DynamicsCon 2024 Preview: Data, design, and the power of diversity in the Dynamics 365 F&O community

DynamicsCon 2024 is fast approaching, and attendees of the event, running May 13 to 16, are gearing up for a year of connecting over Dynamics 365 technology, AI, and new directions from Microsoft. The conference heads to Denver, Colorado this year, and MSDW spoke with event speaker Jody Cronk about what attendees can expect at this year’s event. 

Cronk is a Dynamics 365 specialist with the City of Columbus, Ohio. She first began in the Dynamics space 10 years ago working with Dynamics AX 2009. At the time, she worked for a manufacturer that was migrating to AX and took part in the project. 

Later, Cronk joined a conglomerate with several manufacturing businesses under its control that deployed Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management across multiple sites. 

She was also part of a five-person team during Covid lockdowns in 2020 that did multiple go-lives across the US. “[It was] a baptism-by-fire introduction to D365,” she told MSDW.

Cronk became involved in the Ohio Dynamics User Group in 2017 to improve the AX 2009 solution she was working on at the time, as well as to prepare for next AX offering from Microsoft. Due in part to her connections within that group, she joined the Columbus, Ohio Auditor’s office about three years ago.  The city had just migrated from Dynamics AX 2012 to a Dynamics 365 solution.

Public sector is a lot different than manufacturing, Cronk discovered. Her small, hardworking team helps to maintain D365 for 540 users. The city places a lot of emphasis on the budgeting and procurement modules, with Commerce used for point-of-sale transactions like licensing, occupancy permits, or billing for damage to municipal property — such as when construction knocks down a stop sign. 

Drawing on her wide-ranging experiences with D365 Finance and SCM, Cronk is hosting three different sessions at this year’s DynamicsCon event on a range of topics. 

One session will focus on workspace personalization and will include guidance on creating dashboards and improving user experience. Workspaces should be geared specifically to what users need when working in a certain module, she says. The session “will look at what you can do as an individual user to customize your workspace and make it more user friendly,” she said.

Another session on data will focus in-part on fixed assets and how upload data entities. Her organization continues to make progress on this challenge, she says.