[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As written by James Phillips on community.dynamics.com
At Microsoft Inspire this year, more than 17,000 partners, customers and business leaders will hear our CEO and leadership talk about the critical role our partners play in enabling customers to transform their businesses across industries. Microsoft invests billions annually in innovation to bring the best products to market to support our customers, and to give our partners a set of technology solutions and services they can build their business atop.
This ecosystem of Microsoft Cloud Partners is 64,000 strong – one of the largest in the world. As our partners look to develop or grow their cloud practice we offer them the most comprehensive cloud - spanning Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), application-platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) through leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. These services are enterprise ready and have been built from the ground up to work together.
ISV’s have always been able to build on Microsoft Azure. In fact, we have over 35,000 partners already using Azure IaaS and PaaS services for their apps. Increasingly we’re being asked by these partners to make our higher-level cloud services – particularly those that make up our business applications platform – available as embeddable building blocks.
We pioneered this with Power BI – which has been available as a partner-embeddable building block for nearly a year. Since then we’ve watched ISVs take advantage of Power BI Embedded to add powerful business analytics capabilities to their applications.
Now we want to give our partners even more capabilities with our award-winning business application services, such as:
- Dynamics 365 for Sales, Service and Operations – ranked by top industry analysts like Forrester and Gartner as leaders in their respective markets
- PowerApps – in June, PC Magazine named PowerApps editor’s choice calling it “a power user’s dream” and ranked it ahead of Salesforce’s rapid application development offerings
Announcing ISV Cloud Embed
Today we are making it even easier for ISV partners to modernize their existing business applications, and build new ones, with a new program we are calling ISV Cloud Embed. Later this year, we will extend the number of higher-level services available as embeddable “building blocks” to include:
- Dynamics 365 Embedded – rapidly create business applications tailored for specific industries or regions without starting from scratch
- Microsoft Flow Embedded – enable ISVs to offer the ability to allow power users and information workers to add and customize workflows to automate business processes as part of their application
- PowerApps Embedded – provide an easy extensibility model for you application that can be delivered in the browser or in a mobile application
- Power BI Embedded– allows users to easily embed fully interactive reports and dashboards. Partners will be able to transact this offering through CSP, as part of ISV Cloud Embed.
Benefits to ISV Partners
In addition to being able to embed and build atop these new capabilities, partners also receive critical go to market benefits, based on deal volume, to support their business:
- Partners can focus on innovation while we provide the platform, keep it up to date and add new capabilities on a continuous basis.
- Discounts of up to 50% allow partners to grow a profitable business.
- Microsoft Azure partners can easily leverage this program – for instance hosting their apps on Azure and then extending their functionality with capabilities from ISV Cloud Embed services.
- Opportunity to reach 100 million commercial active users of Office 365 and a growing community of Dynamic 365 customers through Microsoft AppSource – the destination for business users to find and try out line-of-business SaaS apps from our partners.
ISV Cloud Embed – like all Microsoft partner programs – delivers increased benefits based on usage and deal transaction volume. Go to market support is provided at all tiers. For partners whose apps drive significant consumption, we offer co-selling support from one of the world’s largest enterprise salesforces. Today’s post from Ron Huddleston provides more detail on this aspect of the program.
Getting started
Any ISV that builds qualified, finished applications can participate in ISV Cloud Embed at different levels and benefits based on the partner’s preference. To learn more about the program, please go to the ISV Resource Hub. If you would like to sign-up, there’s a simple online form to get started.
We look forward to seeing you at Inspire this week where we will share more about this program, and we look forward to building with you in the coming months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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A commitment to security and transparency at Microsoft Inspire 2017
Microsoft Inspire (formerly Worldwide Partner Conference) gathered 16,000 attendees from around the world last week in Washington DC. At the event, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to its partners and its mission to “empower people to be more productive”. To kick off an exciting week, CEO Satya Nadella made five major announcements during the first vision keynote, including the introduction of Microsoft 365.
Commitment to security and transparency
During the vision keynote on day two, President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith provided updates and affirmation of Microsoft’s commitment to security and privacy. Smith promised dedication to security, saying, “Technology for technology’s sake isn’t particularly valuable. Applying technology towards solving human problems is where you unlock the value”. Smith presented a four-part integrated approach to confront ever-evolving cybersecurity threats: Platform, Intelligence, Partners, and Policies. With the cloud being bigger than ever before, Smith says every business has a digital opportunity. Microsoft has committed “new energy, new focus, new resources” to responding to security threats faster and better than ever before. These cloud principles and improved security features in Microsoft 365 will give partners better end to end security management. Better security and transparency help Microsoft and its partners build trust, and “move technology forward without leaving people behind”.
Security focused product announcements
Microsoft 365 is a new solution that combines software, management, and security options into a single subscription. Partners can choose from two solutions, Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business. Both options provide productivity and security capabilities and a cohesive experience across applications and devices, while simplifying delivery and management for IT.
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Includes Office 365 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise, and Enterprise Mobility + Security
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Available in two plans, as Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5
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Available August 1
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Includes Office 365 Business Premium, security and management features for Office apps and Windows 10 devices, upgrade rights to Windows 10, and a centralized IT console
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For small and medium-sized businesses
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Available in public preview on August 2
Partners can play a vital role in General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, by assessing customers’ readiness and helping them adapt to it.
Help your customers protect against breaches, detect breaches, and respond to breaches with a comprehensive security solution. This playbook focuses coverage on Microsoft products and services that play a critical role in securing this environment. Download the playbook here.
Microsoft recently announced its new hero offer called Secure Productive Enterprise (SPE). SPE provides the latest technology across Windows, Office 365, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Frankly, it couldn’t come at a better time as businesses and consumers are increasingly aware of cybersecurity concerns. Here’s what partners can expect in terms of security capabilities from the innovative Microsoft stack and how they can leverage those capabilities to serve customers.
Conclusion
Inspire was surely an inspiring week for the partners who attended. With continued advances in the cloud and a better way for partners to build a modern, cohesive, and secure work environment with Microsoft 365, it should also be an exciting year.
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How to Export and Import Solutions Between Dynamics 365 Instances
By Ben Ward
Foreword
In this example, I will be exporting and importing a solution consisting of my custom Time and Expense entities previously created.
Exporting the Solution
Login to the destination instance of Dynamics 365 (where the customization resides and to be exported from). Go to Settings > Customizations > Solutions.
Click on New in the top ribbon. Complete the required fields located on the form.
Note: If you have not exported a solution before, you may need to create a new publisher record for yourself. To create a publisher record, click on the lookup button on the Publisher field and click on New.
Once the new solution has been created, click on Add Existing in the top ribbon and click on Entity. From Select Solution Components dialog, select all the entities that make up the solution you are looking to export. In this example, I know that the following entities are part of my custom Time and Expense solution:
· Time entity
· Expense entity
· Time and Expense Date Range entity
· Events entity
· Event Participation entity
If you do not know this information, don’t worry. Dynamics 365 will produce a prompt displaying any missing dependencies later. I will purposely leave out the Event Participation entity to display the missing components prompt from Dynamics 365.
Go ahead a select all the entities that are a part of the solution to export and click OK.
The next screens will show all the assets that are a part of each entity selected on the previous prompt. In this example, I will export all the assets for each of the entities selected. To ensure all assets are included in the export, the Add All Assets box needs to be checked. Once ready, click Next:
Repeat the previous step for each of the entities selected and click Finish on the last entity prompt.
Dynamics 365 will then check the status of the solution and provide a list of missing components that were not added to the solution package. In this example, the icon asset was missing. Make sure ‘Yes, include required components’ is selected and click OK. The wizard will close and display the full solution which is now ready to be exported. To export the solution, click Export Solution in the top ribbon.
On the Publish Customizations screen, click Publish All Customizations (if any of the customizations to be exported have not been published yet) and click Next.
On the next prompt, Dynamics 365 will check to see if there are any missing components prior to exporting. In the previous steps, I purposely did not select the Events Participation required entity, and Dynamics 365 is informing me that this entity is required. To add the missing required entity, click Cancel on the prompt, select the related entity for the missing component (in this example the related entity is the Events entity) and click on Add Required Components in the top ribbon. The missing entity will appear in the list of components to export.
Click on Export Solution again and click Next.
On the Export System Settings (Advanced) prompt, you can “Select the following features if you want their system settings to be applied when the solution is imported. Note that the system settings are not removed if the solution is deleted. Consult your system administrator before including system settings in your solution.” In this example I will not export any of my system settings along with export and just click Next.
On the next prompt, I will select the Package Type to be Unmanaged and click Next.
The next prompt will ask for the target source version. I will select 8.2, and click Export.
The solution will download to your default download location.
Importing the Solution
Login to the destination Dynamics 365 instance and go to Settings > Customization > Solutions and click on Import in the top ribbon.
Click on Choose File and select the recently exported and downloaded solution, then click Next.
The correct solution information should be displayed. If this is correct, click Next.
Under Import Options, check Enable any SDK message processing steps included in this solution and click on Import.
The solution will begin importing into the target Dynamics 365 instance.
Once the solution has been imported, a notification should appear at the top of the prompt to display the status of the import. Click on Publish All Customizations.
Once the solution has been published, click on Close, refresh the browser and navigate to the corresponding section of the CRM where the newly imported solution will now reside. If the new solution appears, test out the functionality and you should be good to go!
Introducing Microsoft 365
By Kirk Koenigsbauer as written on blogs.office.com
Today at Inspire, Satya Nadella unveiled Microsoft 365, which brings together Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security, delivering a complete, intelligent and secure solution to empower employees. It represents a fundamental shift in how we will design, build and go to market to address our customers’ needs for a modern workplace.
The workplace is transforming—from changing employee expectations, to more diverse and globally distributed teams, to an increasingly complex threat landscape. From these trends, we are seeing a new culture of work emerging. Our customers are telling us they are looking to empower their people with innovative technology to embrace this modern culture of work.
With more than 100 million commercial monthly active users of Office 365, and more than 500 million Windows 10 devices in use, Microsoft is in a unique position to help companies empower their employees, unlocking business growth and innovation.
To address the commercial needs from the largest enterprise to the smallest business, we are introducing Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise is designed for large organizations and integrates Office 365 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise and Enterprise Mobility + Security to empower employees to be creative and work together, securely.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise:
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Unlocks creativity by enabling people to work naturally with ink, voice and touch, all backed by tools that utilize AI and machine learning.
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Provides the broadest and deepest set of apps and services with a universal toolkit for teamwork, giving people flexibility and choice in how they connect, share and communicate.
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Simplifies IT by unifying management across users, devices, apps and services.
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Helps safeguard customer data, company data and intellectual property with built-in, intelligent security.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise is offered in two plans—Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5. Both are available for purchase on August 1, 2017.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise is built on the foundation of the highly successful Secure Productive Enterprise, which grew seats by triple digits in the last year. Going forward, Microsoft 365 Enterprise replaces Secure Productive Enterprise to double-down on the new customer promise of empowering employees to be creative and work together, securely.
Microsoft 365 Business is designed for small- to medium-sized businesses with up to 300 users and integrates Office 365 Business Premium with tailored security and management features from Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security. It offers services to empower employees, safeguard the business and simplify IT management.
Microsoft 365 Business:
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Helps companies achieve more together by better connecting employees, customers and suppliers.
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Empowers employees to get work done from anywhere, on any device.
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Protects company data across devices with always-on security.
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Simplifies the set-up and management of employee devices and services with a single IT console.
Microsoft 365 Business will be available in public preview on August 2, 2017. It will become generally available on a worldwide basis in the fall of 2017, priced at US $20 per user, per month.
As a part of our commitment to small-to-medium sized customers, we’re also announcing the preview of three tailored applications that are coming to Office 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Business:
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Microsoft Connections—A simple-to-use email marketing service.
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Microsoft Listings—An easy way to publish your business information on top sites.
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Microsoft Invoicing—A new way to create professional invoices and get paid fast.
Today, we are also announcing that Microsoft’s mileage tracking app, MileIQ, is now included with Office 365 Business Premium.
Satya also discussed how Microsoft 365 represents a significant opportunity for partners to grow their businesses. Microsoft 365 will drive growth by enabling our more than 64,000 cloud partners to differentiate their offerings, simplify their sales processes and increase their revenue.
According to two Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Studies (commissioned studies conducted by Forrester Consulting), Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business increase average partner margins by an estimated 35 percent and 20 percent, respectively, over three years. Partners can learn more and explore training, sales and deployment resources on the Microsoft 365 partner site.
We are incredibly enthusiastic about Microsoft 365 and how it will help customers and partners drive growth and innovation. To learn more about Microsoft 365, please visit Microsoft.com/Microsoft-365.
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3 Crucial Things to Consider for Building a Remote Workforce
The modern workforce is including more remote workers and flexible work policies. Companies that utilize remote employees see an increase in productivity, collaboration, and overall profitability. In order to successfully build a remote or flexible workplace, there are a few things you have to consider first.
Download the Infographic to Learn 3 Crucial Things to Consider when Building a Remote Workforce (and how to solve them)
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Managed Solution is in the top 1% of Microsoft Cloud Service Providers worldwide, and a premier partner aligned with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
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What is Data Management?
By Ben Ward
There is a lot of talk around data management for businesses. In today’s ever changing digital world, businesses are accumulating far more data (even unconsciously) on consumers than ever before. It’s becoming critical for businesses, regardless of size to manage the data collected for analysis to decipher specific consumer habits or trends to ultimately increase profits or reduce cost.
How Can Data Management Help My Business?
Consumer Product Assessment and Feedback
Imagine this scenario:
You broadcast the new release of a product on social media, your friends, family and consumers are all digitally reacting to the launch of this new product using actions such as Like, Comment and Share. Do you have time to sift through the comments section and pull out specific keywords left in the comments to identify how the product is being perceived by consumers?
By utilizing data management, a business can set up metrics and key performance indicators on the data gathered through social media and perform analysis to decipher whether the product is being positively or negatively perceived by consumers. Proper data management can assist business comprehend how target consumers perceive products or services.
Allocation of Marketing Funds
In this day and age, any business that has a website really should be utilizing the power of any analytics platform. If you are one of these businesses, then you’re already one step ahead! Data management occurs in analytic platforms such as Google Analytics, however if you don’t know how to act upon the data displayed inside of your analytics platform, then what’s the point in even having it? Let’s take the Referrals section of Google Analytics for example, Google Analytics does a fantastic job of displaying the channel that each of your referral visitors come from. Let’s hypothetically say that your business purchased ads on Facebook and Twitter to announce the launch of your new product. After analyzing the number of referrals received directly from the ads hosted on Facebook and Twitter, we see that Facebook produced far more referrals that directly lead to product sales than Twitter. In this case, we would look to reduce our marketing spend with Twitter and allocate that money to Facebook advertising.
New Revenue Streams
Adding to the example above, Google Analytics may even display referrals from an organic source that you were not aware of which could contribute to a surprisingly large amount of sales. You may find that more people purchase products from your site when they search on Microsoft’s Bing search engine instead of Google. This type of information would not be easily accessible or available without a proper form of data management.
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Achieve IT infrastructure cost savings of at least 50%
Call Southern California’s most trusted name in cloud at 800-208-3617 for real time pricing and a cost benefit analysis for Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS.
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Here’s what’s new in the latest update to Skype on Windows 10
Today, we’re excited to roll out an update to the Skype app on Windows 10 which makes it easier for you to stay in touch with friends from your Windows 10 devices.
With the new update, you can easily share your files to Skype, react to messages, and get to your calls and conversations faster than ever. Let’s take a look at what’s new in this update:
Get to your calls and conversations faster
In the first in a set of updates we’ll be making, the new look helps you get to your calls and conversations faster – you can now start new conversations, see your profile and visit the dial pad from the top of your recent conversations.
Share photos, videos and more directly to Skype
Now you can easily share files, videos, photos, links and more directly to Skype from your Windows 10 PC – just click on the Windows share charm, and select Skype.
New message reactions
By simply tapping on the reaction icon next to any message or video call, you can now easily express how you feel at any time.
We’re excited to share these new features to make it easier than ever for you to stay in touch with friends from your Windows 10 devices. To learn more about the new Skype, check out the Skype blog!
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Gain complete insights with the Visio visualizations in Power BI Preview
Starting today, you can visualize data using Microsoft Visio diagrams from within Microsoft Power BI dashboards and reports. Microsoft solutions work better together—and now, Visio and Power BI work better together than ever before thanks to the new Visio visualization. Any Visio user can sign up for the preview to start using this capability right away.
Both Visio and Power BI are highly visual and naturally complementary. With Visio, you can create illustrative diagrams, such as interconnected workflows and real-world layouts, to pursue operational intelligence. On the other hand, Power BI helps you build intuitive dashboards from various visualizations, like charts and maps, to understand complex datasets, measure KPIs and track goals—all to achieve business intelligence. Using Visio and Power BI together, you can illustrate and compare data as both diagrams and traditional Power BI visualizations in one place, driving operational and business intelligence to understand the overall picture.
With this new feature, you can import a Visio diagram from SharePoint or OneDrive for Business into Power BI. The underlying Power BI data is then automatically and intelligently linked to the diagram based on its shape properties, eliminating the need to do this manually. In just a few clicks, and without help from IT, Visio diagrams become yet another interactive Power BI visualization that can help you make informed decisions faster.
Get more out of your data using Visio and Power BI together
Consider this fictitious example: Contoso is a large retailer working to improve its inventory management. Using Power BI, the current inventory per store can be represented in a series of visualizations, including a treemap that shows stock by item (left-side chart in the image below).
The visualizations are perfect for an all-up view of inventory at this store. But what if Contoso needs more nuanced details, like sales and inventory data for specific clothing racks? What if it needs to understand where each rack is located in the store and how they are positioned relative to one another? Using a Visio diagram of the store’s layout, Contoso can overlay the data in Power BI on Visio’s clothing rack drawings. The resulting Power BI dashboard provides an accurate, up-to-date representation of overall store inventory while also giving it the ability to drill into specific items.
In the animated image above, the treemap was replaced with individual item racks, color-coded and labeled based on inventory levels from Power BI data. When Tea Dresses is clicked in the Visio diagram, you quickly see that sales are very strong, which helps explain why inventory is low. Similarly, when Suit Coats is clicked in the Power BI bar chart, you see the item is well below its sales target and inventory is still high. You also can see that the suit coat rack is located in a back corner of the store, making it less accessible to customers. Based on this information, the Contoso team might decide to use more rack space for tea dresses and less for suit coats, or reposition the racks for greater accessibility.
Visio visualizations in Power BI offer detailed insights for nearly any diagram type, including:
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Flow charts for identifying interdependencies.
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Fishbone diagrams for root-cause analysis.
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Organizational charts for assessing the impact of hierarchies on process decisions and people management.
Visio flowchart illustrating a sample home loan approval process for a bank. Using the Power BI charts, the bank sees that actual ticket response times for performing property risk assessments are higher than expected. In the Visio diagram, that process step is highlighted in red and, because it’s so early in the process, could affect other steps in the future if the ticket processing issue isn’t resolved soon.
Fishbone chart showing that poor working conditions—specifically excessive noise and temperature, which are highlighted in red in the Visio diagram—are the root cause of diminished product quality. The diagram relies on the employee ratings of operational categories depicted in the Power BI charts on the right.
Dashboard showing how certain people and departments, illustrated by the Visio hierarchy diagram in the upper left, affect different organizational processes. In this case, the marketing and sales department is over budget on tele sales and tele call efforts, all of which are highlighted in red.
Visio and Power BI are inherently visual tools—each helps you to dissect data in new, meaningful ways. Together, they can uncover even more insights.
