Kuldeep Gupta is a Project Delivery Head at CloudFronts Technologies, with a specialization in project service and program management. As part of his responsibility for project delivery excellence, Kuldeep not only oversees projects that deliver Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation to clients, but he oversees its usage internally at CloudFronts.

On this episode of the MSDW Podcast we dive into some of the fundamentals of the PSA product, including the improvements over the three versions, progress toward the next generation that builds off Microsoft Project Online, and the needs of customers asking for PSA-based solutions. We also talk about some of Kuldeep's writing for MSDW and the future of the product.

Show Notes

• 2:30 – Background on Kuldeep's role and areas of focus.
• 5:00 – How and why D365 PSA evolved as a standalone product
• 6:15 – How CloudFronts are using PSA, and the value the system delivers to them
• 7:30 – The importance of time and expense entry management
• 9:00 – The evolution of PSA through version 3
• 12:00 – Common integration points
• 14:00 – Integrating PSA in the context of ERP
• 15:00 – Comparing PSA to the project service features in D365 Finance and Operations
• 16:30 – The future of PSA – Microsoft will reformulate using Project tools
• 20:00 – What else Kuldeep is talking to customers about in delivering PSA solutions

This episode of the MSDW Podcast is sponsored by ClickLearn.

On this episode, Rick McCutcheon, a Microsoft MVP and expert in CRM process, strategy, and user adoption sits down with Clicklearn CEO Joachim Schiermacher and CMO Jakob Hojer Bjorning. They discuss ClickLearn's latest product updates, their presence at these upcoming conferences, and how their product vision aligns with Microsoft's business apps in terms of user adoption, training, testing, and documentation.

This episode is sponsored by ClickLearn.

It's an important week for Microsoft's Dynamics 365 and Power Platform teams as 2019 release wave 2 begins to roll out to customers. To learn more about what this means for D365 Business Central, we are joined by Microsoft group program manager Chad Sogge and Microsoft MVP and chief operating office of Dynamics Southwest AJ Ansari.

Chad explains the five key areas in which his team has delivered updates to Business Central and dives into some of the issues that partners and customers will be watching for as these updates roll out.

Improving the upgrade and migration tools is top of mind. Even more urgent is the status of extensions, specifically their development and support related to compatibility with wave 2. It's potentially a big change for existing BC customers, and the timing is critical.

Also up for discussion in this episode are topics including customer support, multiple production instances, submitting new ideas for the product team, and more.

Show Notes

• 4:00 – 5 key areas of focus for the 2019 wave 2 release for Business Central
• 13:30 – Momentum around discussing NAV to BC upgrades, and what is still needed
• 16:45 – Are customers demanding that ERP vendors like Microsoft carry more of the burden of making upgrades easy and relatively low cost?
• 20:00 – Why the Dynamics 365 leadership team is aiming for more openness in the roadmap.
• 24:30 – Working in sandbox instances with production data.
• 27:00 – How will the latest updates to AL impact extensions?
• 34:30 – The shift to modules and componentization in wave 2
• 39:00 – Opening support tickets via the admin center, is customer access coming?
• 46:00 – Creating multiple production instances in a tenant
• 49:00 – How the community is influencing to new releases of BC
• 51:00 – Status of integration with Common Data Service, Flow, and PowerApps
• 54:00 – Is the dev platform now at an "AL 3.0" stage? And why the BC team might want to consider stronger branding on the changes.
• 56:00 – What's next in terms of diving into wave 2