Today Microsoft launched Dynamics 365 and I must say I am a bit surprised on the result. You would expect that they would have a new home page with your dynamics applications running, but it also ties together every other service as well… and I love it!
So first up the new landing page for Dynamics 365 is: home.dynamics.com. This gives you the range of business applications through your Dynamics 365 subscription. It also is really easy for customers to now go and buy new apps, but I’ll get back to that in a second.
What I really like about the web experience with Office 365 is the navigation at the top and Dynamics 365 merges together with Office 365 to give you that complete Business 365 experience!
It is the same menu you get in Office 365 in fact. Now monocrome and very pretty looking.
Clicking the 3×3 menu item in CRM takes you to the Office 365 landing page, but that is the only disconnect I’ve experienced… Otherwise it is seamless to move from Dynamics to Office online.
AppSource
AppSource has been around for a little while, but the thing that strikes me is how easy it is to be a customer and now go shopping for business solutions through a very user friendly experience.
AppSource gathers applications from both Dynamics 365, Office 365, Dynamics NAV, Azure AND PowerBI and puts it all on display. If you are making or looking for business applications for Microsoft products for a specific task/scenario, THIS is where it is at. If you haven’t started your journey, you’re behind and need to get a move on. I would imagine that once customers get a taste for this it will be like kids in a candy store, but the store is in your home. No more need to go else where to find the goodies. You can just browse around to find what you need to solve most business scenarios.
If you find an application you find interesting, you can request a trial/demo by simply clicking the “Request Trial” button.
Soon the applications will also show a variety of partners that can assist you in implementing the solutions.
The VAR vs. ISV situation was discussed with Joel Leichty in our podcast that we released today if you want to head a story of a person responsible for an application that is in the store.
The three pilars and the foundation
The Common Data Model is to be pinacle of the concept of master data managment. A model where all commen concepts of data entities lives and are pushed and pulled through different applications in the pool that makes up your business application suite.
PowerApps, PowerBI and Microsoft Flow is the engines driving and merging a lot of these processe together and will be the customers own tool to solve a lot of their business scenarios without the requirement for costly amendments to their core applications.
Also interresting is the integration from PowerApps, PowerBI and Microsoft Flow to other applications like Google and SalesForce and other direct Microsoft competitors giving any business an opportunity to create own flows and eventually put all ther processes in alignment with their business applications.
All in all
Not that much has changed in the core part of the individual applications (yet). CRM is still working the way it has always done and Dynamics AX is still the broad multi-tool we know and love. What is new is the way our customers now will interact with the multitude of opportunities that is available and the power to do a lot more self driven business development.
All in all Microsoft just lowered the bar for “Every person and every organization on the planet to acheive more”. I just hope they don’t get lost in the forest and will be relying on good advice from partners who know the terrain.
Welcome to the new world of Dynamics!
dyntips.com by Fredrik Sætre 