Getting to know Dynamics 365 for Talent

Today, we have so many different applications under the umbrella of Microsoft Dynamics 365. And for ease of understanding, they are categorized into the below groups (as of today, not sure what changes tomorrow, especially with the naming 😉). 

• Customer Engagement
• D365 for Sales
• D365 for Customer Service
• D365 for Field Service
• D365 for Marketing
• D365 for Project Service Automation
• Unified Operations
• D365 for Finance and Operations
• D365 for Retail
• D365 Business Central
• D365 for Talent
• Power Platform
• PowerApps
• Microsoft Flow
• Power BI

And the approach strategy opted by Microsoft for the Customers of the future - Dynamics365, forces us to get an understanding of each of the above products. And this is my attempt to learn and share the D365 Umbrella application insights. 

Today I did some reading about Dynamics 365 for Talent. Logically, D365 for Talent is divided into #3 categories, Attract, Onboard and Human Resource (CoreHR). As you can imagine one of the primary targets for any HR team is to Attract the right people with the required competence through profile shortlisting, interviews and by making the right offer. 

Onboarding the new team member is the next major step, where a proficient system can add value to both the company and also the new employee, by multiple folds. CoreHR is used for all traditional Human resource activities including Goals and Performance review. 

When you have the correct .onmicrosoft.com account with all required permissions, you should be able to jump between these three seamlessly. 

Human resources (Core HR): 

From what I see, the HR Core module is hosted on an AX / Dynamics 365 F&O server. You can also understand this from the UI. 
[Update]:  After learning more with the help of Malin Donoso Martnes (Thanks for that, Malin 😄) Core HR (and also the other modular apps) are on layered on top of the new common data service, which is on Azure. It's based on the HR/personal module in AX, that's why the interface looks the same.

The below picture shows you the various modules in the Core HR module. 

Also if you navigate to the Home, there will be a "Click here to Get Started" Button, which directs you to the most basic scenarios you could try and learn from. 

Attract: 

Attract provides capabilities for managing the process of hiring new talent. 

Candidates can be added to open jobs, and they can then be advanced from stage to stage until either an offer is extended or the application is rejected. During each stage, candidates move through activities such as screening calls, assessments, and interviews. After candidates apply, they receive an email that invites them to sign in to Attract, where they can follow the status of the job and their application. They can also respond to any tasks that are assigned to them.

There is a lot of focus on User friendliness and at the same time CDS behind the scenes ensures that the data is secured based on the access permissions tagged to the login account. 

Onboard: 

Onboarding helps new employees perform more effectively while also gaining a sense of belonging in their new role. Helps to understand their new role more quickly and accurately than they would have otherwise, and they get a head start on establishing relationships that can help them succeed. If not done correctly, new employees might leave questioning their decision to join your organization. This is where D365 for Talent jumps in with a user-friendly design to make a welcoming change.

By looking at the applications Onboard & Attract, they feel closer to the XRM backend. However, I am not sure how (and if at all possible) to see the solutions involved.  

Finally to conclude the introduction to Dynamics 365 for Talent, the below picture illustrates the processes involved from identifying a resource to hiring that person. And seems like D365 for Talent, can help through this journey in a modern way of communicating.

Also the below picture illustrates what is really different with D365 for Talent, when compared to other tools available to serve similar purposes. 

Hope this helps and feel free to comment your views. Cheers. 

Azure DevOps and Sample Windows Web App

It has been a while that I wrote a post in here.. been busy days 😅
This is the era of tons of information over WWW and new topics / services are born everyday. And for me, the only logical way to learn some new cool things in this fast paced industry is to Learn by doing.. and thus, back to sharing what I am doing 😃

Today's learning's: 

• Azure DevOps (VSTS transformed into DevOps now)
• Azure Windows Web App (as a service)
• Azure SQL database
• Git Push from Visual studio 2017

If you have a Azure account (can also easily create a free account for one time use), one of the first things which will pop up when you login to https://portal.azure.com/ is to Create DevOps project 

So I created a new DevOps project and went through the UI experience/suggestions and created a new Windows Web app. 

Once I finished the process, Azure will automatically create several resources for me.

1. An Azure DevOps project was create - https://dev.azure.com/ajit0705/avadna 

2. Also the Sample ASP.net Application is also loaded into my Repos 

3. Also generates the first build in DevOps 

4. Also queues the release to the automatically created pipeline  

5. And also all the Azure resources required to support Web App as a service are also created in the background 

And all this is done in matter of few mins. 

So all I now have to concentrate on just building my website without worrying about anything else. 

With Git in place, which is new to me as I have been always working with TFS and VSTS together with AX and Dynamics 365 F&O, the next step is to Clone the repository which was created automatically for you on-to your local computer and start making changes to the ASP.net solution. 

Also you connect to the Azure database server from VS to proceed

Once you make your changes in your local repository, you need to push the changes to Azure DevOps and this is very easy to do from VS 2017. 

1.  You will notice the number of changes in the bottom-left corner of VS

2. Once you click on the small pencil icon, you will be taken to Team explorer showing all the changes you have made. 

Where you can add a comment to identify the purpose of the change and click Commit all. 

3. You will notice a pop-up will mentions that your changes have been committed locally now. However needs to be synced with server to push the change into the DevOps Repo. 

4. Also you can notice the up-arrow (as there is only changes from local to server to be synced) in the bottom-left corner of VS which indicates that they local commits are yet to be synced with server. Click on it. 

5.  In the Team explorer - Synchronization; just push the changes 

The next cool thing done by Azure DevOps is Automatic Build and Release after every new Push to the Server. Thus the site will be updated automatically if there is not failures in the release. 

So if you have Azure subscription already, just try this out - End-to-end the whole process won't take more than 45 mins and you get to learn so much 😇

Work hard! Cheers....