Jukka Niiranen

Tag: competence

  • New Courses for Learning Power Platform & Dynamics 365

    New Courses for Learning Power Platform & Dynamics 365

    Microsoft announced in December 2018 that they were retiring many of the Dynamics 365 exams that previously were part of the MCSA and MCSE Business Applications certifications.

    Shortly after that, there was a brand new set of certifications and their associated exams announced. The exams are:

    • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Core (MB-200)
    • Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales (MB-210)
    • Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service (MB-230)

    By passing the exams you can claim the following certifications:

    • Dynamics 365 for Sales Functional Consultant Associate (MB-200 + MB-210)
    • Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Functional Consultant Associate (MB-200 + MB-230)

    Just today I took the new MB-200 Core exam as beta and I have to say the content has evolved nicely into a much more rich format than what the previous “pick 1/2 out of 4” questions types were. There’s a lot to cover in one exam, as this new MB-200 essentially combines the earlier Online Deployment and Customization & Configuration exams into one. Still, these are all essential skills for anyone who’s working on this ever evolving business application platform from Microsoft.

    So, where does one go to learn these skills for passing the brand new exams? While Microsoft did release the list of new courses that link to these exams, there wasn’t an online learning option made available initially. Traditionally the content would have been published via the Dynamics Learning Portal (DLP) that has been limited only to Microsoft partners (and notoriously difficult for gaining access to). However, going forward the DLP course catalog will not be updated, based on the notification shown on the portal:

    Great, lets head to Microsoft Learn then! Except that this isn’t where the course material for the Dynamics 365 certification exams seems to be landing. You see, Microsoft has also been publishing newer online learning materials on an open platform called edX, like this Power BI course.

    Oh, but that’s actually a different edX than the one we’re talking about here. While edX.org is a platform common to many training content providers, there’s a dedicated Microsoft site at openedx.microsoft.com which served as the hosting platform for the first non-DLP Dynamics 365 course one year ago:

    At the moment there isn’t a visible catalog of the new Dynamics 365 and Power Platform courses on that site yet, but it is fully possible to sign up for the courses via direct links. Here’s what my dashboard at openedx.microsoft.com looks like after picking all the new courses:

    Here are links that should work for accessing the online courses:

    • MB-200T01: Dynamics 365: Power Platform applications
    • MB-200T02: Dynamics 365: Power Platform automation
    • MB-200T03: Dynamics 365: Power Platform integrations
    • MB-200T04: Dynamics 365: Power Platform test and deploy
    • MB-210T01: Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement for Sales
    • MB-230T01: Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement for Customer Service

    What’s interesting is that due to the open nature of Open edX, there appears to be a whole network of training service providers that have partnered with Microsoft and distribute these same courses on their portals. As an example, the Finnish IT training company Sovelto has these courses available for free on their SoveltoX portal:

    We may get more clarity on the roles of each channel in the future, but since so many Dynamics 365 professionals are eagerly looking to start preparing for the latest exams, here’s at least a way for everyone to quickly get started on their learning journey. Refer to this post by Mark Smith for a more comprehensive list of links regarding the Dynamics 365 & Power Platform training and exams in 2019.

  • In Praise Of Code and No-Code

    In Praise Of Code and No-Code

    Two weeks ago Neil Benson wrote an excellent article on LinkedIn, as a response to a claim that everyone working as a functional consultant in a Dynamics 365 project team should also know how to write code. This really resonated with me and I shared the article, along with a bit of commentary of my own. My post, in turn, started to gain quite a lot of traction on the LinkedIn feed. It looks like we had touched upon a topic of great interest within the network of CRM professionals.

    If you read my post above, it pretty much summarizes the main points I wish to bring out in this discussion:

    1. There is much more to ensuring Dynamics 365 project success than being able to do hands-on software development.
    2. A big chunk of the value delivered by Microsoft’s cloud platform is not relying on custom code development.
    3. The remaining chunk that is custom code driven work should be left to professional developers and not copy-paste heroes.

    There have been some very good arguments written in the comments section of the LinkedIn post, so I urge you to also view them for gaining greater perspective on the topic. I see a lot of resemblance with the “should designers code” meme in the original assumption that functional consultants would be able to do their jobs better if they also were familiar with developing custom code. Much of what has been said in the heat of that debate between coders and non-coders probably applies here, too:

    Alan Cooper’s four part article covers the dilemmas in general software development teams with such great insights and depth that I won’t even attempt to dive in the same direction here. In practical terms of a CRM project, when it comes to the availability of skills and experience needed in carrying out the wide range of tasks during the project’s lifecycle, the manager in charge of resources is always going to need to do some juggling. The less you ask the team members to juggle between completely different kinds tasks, the more likely they’ll able to focus on actual customer value generating activities rather than keeping all the balls in the air simultaneously. Here’s how Neil Benson put it:

    “Asking a functional consultant, with no formal computer science education or experience as a professional coder, to find and copy someone else’s JScript from Stackoverflow and paste it into your Dynamics solution is asking for trouble.”

    I don’t touch code myself but I do try to get my hands dirty on a wide variety of technologies. For example, today I spent a few hours getting familiar with Azure Service Bus, testing how without writing a single line of code I was able to push plugin execution context data into a cloud based message queue and work with it via a GUI in Azure Logic Apps. Now, I would never recommend myself as a person you should hire to set up your production ESB, but I do feel like I need to have a deeper understanding of these technologies than I could gain just by watching through the flashy demos in Microsoft keynotes. Seeing the different sides and reading/hearing what those with deep expertise on a particular technology have to say about it, that is essential. Going and actually trying to step into the shoes of an expert for that technology – probably an unnecessary detour.

    Skimming the bits from the top without diving deep into the dirty details of writing real code might sound like being afraid of all the complexity that awaits beneath the surface. However, the lack of code in a solution doesn’t mean that the complexity of the solution couldn’t be high. The CRM Tip Of The Day post “The story of the small change” perfectly illustrates the way in which individual configuration items built entirely via the graphical tools provided by MS can have dependencies that require you to have a rigorous testing process in place. It’s not just the changes of a system either, since you can easily use workflows and business rules to build a level of complexity into your business logic that doesn’t reveal itself in the test scenarios the consultant behind the design might have thought of. Whether you’re delivering the end product via code or configuration, bugs will sneak in there and eat away a part of your life – be it before or after production deployment.

    The argument for doing things via point’n’click configuration “because it’s so much faster to build” shouldn’t be the one and only argument. Yes, it is often much, much faster to put together the first iteration of a solution via graphical tools. This in itself can be a huge value for the business because you can validate the proposed solution quickly with the relevant stakeholders. Often you’ll only get to the actual requirements when demonstrating live parts of what the initial requirements said. Now, the main reason why Real Developers are often afraid of what “citizen developers” might come up with when given quick tools for building no-code apps is that they may lack the experience of seeing the full lifecycle of a business application. They’ll mistake the first PoC as being equivalent to the final production solution, with little thought given to the work that still remains ahead. This experience isn’t something you must necessarily gain via writing code yourself – a no-code functional consultant just needs to gain sufficient exposure to the various stages of the process via working as a part of the CRM project delivery team.

    I think we all need to be able to see “beyond code” when building solutions on top of platforms like Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. Going full-on no-code in your design approach is probably going to unnecessarily limit the value that could be gained from an extensible application platform, forcing you to unsustainable workarounds and resulting in poor UX for the system end users. At the other end of the spectrum, always resorting to your custom built components before having a thorough analysis of the configuration capabilities and complementary cloud services found within your ecosystem of choice will likely increase the solution’s TCO and put the long term reliability of your complex business application at risk as changes in related processes, personnel and technologies occur over time.

    Please feel free to leave comments on how you see the role of code & no-code work evolving in Dynamics 365 projects.

  • Getting Your MCSE Certification for Microsoft Business Applications

    Getting Your MCSE Certification for Microsoft Business Applications

    No matter if you’ve been in the Dynamics business for over a decade, there inevitably comes a time when you’re unqualified for your job. Not necessarily from a real life competence perspective, but by not having any valid certifications for the Microsoft product you’re working with. This was the fate that I was facing as the year was coming to an end and my CRM 2016 era certificates were about to become worthless in the eyes of MSFT.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with a fine product like Dynamics CRM 2016 yet, but if you’re working for a partner organization then the exams for that particular version no longer count towards your company’s competency eligibility. It’s Dynamics 365 all the way now, no more CRM. It shall be interesting to see how the validity of these certifications will be defined in the new world without any year numbers in the product name, but let’s not worry about that just yet. If like me you are in risk of becoming uncertified, then here’s a bit of information on how to turn things around.

    Welcome to Cloud Business Applications

    Since CRM isn’t a thing for Microsoft anymore, also the competency that MS partners now need to target is called Cloud Business Applications competency. Compared to the earlier and soon retiring Cloud CRM competency the requirements for number of certifications as well as certified professionals have gone up significantly. Silver requires 5 individuals with in total 15 exams passed, whereas Gold is a whopping 15 & 45.

    Alongside this change there has also been a formal MCSE certification introduced for Business Applications. The way this works is that you’re supposed to first take the two required exams for MCSA: Microsoft Dynamics 365 certification: Online Deployment (MB2-715) and Customization & Configuration (MB2-716). Then you have a choice of completing one of the application exams, either Sales (MB2-717) or Customer Service (MB2-718). Now, this conveniently aligns with the Cloud Business Applications competency requirement, so you could simplify them by stating you need 5 (Silver) or 15 (Gold) MCSE’s working for your organization to qualify.

    I chose to complete the first three exams and was automatically awarded both the MCSA and MCSE during the process. Compared to the last time when I did Dynamics CRM exams, there’s now an integration between Microsoft’s exam records and the Acclaim badging platform (yes, that’s an actual thing in today’s world). This means you can easily set up a public profile page displaying all those Microsoft certifications you’ve earned. For example, if you for a second doubt that I might have Photoshopped the above image of my MCSE then HAH! There’s the proof!

    (It’s nice to discover that I now have bonus skills I didn’t even know about, like Dynamics AX.)

    Find Your Way Around DLP

    We now know the why (attain competency) and what (MCSE Business Applications) so let’s talk about how. Dynamics Learning Portal should be familiar to anyone who’s done any homework about how the Dynamics 365 training courses are offered these days. If not, read the friendly FAQ. Now, once your organization has arranged you to have access to DLP, the next hurdle will be how to find the relevant material from this ever growing maze of training content.

    Searching with the exam code like MB2-715 is one convenient way of finding what you’re after. Another nice shortcut is to use a Learning Plan that someone has built and shared with you. Here’s an example of a Sales based Learning Plan that contains the courses for achieving MCSE: click here to add it to your plans.

    Another route to MCSE would be to complete the MCSA foundation courses and choose the Customer Service track instead. That is also available as a shared Learning Plan built by me, which you can access via this link.

    One nice thing about those Learning Plans is that they also show the total duration of all the videos in all the courses that prepare you for the MCSE. In these examples the Sales track contains the Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365 course, the Service track doesn’t. The net weight of these packages are 34 and 37 hours. One week’s worth of just watching the course video materials. No practice included.

    Passing The Exams

    That’s probably what you’d really want to learn from this post, right? Unfortunately, no one can be told what the right path to MCSE is. You have to see it for yourself.

    Obviously if this is the first time you’re studying for the exam area there’s going to be a lot more to digest compared to just refreshing your certification to the latest version. If you haven’t even touched the features in an actual Dynamics 365 / CRM environment before, then be sure to reserve a lot of time for poking around the application UI, entering dummy data, changing configuration options and examining their impact, building brand new areas into the application via customization tools, managing user and environment settings, installing solutions, browsing through the documentation, and so on. That’s how you actually learn the skills, not via memorizing the course material contents.

    Even people who have extensive experience on working with the XRM platform are unlikely to do well in the exams just based on the customer projects they’ve worked on. There’s going to be questions about features so ancient and so rarely used that you may not have touched them for 10 years, like discount lists. Then there’s the new stuff that’s still in Preview mode but included in the exam area anyway, so you’ll also have fairly little experience on using it in real life projects, like Relationship Insights. Those are the areas where even an experienced consultant will have no choice but to spend time studying how the product actually works.

    I’ll admit that I didn’t watch the videos while studying for my MCSE, since the areas in my chosen path (that include the Sales certification) were something I’ve spent quite a lot of time with – both in Preview programs exploring and testing the new features as well as designing and implementing solutions to meet customer needs. This meant that I was able to collect the information I needed from reading through the slide decks of each course, as well as glancing over the companion guides providing the text from the videos. These documents can serve as a “refresh pill” for your mind to help you recollect the things you’ve already encountered earlier, but they are obviously not designed to be a full user guide. You cannot replace a healthy learning diet with these pills alone.

    There’s The Exams – Then There’s The Real World

    The application exams are always the ones where I find myself drifting furthest away from my everyday work tasks. The reason is that they sometimes describe an alternate reality where customers actually use the built-in CRM features in a very deep way, with no mention of the customizability limitations and user experience challenges that in reality will steer many organizations away from them. Well, actually it’s the implementation consultants that get burned by an OoB feature and then THEY steer the users away from ever even knowing it exists.

    Making these two worlds collide is actually a positive thing in the end. In the midst of busy project work you rarely get to explore the way that Microsoft designed the application to be used, so you’re likely to focus a lot more on the limitations and differences to the customer’s specifications, not so much on the opportunities hiding within the product. I bet if you never study for the certification exams with the DLP materials then you’re going to miss out many areas where standard features could be applied to solve a real life problem – even if a bit of creativity would be needed in crafting the end solution.

    With multiple choice questions to measure the amount of knowledge crammed into your head, there’s unfortunately going to be some questions in the exams that focus on details you’d normally have very little need to memorize. With a customizable platform it’s not very essential to know a list of default views included or the specific terms used in the (English language) UI – unless you want to get your MCSE certification. In that case you’ll be partially evaluated by how well you recall theses type of details, not only based on what’s your understanding of the big picture and the context in which these details appear in the XRM platform. Oh well, such is life. You’re only going to need a score of 700/1000 to pass the exam anyway, so perfect memory is not a requirement.

    Probably the biggest challenge with the certification system is the pace at which the cloud platform is evolving. There’s just no way that the exam content could target the very latest release available for Dynamics 365 with the way new functionality is rolled out. As the platform and the applications on top of it are further separated from one another (App/Plat separation), potentially leading to an ever more agile delivery practices for new features, this will very quickly make the DLP course content details in conflict with what’s the actual product functionality that (new) customers have available to them. Solving this dilemma would require Microsoft to also move to a more agile process in delivering training materials as well as measuring the skills of the MCSE candidates, since regardless of the DLP delivery channel the exam format still remains very much founded in the era of on-prem software. It remains to be seen if new innovations in this area could eventually transform the certification process in a more profound way than merely making existing the classrooms and test centers virtual via tools like DLP and online proctored exams.

    Imagine All The People, Sharing All The World ?

    If you’re working on the customer’s side of the business, then Dynamics Learning Portal won’t be accessible for you. Sorry, this is a private school that doesn’t accept just anyone interested in Dynamics 365. One reason behind this must be that DLP is also the primary portal these days for Microsoft to deliver partner presales training courses and product announcements.

    There is another way to get to many of the Dynamics 365 training courses, though. Not many people might have heard of the Microsoft Imagine Academy, but now that it’s been featured on the prestigious CRM Tip Of The Day blog, I’m sure eager students are lining up behind their login page door already.