User Group Summit North America 2019 Preview: Master planning for Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Dynamics AX

Editor's Note: MSDynamicsWorld.com is collaborating with the User Group Summit North America to explore the upcoming conference in a series of preview articles.

Attendees at October's User Group Summit North America for the Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Dynamics AX community will not only learn about Microsoft software updates, they will also hear from subject matter experts who have real world experience with the products. Shelby Wright, applications manager at Leatherman Tool Group Inc., is one of those experts. Wright spoke with MSDW about her involvement with the event and what she's looking forward to this year.

Sitting on the content committee

Although Wright didn't participate in planning the event, she was on the content committee, helping to decide which sessions will be presented.

There are a group of folks who have knowledge in specific areas of the content tracks. The two I sit on are master planning and manufacturing. The group of us get a list of all the sessions that have been submitted, and we individually review the list and mark which ones we think are the most pertinent content to users.

Then we also look for areas where we might have weaknesses or missing content. Sometimes, we'll even recommend that the committee reach out to somebody and ask if they'll include some different content or add some content. Or we'll ask two speakers to combine sessions or ask a partner to involve one of their customers in a session. We try and make sure that we have complete content that covers the areas on the list.

Experience with Dynamics AX

Wright is not yet working with D365FO, because Leatherman is currently in the process of implementing their new system, but she has worked with Dynamics AX for a little over 10 years.

I started with an implementation … where I was responsible for planning and supply chain tasks. From there, I moved into being a business analyst and have worked on the partner side and on the user side doing implementations and supporting [Dynamics] AX ever since.

At the event, Wright will be presenting three sessions – two on master planning and one on program and project management.

One session is designed for folks who haven't implemented master planning before. Maybe they've been using the software for a long time, or maybe they're just going into a new implementation. This session is designed to give you that knowledge and the tools to do that. The other session will offer some best practices and cheat sheets for how to make sure that you're ready to test your master planning setups or ready to go live.

The project management session is designed to help people who are implementing new software figure out what they need to be doing in the software and how they test whether or not they’re done and ready to go live. It's designed to help them [determine] how to better track the requirements for their business that allow them to successfully have a system that's ready to use.

Setting expectations