Free Training

There are SO MANY resources to learn about BC and AL development out there. Some of the best of them are totally For Freeeee!! As I always like to point out: free is in everybody’s budget. Today I noticed a video that popped up in my YouTube timeline. It was a video that I had recorded a few years ago, and I noticed that it had more than 30K views! Just an unreal number, and I want to share the story about these videos.

It Starts…

Back in 2018 I was one of the owners of a well-known company (I’m gonna keep the name out of this post for personal reasons). We were working closely with Microsoft on the cutting edge of all the new technologies. We had developed the material for a number of workshops, and we all traveled to a bunch of different places all over the world to teach NAV people the intricacies of the new technology stack, new processes in the channel, and the philosophy that would become the path that we are now all traveling. Chances are that if you attended any event that was organized or sponsored by Microsoft, you have attended one of our workshops.

At some point, we were stretched quite thin. There were more requests for these workshops than we had staff to hold them. Microsoft then came up with the brilliant idea to record our workshops and create a series of videos that would be made available on PartnerSource.

Creating Content

We created a Very. Long. List. of topics, and the word came in from Microsoft: start creating content! The task of actually creating the videos fell to me, because of my demeaner during in-person classes and my pleasant baritone voice *ahem*. The truth is that most of my co-owners thought this would be a terribly tedious task, and I was the only one that was actually excited to record all of this material. Also, I had a LOT to learn and this was a perfect opportunity to do just that. As far as I’m concerned, this was by far the coolest project I had ever taken on in my professional career. It was explained to me that Microsoft would provide the content, and all that I had to do was record the videos.

It would take a whole series of posts to tell the stories of creating the content, so let me just summarize. Despite assurances from one of my co-owners, nobody at Microsoft knew about the expectation that they would provide ANY sort of content, other than meeting with me to briefly discuss the outline of the content and providing answers to questions. For a number of topics we had some content from short presentations at various events, but none of it was nearly good enough to make it into the videos. As it turned out, I had to create most of the material from scratch. A LOT of willing and eager Microsoft people spent a very limited time with me to first explain the basics and then go over the results of my material before I recorded it.

Let me just make one thing very clear. I enjoyed every single minute of the process of creating and recording the material. It was an absolute joy to work with every single person from the BC team, many of whom had to endure completely ignorant questions from me. I am super grateful to have had the opportunity to work with each and every one of them. I could not have done any of this without their help.

Over the course of 6-7 months, I created more than 20 hours of videos. The topics range from a condensed version of our 2-day AL Development workshop, to videos about how to get your app into AppSource, to automated testing, to source code management. Picked up a bunch of skills that I still benefit from today. It really was one of the best projects of my career.

The Academy That Never Was

The initial idea was that Microsoft would create some sort of ‘academy’ that would be accessible in PartnerSource. Partners would pay a fee for to provide training to their staff, of which our company would receive a percentage. All good with us, because there were BIG plans for the ISV Development Center, so we didn’t think we would have much more time to do in-person workshops anymore anyway.

Soon it became clear that this academy was not going to happen. There were calls from partners that they would not want to pay for this, since they never had to pay to attend any in-person events. At some point about half the videos were done, most of the material for the rest was ready to record, and the question was to continue recording or to stop the project.

There was talk of putting the videos on PartnerSource but not behind a paywall, which just made no sense to me at all. Most developers that I know don’t even have access to PartnerSource, so they would never even see it. Besides, if you are going to provide this content for free, why not just put all of it on YouTube? Just upload it to the public and let anyone that wants to learn all the skills that you need to make it as an AL developer. Once I heard that the content was going to be made available for free, I went all in and talked to anyone that wanted to listen that it should be made available publicly.

To make a long story short, they did end up putting the videos on YouTube (they are all in a single playlist that you can access here).

Unexpected Impact

It’s been almost four years since I created these videos. Still today, every once in a while, videos from this playlist show up in my YouTube timeline, like today. It just struck me that this video had 30K (thirty THOUSAND!!!) views. I was just so surprised about how many people have watched videos that I created. Thinking about all the people that have learned these skills, partly as a result of listening to me explain them. It just makes my head spin.

There are two things about these videos that I take full credit for. First, since I was responsible for the content, I had decided that I wanted to make proper full-length videos. Not condensed summary videos with the high level view of the topic, but deep down detailed videos with ALL the information that you need to execute on that topic.

The second thing is getting the content into YouTube. The project manager told me that my relentless lobbying to every person in the BC team was a key factor in getting them to put these videos on YouTube. I was paid to create the videos but getting them to YouTube was totally done with a community spirit. This is by far the most impactful contribution I have ever made to the BC community, one that I am extremely proud of.

Microsoft the ISV

Microsoft published their new Shopify connector today. It’s great to see them invest resources into what is hopefully the gold standard of integrating with these external services. However, I have serious doubts about whether this is such a good idea.

ISV Partner Channel

In the runup to having BC in the cloud, the story was that the partner channel should refocus their efforts into becoming ISV’s. Rather than one-time bespoke systems for individual customers, they want the partner channel to create extensions that could be used by the masses.

This was (is?) a logical continuation of their story of verticalization that we had heard throughout the past two decades. In itself nothing that I don’t agree with. I too think that having re-usable extensions in a marketplace is a solid way to go. Microsoft’s argument was that they need to focus on the base product, a core set of functionalities. The partner channel would then be free to add functionality, to extend the base product.

There’s Just a Tiny Thing…

One thing that caught my ear was a statement that said that Microsoft does not want to provide specific, industry focused expertise. They said they have no interest to build integrations with external systems. Rather than having Microsoft provide integrations or other specialized functionalities, they would leave this up to the partner channel. There could be an ACME Rockets integration created and supported by an ISV, or even by ACME themselves.

Great soundbite showing great potential, and it sold well. Many partners listened to Microsoft and started creating lists of functionalities that they have know-how for. Many VARs dove right into their inventory of “add-ons” with the intent to turn those around into the next AppSource apps.

I know personally of three separate partners that have invested a lot of time and money into developing Shopify integrations. All three of those partners are LIVID with Microsoft today. The promise was that Microsoft would stay out of this type of functionality, and today’s release is one of an unknown number of apps that we will see come out of Microsoft.

Besides the fact that Microsoft is now on the hook for maintaining this app, they have effectively cut off the potential from the ISV channel. Their work in progress as essentially turned into a big fat tax write-off.

What Next?

Two out of those three partners had already been looking at alternatives to their NAV/BC practice, and I can’t say that I blame them. Licenses are no longer capital investments. Margins are going down with lower subscription fees, so you can no longer afford to focus on smaller businesses as clients. Having to go through a primary CSP means that you have to share what little margin remains. The stack has become much more complex, so you have to hire experts for everything.

One of the last things that are left is to develop your own IP and publish on AppSource. Would you decide to invest in new products if there is a real chance that Microsoft is working on the same thing?

Personally, I think Microsoft is making a huge mistake by creating this type of app. I am not sure if they are capable of taking on the support, and that they will be maintained properly. I am also doubtful about the cooling effect this will have on the partner channel’s willingness to invest in new products.

Most important though is that I am just flabbergasted that they prioritized something like this, when there are SO MANY things still left to improve in the base product.

As I am writing this I am struggling to find a good way to finish this post, I’m clearly not done thinking about this. Let me know in the comments what you think.

Docs on GitHub

Maybe you remember, last year I wrote about signing an App Package file, but that post was really about how I got to collaborate with someone at Microsoft, and one of the things we did was improve the online documentation for this topic.

At the time, I had noticed that there was a feedback button on each page in Docs, and underneath the feedback button it said something like ‘feedback is linked to GitHub Issues’, which led me to wonder if we’d ever see Docs in a repo that we could actually contribute to.

Now today, through a tweet by one of the managers at Microsoft, there was a link to a blog post about that very topic: here it is.

Just think how great this is! Not only do we get access to the source files of the actual documentation, we have a mechanism to contribute to the content. If you ever find yourself confused by any of the documentation, you can either leave your feedback on Docs, or you can make a change and submit a pull request to the repo itself! Either way, the actual system that is used to maintain the docs source files is also used to track issues, and you can create issues yourself in that very system!

This is what we call a BFD 🙂

Business Central on YouTube

Today is a Very Big Day! Allow me to tell you why 🙂

Maybe you remember a few months ago, when I posted some ‘how do I’ videos, I also mentioned that I was working on hours and hours of training material for Business Central. To make a long story short: my company was commissioned to create a long list of technical training videos. Originally, those videos would be published in the Dynamics Learning Portal (DLP). For those of you that don’t know, the DLP is a website where you can find a ton of training resources for a variety of Microsoft Dynamics products, including NAV and Business Central. There are a few caveats about DLP: not only is it inside PartnerPortal, you have to pay extra to get access to it. Partners who don’t pay this extra fee do not get access to DLP.

As soon as I started working on these training videos, I started mentioning how cool it would be to have these videos available for a wider audience, and every chance I got I would repeat that to anybody who would listen. At some point the decision was made to lift these videos from behind the paywall. They would still be inside DLP, but anyone with PartnerSource access would be able to see them. I was still not happy with that, after all PartnerSource is not free.

Now, exactly how much influence I have over these types of decisions is up for debate, but I do know that I recorded these videos, I had daily status calls with people from Microsoft, and I mentioned it to everyone that it would be great to make ALL of these videos available to the public.

So, the reason why I am so excited, is that I am very proud to be able to share that as of today, there is a separate channel for Business Central on YouTube, and the first thing that was published is a playlist with ALL of the technical training videos that are currently available. That’s right, the entire list of videos that are currently in the Business Central YouTube channel are recorded by ME!!

We still have more videos to create, and they should be added to the playlist as I finish them. At some point I’m expecting Microsoft to add more content to this channel, so it won’t be just me on there, but for now I am almost giddy with excitement.

Now like I said I don’t know just how much my insistence has played a part in this, but when I first started with this project the only plan was to publish these videos to DLP. In my mind I single-handedly convinced Microsoft to release all this great content to the public.

MVP Award Number 12

Ever since I received my first MVP award back in 2005, July 1st is a day where the first thing I do is check my email. This year I actually did not expect to get the award again, because I have not spent as much time in the community as I would like to this past year.

Wouldn’t you know, there was an email from Microsoft, congratulating me on receiving the 2016 Microsoft MVP Award. This is one of those things that gives me this very strange disproportionate level of pride. There are not many people who receive this award, even though there are many people who spend large amounts of time in the community. Still, to be singled out for this feels strange. A full dozen is pretty good.

I feel very fortunate to be part of this community, it is always a pleasure to meet people in person and talk about we help each other and how we can do better yet.

NAVUG PHX Chapter Meeting

Today attended the second meeting of the NAVUG Phoenix chapter, which was held at the Microsoft office in Tempe. The picture is the view from the conference room there, and it is not a bad place to work if you ask me.

We had maybe about a dozen people in attendance. In addition to talking about current affairs of the chapter, there were a few useful presentations. Per Mogensen from mergetool.com presented the security features in NAV. One of the ISV’s presented their product and gave us a preview of another product that they were about ready to launch.

Then I had the pleasure to present about Events and Extensions in NAV 2016. My goal was to explain what this means for non-technical people. I only had 30 minutes, which is barely enough to scratch the surface, and it is very easy to get very technical on this topic. I hope I didn’t confuse people even more, if you’re interested, you can download the slides here.

It was great to meet some people from the user community and from the local partner channel.