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Microsoft Inspire 2018 wrapped up on Thursday (7/19) with a Bruno Mars concert. But, before the music there were a bunch of very useful sessions on Microsoft Business Applications (i.e., Dynamics 365, PowerApps, Flow, PowerBI, etc.) Yes, I know the marketing/branding still a bit unclear but hopefully that will be cleared up by James Phillips next week at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit in Seattle. You can find all the session videos from Microsoft Inspire 2018 on the web site. I’ve curated a handful of sessions that would be top of list in prioritizing. I still recommend going through the site and finding other sessions that may be of interest. ...

This will be a quick post, but thought someone out there might find it useful if they are working in Microsoft Flow and need to get a local date and time and/or format a date and time. This evening I was building a Flow. In this case it is a Flow that sends an email and I wanted to include the current date in the subject of the email (i.e., “Here are your work items for 01/21/2018”.) The expression design in Flow still seems odd to me - being that I primarily write C# code and a good bit of JavaScript. ...

As a Dynamics 365 (CRM) developer you have probably come to rely on the Dynamics CRM SDK over the years. With the release of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement 9.0 (a.k.a. July 2017 Update) the old downloadable SDK has been replaced by an online document set and NuGet packages. This allows the SDK to become more of a living document where everyone is always referencing the most up-to-date information from Microsoft. Overall, I believe this is a big positive for developers which will make for a better development experience. ...

“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” ― Vincent van Gogh Too many people spend their time seeking normality and the false security it provides. In reality, normality is a front - it makes you think you are safe, while providing no safety net at all. For when you need a safety net, normality will leave you there unprepared and inexperienced to change direction, take the other fork in the road, challenge the status quo, or make change happen. ...

If you don’t “do” New Year’s resolutions or they work for you or really for any other reason this doesn’t apply to you, please ignore it. This year skip your New Year’s resolution and make a January 31-Day Resolution, you are much more likely to keep that resolution and positively impact your life. And make it a real resolution — something both measurable and achievable. Cannot Measure vs Can Measure You cannot measure success against “losing weight”, “eating healthier”, “drinking less”, “liking your job”, “being a better friend”, etc. You can measure “lose 5 pounds”, “don’t eat processed foods”, “no more than 3 drinks a week”, “apply to three jobs a week”, “call someone you haven’t talked to in 3 months each week” etc. If you cannot measure your goal you cannot know if you are achieving your goal — i.e., it will be just a crap shoot hoping for the outcome you desire. ...

Interesting original research by Maria Droganova on the historical differences in pay in the US Federal Government (civilian) workforce and how it is impacted by the gender of leadership. I found the significant impact of supervisor gender to be most interesting. From a manager/leader side it is a strong indicator that unconscious bias is real, and we must actively manage against it in how we manage. From the worker side, it might indicate that you should target having a same-gender manager to maximize rewards. I find that in offices where all supervisors are men, male wages are on average 10.6% higher than female wages. In contrast, in offices where all supervisors are women, the wage gap in favor of men disappears and becomes 3.2% in favor of women due to a 7.1% increase in female wages and a 6.7% decline in male wages. Also, the gender of an executive (a higher level supervisor) has a lesser impact on wages than the gender of regular supervisors. However, the gender of an executive has a greater impact on wages of supervisors than on wages of non-supervisors, which is consistent with the theory of mentorship. On a personal note, I’ve not found this to be my experience. Having had significant time under both male and female direct managers. My experience is just anecdotal and anecdotal doesn’t mean much, always look to the research. ...

A client of mine recently asked for support to show the next birthday for a contact. Often there will be an ask for a list view of contacts with a birthday in the next month. In this post I’m going to show you how to use a business rule and calculated fields to achieve this functionality without writing any code. This will be a a native calculated field so it can be used in lists, forms, queries, etc. ...

Since it is the start of December we’re now down to one month left to accomplish this year’s goals and set some goals for next year…for a lot of people those goals include getting some big projects done, and one of the reasons we fail to accomplish a lot of our big projects is because we aren’t in the right state to do deep work. Deep Work I only came across this NPR podcast (worth the 40 minutes to listen to) from July the other day and found it very interesting, in light of the need many of us have to find ways to be more effective. I see people complaining about their procrastination problem. (And no, you probably don’t have ADHD - not even “a little bit” - but if you think you legitimately might have ADHD then find a good psychiatrist and schedule an appointment.) Our world is becoming full of distractions and that is taking away from our ability to really focus and do deep work. ...

I saw this tweet from the Tom Peters (@tom_peters), the management guru, the other day and it really struck a cord with me. https://twitter.com/tom_peters/status/914155487595245569 I can’t say I always felt that way, there was a time I would have put “nice person” lower down on my criteria for hiring someone. My younger self would have said nice is nice but smarts are way smarter. I still believe smarts are important (as is drive, motivation, passion) but I have come to firmly believe nice matters a lot. ...

Almost every B2C (Business to Consumer) organization knows that high-quality customer service is critical in today’s market. But many B2B (Business to Business) and B2G (Business to Government) firms fail to pay enough attention to customer service, this is a critical mistake. The B2B/B2G customer is also a B2C customer and expects the same service from their business partners - technology partners, marketing firms, real estate, consultants, etc. - as they get at Nordstrom. ...