Partner Story Episodes

#141. On this episode of Amazing Apps, podcast host Neil Benson is joined by Allan de Castro, a senior technical consultant for the Power Platform at Avanade France. They discuss their experience applying Scrum to recent projects, including the role of an architect in the Scrum framework. The episode covers key challenges such as the importance of ensuring clarity in the backlog, prioritization of sprints, and addressing technical requirements while focusing on business and added value. [00:06:2...

132. Today’s guest is Andrew Ly, a Microsoft Business Applications Solutioning Lead at IBM Consulting in Australia. Andrew shares his 22 years of experience in the Microsoft space, including the type of work he does and the clients he works with. Andrew also gives his two cents on the low-code, no-code approach and talks about the demand of in a day trainings like App-in-a-Day sessions, Figma, and Power Platform applications. Show Highlights [02:48] Andrew’s background and what it’s like living ...

131. Today’s guest is Magnus Gether Sørensen, a Dynamics 365 Field Service expert at Delegate in Denmark. Magnus shares with us some of the Field Service projects he has worked on, as well as the interesting challenges that his customers have encountered using the application. Plus, Magnus talks about what’s new and next for Field Service and gives a few tips for teams implementing the application. Episode Highlights [0:30] Magnus’ background and his career in business applications [03:29] Magnu...

#130. Sprint 1 is a magical, wonderful, beautiful thing. Find out how my messy, unstructured and un-estimated sprint 1 unfurled on a recent project to build a Power Platform app for a mid-size Microsoft customer in financial services. In-person conferences I didn't attend: Power Platform Conference Nordic Summit South Coast Summit Upcoming online conferences I'm presenting at: 2 Nov 2022 at Power Platform 24 4 Nov 2022 at New Zealand Business Applications Summit Learn how to qualify, pitch, prop...

120. Hamish Sheild describes his five step Solution Mapping framework for using design thinking principles to define the requirements for complex Power Platform applications. Hamish has discovered Outlook's Board View and Neil is evaluating Motion for improving productivity. AppRising's Solution Mapping Framework What is a complex application? Observing users in their environment Customer journey mapping Swimlane business process mapping Are as-is process diagrams worth the effort? Creating a pr...

119. What's the role of pre-sales in setting up Microsoft customers and partners for successful Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects? Today's guest is Craig McGeough, Power Platform Pre-Sales Consultant at Incremental Group. Make sure you catch Craig's session, More than "selling the dream"! Why Pre-Sales is the key to Power Platform success , at Scottish Summit on Friday, 9 June 2022. Register for free today at ScottishSummit.com . What is pre-sales? Why do pre-sales consultants get paid so...

#116. Dani Kahil interviews Andrew Bibby about a pivotal, multi-year Dynamics 365 business transformation project in financial services. Dani Kahil and Andrew Bibby are both Microsoft Business Applications MVPs. Dani is an independent consultant and online trainer specialising in requirements analysis and solution envisioning. Andrew Bibby is a founder of Proximo 3, a Microsoft training and advisory partner based in the UK. Dani and Andrew discuss: How Andrew's client engaged him as an advisor t...

#112. Dani Kahil interviews Paddy Byrne about the Power Platform's role in enabling Scotland's new recycling scheme for single-use drinking containers. Scots people are famous for being careful with their money so I imagine any program to pay them for recycling containers was always going to be a big hit. Learn about Paddy's Power Platform team: Meeting public-sector's accessibility and security requirements with a custom web portal rather than Power Apps Portals. Internal project team of a func...

#102. Bruce Sithole's team at 265 Mechanix built a Power Portal application for a business to business lender that earned some serious kudos for his customer. Find out how in this episode of Amazing Applications. We also cover: Starting your own Microsoft partner business What is takes to achieve FastTrack Recognized Solution Architect Which is better: FTRSA award or MVP award? Building amazing Power Power applications What night to release a new deployment Using feature flags in our application...

#101. DynamicsCon starts next week. Lipi Sarkar is presenting two sessions at DynamicsCon and joins me to share the highlights from her presentations as well as her book, Build a Digital Future. Resources Register for DynamicsCon Lipi Sarkar on LinkedIn Samit Saini and Eric McKinney on LinkedIn Building a Digital Future by Lipi Sarkar and Vinny (Amazing affiliate link) South Coast Summit conference Scottish Summit conference Support the show CONNECT 🌏 Amazing Applications 🟦 Customery on LinkedIn...

#99. We all know that good form design is important especially when we're building model-driven Power Apps and Dynamics 365 apps. But what actually makes a good form design? Join me as Mary Ann Castro shares her secrets of effective form design from her upcoming presentation at DynamicsCon. Resources Mary Ann Castro on LinkedIn Register for DynamicsCon Special mention to Andrew Butenko , Amey Holden and Dian Taylor I've just registered for Microsoft Power Platform Conference in Las Vegas from 3-...

#98. Hey everyone, Dian Taylor is here! Dian is a two-time MVP and a director of pre-sales at RSM US. She's presenting, 'Getting Started with Power Virtual Agents' at DynamicsCon on 20 September. So I invited Dian onto the Amazing Apps show to tells us all about Power Virtual Agents and give us a sneak peek into her presentation. We discuss the summer weather in Florida and the easy life of pre-sales as well as some serious topics such as how amazing chatbots can provide an awesome customer expe...

#91. Join me with Reza Rad, the founder and CEO of RADACAD providing Power BI training and consultancy services to thousands of Microsoft customers and partners every year. Reza's list of achievements is pretty embarrassing. He's not just a 10 times Microsoft MVP. He's a Microsoft Regional Director. He's written over 15 books on data analytics, in addition to dozens of courses on RADACAD. He's been a speaker at dozens of industry conferences and used all of that experience to organize and host ...

#89. Join me with Mohammad Mohsin Khalid. And he's the founder, CEO and chief architect at Imperium Dynamics. He and his team built a Power Portal to support a million constituents booking their COVID test appointments, and they did it in less than 100 hours. Our discussion covers: The physical logistics of drive-up COVID testing for thousands of people. Why custom scheduling was used instead of the inbuilt scheduling functionality of the Dynamics Healthcare Accelerator on Power Platform The uni...

#79. Bonus extended interview with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations. In this bonus episode, CJ and I try to solve the Elon Musk problem in data verse. Resources CJ Brooks on LinkedIn MISSION CRM on LinkedIn MISSION website Demo: Dynamics 365 Fundraising & Engagement Support the show C...

#78. Join me with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations. Make sure you stick around until the end of this episode to find out how you can get access to the bonus episode with Neil Benson and CJ Brooks extended interview. Our discussion covers: How Mission CRM took a step back and pivoted t...

#77. Bonus extended interview with Bert Wijns, a Global Solution Strategy Architect a Microsoft and co-founder of Power Accelerate as we talk about the tool he created which allows you to take a screenshot of a legacy application or database schema and have a Power App built in a few minutes with the legacy data migrated. Sound crazy? Listen on to hear more about Bert Wijns' Power Accelerate. Resources Bert Wijns on LinkedIn Power Accelerate on LinkedIn Power Accelerate website Power Apps Screen...

#76. Join me with Bert Wijns, a Global Solution Strategy Architect a Microsoft and co-founder of Power Accelerate as we talk about the tool he created which allows you to take a screenshot of a legacy application or database schema and have a Power App built in a few minutes with the legacy data migrated. Sound crazy? Listen on to hear more about Bert Wijns' Power Accelerate. Make sure you stick around until the end of this episode to find out how you can get access to the bonus episode with Nei...

#75. Join me with Haniel Croitoru, Associate Director of Protiviti, a Technology Consulting solutions provider in Toronto, Canada. Haniel shares a story about one of his power platform projects for a not-for-profit client and shares the lessons learned about multi-language deployments, implementation approach, executive sponsorship, and change in user adoption. Our discussion covers: The importance of strong project sponsorship in projects that drive a lot of organisational change. Refining kno...

#58. I had to fire a client this week. I felt terrible that I wasn't able to help, yet relieved that I stuck to my approach and my principles. Listen in to find out what happened. Support the show CONNECT 🌏 Amazing Applications 🟦 Customery on LinkedIn 🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES 🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps 📐 Estimating Business Apps Keep sprinting 🏃‍♂️ -Neil

#57. Join me with Ana Inés Urrutia de Souza , a Dynamics 365 HR consultant at FourVision and a rising star in our Power Platform community. Ana shares the story behind the amazing Dynamics 365 for Talent application her team deployed at Centria, in Lima, Peru. Ana came from an HR administrator role and today is an HR application functional consultant at FourVision. Ana's project team created a Dynamics 365 for Talent companion app using Power Apps to enhance the recruiting process at Centria. HR...

#54. I'm joined by Dani Kahil , Microsoft Business Applications practice lead at Empired, who shares the story behind one of his client projects, Lives Lived Well. How the Lives Lived Well CRM project started with a review of the high-level requirements Adopting Scrum gradually during the course of the project The benefit of having a scrum master (or a project manager) who is familiar with Scrum Dani's advice for Microsoft customers who are new to the product owner role Using a blend of partner ...

#50. Chris Kendrick is the founder and CEO of Mercury xRM , who develop recruitment software on Dynamics 365 Sales. We discuss parsing resumes (and fine-tuning your own resume), as well as entity model designs, ISV product development, implementation approaches, remote training and user adoption incentives. I've just registered for Microsoft Power Platform Conference in Las Vegas from 3-5 October. I'd love to see you there. Visit customery.com/mppc for a $150 discount voucher to register. Suppor...

#48. My guest is Clément Olivier from Javista in Nantes, France. Clément was recently awarded a Power Platform FastTrack Recognized Solution Architect designation. He was one of 8 first-time Power Apps architects and 5 Power BI architects to be recognised, in addition to a new group of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Customer Engagement architects . It's a recognition from the Microsoft FastTrack team within the Business Apps product engineering group of a solution architect who consiste...