FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/104

• Personal background – living in Kirkland, WA, interests, being fanatical about wine 
• Professional background – current role at InsideView, responsibilities 
• About InsideView – what they do and their services 
• Industries that commonly use or geographies where there’s a greater demand for InsideView’s technology  
• Current trends in the B2B businesses and how they adapt to technology 
• Recent changes that Microsoft implemented in relation to InsideView and the confusion that resulted after it’s no longer subsidised by Microsoft 
• Assessing an AI opportunity if an organisation wants to go down that path 
• How InsideView addresses low-quality data sitting in people’s systems, and is there a demand for it? 
• What InsideView is doing differently as an organisation, being involved in the AI discussion going forward 
• Journey on being an ISV and partnership with Microsoft 
• What is the new ISV program and Heidi’s thoughts on it 
• Thoughts on old ISV’s concerns about the new ISV program around revenue sharing 
• Knowledge about the existing AppSource marketplace that we have at the moment, experience on the quality of leads that have come through from the AppSource 
• What it takes to be a successful ISV 
• What ISVs need to build into their business as part of their business model for success 
• Recommendations to ISVs that want to move their product into the global market 
• Managing relationship with Microsoft as an ISV – how to maintain a good relationship with the product team, etc.
• Effective ways for engaging the Microsoft Partner Network  
• SIs that do things differently that move ISV products more, their patterns in their business that cause them to recommend an ISV’s solution more 
• Effectivity of exhibition space, how to go to events and be effective as an exhibitor 
• Brand awareness – what works effectively in engaging people, training staff to engage with people 

RESOURCES

• InsideView Insights – http://www.insideview.com/insights 
• Battlecard for Microsoft CSM's and SI partners – https://view.highspot.com/viewer/5ce5fd72a4dfa036dfc84d3b 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

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If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/103

• Personal and professional background – family, working in London, 12 years working with Dynamics 
• Living in England and growing up in Devon, popular places to go and dishes in Devon 
• How he started working in Dynamics 
• Perception on Microsoft partner ecosystem, especially in the UK 
• Pivoting to a different role – from a developer to solution architect to a “translator” role 
• How upskilling to prosci has impacted the way he worked or engaged in projects and with customers 
• What “doing the work before the project” means 
• Thoughts on what other people say about change management 
• Being one of the top 10 Dynamics influencers according to klear.com, contributions to the community 
• Steps Andrew takes to do more community work 
• Being an independent contractor  
• Being an MVP and how it has affected his marketability as an independent contractor 
• MVPs that have influenced Andrew’s career 
• Doing it all again, would Andrew have pivoted to Dynamics in his career 
• Words to give to people wanting to make a career shift to Dynamics 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/102

• Journey across the Dynamics ecosystem over the years 
• Being the author of Dynamics CRM Unleashed series, thoughts on authoring books  
• Being a Microsoft MVP 
• Interests outside of work 
• Experience starting a Dynamics practice – building a company (Webfortis) and going through the acquisition process 
• Thoughts on consolidation in the market and does it create white space for new players 
• Is Microsoft supporting the ability to really push deeply into the SMB space? 
• Marc’s latest pursuits and his plans going forward based on market assessment, getting back in the game 
• Partnering with partners 
• Being 100% “born in the cloud” – Do we see it as the days of swapping software out that does a core bit of business functionality is going to go away? 
• The specific segment that Marc is going to target – specific industries that they’ve got success in already or horizontal offering 
• Types of business that want a lightweight ERP – Are these businesses that already exist, or are these more startup type business that needs to put an ERP system? 
• What made him get back into the game – the big motivator 
• Two key things that partners haven’t done well, thoughts on marketing and getting that part of the business right when you’re a practice 
• How long they have been running and what kind of traction they are getting 
• Groth aspirations in the coming years 
• Thoughts on the Microsoft partner relationship model going forward – Is it changing? How is it maturing? 
• Thoughts on Microsoft encouraging global SIs – Are they competitors to what Marc is doing? 
• MCS – Microsoft Consulting Services 
• Possible changes in the Microsoft consulting part of the business – Will they see partners as allies and not augmented headcount? 

Books Mentioned

Dynamics CRM Unleashed series – https://amzn.to/2WtyCMb 

Resources

• Cowry Solutions – https://cowrysolutions.com/ 
• Microsoft Business Central – https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/business-central/overview/ 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/101

• Personal background – living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the local food scene 
• April's focus on the Microsoft Business Applications arena – PowerApps and Flow 
• Has Flow replaced the former workflow tools that were in SharePoint? 
• Professional background – working on InfoPath 
• Thoughts on PowerApps and Flow replacing old InfoPath form 
• How PowerApps compares to InfoPath around the native functionality to print a document, and thoughts on Microsoft addressing this issue 
• The main thing that April thinks is necessary for the print functionality within PowerApps 
• Experience attending the MVP Summit for the first time 
• Building apps in Azure SQL and SharePoint 
• Thoughts on Common Data Service playing into the future of what she does  
• Being one of the MVPs that is also a business owner – about ThriveFast 
• Her #1 tip for picking up customers for a consulting business 
• The meaning behind her titles SharePoint Siren, Automation Princess, and Karaoke Queen 
• Being a music fan and interests outside of singing 
• Journey to becoming a Microsoft MVP, being mentored by Melissa Hubbard and other MVPs 
• Where she sees PowerApps and Flow are going in the near future 
• Thoughts on AI and where she thinks it is going and whether it’s going to impact our lives more 
• Thoughts on how AI will affect her job or personal role 5 years from now – building the right code, understand business models, create new ways of looking at them and developing technology 
• Training resources for somebody to get up to speed CDS and the model-driven side of things 
• Advice to people become effective at public speaking and talking about IT-based topics 
• Tips for public speaking – preparation, creating content, presentation/demo 

Books & Other Resources Mentioned  

• ThriveFast.com 
• InfoPath Forms Services 
• Microsoft Docs PowerApps 
• Shane Young YouTube channel

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/100

The Microsoft Business Applications Summit will be happening in a few days. In this special podcast episode, I am joined by none other than Steve Mordue to talk about what to look forward to and share our thoughts on some of the key things around the Summit.
We're all excited, so here are some of the things we discussed about this upcoming two-day event:

• Looking back to the first Business Applications Summit in 2018 
• What’s exciting about Business Applications Summit compared to other Microsoft events 
• Thoughts on the Summit – It's not long enough! 
• Observation on the significantly higher number of sessions for Flow, PowerApps and Power BI than there are for Dynamics 365 in the coming Summit 
• Internal competition between releasing a platform vs first-party apps? 
• Guest speakers – Alexis Ohanian, James Phillips, Alysa Taylor 
• Business Applications Summit 2019 LIVE STREAM  – Subscribe and hit the bell to get notified when we go live! 
• Our goal for this podcast and the live streams 
• Summit agenda and partnering with Microsoft for the live streams 
• Comments on the expo floor and exhibit hall during the event 
• Sessions and speakers listed in the community section – who are coming and who are MIA 
• Topics we are eager to hear about during the Summit, especially AI 
• The pre-day event, Hack4Good by TDG and Microsoft Community – Register here!! 
• Networking events and having fun before and during the Summit 

RESOURCES

• Business Applications Summit 2019 Live Stream – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xIihZ3UKNk 
• Dynamics 365 Is Dead – https://www.nz365guy.com/dynamics-365-is-dead-long-live-the-microsoft-power-platform/ 
• Keynote Speakers: 
  • Alexis Ohanian – https://twitter.com/alexisohanian 
  • James Phillips – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmalcolmphillips/ 
  • Alysa Taylor – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alysa-taylor/ 
• Summit Sessions – https://bascatalog2019.azurewebsites.net/ 
• Hack4Good Hackathon by TDG and Microsoft Community – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hack4good-microsoft-business-applications-summit-tickets-60940325153 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/99

• Personal and professional background – growing up in Australia, hobbies outside of work 
• Career journey, joining Microsoft product team, working on PowerApps and working with the original team at Canvas Apps, starting as a Microsoft Partner before joining Microsoft 
• Key pillars/various moving parts of the Power Platform team 
• Owning the UI, holding the constraints of the upper-level nav and the left-hand nav of the system and what the maker has control over 
• What is the App Experience and what the team think about when designing the App Experience for the makers 
• What the App Experience team looks at when it comes to guiding principles 
• Tidying up old legacy versions – is it part of the transition to Power Platform? 
• Microsoft’s key focuses in the Power Platform moving to the end of 2019 
• Possibility of PowerApps becoming unrecognizable as a Microsoft software, especially with PCF coming to market 
• Thoughts on the possibility of creating any type of business application in a white-label experience  
• Why isn’t React supported in PCF? Why Microsoft didn’t just go and support some third-party control framework 
• Making theming and branding easier in PowerApps 
• Type of use cases of unique controls where there’s no need to shift to the platform 
• What’s new in model-driven maker experience 
• Creating a new field on the fly to be included in the maker experience 
• Reusable Canvas Apps components – background and thoughts around it 
• How the team is bringing Canvas Apps and model-driven apps together 
• Intent to provide URL and put off creating a top-level nav in Power Apps 
• What’s coming up in the next release notes 
• Thoughts on Microsoft’s goal of 10M active users on Power Platform 
• Offline access – what to look forward to 

RESOURCES

• Make PowerApps – https://make.powerapps.com/ 
• PowerApps admin centre – https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/ 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/98

• Personal background – living in Finland, family 
• A bit of Finland and Nordic geography, length of winter in Finland, local delicacies 
• Organizing Dynamics 365 events in Finland – Finland Dynamics User Group and Dynamics 365 Saturday 
• Favourite part of the Power Platform 
• Being one of three Microsoft MVPs in Finland
• Is Project Service Automation dead? 
• What's happening with PSA, PSA's capabilities becoming a core part of Dynamics 365 for Sales and Customer Service, the possible future linkage between PSA and Azure DevOps. 
• Journey to become a Microsoft MVP
• Is it worth it becoming an MVP? 
• How becoming an MVP enhanced Antti’s career. 
• Value-added to the company for having a Microsoft MVP in the team – Does your company know how to leverage your status as an MVP?
• Approach to being an MVP – technology vs business value 
• Advice to people wanting to become an MVP – actions one needs to take to become nominated to the MVP Program 
• The importance of having a niche, a core pillar of strength as a consultant – being a T consultant 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/97

• Purvin’s role in Microsoft when it comes to the Microsoft MVP Program 
• What the MVP Program is from Microsoft’s perspective 
• What is “MVP for life”, and is there such a thing? 
• How one can become an “MVP for life.”
• MVP Award vs Inner Circle Award – what is the difference between individual and company awards
• Purvin’s passion and motivation for the Business Apps MVP program, what turns his wheels 
• What Microsoft MVP aspirants need to start doing to be nominated into the program 
• Types of contributions that Microsoft is looking for from an aspiring MVP
• Types of contribution that Microsoft wants to see more of
• Where the different types of contributions are heading, especially the new generation of contributions
• How long should an aspiring Microsoft MVP be doing a certain contribution before seeking nomination
• Examples of MVPs creating outstanding content 
• How changes in Microsoft (specifically around Power Platform) affect the MVP program, particularly what Microsoft is looking for in future generation of MVPs 
• What types of fan products Microsoft is looking for 
• Number of new MVPs that Microsoft is interested in taking on in the PowerApps space

Resources

• Andrew Ly, 365lyf
• Elaiza Benitez, What the Flow
• Joel LIndstrom, CRM Audio
• Jerry Weinstock CRM Innovation Blog 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/96

• Personal background – living in Uruguay, being bilingual (Spanish and English), the popular food in Uruguay, family 
• Becoming a Microsoft MVP – being a 10-year MVP, how different the Microsoft MVP program was since he first got nominated 
• About Communidad 365 – starting the Spanish speaking community 
• Becoming officially part of the Dynamics User Group community 
• Membership in the Spanish speaking Dynamics and Power Platform community 
• Area of specialisation as a Microsoft MVP and professional projects 
• How being a Microsoft MVP has impacted Pablo in the last 10 years 
• Passion for product, deciding factor for pursuing a career in Dynamics CRM / Dynamics 365 
• Various project involvement over the years – customer service platform, XRM, sales, current case systems

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/95

• Personal background – living in Issaquah, hobbies, family 
• Career highlights being part of the Microsoft Business Applications team 
• Thoughts on the idea of Microsoft’s shift in focus from apps to the platform 
• The “measuring stick” that Microsoft uses to define a top ISV 
• Patterns that successful ISVs do effectively to become a top ISV 
• Creating a business model around being an ISV 
• Various tools that Microsoft have available to enable ISVs in their journey to the Power Platform 
• Unpacking the different categories of ISVs: Build ISV, Extend ISV, Connect ISV 
• Examples of companies that are under the three categories of ISVs 
• Splits between the different types of ISVs 
• Difference between vertical and horizontal solutions 
• Understanding the Power Platform and app separation, pivoting towards starting with CDS and building dedicated applications at their layer 
• Thoughts on possible changes in how recognition works in the future for an example use case 
• Size of the potential market opportunity for ISVs in the business application market 
• Opportunity for SIs to spin up new business units that specifically focus on creating IP 
• Dev Centres – what they are, their purpose, and who can access them 

RESOURCES

• Dynamics 365
• Become a Microsoft Partner
• Azure Consumed Revenue (ACR) 
• Dynamics 365 blogs 

This year we're adding a new show to our line up - The AI Advantage. We'll discuss the skills you need to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

Accelerate your Microsoft career with the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge 

We’ve helped 1,300+ people across 70+ countries establish successful careers in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Benefit from expert guidance, a supportive community, and a clear career roadmap. A lot can change in 90 days, get started today!

Support the show

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith