Report on Directions North America Conference 2019
Our Vice President, Christian Roach, attended this year’s Directions North America Conference in Las Vegas and brought back some details on Microsoft’s goals and planned updates coming later this year.
The annual conference empowers Microsoft partners servicing the SMB market to boost the efficiency of their business and strengthen important relationships. Throughout the conference, attendees discover a wealth of content created as a result of partner feedback. This content enables partners to drive sales, enhance their product knowledge and skills, explore the latest ISV solutions, and learn and apply best business practices.
Key Notes
Dynamics 365 Business Central investment themes discussed this year included world-class cloud service, modern productive UI, modern ISV and VAR tools, and being an integrated Microsoft solution.
Presenters highlighted improvements in automation and proactive logging, improved error messages, alerts to users about upcoming maintenance, customizable navigation bar, and efforts to reduce the number of inactive session timeouts. Long term and short term improvements are especially being made through increased telemetry, which can detect, mitigate, and prevent performance issues before users even identify them.
Presenters discussed results of 2018’s Roadmap and introduced this year’s new Roadmap which includes actions planned up until 2022. The current version of Business Central (released in April 2019) will be available until October 2020.
Next Business Central upgrade
The next major release of Business Central coming in October 2019 will include continued performance and proficiency improvements, 100% modern client (Web Client) only, VS Code (AL) only, and reduced ISV friction.
Going forward, official release notes for major updates will be provided at least two months prior to release. The October 2019 release notes are expected to be available in June. Partners will also be notified of any tenant upgrade conflicts prior to an attempted upgrade.
The Conference also focused on cloud services security and compliance. You can learn more about the Dynamics 365 Trust Center and security efforts here.
To learn more details from Directions, please contact us.
*Would Dynamics 365 Business Central Manufacturing or Assembly work best for your ERP business setup? Check out our previous blog here where we explore and compare the two. Hint: Manufacturing includes all the pieces you need, Assembly affords better configuration.
More Blogs
The 8 BIG Advantages You’ll Gain by Managing Your Oil & Gas Service Business with Business Central
In the fast-paced world of oil and gas services, managing your day-to-day operations efficiently is important for being profitable and staying ahead of competitors on the oilfield.
Why Don’t ERP Consultants Always Offer Fixed Fees for the Implementation of a New Business Management System?
If you’re concerned about all the possible costs involved in a new accounting or ERP system implementation for your business – you’re not alone. On average*, the cost of ERP software for small businesses is between $10,000 to $100,000. With such a broad range, we understand the stress experienced when organizations don’t know up-front about … Continued
A Microsoft 365 Reseller’s Perspective on the Latest Microsoft Releases
As businesses navigate the rapidly evolving economy and look at staying ahead with the latest technological advancements, it’s important to be up to date on Microsoft’s latest releases. Microsoft does their updates in what they call a “Release Wave” where they announce what’s coming in advance and then new functionality will be released into their … Continued