From Directions to Actions: An ISV Product Manager Perspective

From Directions to Actions: An ISV Product Manager Perspective

From 9-11 November, I had the pleasure of attending the 15th edition of the Directions EMEA conference for Microsoft business application partners, in Hamburg, as part of a large delegation from 4PS.

Directions EMEA started as an event for the Dynamics NAV partner community, and has grown over the years, not just in the numbers of attendees and sessions, but also to encompass the wider Microsoft business applications stack, including Power Platform and Microsoft 365.

Now that I’m back home wearing my Product Manager’s hat at 4PS, I want to share some insights from Directions EMEA, which I intend to apply in my own ISV product management work in 2023.

Directions gave me the inspiration to focus on some specific areas, and now it’s time for action to see what I can achieve by applying interesting new capabilities to a large ISV solution like 4PS Construct.

I plan to share some updates during 2023 on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what I learned along the way.

What’s really going on? Using telemetry to deliver data-driven product insights

Product management goal: Use data-driven insights to identify product improvements, especially in the user interface.

User benefits: A UI that better supports real-world usage.

Microsoft has already been growing telemetry coverage in Business Central Cloud since BC 2019 release wave 2, but it’s coming along in leaps and bounds now. Note that many, but not all, of the same telemetry areas are also available on-premises.

Telemetry may seem very technical, and meant for system administrators, tech architects and developers, for example when seeking improvements in performance or stability. However, it also has great potential for product managers if you take the time to look through what’s available. This is what I’ve done in Business Central, to see if there’s something I could use in more strategic product management decision-making.

Data-driven product insights are very valuable because they provide a “data story” to complement the user experience of customers and colleagues who work in the field. Data-driven insights from telemetry can also give a more balanced view across all parts of the application, rather than just areas that the users you speak to happen to have used recently.

In my case, I’ve decided to focus on two specific areas for UI improvement in my BC product modules, using the results of telemetry:

• Which are the 10% most and least used pages within my ISV add-on modules, looking back at say 6 months of usage? I’ll use Page View Telemetry for this.
• Which are the 10% most and least used reports within my ISV add-on modules? I’ll use Report Execution Telemetry for this.

Equipped with these insights, I could decide to promote/demote pages and reports within the UI based on frequency of use. This should reduce the number of clicks for users in frequent scenarios, while decluttering menus, pages, and role centres of rarely used pages/reports.

IP or not IP? Finding the “sweet spot” for Power Apps

Product management goal: Build and deploy quality, stable product IP, while co-existing with Power Platform capabilities.

User benefits: A quality, standard product in BC. Tailored apps for specific tasks in your business, that you can deploy outside BC.

As I’ve been building up some Power Platform knowledge during 2022, I found myself reflecting on whether it could play a part in a product IP portfolio, and not just for per-customer solution delivery.

Power BI and Power Automate are already infused within Business Central, and naturally play a role in representing data and enabling more efficient business process, respectively. As a Product Manager, I’m also happy to include elements of Power BI and Power Automate in BC-based modules.

What about Power Apps? If you’re an ISV with some apps in your portfolio, which you built outside BC, are Power Apps a possible replacement for using a dedicated mobile app development platform?

My opinion is “no”, at least not now. Power Apps are a fantastic way for a specific business to deliver fast, flexible solutions for users to enter and view data, which can come from multiple sources. However, to ensure quality and consistency at global scale, a cloud product needs:

• Central deployment and management: Power Apps – there isn’t a partner portal like there is for BC for the partner to keep an overview across tenants and monitor which app version each tenant has upgraded to.
• Versioning and source control: There is basic versioning in Power Apps, which is fine for rolling back to a previous app version within a given tenant (it creates a copy of a previous app version as the new current version). But there isn’t the detailed versioning or source control needed to manage product-level quality across multiple customers.

This is an evolving space. While I hold the above opinion now, I’ll stay tuned to how the deployment and management aspects of Power Apps evolve. There are also two other aspects of Power Apps that I need to stay tuned into:

• Identifying when requirements may be met easier by individual customers using Power Apps, rather than building a product capability within BC.
• Prototyping an idea where, for example, a user or consultant wants to mock up and play around with a new concept for a page or capability, then review it with a Product Manager. The ease of use and scope of Power Apps could make them a great place for such prototyping – even if a resulting product addition ended up being built in BC.

All aboard! Onboarding new customers, users, and features

Product management goal: Embed self-serve setup and discovery within your product.

User benefits: Get familiar with BC with relevant tips on key tasks, perform your own initial setup without 3^rd party manual intervention, identify and understand product changes in real time, as you encounter them.

Microsoft has ramped up focus over the past year or so on enriching the onboarding experience within BC, which partners can use as a framework to enable users to get productive easier and faster. It’s not just about having relevant information about fields and functions available where the user is working, in the application, but also about enabling users to self-setup areas in which they have the knowledge to apply setup.

For a large, complex ISV solution, this will not cover anything like the overall scope of an implementation, but it is a great opportunity for partners to start with the basics of setup and reduce the amount of consulting time needed to get repetitive setups done. This should release partner consulting capacity for dealing with higher-value, more complex topics like business process review and mapping of business data structure and process into the application.

I’ve started with guided tours and teaching tips, adding some content for existing functionality as well as including this area on the checklist of things to include, or at least consider, when adding new product functionality. I also hope to start adding setup pages and checklists that will guide users through some basic setups.

About Directions 4 Partners

Directions 4 Partners is the independent community for Microsoft Dynamics 365 partners from the ERP and CRM channels. It is organised for partners by partners. Directions EMEA is one of the highlights of the Microsoft Dynamics year and it’s the place where Microsoft present new releases and partners can connect, share knowledge, and grow together.

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