MSDW Podcast: Community Summit NA 2026 Recap with Microsoft MVPs and Dynamics experts

Community Summit North America 2026 offered Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform customers a chance to hear product updates, learn from other customers, and get the latest guidance from subject matter experts. It's one of the biggest Dynamics-focused events in the world, and to learn more about the themes that drove the conversation this year, MSDW spoke with four ecosystem veterans. They told us what they learned from Microsoft's presentations, what they heard from audiences in their own sessions, and they shared other observations on both technology and ecosystem themes that they believe will have an impact in the next year. 

Our guests in this episode are: 

• Elif Item, CEO at Item by Item
• Asif Rehmani, CEO at VisualSP
• Susana Ramos,  VP, Commercial Services at Coffee + Dunn
• Frank Vukovits, Chief Data Scientist at Delinea

We discuss topics including

• Headline messages from Microsoft seen across the event
• Work IQ's progress as a foundational AI service
• Other AI progress from Microsoft that matters to customers
• Other real concerns of customers at Summit like traditional user adoption, security, and business process
• The breadth of product and service updates from both Microsoft and other vendors

...

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Gumpert (00:00):

Welcome to the MSDW Podcast. I'm Jason Gumpert, editor at MS Dynamics World. On this episode, we are recapping Community Summit North America 2026 with the help of several presenters whom we spoke with live onsite in Nashville, Tennessee. MSDW was a media partner of Summit this year, and Microsoft's top line message at this customer focused conference might best be described as building the case for customers, keeping what they have, but also incorporating agents and Copilot into their long-term story. It felt like a shift in tone from Microsoft from a forceful story about an AI-driven future to one where agents, Copilot tools, and other services support the systems of record that Microsoft's customers have already bought into across productivity, cloud, and business applications like CRM and ERP. This positioning likely also reflects other factors like a maturing product lineup for AI, starting with Copilot, but including other services that we will get to, and a better sense from within Microsoft of how hard they can push their customer base on the importance of embracing some of these services.

Jason Gumpert (01:06):

Microsoft's presence at the event included both participation in general sessions from different product communities and leading smaller, more focused sessions. At the CRM general session for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Microsoft VP Mike Morton focused mostly on vision and adding AI focused tools and services to core CRM rather than looking at the core product roadmap. Susanna Ramos, director of marketing services at Microsoft Partner Coffee & Dunn, which specializes in D365 customer engagement, including customer insights or CI, was encouraged by the way Microsoft is positioning the future potential of the products and the broader landscape.

Susana Ramos (01:44):

I think there's so much promise. I think there's still a lot of opportunity, and I'm sure anyone either watching the keynote or otherwise is gonna pick up on that. But I think there's a lot of promise, and I think we heard a little bit about that from Mike today. I think with respect to CI and the marketing product, I, again, thrilled to hear, even if it wasn't the exact words, unsung hero, the fact that he's seeing how pivotal marketing is to making sure that it's an entire truly comprehensive process. So super exciting to see. I think with respect to that particular product and the AI features and agents that we're starting to see out of that, there is so much more potential, not just within the ecosystem, but also how other tools play within the system. So I think we're starting to see more of that as well.

Susana Ramos (02:28):

For CI, there's an MCP server that's obviously attached to it and then a few skills that they've already started to roll out. We understand that that's a phased approach here, but I think it's really exciting. And candidly, for a lot of marketers, it's starting to better align with the experience that they're having outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, right? Whether you're in a cloud or you're in a clay or any of those adjacent, you know, applications or solutions, that is the experience, right? So you don't necessarily have to be so focused inside of the app in order to get the work done. And so I, I think to be able to see something like CI and those plugins now available in Copilot cowork, I think is better aligned with the overall experience.

Jason Gumpert (03:05):

Frank Vukovits, chief security scientist at Delinea FastPath and a veteran of the Dynamics 365 ERP space, noted that one influence of all the AI updates in the ERP space is a rethink on the future of ERP implementations. It's also showing up in terms of a certain amount of agent proliferation across the solution stack, he says.

Frank Vukovits (03:26):

Yeah, I, I think, um, obviously everyone's talking about AI. It doesn't matter what conference you go to - Right. From business software perspective, cybersecurity, industry specific, it's all about AI. But I think what's unique if I look at last year compared to this year is probably some additional approaches or steps Microsoft's making about how AI is now gonna help you implement the Dynamics products, especially finance and supply chain/F&O. And with their Activate program and now saying, well, we can take implementations maybe that took years, I could argue implementations taking years to begin with has probably got bigger problems, but down to months or months down to weeks. And it continues to show Microsoft's influence of putting AI into their products, not only to help you day to day, like from a worker perspective, but now also brought in to help implement their products. Yeah. Which is an interesting angle.

Frank Vukovits (04:14):

And then even further, tying to some of the fast track stuff. So yes, we all expect Microsoft to do more with AI, but from a Dynamics perspective, even looking at last year to this year, especially in the finance supply chain, it's clear they're using AI now thinking about it more holistically than just let's help Jane and AP do some tasks that we can, we can automate from an AI perspective. Now we're gonna help implement our solutions with AI agents that can make those solutions be implemented faster. You think about s- some of the rest of the Microsoft stack, your tools like Purview or Agent 365, all these other great tools Microsoft has that aren't for Dynamics, but now they all integrate together and they all have agents running as well. So it's almost like there's gonna be so many agents looking over your shoulder as you use your, in this case, your 365.

Frank Vukovits (05:00):

It should make it run better. You should find problems easier. And I think at some point it's, I'll use the term self-healing, that if you allow those agents based on security to go fix some things they find, now you're not reaching out to your help desk. You're not reaching out to Microsoft. I think, I think that's where they're probably trying to go as well. I mean, that's not an industry secret, but - Yeah. I, I just seems to be they're getting the agents into different spots that we've not seen before.

Jason Gumpert (05:23):

And Microsoft MVP Elif Item, founder of Item by Item, who works on training and adoption across both Dynamics 365 CE and ERP, explained that she noted customers at Summit thinking about both AI and core product concerns.

Elif Item (05:38):

The reality of it is AI is obviously a big topic of conversation. This year at the summit, they had a separate swim lane, like a, a path for the AI sessions. I think that was a good decision because before, I'm also in the planning committee for the FSCM sessions. So it's always a struggle to have like how many sessions do we give to AI, obviously because everybody wants to know about it, but then you wanna be true to your roots and talk about the, the core product as well. This year they made it easy for us and it helped to just, we were able to pick only FSCM sessions and all the AI sessions went into that swim lane. So I think that was nice. And, um, you know, I think my personal opinion is that, of course, everybody talks about AI, especially the management, the people who are also under pressure to apply more AI into the products that they're implementing.

Elif Item (06:35):

But I think the business analysts, other people who are using ERP, especially on a day-to-day, they're still in that, in the, in the mode of more ERP. I think that bridge has not closed yet. Um, we talk, I talked to a couple of people about that. I think the reality versus, um, you know, uh, somebody came to me and said, "Oh, like, I did this very basic session, like basics FSCM session, and it was packed, and everybody was asking all of these questions about, you know, like, oh, I didn't know that, and I didn't know that." And it made them realize, well, like, okay, like, these people maybe, they, they need more information and they need more details. And it makes you realize a lot of people in their day-to-day jobs, they're just trying to run the business. So their concern is not necessarily the AI.

Elif Item (07:22):

So I think the reality on the ground, like, in the businesses are very different than actually in a conference like this. This conference, I think, represents more the future. Always, it, it, it always does, like, what's the future holds, what the new functionality is going to be? But then when you look at the people that are using, uh, Dynamics products on a day-to-day basis, I think they're in a completely different space.

Jason Gumpert (07:44):

Microsoft raised the concept of headless systems with both ERP and CRM at Summit, but most often with regard to CRM, the product roadmap seems to have factored in that a certain percentage of traditional CRM user seats are going to flow away from those usage scenarios and towards services like Cowork and Teams, where sellers or marketers can engage with only the most relevant information while avoiding the traditional points of friction that most people in this space know about. Asset Ramani, a Microsoft MVP and CEO of the firm, Visual SP, told me that he still has questions. He was at Microsoft's keynote and thought more about how to weigh it against some experiences and sentiments expressed at a related session that he led at Summit.

Asif Rehmani (08:29):

<laugh> The headless CRM, and I love, uh, what they mentioned at the end is, you know, we have been spending so much time training our reps to go into CRM, to put in the opportunity and contact and all that stuff. And now here is Microsoft saying, "Hey, you don't need to go probably. It's, it's headless. Just use an agent." I think that - Copilot will get, will spit out what you need. Yeah. Copilot will give you everything you need and you can input whatever you need. I think it, there's a balance. I'll give you a very specific example. One of the people in my session that came talked about how their people are always on the field. They're always in their car, they're always at a client site, and that's what they need to do to sell. Now, if they're doing that, it's very difficult for them to be on their phone or iPad or computer to put, putting in all the notes.

Asif Rehmani (09:12):

For that, uh, my advice, for example, was to, you know what? Have the transcript, go to the sales agent, and input everything directly into CRM, or do it through Outlook when the email comes in, you can send it directly there. Or, you know, from the Teams recap, you can, there's a way to send it there. But there's many different ways that you can send it without going to the actual CRM. Having said that, I think that's half the story. You want to do that, but you want to complete the information to have the right forecast and pipeline and everything else by being in the CRM. Uh, so in my opinion, it's a hybrid situation and it will remain hybrid for a long time to come. I think headless CRM is not, at least in my opinion, a reality currently, and it's not going to be for a long time, but it is very possible where you're just talking or putting data in somewhere and it just ends up where it's supposed to be.

Asif Rehmani (10:03):

Yeah. And then you retrieve it from wherever it's supposed to be back to your agent. But not yet. Whatever

Jason Gumpert (10:07):

Your organization is putting the right interface in front of people that they think is the best option. Yeah. Not up to it. Microsoft's not dictating it, perhaps. I don't

Asif Rehmani (10:15):

Know. Thats - And that's the other thing, right? Where vibe coding is becoming so easy, every rep can basically make their own interface, which honestly, it's pros and cons to that. Yeah, sure. If you have a different interface, Jason, than I do, I know Asif, and I, my interface does not have the required fields, does not have the right information that I need to put in there, the data's gonna be all skewed. But anyway, we're in the journey right now together.

Jason Gumpert (10:39):

Susanna Ramos told me she is looking for a balance on this topic since it reflects a certain reality, but also introduces new challenges.

Susana Ramos (10:47):

Yeah. It's a very ancillary ecosystem if you're not careful, right? And so, like I said, the fact is marketers every day, that is how they work outside of Microsoft. So, uh, I think it would be silly for us to pretend like that's not a part of the equation. Uh, I think it's absolutely going to continue to be part of the experience. Again, I think that that makes it a much easier kind of smoother transition into AI adoption where you're starting to see more of that alignment between the experience that you can have in a Copilot or like for CI versus, you know, otherwise.

Jason Gumpert (11:20):

Summit is very much an event geared toward the learning and community interests of Microsoft customers, even though partners are highly visible both as presenters and as trainers and exhibitors. And the experts I talked to told me that adoption concerns that customers are bringing to this year's event can dovetail into some of the themes Microsoft arrived ready to talk about. Getting customers to think about their core adoption challenges from another perspective can open the door to new ideas, whether it's for ERP or CRM users. Here's Asset's take from a CRM perspective. I did

Asif Rehmani (11:51):

A session on Monday, uh, specific to top five steps to sustainable CRM adoption, dynamic CRM adoption. And that's exactly what I talked about over there, that, listen guys, what is it in it for your reps? Why should they care? Many of them did not remember that when AI within Dynamics 365 CRM came out, it was actually $50 per user per month. Did you remember that? Yeah. They, they were trying to charge that, this was a long time ago. Now, it's free. <laugh> There's a reason for that obviously, right? Because the uptick was not there. It is what it is. But there's a lot of good stuff that you can do currently with the, for example, data exploration agent, the data qualification agent, uh, and just AI queries in general to get filters and stuff going within Dynamic CRM. There's a lot of good stuff you could do in there.

Asif Rehmani (12:40):

When I was showing some of those things in my session, people were blown away because that's where the rubber hits the road. That's where the rep's life becomes a lot easier. The customer service rep or the sales rep, whoever it is in CRM, like, "Oh my God, this, this is why I need to be in this environment to use it over here." So there's a lot of good opportunities there for sure, for sure. But mostly it's still hidden, unfortunately, or unknown by many of the people who actually use the software. But I'm really hopeful. I, I'm trying my best to get the word out there.

Jason Gumpert (13:12):

And Elif noted that adoption also starts with a willingness to learn. She saw that in a pre-day workshop she led.

Elif Item (13:19):

There is always a story, but interesting enough, though, when someone comes to a class like that, you, they are more in the category of, "I wanna learn how to deal with these because I'm starting a new project or I'm in a project, I'm struggling like to make sure that there's adoption for whatever that I am implementing." So, um, I think there was some horror stories, but there's a lot of, like, note-taking aha moments and, like, I think it was, it was good for them. And we ended the, the class by just, like, what are your takeaways from this? What can you apply into your own situation? And I think that was really nice. And it was a good mixture. There were some CRM people, like, that were doing CRM implementations, and there was also some FSCM people. So it was a good mixture. So it was

Jason Gumpert (14:06):

Really probably some theory as well as some practical stuff.

Elif Item (14:10):

Yes, exactly. Absolutely. Some theory, some practice, and some deviation, like, sort of in change management always is like you show even a slide with a bunch of things on it. People only, they s - focus on the things that they are relevant to them. Mm-hmm. So i - out of the 10 things, they may hear, you know, they may see, like, six, and the other person may see the other four or a mixture of the other. So depending on their situation, and we, we've tried to really bring that to the front, and then they understand each other too. There's a lot of learning in these types of situations, not only from the instructor, but also from each other, you know, how they b- built for a specific situation.

Jason Gumpert (14:50):

On the CRM side, any effort Microsoft can make to bring relevant AI experiences to marketers at this point is helpful. For example, Susanna told me that the new customer journey agent for D365 customer insights journeys will bring Microsoft one step closer to that audience.

Susana Ramos (15:06):

For CI, there's an MCP server that's obviously attached to it, and then a few skills that they've already started to roll out. We understand that that's a phased approach here, but I think it's really exciting. And candidly, for a lot of marketers, it's starting to better align with the experience that they're having outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, right? Whether you're in a cloud or you're in a clay or any of those adjacent, you know, applications or solutions, that is the experience, right? So you don't necessarily have to be so focused inside of the app in order to get the work done. And so I, I think to be able to see something like CI and those plugins now available in Copilot co-work, I think is better aligned with the overall experience.

Jason Gumpert (15:42):

Beyond traditional user adoption themes, the separate question of AI adoption or uptake of Microsoft's core AI technology priorities for business users remains a work in progress, at least according to what I and my guests observed at Summit. Asif noted that Work IQ, one of the key elements of Microsoft's AI story for business users, has not yet lived up to its promise. Microsoft officials devoted quite a bit of stage time to Work IQ at Summit, but were less direct in terms of calls to action for users or how to make the case for the costs it incurs. As Assef told me, real world experiences with the service have been mixed so far.

Asif Rehmani (16:19):

I personally love Work IQ. Having said that, I think it still has some ways to go to work better. And, and I love examples. I'll give an example over here too. The best thing about Work IQ obviously is the agent is sitting inside, you know, you have Copilot sitting inside, the agent's sitting inside your organization looking in all different directions and is finding your teams and emails and files and everything else, but it's also finding things that are old and irrelevant. And even though sometimes the di - the date stamps says that there's a new information, it's still going through old information. I've had that happen to me, unfortunately. And that really sucks, even for a guy like me who knows, you know, what it's doing and what it's doing wrong. So I can only imagine for people who are actually working in the field, if they get the wrong information once, they might give it a second chance, but third chance never gonna happen.

Asif Rehmani (17:11):

So I think still has a way to go. Copilot and agents need to become better at recognizing relevant, up-to-date information.

Jason Gumpert (17:19):

Frank Vukovits has seen the evolving AI positioning as a real challenge for users. The discussion has shifted quickly as Microsoft and other big vendors have focused on agents and on new and more complex chat-based scenarios like Copilot co-work. But these new approaches are hard for users to adopt en masse and they create new security and regulatory questions, he explained. 

Frank Vukovits (17:41):

Agentic AI obviously blown up the last 12, 18 months. But, and I'm fortunate enough to go to a lot of cybersecurity conferences. They've been talking about securing agent AI and it was right before that it was generative AI. Right. A lot of companies are still trying to adopt generative AI, just chat bots to help answer simple questions. If, if, and I've been in several sessions this week a- and asking people, "Raise your hand. Are you using these, any of these out of the box agents that Microsoft's talking about?" No one's raising their hands. And they weren't last year either. So it's a crawl, walk, run with the adoption of AI in any company. And then certainly inside of dynamics, especially with these agents. I mean, there's still gonna be a level of trust. Yeah. It's one thing to say, "You know what? Oh yeah, it makes Sally's job easier in, uh, in the AR department." But what does that agent have access to?

Frank Vukovits (18:25):

What can it do? Have you tested it? Uh, a lot of unanswered... There's questions Microsoft ans- answers for, but until customers try it out themselves, I think there's been reli - uh, reluctance there. Plus, they're still struggling to use all the functionality they have in the software to begin with. I mean, and so that, and that's nature of ERP implementations. It takes a while. Once you go live, you're not done. AI has forced them to look at things differently from a security perspective or doing a FastPath, that's great. Mm-hmm. Uh, of course, we have AI, agent AI mentioned in our booth, but they're hearing about from Microsoft saying, want to say, "Hey, how do you treat those AI agents? Do they, do you pick them up in your tools?" And fortunately, we do. Uh, so that, that's been helpful. But the other thing that's been helpful is we, uh, rolled out our MCP server, FastPath’s MCP server this week.

Frank Vukovits (19:06):

And now, people that... An MCP server's not a FastPath thing. Everyone's got a... Microsoft's got MCP servers for Dynamics. But it makes it easier for a human to get quick answers to questions that maybe before they have to run a bunch of reports, export them, put them in a pivot table, hopefully get your formulas right, spend a lot of time. Now I'm just typing in, like, tell me which users haven't used their access in the last 90 days.

Frank Vukovits (19:28):

Yeah. So like a - Yeah. Talking to a Copilot. Exactly. In case the, the, the FastPath MCP server, it's bring your own AI. That's a crazy new term too, is bring your own device, now it's bring your own AI. Uh, yeah, so it makes it easy. And there's plenty of other vendors out there that have their own version of MSCP to make it easier to use their software add-on for Dynamics, and for that matter, for, for any ERP they work with.

Frank Vukovits (19:49):

And I think that's a really powerful thing because it puts more power back in the, the users of the tool, and now they're not reaching out to help desk. They're not, they're not logging in to look up something and, uh, uh, uh, help me file. They're just typing it in, in regular language and get an answer back pretty quick. Kicker is though, you're still burning tokens. Yes. So, yeah. But no, I think that from, from a f - doing a FastPath perspective and walking the show four, seeing a lot of AI and other vendors talking about we wanna make our software solution easier to use, MCP servers, which are, again, let's not kid ourselves, it's powered by AI - uh-huh. Is, is opened up a whole wealth of knowledge, uh, that maybe in the past, uh, some of our software solutions weren't tapped into 100%. We should be able to get there sooner now, which I think is pretty cool.

Jason Gumpert (20:31):

Ultimately, the conversation about enterprise software adoption is about showing organizations the value in these major investments they're making. That comes down to uncovering the value for people using the software. Susanna Ramos noted that she will continue to watch for Microsoft's focus on the role marketers can play in the broader CRM trend.

Susana Ramos (20:51):

Look, I'm, I'm always excited, and I think, you know, look, the... It's one big pep rally and for good reason, right? I love it. I'm really excited about what's to come. Again, I think the more transparency that we can get on the harder conversations, like the cost, what that's gonna look like, and making sure that marketing continues to not just be part of the equation, but is acknowledged as someone who is sitting at the table helping to make those strategic decisions to make sure that we're in a position to not be a cost center, but to really drive growth, right? So I think any opportunity that we get to be around other members who are like-minded is a win for us.

Jason Gumpert (21:25):

Implementations have fundamentally changed. Frank told me. For partners, the future will look different from both a pre-sales perspective all the way through to support and enablement of existing customers.

Frank Vukovits (21:37):

Well, and I think too, coming out of COVID, and people were implementing Dynamics still during COVID, was all virtual. Well, guess what happened? Not only people didn't go back to the office after COVID, a lot of implementations didn't go back to model, we're gonna find the consultants and be on site all the time. Right. And it became a mix. So now you introduce... That's already changed from a staffing perspective, would've been onsite versus not. Now you add agents in the mix. It's just evolving. And I think you're right. People... The, the challenge is gonna be, especially for the partners, there's business knowledge, business acumen, folks that understand business processes. How does an agent have that 10, 20 years of understanding of that? Is it because you go to something in the LOM and it picked up and read about it and all of a sudden knows how accounting operations should work because it read in a manual and s- several other places?

Frank Vukovits (22:23):

Maybe. Is that good enough? Or is it still good to have a consultant that has specialized skills with the software in place? I think that's gonna be... It'd be interesting to see how that plays out.

Jason Gumpert (22:32):

And we'll give Elif the final word here when it comes to business outcomes and adoption. As you can hear in this clip, we were talking at the very end of the event as workers were breaking down booths. She explained that she sees some good potential roles for agents and tools like Copilot as we move away from Summit, but she predicts that ISVs focused only on AI could experience challenges as customers continue to focus on the human-based issues that determine the success of a dynamics project.

Elif Item (23:00):

I think that that side is going to improve tremendously because what I see, how what, what AI does well is if you... It has all the information, like a security is another one. I think it's like it's going to improve security and it's going to improve testing because it's all the things that AI loves. Very solid database, no ambiguity. You know, if you turn this on, it will work. If you turned it off, it won't work type of, uh, approach. I think it's going to make things faster and more efficient and effective. And I think those companies are, have a tough road ahead, in my opinion, those ISVs, because, you know, I think customers will, uh, be more, um, I would say, you know, argue for value. You know, what, what exact value do you bring that beyond what I can do with some tool that I have or with Copilot, right?

Elif Item (23:53):

So, um, I think we are still in that ambiguous area, so I, I don't... I'm not arguing that. I think our, uh, business is going to change too. Training change... Business is going to change s- some manners to make things more convenient for the learners. But at the end, we are still dealing with people. So I am, I am faith... I have faith in the fact that our businesses remain primarily, uh, structurally unchanged. Yeah. We still have to train people to do better job at whatever that they are doing. So, but... And, and contrary to general, um, perception, Dynamics projects are still very much so people projects. You know, because we're so much in the technology side, we're, we constantly think about technology. We think that they're technology projects. They're not. And every time we think it's a technology project, it's not successful. I consider that dynamics projects are 70% people, 30% technology projects.

Elif Item (24:53):

So when you deal with people, you deal with ambiguity, you deal with resistance, you deal with change issues. And again, AI can help us to pinpoint some of those, but cannot solve it for us. So the only way to solve it is to elevate those people's knowledge and give them confidence into the, to do their job. So I think I'm, I have, you know, I think about this a lot because it's my, you know, also my company and, you know, what is it gonna be in five years? But more and more, I am, I am inclined to think that we are going to be around for many years to come. Maybe the way we are around will be different. Um, but, um, but I, I think it will, it will change us and we have to change with it. We cannot, we cannot argue back that we don't wanna change because then it's, you know, the, the world moves on.

Elif Item (25:43):

So I think we have to be looking into the future and always keeping our learners in front of our eyes and how can we improve their understanding in the process.

Jason Gumpert (25:58):

This has been another episode of the MSDW podcast. I wanna thank all of my guests for taking some time at a very busy Summit conference to speak with me and share some of their views. I also wanna thank the DCI team for hosting MSDW as a media partner. We'll post links to all of our guests' LinkedIn profiles that you can get, use to get in touch with them. If you wanna get in touch with me, you can send me an email, [email protected]. For all of our updates, please do follow us on LinkedIn. Until next time, this is MSDynamicsWorld signing off.