Article

Microsoft Dynamics Profile: New MVP broadens community efforts from CRM to Power Platform

by Linda Rosencrance
Contributing Writer, MSDW

When it comes to building apps with Microsoft PowerApps, customers are sometimes unsure how to begin -- or when it is the right approach. 

And that applies to customers that have just barely started using the Platform as well as early adopters, says newly-minted MVP Abraham "Abe" Saldana, Power Platform practice director at PowerObjects, an HCL Technologies Company.

"Some of our customers are learning just to integrate with other third-party applications and to expand their reach with the support of PowerApps and Flow," says Saldana. "But they're not yet into a full, complete overhaul from the development environments on the Dynamics side to [be able to] use Power Platform as the platform for new development."

Consequently, Saldana says his role is to give customers the information and tools they need to build apps using the Power Platform.

"Most of the time, customers have decided they want to continue on their own and they just want some mentoring or support from our side," he says. "But although they initially planned to build the applications themselves, later on they realize it's not as easy as they thought and then they ask us to do the development or the design of the application for them. Some enterprise customers might also ask for help with their implementations."

Saldana started working with the Power Platform as an early adopter a couple years ago. However, working with the platform was a bit challenging for him at first.

"I was coming from the mentality of a developer and I was thinking: 'Where's my source code? How do I do this? How do I find it? How do I do the connections?'" he says. "So I had to do a little bit of mind changing, especially for low-code and no-code application designs. And I had to start thinking about how to use more of the expressions and the functions and build the applications or build the flows and understand how Flow manages all the data."

Currently, as PowerObjects' Power Platform director, Saldana says part of his job is to keep up with the latest and greatest features of Power Platform to build better applications. In addition, he does a lot of pre-sales work and proofs of concepts for the company.

"I do a lot of demonstrations as well as a lot of training in the pre-sales engagement, which is not a typical training," he says. "This training might happen more into the pre-sale stages for the Power Platform. You're talking one-on-one with customers when they want to have more information about governance and administration for the Power Platform."

From CRM 1.2 to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

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About Linda Rosencrance

Linda Rosencrance is a freelance writer/editor in the Boston area. Rosencrance has over 25 years experience as an reporter/investigative reporter, writing for many newspapers in the metropolitan Boston area. Rosencrance has been writing about information technology for the past 16 years.

She has covered a variety of IT subjects, including Microsoft Dynamics, mobile security issues such as data loss prevention, network management, secure mobile app development, privacy, cloud computing, BI, big data, analytics, HR, CRM, ERP, and enterprise IT.

Rosencrance is the author of six true crime books for Kensington Publishing Corp.

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