighted in their Dynamics 365 career paths. Follow these last tips if you want to have a successful Dynamics 365 career.

In Part 1 of my Dynamics 365 career blog series, I discussed how you can build your qualifications in order to get a headstart in your Dynamics 365 career.In this post, I will provide three more valuable tips if you want to build a Dynamics 365 career, and the first would be…