Microsoft Dynamics Profile: New MVP helps others level up with D365 Marketing

The first days of November and December 2021 were quite nerve-wracking for newly minted Microsoft MVP Vivian Voss. Although she had only been nominated to become an MVP at the end of October and knew it could take up to ninety days to receive a "yay" from Microsoft, she had hoped against hope that her answer would come sooner rather than later.

"Every first of the month that passed, I was refreshing Twitter to see if people had received their MVP emails yet," said Voss, a business architect at AlfaPeople Inc. based in Denmark. "Once the tweets started coming and I hadn't got an email, then it was 'oh, well' and on to waiting for the next month."

Then again January 2, when she hadn't received an email in the morning, she resigned herself to waiting at least another month.

"Then in the evening after I was done with work, I was playing with my son," she said. "When I looked at my phone I saw the email from Microsoft and after I read it, I started jumping up and down and I was really, really relieved."

For Voss, becoming a Microsoft MVP is recognition that she's doing the right things in her work with the Microsoft Dynamics community, but receiving the award wasn't the reason she got involved.

"The main motivation is still the people and the knowledge," she said.

MSDW reached out to Voss to learn more about the award, her work with Microsoft Dynamics 365, as well as her activities in the community like her upcoming session at the European Power Platform Conference.

MSDW: What does it mean to you to be a Microsoft MVP? Will it help you in your job?

Vivian Voss: [Being an MVP] is first and foremost a recognition and kind of proof that this person actually knows something about the area. So to me, being an MVP opens a lot of doors. At first, though, it was a huge information overload, so I am still getting the hang of handling it all. But I am getting better at it.

Funny, but the first question I asked the MVP group was how it has helped them with their jobs. I don't believe that it has changed my direction at work. Not at the moment, at least. I still do what I love and I want to continue with that as I am not good at doing things I am not passionate about.

What does your work as a business architect consist of?

I work as an architect, but on some projects, I also work as a functional consultant primarily because I love to see the products in action. I believe that it is the only way to also showcase them, if you have tried and seen how they work or not work in real life. Most of the times, the failures and troubleshooting are the best sources for blog posts.