I haven't been able to figure out how to clone myself so I can be in 3 places at once this month, but it's great to see all the activity picking up this weekend at the first Microsoft Power Platform Conference in Orlando, Florida! The event is SOLD OUT with around 4,000 attendees expected at the main event the 20th-22nd and pre- and post-workshops on the 18th, 19th, and 23rd, as well.
It will be great to hear about all the latest product updates and investments in customer success this week. Personally, I'm looking forward to hearing more about the Power Platform AND Automation Center of Excellence (CoE) Toolkit updates. They are key resources for customers adopting and scaling out their platform investments and are constantly adding new features and capabilities based on customer and community feedback.
Of course, establishing a CoE is more than just about installing a toolkit. What really makes the toolkit effective is all the pre-work done to envision and onboard the right team members to support the organizational change needed to adopt technology at scale. The good news is there are plenty of resources to help with that, whether you're starting from the Dynamics 365 or Power Platform side of things.
In both cases, the steps involved in envisioning and onboarding are very similar. The important thing is to start with the business and strategy first, then see how the technology can be used to achieve the desired outcomes aligned with that strategy. In order to realize value at scale, adoption activities should continue to encourage ongoing engagement and mature the internal organizational resources and processes to sustain long-term benefits.
The Power Platform adoption guidance follows a similar path through envisioning and onboarding but scaling to support more active app makers in the environment is where the periodic maturity assessments and other related CoE managed activities come into play.
With all these pieces in place, the CoE Starter kit helps organize many of the reports, insights and activities needed to sustain ongoing usage by business users, app makers, and the admins responsible for overall environment and adoption health. Some customers find it helpful to deploy all the components in their environments, while others may only need certain elements. The toolkit is customizable and extensible enough to accommodate a variety of operating environments to monitor, govern, and nurture an active maker community of citizen developers.
For admins, the toolkit provides several additional resources to support the initial setup, customization, extensibility, and ongoing maintenance of CoE components in your environment. Updates are normally available on a monthly basis, and it is recommended customers plan for at least a quarterly update to make the most of recently available enhancements.
In addition to the core Power Platform CoE starter Toolkit, the Power Automate team has been supplementing their adoption guidance with additional resources to support an Automation CoE based on Holistic Enterprise Automation Techniques (HEAT). You can expect to hear more soon about their progress with the private preview earlier this year.
Although I can't be there in person, I'm looking forward to hearing more from the community at #MPPC22 this week, especially as we get closer to ONE admin center to rule them ALL #iykyk
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