Highlights and Takeaways from Community Summit North America 2024
Anyone who knows ArcherPoint knows we have been involved in Community Summit from the very beginning. We enjoy attending sessions, meeting with colleagues and clients, and sharing information with the Dynamics community. And this year was no exception.
This year saw a terrific turnout of partners, users, and Microsoft professionals. ArcherPoint had over 20 employees attend Community Summit 2024 North America in San Antonio last week, with over half presenting sessions on upgrades, security, testing, and more.
Here is a brief look at the highlights and takeaways of Community Summit 2024:
Nothing beats meeting people face-to-face
Today’s communication is dominated by emails and Teams meetings, but nothing is better than sitting down and making a personal connection with someone. Whether it is a client, coworker, prospect, or even a competitor, Summit has always been known for making it possible to make connections between partners and users. As one attendee said, “Summit proved again to be a fantastic way to meet face-to-face with colleagues and customers we’ve not had the opportunity to meet in person yet.” Another described Summit as “a great opportunity to meet coworkers in person and begin building relationships. Summit is more about maintaining and developing relationships in the community with coworkers and customers, both present and past.”
More GP users seemed open to moving to BC
Dynamics GP has been a mainstay in the ERP community for over 30 years. But, Microsoft has made it clear they are investing in Business Central as their future cloud ERP solution for SMBs. This year’s Summit found many GP users interested in opening a dialog with partners about moving to Business Central and taking full advantage of Azure and Microsoft’s cloud-based tools.
Data analysis, AI, and Copilot will be the future
Keynote speaker Vik Singh, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Copilot Apps at Microsoft, emphasized how Microsoft has invested heavily in making data analysis, AI, and Copilot a part of all their Dynamics and business tools and provided a demonstration of how Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365 applications work together. This year’s Summit sessions gave attendees a look at how users can harness these tools to perform advanced data analytics, improve user interactions, and create custom apps to improve productivity.
Security is key
Several sessions stressed the importance of cybersecurity and securing cloud applications from external and internal threats. Topics of interest included securing user identities and steps to mitigate cyberattacks.
Sessions were amazing
From data and security to reporting and supply chain, there were over 600 sessions that offered something for everyone. Shout-outs go to:
- Migrating from NAV to BC-SaaS: 10 issues and how we solved them had some excellent information for upgrade teams and provided a solid background for everyone.
- 10 Things you’ll love about BC after switching from GP had a lot of energy and kept the audience engaged at an end-of-the-day session.
- Exploring Microsoft Fabric and the Process of Integrating Business Central Data was both entertaining and offered something exciting and new.
It’s time to have some fun
Among the attendees’ favorites were the Alamo event on Sunday night, the great food everywhere, and, of course, the booth with the puppies!
What could have been better
While Summit was an overall success, there were a few things we didn’t love. One of the biggest issues we heard from our customers was the confusion over the expo schedule. Many attendees assumed the expo hall would be open on Wednesday, but unfortunately, it was not. This led to some frustration as people planned their time around visiting the expo that day. Clear communication on the schedule could have helped avoid this confusion.
See you next year
Next year, Community Summit North America will be held October 19-23, 2025, at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.
We hope to see you there!
In the meantime, enjoy some of our favorite shots from Community Summit 2024 in San Antonio.