Despite a heavy meeting schedule at this year’s Convergence, I was able to attend many of the keynotes and product sessions.  Lots of great information there and plenty of exciting announcements, most of which has been covered very extensively, especially the news about the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics for the cloud.   However, for my money, one of the coolest demos there was a tool that became available last year with the release of Dynamics GP 2010 and is looking better and better.   That’s Dynamics Business Analyzer.   

Dynamics Business Analyzer is an analytics tool that’s provisioned directly inside the GP homepage, similar to Business Portal.  Using that same metaphor, they’ve made some significant improvements for pushing out information from Microsoft Dynamics to the non-Dynamics users in your company, such as the executive management or sales team.   And, with Windows 8 and the Metro UI, you can access API type information from Dynamics using the Business Analyzer toolset on your tablet or smart phone.  What does that mean?  It means you get away from Internet Explorer.  So it’s almost like removing a layer - you no longer have to go through a URL because the information is coming directly through  Windows 8. 

The demo at Convergence was recorded and is available after a very brief registration at the Virtual Convergence site.   That’s well worthwhile, and allows you to view some popular sessions, to give you a little flavor of the conference.  However, if you just want a quick idea of how Business Analyzer works with a mobile device and what it looks like in a real life setting, I highly recommend the two very short Youtube videos called out in a blog post by one of Microsoft’s long-time Dynamics experts, Errol Schoenfish.  Both are under three minutes and get right to the point.

As always, if you’re interested in discussing Microsoft Dynamics for your company, I’m here to help.