Directions EMEA in Lyon 2023 has now come to an end. Liza and Carolina share their experiences from these three days!

You have just returned from Directions EMEA, a major European conference for partners focused in Business Central, Power Platform, and Sales. How did you experience the days?

First of all we had such a great time. It’s so much fun to meet IRL. Off-site work and Teams meetings are great, but it’s really enjoyable to see each other in person. We get to talk casually, share laughs, and discuss future plans, says Carolina Edvinsson. All the spontaneous visits to our booth provide so much energy, showing that we have great apps and products that customers are looking for. It provides so much positive feedback that we actually make it easier and empower users in their daily work, just as we aim for in our product development, says Liza Juhlin.

What are the top 3 things you are taking away from the conference?

1. That our multicompany solution app stands out in the market. We distinguish ourselves by simplifying and saving a tremendous amount of time for companies with more than one entity (up to 98 %!). It’s an app that can’t really be compared to any other, as we’ve noticed in our conversations with partners and users.

2. We shouldn’t underestimate the value of meeting in person! Discussing collaborations to provide users with the Business Central experience they deserve in their daily lives. SmartApps collaborates not only with Business Central partners but also with other app providers. Users can perform tasks using our multicompany app, Eagle, within other providers’ apps, simultaneously across all companies you as a user work in. This eliminates the need to perform tasks one by one in each company, one after the other. You can even schedule tasks, so you don’t have to click a single time.

3. The fact that partners are now really embracing the cloud, and customers want to move there. We’ve been building apps for the cloud for five years, but few partners have fully embraced the cloud until now. And we are ready!

Tina has been a part of the SmartApps team for almost a year. At the beginning of her time here, she answered a few questions. Now it’s time for a follow-up!

Read Tina´s first post

Can you tell us more about your role as SmartApps’ Technical Writer and Partner Support? What are some specific tasks or responsibilities you handle in this role?

– Working on writing documentation for our apps feels very important. Keeping it constantly updated as the apps grows and we release new versions is exciting! Supporting our partners with their questions is incredibly fulfilling, and it’s often where we get new ideas that we can bring to life. The most challenging part is creating documentation that all our users can understand and find easy to use. We have a wide range of users to cover.

It sounds like you’re excited about making Business Central more efficient with SmartApps’ solutions. Can you share any specific projects or features you’re currently working on to achieve this goal?

– I’ve also been a user of BC and several of our apps, and I find it incredibly exciting to now be able to document and showcase our apps to users in a way that I would have wanted to see them.

In your role, you likely interact with SmartApps’ partners frequently. How do you typically support partners with their questions and challenges related to the apps?

– We take a closer look at the issue that has arisen and investigate the reasons behind. Sometimes, there are underlying system adjustments that are causing it to not work as desired, while other times it’s just a simple setup that was missing. It’s during these types of investigations that ideas emerge on how we could potentially do things differently, take a shortcut, or explore something else exciting!

When it comes to turning user feedback and ideas into reality, can you share an example of a feature or improvement that was born from user feedback and successfully implemented?

– A good example of this is the wishes to work with collective invoices for multiple contracts in Parrot. This has been released for some time now, and it’s very useful and likable.

Are there any upcoming developments or plans for SmartApps that you’re particularly excited about and would like to share?

– There are very exciting developments happening in Eagle right now, and I can give you a sneak peek that soon you’ll be able to schedule reports from your Function Setup. So, you won’t even need to press a button to get your reports; you can schedule them to arrive when you want!

Are you dealing with data across multiple systems and feeling frustrated when they don’t sync up? Spider offers a range of features aimed at streamlining operations and ensuring seamless coordination between different systems.

Keep your external systems in sync with Business Central

One of Spider’s key functions is keeping your external systems in harmony with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Using Spider’s Web Services and API pages, you can track changes in Dynamics 365 Business Central and transfer them to your external systems, ensuring consistent and up-to-date information across all platforms.

Moreover, Spider helps you maintain synchronization of your master data. Whether you’re managing multiple companies that share master data, such as charts of accounts or vendor registers, Spider ensures that any changes made in one company are automatically reflected in all others, providing instant feedback in case of any issues.

Avoid building integrations from scratch

When it comes to integrations, Spider simplifies the process by offering a toolbox for creating your own integrations or using pre-built ones. Avoid the complexity of starting from scratch; Spider provides the necessary tools so you can concentrate on the missing pieces required to seamlessly connect your integration to Business Central. Common integrations, such as importing G/L entries or FA entries, can be accomplished with ease using Spider’s setup-driven approach.

Managing data imports and exports is made straightforward with Spider’s Integration Queue with Support for importing and exporting files to/from Azure Storage, SharePoint Online, FTP, and S/FTP.

Get full control and transparency of your data transfers

You’ll have full visibility into the progress of data transfers, with the assurance that no files will be deleted until the data is fully committed in Business Central. You can also track the history of your data transfers and, in the event of any issues, correct the data and retry the job while preserving the original information.

Lastly, Spider offers the capability to store external information in Business Central without the need for customizations. If your external system contains data that Business Central doesn’t natively accommodate, Spider allows you to add extra fields to your customer and item records, ensuring that users have access to all the necessary information, regardless of the system they regularly work in.

We are so happy that you want to be a part of our SmartApps family!

Accigo is an IT company with skills and roles in both breadth and depth within Microsoft’s three cloud services, power platform and integration.

Accigo LinkedIn

We are so happy that you want to be a part of our SmartApps family!

ECIT delivers products and services in finance, IT and business solutions.

ECIT LinkedIn

Badger – What is it?

Badger is an app that kickstarts your use of Power BI and is suitable for anyone using Business Central. Badger includes ready-made templates for Power BI that make it easy for you to start visualizing data without having to build any models yourself. Since Badger does not affect the standard code when installed in your business system, it is easy to uninstall if you are not satisfied, although we are confident that you will be.

Badger – Get started quickly!

There has never been such a convenient way to get started with Power BI as with Badger. By being able to implement ready-made templates that specifically suit your needs for Power BI in Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can avoid all the complexity and instead dive into the exciting part – creating attractive and insightful reports that visualize your business intelligence.

Badger is so simple that you don’t need any consultant or developer assistance to get started. Everything you need is ready for you in Badger. However, we at SmartApps are always ready to help you take it to the next level. If you need help creating more reports, dashboards, and analyses, we are always prepared to help you dig even deeper into your data with Badger.

Ready for Wave 1 2023

All apps from SmartApps are officially validated for Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 1 2023, also called Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 22.

To be able to list your app on AppSource you need to undergo the Microsoft validation process to ensure that the app is secure and meets standard of Dynamics 365 Business Central. We are happy to announce that all apps from SmartApps have passed the validation for Wave 1 2023 and are ready to be downloaded to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 22.

If you already have an app from SmartApps in your Dynamics 365 Business Central you will automatically get the latest version when your Dynamics 365 Business Central get upgraded to Microsoft Dynamic 365 Business Central 22.

Click here for more about our apps