I presented at the Global Power Platform Bootcamp, Sri Lanka event a few weeks ago.  My topic was a recent feature that went GA for Power Platform makers, enabling a built-in solution deployment process. I discussed topics including; What is Application Lifecycle Management? What are Pipelines? What are Power Platform Pipelines? Managed Environments, Solutions, Components Demo – Installation and configuration of Power Platform Pipelines The slide deck of my presentation References Azure Pipelines – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/products/devops/pipelines/ Power Platform Pipelines ..read more

  Last night, I presented at the Field Service Bootcamp – 2020 organised by Ben Vollmer, Antti Pajunen, Mark Christie, Shawn Tabor, David Clarke, and Raz Dynamics.  My session “Multi-User Multi-Device Auto Allocation of Resources with Dynamics 365 Field Service” is based on my experience from a major Dynamics 365 Field Service implementation in Australia. You can find the slide deck and the video of the session below. Slide Deck Video Thank you for visiting Dyn365Apps.com. Follow me on Twitter – Follow @dyn365apps Until next time… About the Author Nadeeja Bomiriya is a&n ..read more

At Power Platform Saturday, Sydney conference, I presented this session “DJ Bot, the bot who spins Dad Jokes” with my son Dinel to a group of smart and enthusiastic young people.  This blog post series is based on learnings from building a conversational bot using Microsoft’s Power Virtual Agents and Power Automate products to spin dad jokes.  This is Part 2. Check out the first article of this series – DJ Bot, the bot who spins Dad Jokes – Part 1 – Overview The Design The design of the DJ bot includes 3 products. Power Virtual Agents – This is the bot. Power Automate – A work ..read more

At Power Platform Saturday, Sydney conference, I presented this session “DJ Bot, the bot who spins Dad Jokes” with my son Dinel to a group of smart and enthusiastic young people.  This blog post series is based on learnings from building a conversational bot using Microsoft’s Power Virtual Agents and Power Automate products to spin dad jokes. Check out the DJ Bot in action. What is Power Virtual Agents? Power Virtual Agents empowers teams to easily create powerful bots using a guided, no-code graphical interface without the need for data scientists or developers. Power Virtual Agents a ..read more

  The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in Victoria, Australia, recently released an interactive COVID-19 (Coronavirus) interactive website. https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/coronavirus-self-assessment When I stepped through the self-assessment, I wondered, how quickly can this be implemented using Microsoft Power Virtual Agents.  I reverse-engineered the logic and implemented a comparable solution using Power Virtual Agents.  The implementation and preliminary tests took less than 1 hour.  Of course, the requirements were 100% perfect and analysis work was already ..read more

  Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) includes a great feature to extend the Schedule Board functionality to apply specific custom logic and alert Dispatchers when they create or update a Bookable Resource Booking records.  This feature is known as Booking Rules.  Booking Rules are not to be confused with Booking Alerts.  Booking Alerts has a different purpose and we can discuss this in another article. Out-of-the-box, URS provides effective ways to filter resource requirements, resources, and efficiently book Work Orders (or any schedulable entity) to a suitable resource ..read more

Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) Schedule Board has many great extensibility features.  While there are many knobs, switches, and levers to configure Schedule Board to suit our specific needs, we can open up the panels and play around with the wires, fuses, and printed circuit boards (PCBs) to fine-tune the Schedule Board.  Following are some of the advanced features provided by the Microsoft URS team. Filter Layout Resource Cell Template Retrieve Resources Query Booking Template Schedule Assistant Filter Layout Schedule Assistant Resource Cell Template Schedule Assistant&n ..read more

Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) Schedule Board is the most advanced single page application of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE).  In upcoming articles, I will walk you through some of the great extensibility features of the Schedule Board.  Before we deep dive into the extensibility features, let’s have a look at the components of the Schedule Board. Search/Filter Select the filter criteria and click Search button.  Out of the box, Characteristics, Roles, Territories, Organizational Units, Resource Types, and Business Units are included.  Filter panel can be exte ..read more

In Part 1 of Life of a User Story, I discussed the early stages of the User Story and how we can prioritise them to get the best return on investment.  In this article, I will discuss what’s required in a User Story before it’s ready to be built. Getting Ready for Business Now that we have an idea which User Stories are in Sprint 1, BA/FCs can now spend more time on “Grooming” the User Stories in early Sprints and include Acceptance Criteria and any additional details.  The idea here is not to waste time on grooming User Stories we may never end up building.  For example ..read more

More and more organisations are moving away from the traditional Waterfall methodology and embracing Agile methodology when implementing Business Applications.  A User Story is the most important artefact in Agile delivery.  User Stories should not be confused with a Functional Specification.  In this article, I am hoping to give you some insights into the life of a user story. 3 C’s of a User Story A User Story includes 3 main sections. Card – Describes the user story As a [user role], I want to [goal/action], so I can [reason/business value]. Conversation – Provides more info ..read more