Innovate with Ludia: The Dynamics 365 Physical Operations Podcast
Join us on the 'Innovate with Ludia' podcast for discussions on Physical Operations, including D365 Field Service, IoT, Mixed Reality, D365 Project Operations, AI, and more. We'll cover industry challenges, new features, and insights from Microsoft, MVPs, and ISVs.
Innovate with Ludia: The Dynamics 365 Physical Operations Podcast
Navigating Dual Write with Nick Talsma
Unlock the secrets of mastering DualWrite with insights from Nick Talsma, head of Ludia Consulting's CE technical team. In this episode of Innovate with Ludia, Nick takes us through the evolution of DualWrite, sharing essential best practices for configuring and troubleshooting this vital integration tool. Learn how to maintain synchronization between systems and minimize errors effectively, drawing from Nick's extensive experience and lessons learned. This episode is a treasure trove of tips that will elevate your DualWrite implementations to new heights.
We then switch gears to discuss the excitement of the upcoming Community Summit. Nick and I reflect on the invaluable networking opportunities, the camaraderie among industry peers, and the joy of supporting fellow presenters. We delve into the balancing act of managing project work and event participation while highlighting the evolving, yet crucial, role of AI and Copilot in our industry. Despite technological advancements, the need for human expertise in understanding and troubleshooting remains paramount. Tune in for an engaging conversation that perfectly blends technical know-how with the vibrant spirit of community events.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Innovate with Ludia. I am your host, scott LaFonte. Today we are starting a special series little mini-series, if you will talking about Community Summit that's coming up in October and specifically around those attendees and speakers that are from Ludia Consulting. And so today we have our very first guest. Special guest is Nick Tauza, who heads up our CE technical team. Nick, how are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. How are you doing, Scott?
Speaker 1:Not too bad. You know it's a I think it's Wednesday.
Speaker 2:No, it's Thursday, so even better. So I'm doing better. It's going by, you must be having fun.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's been very busy. So, Nick, this is. You know I wasn't here last year for at Ludia for Community Summit, but my understanding is you had a session or two last year and you're now presenting again this year.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's correct. The past couple of years I've been on site with a few sessions, and the year before that too, I did some remote sessions when we had a lot of the people doing them over video too.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, the COVID experience and people not being able to travel or not wanting to travel. It's nice to be able to get back on site and see everyone face to face.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:You actually have a very interesting topic and, I think, one that potentially people could take for granted, and that is configuring and troubleshooting dual write. How did you come about picking that topic? I know you from a technical perspective. You have a passion for a lot of all things technical, but what made you really pick out that topic to present that summit?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I mean, this is something that I have both a lot of experience with and a lot of recent experience with, just by nature of the projects that we work on and a lot of the clients that we've been seeing lately. Uh, dual right has been a integral cornerstone of almost every project that I've worked on, worked on since being here, so we've got a lot of uh tips and tricks to share there and I a lot of uh, uh lessons learned that I would love to teach other people without them having to learn it the hard way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's great and I think that's the important thing, right, we talk about Community Summit and it's really about experts in different topics, in different areas, or those that have a passion for it, being able to go in front of the community and educate them and, hopefully, help and guide them on their own implementations, absolutely. And so if you think about going back to DualWrite from its beginning days, I mean, have you seen a lot of improvements within DualWrite in and of itself, or are you still seeing some of those same sort of gotchas and tips and tricks that have come in handy early on still applying today?
Speaker 2:No, so I mean it's a bit of a mixed bag, but absolutely, we're seeing constant growth in this technology. It's changing incredibly fast. Sometimes it seems like you know the documentation that you find for it online can't even necessarily quite keep up with the speed of the fixes and improvements they're making, which is part of why I want to get out there and spread the good word, because they said our friends over at Microsoft are making a lot of improvements to it. You that you wanted to do with it used to be, even just a few years ago, a lot more clunky in terms of anytime you wanted to stand up a new environment, anytime you had big changes in your environment. There were a lot of manual steps that have turned more into automated pushes of a button or scenarios you could find yourself in that there were no way to cancel or back out of once they kicked off that. They've given you a lot more hooks to solve without having to involve support.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah, I know back in the day when I would dabble in dual write and I say dabble because I actually spun it up and would test it out, of course for more demonstration purposes than implementation. But you know there were things where you know I would scratch my head and say, well, why isn't this working out of the box? Or why isn't that working? Or if I make this change and I want to maintain it, you know, as a novice in that, particular in terms of the setup, but you know I understand the concept and the architecture and what it's supposed to do, which is my goal, being hands-on. Probably you would slap me, and rightfully so.
Speaker 1:But it can be very frustrating when you're first starting out and you're trying to dabble and figure it out, especially if you are someone that isn't. You know integration and do-right and all that isn't your specialty, sure. And so, um, yeah, I, I had countless days and that's why I actually have no hair is because do-right cautionaryautionary tale. But in all seriousness, I think to your point. It is a great topic. I'm looking at your topic now in terms of the learning objectives for those that are attending your session Learn best practices for dual-write, configuration, troubleshooting, fixing errors that can arise and best practices for maintenance to minimize effort and desynchronization. So those are really good topics. Now, what does out of curiosity for those that may not know minimize effort and desynchronization? What does that mean for those that are listening and saying Scott, what are you talking about? Desynchronization?
Speaker 2:So anytime that you've got two systems integrated via any technology, one of the biggest challenges there is what to do when you have discrepancies in data and, depending on how big those discrepancies are, that can be a more or less painful process to resolve. So there's a lot of things that you can encounter that are reasonable business practices to do. Maybe you want to update some option sets that are, you know, the choices that you have available to you. Maybe you want to refresh UAT from production A number of these changes that you make.
Speaker 2:They could cause disruptive events that are going to get the data out of sync. And when you get to a point where your data is out of sync because one of the premises of almost any modern integration system is that you're just pushing the changes that occur there's some pain and heartache involved in going back and repairing stuff that's already out of sync changes that have happened and have not successfully propagated. So in my topic we're going to both discuss how do we get ahead of those kind of desynchronizations so that you don't wind up in the bad spot, and we're also going to talk about, if you do wind up in a bad place, how do we fix it in the least painful way possible.
Speaker 1:That's great because I know that's always been my challenge when I build a demo environment. And I'm doing it with dual right and of course things happen because, again, it's a demo environment and and I'm not an F&O expert and I'll do certain things and all of a sudden you know things are out of whack and and uh. So I'm Totally get it. I think this is going to be a great topic for those that are getting into Dual Right. I mean, it's been out for quite a number of years now and, to your point, it's been evolving and I mean, look at now the field service integration is in there with Dual Right. So that's pretty exciting stuff. And Ludia was one of the first ones to go ahead and implement that for a customer, was one of the first ones to go ahead and implement that for a customer. So we have some really good experience with that. I'm sure there was some trials and tribulations and some sleepless nights, but you guys did it.
Speaker 2:I know you were part of that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and even beyond how long dual rights been out. This effort for Microsoft to provide an out-of-the-box way for their systems to talk to each other has been around for much longer than that. Even back in the days when people were mostly running CRM on-premise the precursor to what's now Dynamics CE, and AX on-premise, the precursor to what's now Dynamics for Finance and Supply Chain, microsoft had offerings that were out there, but we saw a lot of the partners and customers opt to go. Even with that technological offering in place, we'd see them using third party tools out there.
Speaker 2:You know Cozy Rock, kingsley, soft Scribe, a lot of these other integration methodologies off of this much time. You know 10, 15, 20 years, however long that we've been at this goal of making these systems play nicely with each other. We're seeing the fruits of those labors finally coming to fruition, where the standard option for making those systems play nicely together is dual-right and is a core piece of functionality in a lot of Microsoft standard offerings that now bridge the gap and span across both the power platform and their ERP system.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and what are you seeing? I mean in terms of going back before dual-write or any of these other tools are involved to connect two systems seamlessly together. How long would one of these integrations take back in the day versus now? It's got to be night and day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Anytime that you were standing up an integration in the past, if you were going to use one of these other tools, that meant that you had to custom define the data source and targets on both sides of the fence there meticulously, with all of the tables and fields that you wanted to integrate and help those pieces of data talk nicely to each other.
Speaker 2:It could say you know, most of the time if you were going to stand up the two systems, there was a good chance that the actual piece of integrating those two systems could be almost the lion's share of the work in doing that if you wanted it to be a cohesive unit. Now the process to stand up dual right just to get it running, to make some of the out of the box tables talk to each other, is in theory. I mean you could stand it up in a day or something like that if you just turn it on, turn on some of your favorite tables and want to use what they put in there. The reality is a little bit different. Each customer's need is going to be a little bit more focused and targeted from that. But yeah, the premise is there, that out of the box, if you say I want to turn on a system. I want each system to be aware of what the accounts are, the contacts are, the products are on each side of the fence. You could just turn that on and it'll go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a very good point I want to kind of specifically point out is like, hey, yeah, sure you could turn this on in a day, but, to your point, customers use cases and the reality is different, right? So it's not always as simple as, hey, I turn it on and it's good to go, right, you have different fields, you got different rules and logics and when it should trigger, should it really be dual right, should it be one way? All of those things kind of taking into play and kind of comes up with the whole integration strategy for a particular project or a particular customer. In general, I think that's important to point out to folks. That, yes, it is quick to turn on doesn't necessarily mean it's wham, bam, I'm done, happy day, Let me go away now. But it is obviously a heck of a lot faster than building a custom integration between two systems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's definitely a good thing and it's only going to get better. I mean, we've seen improvements to your point. I can only imagine, as we keep evolving into the, especially with the whole world, who knows what AI is going to want to bring into this? I mean, I don't know. I just don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know Microsoft, they're not shying away from this push to continue to make their whole ecosystem of technologies play more cohesively either. We're seeing with the recent changes where the technology to integrate with the data analytics, data warehousing, all the fabric technology we're seeing the switch from the old export to data lake technology to now the Azure Synapse link functionality to move F&O data over into the data lake. We're seeing the shift away from LCS to now using a power platform-based administration tool for finance and operations. Yeah, I know it feels good as somebody who's a lifelong member of the dynamics and power platform space to see stuff folding more and more into our lifelong wheelhouse here.
Speaker 1:Come over to the dark side. People Come over to the dark side.
Speaker 2:The water's warm.
Speaker 1:But it just makes sense In theory. Think about it this way If you're a system administrator, maybe you administer both. Now do you want to go to LCS and Power Platform, or how about we go just to Power Platform? So I think it's great to see it slowly coming in to again the dark side.
Speaker 2:Seeing the light. We'll call it Coming over to the light side.
Speaker 1:Okay, you have your version, I have mine. Okay, it's all good. Okay, so back to Summit. So are there? In addition to, of course, your session, which we'll get back to here towards the end, give everyone all the details on where it is and what time and day.
Speaker 2:What are some of the things that you're looking forward to at attending a summit this year? So for the other sessions, other sessions or just in general, it could be other sessions.
Speaker 1:I know some folks really enjoy being at the booth and meeting people and talking about you know different scenarios and helping them out. Others like to go and just of course, like hey, you know, I get to meet, you know different colleagues. Like I'll finally get to meet the Nick Big Papa Tauasma in person so there's a backstory to the whole nickname there. But you know so there is some excitement in terms of meeting and seeing colleagues you haven't seen in a while. But in general, you know so there is some excitement in terms of meeting and seeing colleagues you haven't seen in a while. But in general, I mean, what is it that? You're? You know you're looking forward to? It could be sessions, if there are additional ones, but anything in general.
Speaker 2:For me that's the biggest thing is going to be able to get there and see colleagues you know other, you know former acquaintances in the space, getting to put a face or at least an in-person handshake to a name for some of our clients that may be attending there, meeting new people and, you know, just getting to get out there and, you know, getting to have that, that in-person face to face experience with a lot of the people that make up such a big part of our, our daily life and and the space that we work in here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you're at the booth or you know, unfortunately or fortunately, we do have project work that continues to go on or pre-sales opportunities or things of that nature that sometimes pull our focus away. That sometimes pull our focus away. You know I always enjoyed going to, you know colleagues or other MVPs sessions and, you know, kind of throw a little softball up to them, you know, ask them questions or just in general. Sometimes it's just having a friendly face there. I know, you know not everyone is very comfortable presenting. They go and do it because you know they have something you know really important to share, but it's not something that they enjoy doing to the point where they're super comfortable. I've been doing presentations for years and sometimes I still get nervous sometimes, but then I get into a groove but it's always nice to see one or two friendly faces in the crowd.
Speaker 2:I agree, and that's been most of the sessions that I've gone to the past couple years. Like you said, I haven't had a lot of time to go to sessions, partially because the past couple years I've had, I think, three sessions at each of those, but then also because because, to your point, ludia Consulting has done a great job of being proactive, getting out there, putting in proposals for a lot of sessions.
Speaker 1:So as a sort of boutique firm here, it's not tenable for us to just close the doors to the business for a week while half of us go out to Summit and we have 10 sessions, which is, if you think about it and the way Summit is doing it and trying to spread the wealth a little bit more, which is great 10 is a lot. 10 is a big number.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. But I do really hope that I can catch some of my co-workers' sessions here. I have enjoyed that in the past, seeing them go up there in their element and really thrive up there.
Speaker 1:Well, I think Lucas has two sessions in addition to being, you know, being on main stage at the beginning. I think we should all go to Lucas's sessions and we should heckle him or ask him really hard questions and see, you know, kind of play, stump to chump. You know, I don't know if we'll have a job the next day, but no, just kidding, lucas Love you. But you know, know, it should be really exciting and and I know, in some cases, you know, looking at some of the sessions, there's some overlap, so it's a little disappointing, like you know, I know I have a session or two that overlaps with other people's and so it's like I can't attend it.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, hopefully others will be able to attend it. To just provide that support to our fellow colleagues and presenters in general. I mean, we're all. I think that the beauty of Community Summit is that we're all volunteers, we're just. We have great ideas that, or topics that have been nominated. We not. We're, you know, submitted our proposals or topics that have been nominated. We not were you know, submitted our proposals.
Speaker 1:The committee, you know, felt there was value in sharing this knowledge with the community, and so it's one of our ways to, I guess, give back to the community, the Dynamics community, and share that insight and wisdom and hopefully. I mean there's a lot of sessions this year on AI and co-pilot, so, um, I I am really curious to see how that pans out for a bunch of the other different areas, because, of course, ai and co-pilot is such a hot topic. So, hopefully, hopefully you know, not everyone's going to all those sessions and then there's like three people and the rest of ours, but I think there's still still an appetite for, for uh learning how humans can do things too, not just the robot overlords that's true, the robots are taking over.
Speaker 1:That's it, that's right, it's like I. It's like back in the day I used to ask my kids, or tell my kids you know, there's a thing called Google, you go search it. Now it's hey, go use AI, go ask ChatGPT, go ask you know Copilot, you know what it thinks and what it can provide. So it's amazing how things have changed so quickly. Right, and it's not like to your point. Dual right is evolving, it's continuing to evolve.
Speaker 2:There's an investment there. Yes, there's a big investment in AI and Copilot, but there's still investment in evolving and moving the additional products to a higher level where we're ready to let AI say okay, ai, go, set up a dual-right integrated environment for me. But even when we get there, it's still going to be important for people to be able to go in there and understand what's been set up, because, just like we run into problems in operation today that need to be troubleshot solved, that's going to be the case in the future as well, and the problem is only going to be exacerbated if the only thing that we know how to do is tell AI to go set something up for us. So the appetite for understanding the technology, in tandem with knowing how to best leverage AI along with it, I think, is always going to be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great. Plus right, we all know AI is only as good as what you tell it, how you tell it or ask it, and then, of course, depending on your data, how good your data is. So there's always going to be, I think to your point, that human element. So don't worry folks, AI is not taking over the world. You still have a job, you know, at least for today, it's all good. And for those using dual right, you're still. You're still good.
Speaker 2:That's it. But I mean that's why we, that's why we have stuff like Community Summit, right, because we have big disruptive events, big changes that come, like AI, that force all of us to evolve. And events like this, where we can all come together and share knowledge, is going to be one of the key ways that we're able to adapt and swim in that, in that evolving, changing world. You know, learning how to, how to live in a live harmoniously with the, you know the new AI changes instead of getting swallowed under by them.
Speaker 1:We're going to live harmoniously with the robots before that that's right Before they steal our brains.
Speaker 2:That's right If any future robots are listening to this. I always believed in you.
Speaker 1:Don't come knocking at my door, that's right. All right. So, nick, just real quick. I want to recap for our listeners or those watching, because I know this will go out on our very own marketing folks. We'll go ahead and produce this and, you know, take some snippets out. Your session is configuring and troubleshooting Dorite. It is on Wednesday, october 16th, from 915 to 1015 Central and right now the location is 213B. So, everyone, I urge you to definitely go and listen to and see what Nick has to present and offer.
Speaker 1:And around dual right. You know, pick his brain, ask him. You know, try to stump to jump. I dare you, I guarantee you won't. Nick is pretty well versed in this area. But definitely if you have questions, you have concerns, you're just curious about what dual right can do and how you can troubleshoot it and fix it, or best practices, lessons learned. Definitely this is a session to go to. I will definitely be there as well, so that means you may not want to be there. Just kidding, how many people aren't going to come now, like oh Scott's going to be there?
Speaker 2:I'm not going. Yeah, I truly hope to have a good turnout there. It certainly, as a presenter, makes you feel good to look out there and see a room full of interested people, which fortunately has been the case in the past.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, looking forward to hopefully seeing lots of people there at the session again, a few grades before we go, we do raise an interesting one. So I think it was the year that everyone was in person but could be virtual, and I was on site and I think the majority of the folks that attended my session were on the phone and so I couldn't tell, or on the video I had no idea how many people, but there was like four people in the room and apparently there was like 20 or 30 people on watching. But when there's only four people in the room, you're like I'm going to make this a little bit more personal, yeah, and more interactive and things like that. So I think to your point, it's like wow, only four people. But you know there's four people.
Speaker 1:It was interesting that they said that year that because I made it more personable and I started asking questions of them, they seemed to get a lot out of it. So it was just, you know, for me it was a way to kind of say OK, how do I pivot? Hopefully it doesn't happen this year, but you know I don't want it to happen to you, nick.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying no, and I mean there's always, I think, an aspect of pivoting there to a degree, because, you know, one of the natures of dealing with a technology that spans across multiple giant platforms is that what people need to see out of that is going to vary a little bit based on who's in the room. So one of the things that I'm going to do at the start certainly is say how many of you guys have used CE Power Platform in the past. How many of you guys have used Dynamics for Finance and Supply Chain in the past? If everybody in there is ERP experts, we'll go into a little bit less details of how to navigate the basic UI of the system. But if it's brand new to everybody, then we need to explain what modules and workspaces are and data entities are and things like that with a little bit more clarity.
Speaker 2:And the other point that you brought up too is you know, regardless of how many people are in the room, the end of the session is the perfect opportunity for people to be able to ask questions like that. That's a substantial part of every session. So, yeah, I'd love to have people come in there and just let me know, you know, the sorts of things that they're running into, that they have questions on, because a lot of those questions that one person has, there's a good chance that a lot of people have run into a similar situation.
Speaker 1:That's a good chance that a lot of people have run into a similar situation. That's a great point. So for those listening and attending Summit, don't be afraid to ask questions. There's no such thing and I am a firm believer in this no such thing as a wrong question or bad question. If you're thinking it, there's a good chance someone in the room or someone in the someone is thinking it somewhere and someone doesn't have that answer. If you don't feel comfortable asking in front of the group, definitely go up to Nick afterwards. He'll be more than happy to to answer any questions, whether it's in the room or if he's got to leave the room because another presenter is coming in. You guys can have the conversation outside or at our booth, but definitely track Nick down, ask your questions about dual right or anything else technical. Like I said, it's not just dual right, but of course his session is dual right. So definitely hunt him down, track him down. If you find me, I'll track him down. It's all right, we'll put out a search party.
Speaker 2:I love it. Like I said, that's one of the things I like most about Summit is meeting people out in the field, hearing what they're dealing with and having those sorts of conversations.
Speaker 1:Awesome, well again. So Nick Session Configuring and Troubleshooting Dual Write. Wednesday, october 16th, 9.15 to 10.15. Central and location 213B. Nick, it was great talking to you, having you on the session. Definitely wish you much success and a huge audience at your session. I will be flagging everyone down and sending them your way.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. I love it. Hope to see a lot of you guys there.
Speaker 1:All right For our listeners. Have a great day. Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 2:Bye guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Innovate with Ludia podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast app or follow us on LinkedIn. Until next time, I'm your host, Scott LaFontaine. Thank you.
