Microsoft has provided a free, downloadable or embeddable, Power BI Report sample using COVID-19 data for the US. This report can be used as is, or customized to leverage the COVID-19 data and report capabilities to compare to your regular business data. 

Microsoft Teams is a feature-rich collaboration tool that's adding new users and organizations every day. Here at Aerie, Teams is the foundation of our day-to-day communication and collaboration. With so many features built into this robust application, we thought we would share some of our favorite features, tips, and tricks to get the most out of Teams.

Recently, Microsoft and the Dynamics 365 team published the release plan for 2020 Release Wave 2. It contains the features being launched between this fall and early spring for Dynamics 365. To find the new features I highlighted recently, click here. Quick links for features in both the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform track can be found here. 

Recently, Microsoft and the Power Platform team has published the release plan for 2020 Wave 2.  It contains the features being launched between this fall and early spring for Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents and the AI Builder applications. Quick links to those features can be found here. 

Microsoft has just released the release notes for Dynamics 365, the Power Platform and Industry Accelerators. You can expect these features to start rolling out in preview in the coming months, and being generally available sometime this fall/winter. For those who don't know, industry accelerators are free app "accelerators," or features specific to an industry that are provided by Microsoft. It can get you up and running quickly with a functioning application with no configuration or development required.

Continuing my blog series on Dynamics and CDS Best Practices, Understanding the Technology.

One of the biggest downfalls to any software solution is not always the solution itself, but the team, department, or company's understanding of that solution. You could have a perfect solution or application that fails miserably. Or, an imperfect solution that thrives. It all comes down to aligning the application to your users' experiences and expectations, as well as documenting your solution as you go, so anyone can step in to maintain it or get up to speed quickly on expected functionality.

Power Apps has shortened the development life cycle of many projects due to the quickness with which you can get connections to your data up and running, no matter where it's stored. But that doesn’t mean you should throw typical software development processes to the wayside when building your apps.

We've recently helped our clients build applications quickly during these times to communicate crisis management news and updates, report on resource utilization, and facilitate work from home solutions.

If you are starting build or in the process of evaluating your next need, keep these important steps and milestones in mind when building your next app, whether it’s a Crisis Management app, or the Sales App that has been in the backlog since before Covid-19 happened.

Power Apps is an incredible tool allowing you to rapidly build low-code apps quickly and easily. In this demo, I will show you how to build an equipment tracking solution with SharePoint lists as a data source and a Power App user interface for ease of use on mobile devices.

Last week, Microsoft announced four new products for small and medium-sized businesses: