Jukka Niiranen

Power Platform Advisor, Owner at Niiranen Advisory Oy. Microsoft Business Applications MVP since 2013. CRM geek since 2005. Craft beer aficionado. Original techno junkie. Dad.

Joined: September 22, 2008
Articles: 303
Comments: 492

Analysis

Year 2019 in Microsoft Business Applications

What were this year's top 3 most notable themes in the world of MS business applications? We saw the rise of the low-code movement, a number of changes in the already complex licensing model of Power Platform, and the evolution of Microsoft's data story to help organizations make better use of new AI innovations. Here are some thoughts on why these will continue to have an impact in 2020.

Jukka Niiranen
December 27, 2019

Features

Why would you store images and files in CDS?

Binary data is getting better support in Common Data Service, thanks to the new image and file datatypes. How could we leverage these in Power Apps? Here are some use cases for binary data storage in CDS, as well as comparison to the familiar Attachments feature and the built-in SharePoint document management integration.

Jukka Niiranen
December 13, 2019
9 Comments

Miscellaneous

Life after CRM: farewell to SurvivingCRM.com

Welcome to Thinking Forward - my new blog built on top of the foundation that was laid by Surviving CRM in 2008-2019. As we're approaching the turn of the decade, it's a great moment to push myself into more actively exploring the world beyond CRM.

Jukka Niiranen
December 9, 2019
3 Comments

News and events

End of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online

I always prefer to use precise terminology when talking about the technologies that are part of my trade. Some might consider me a pedantic guy who’s always correcting some insignificant details in documents or presentations that cover Microsoft technologies but…

Jukka Niiranen
November 2, 2019
7 Comments

Analysis, Licensing

Licensing is NOT a security mechanism

Licensing remains a topic that no one claims to like yet everyone keeps on talking about. October 2019 saw what was undoubtedly the biggest number of changes to Microsoft Business Applications SKUs (i.e. items that MS sells), with the end…

Jukka Niiranen
October 28, 2019
3 Comments

Features, Licensing

Sharing Apps Is Caring

A while ago there was an announcement made on the PowerApps team blog about “Share canvas apps with guests in your organization”. Launched in public preview, this feature makes it (almost) as simple to share apps with a guest user…

Jukka Niiranen
October 24, 2019
1 Comment

Licensing

PowerApps licenses and a Dynamics 365 environment

Believe it or not, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications from Microsoft are built on top of Power Platform. No, they didn’t originally start that way, but as the Citizen Application Platform technology from the PowerApps side merged with the former…

Jukka Niiranen
September 19, 2019
14 Comments

Analysis, Featured posts, Licensing

Licensing by consumption: pricing model of Power Platform online services

On the topic of Dynamics 365 and PowerApps licensing changes coming in October 2019, I earlier wrote about the biggest change in how Microsoft is separating the first party applications and the underlying platform in the new Per App pricing…

Jukka Niiranen
September 12, 2019
5 Comments

Tips

Canvas Apps for the Model-driven mind: how to make that leap

Business applications come in all shapes and sizes. In the Microsoft ecosystem, we now have a broader set of tools to choose from, compared to the past strategies of Build vs. Buy, i.e. writing code to develop a custom application…

Jukka Niiranen
August 30, 2019
4 Comments

Licensing, News and events

Application/Platform Separation in New PowerApps Licensing Model

Ever since Spring 2018 when the XRM and PowerApps platforms merged on a commercial level, I’ve found myself spending an ever increasing number of hours per week involved in licensing discussions and scenario planning. My initial exploration of the platform…

Jukka Niiranen
August 12, 2019
6 Comments

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