Dynamics F/SCM Customer Experience (CRM) Dynamics GP Dynamics Business Central (NAV) Dynamics SL Power Platform Fabric Copilot

[Matthew Arp]

Is it just me or does the new DAC seem to bury the best things of the GP community (user engagement/discussions and learning) behind a confusing façade of meaningless IVP partner sales pitches and buzzwords that one usually finds on PowerPoints for C-levels. I get trying to re-invent oneself, and maybe this is an effort to get the communities to be more intertwined, but c’mon…??

?

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Matthew Arp
Business Systems Developer
Hunton Group
Houston TX
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[Luc St-Yves]

I am sharing the exact same questions.

Why fix if it ain’t broken…

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Luc St-Yves, Senior Business Analyst
Humanware Technologies, QC (Canada)
Implementation projects leader
-Essilor Instruments USA and Canada
-Essilor International S.A.S., France
–Promoting Dynamics GP in Europe–
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[Thomas Hill]

What’s DAC?

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Thomas Hill
Staff Accountant
M&A Technology, Inc.
Carrollton TX
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[Matthew Arp]

It’s the new unified website for all of the UGs… check it out

https://mydacfeed.com/home

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Matthew Arp
Business Systems Developer
Hunton Group
Houston TX
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[Luc St-Yves]

Yep.  Looks like we will be losing this huge, incredible and high valued source of information which is GPUG…

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Luc St-Yves, Senior Business Analyst
Humanware Technologies, QC (Canada)
Implementation projects leader
-Essilor Instruments USA and Canada
-Essilor International S.A.S., France
–Promoting Dynamics GP in Europe–
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[Thomas Hill]

I supplement Great Plains with tools I have crafted in FileMaker Pro.  They are a major database application very friendly and very cross-platform.  They went to a new Message-Board based on SalesForce.  It was a disaster.  Lots of complaints.  And some of the major contributors left and started a competing message-board that immediately addressed all of the negatives of the new one.  I still use the new one, but not as often as before.  Hopefully DAC will work out.

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Thomas Hill
Staff Accountant
M&A Technology, Inc.
Carrollton TX
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[Matthew Arp]

*hurriedly registers gpugly.com*

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Matthew Arp
Business Systems Developer
Hunton Group
Houston TX
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[Jo deRuiter]

Hi

I spoke with the leadership of the DAC community starting in October and warned them that having a site where it’s just people selling to each other would exclude the users, and partners and ISV’s just ‘selling to each other’ would be what it turned into with zero help for the users (which is what I love about GPUG).

I am waiting to see how all this plays out, and they have kept GPUG up and running (which is good), but I, too, have the reservation that a selling site is not what this was ever intended to be.

And, if you make the mistake of clicking one of the articles on DAC, the ISV will get your contact information and it’s spam city for users.  I HATE that!

By the way, Lisa Lucas is no longer with the communities, but she is doing well…. there really is no one right now that we can contact. 

I, myself, am not even allowed to give webinars any longer to help out the community because they’ve asked partners to pony up $5,000.00 for every webinar they’d want to give.  It’s very disappointing.?

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Jo deRuiter
?? GPUG AllStar 2019
??Granite Award Winner 2018,2019
Atlanta Chapter Leader
Credential Council Co-Chair
Aisling Dynamics Consulting, LLC
ERP Practice Manager
jo.deruiter@aislingdynamics.com
9518674366
Alpharetta, GA
aislingdynamics.com
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[Kathy Kim]

I could not agree more. If this forum goes away, I am done with GPUG and DAC. Dynamic Communities has forgotten that it is users who built this community. The focus has moved from helping users to building a business model. That’s not the community I joined or that I care to be a part of. It’s appalling that they want to charge people to give a webinar. That used to be part of the value of our membership and what WE were paying for indirectly. People used to be thanked for volunteering their time, not expected to pay to do it. I am not sure we’ll be renewing our membership. I hope the people in charge are paying attention. I used to be able to just shoot them an email with my unsolicited opinions ??, but sadly, those days are gone as well. ?

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Kathy Kim
Director of Finance
Donor Network of Arizona
Tempe AZ
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[Luc St-Yves]

Same here.

Anyone here remember the days of “Microsoft Convergence” ?  I was there every year !!!  It was all about users experiences, trainings, tips and tricks and knowledge sharing.  It is those times where I met fantastic people like , , , , , , , only to name a few…  I would have never missed it !

Then they decided to give more room to the vendors???????? and less to the users, and they named it “Microsoft Envision”, and dropped from 22k attendees to only a little more than 5k.  Then to nothing.

If I need a third party, I do 2 things : 1) Call my VAR who knows about 90% of them, 2) Google.  I can have all of them calling back to me within a week, without spending 800 bucks a year.  But the value of this forum is, out of doubt.

I hope they will listen this time.

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Luc St-Yves, Senior Business Analyst
Humanware Technologies, QC (Canada)
Implementation projects leader
-Essilor Instruments USA and Canada
-Essilor International S.A.S., France
–Promoting Dynamics GP in Europe–
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[Mariano Gomez Bent]

I just came here to say is not fantastic, LOL!??

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Mariano Gomez Bent, MVP, Dynamics Credentialed Professional
CTO
Mekorma
ROSWELL GA
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[Beat Bucher]

LoL! 
tries to keep his account alive on GPUG 😀
Joke aside, I’ve not been on the DAC site for almost a year or so, and realized that the interface / platform has changed again and my old account isn’t even recognized anymore… what a pity! Tell about trying to save a community site…
This one here is still going strong with new questions posted every day to the community “General” discussions… it is just sad that nothing else is added anymore, no webinars, no presentations, nada..
I guess we should be grateful to DCI to keep this one alive, as there aren’t much other viable options available (except for the Microsoft Community forums).
Enjoy the summer and hope to see everyone safe and healthy back in the fall. ??

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)

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[Steve Erbach]

Hi, ,

I have another experience with DAC to relate. This morning I went there (I haven’t visited in a while since GPUG.com is still active) to look at the Green Bay LDAC page… and it isn’t there! No announcement for our Feb. 18th meeting. No list of Green Bay GPUG members. Nothing.

This does not inspire confidence.

Sincerely,?

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“Sparkly” Steve Erbach – Green Bay, WI
Co-Chair, GPUG WI (Green Bay) Chapter
Blog: https://www.gpug.com/blogs/steve-erbach
Twitter: twitter.com/serbach

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Excel Webinar List as of June 10, 2020
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[Beat Bucher]

Believe it or not, 
it’s been a while I haven’t posted or answered any forum question on GPUG as I expected this site to vanish from one day over the other with the ‘new’ DAC activated at the beginning of 2021.. 
Nonetheless, I search for the my local chapter, and it is far less intuitive as the old GPUG site, and it returned 2 results for the Montreal local chapter.. 
Montreal, Quebec | ReactCast (mydacfeed.com)
The URL being way less intuitive as the old method (www.gpug.com/montreal), as the new one is letteraly linked to your feed (https://mydacfeed.com/channel/ldac/montreal-quebec-5611) which I don’t really call ‘easy’ to remember.. 
Clearly when I was offered to be a ‘BETA’ participant to early have a look at the new DAC platform, I though myself “this looks like another Microsoft training site where you gather all your bookmarks for all the topics you’re interested in” .. but not a community forum.  And indeed when you scroll thru the main DAC page, that’s all it looks like, and when you click on the ‘community’ icon for GPUG, it brings you straight back to the (old) GPUG site.. 
What does that mean? GPUG.com as we know it will never go away ? not sure DCI wants to maintain two different platform (and pay for it) when a single one can do the job.. How well can that work ? IMHO if the new DAC site doesn’t provide a rich forum interface where user’s can exchange about everything, then it’s not going to succeed as a user platform.. it’s going to be another partner vitrine / showcase like so many Microsoft sites already exists.. 
is right when saying that trying to make (more) money on the back of the members is likely to fail and be the end of the DCI community as we have known it.. The old site lived by the users for the users, granted they had sometimes partner product presented, but it needed to remain a UG site.. It is a silly move to ask high profile members like GPUG All Stars or other award winning users to ask to pay for their presentations now because they had become partners.. Granted that DCI doesn’t have the cash that Microsoft has for marketing, but I truly believe that the way to attract more members is to offer free to low cost content that is useful to their daily activity.
We had a central place to write blog posts, answer forum questions and help other users out on (mostly) free time and a volunteer basis. If that spirit is no longer there, it’s the beginning of the end I think..
Like I enjoyed the days of Convergence and Summit, but the last Summit left kind of a bad taste in the mouth… feeling torn between something that had become too big, as it way trying to split the event in multiple stages (like the 365 event slightly in parallel with DCI Summit) and something that wouldn’t focus on the very product you’re working with.. Granted that in those days now it’s hard to draw a line between the products as many of them interwind itself and many users are facing the use of more than one tool at their job..
The future only will tell us if DCI made the right choice or not??.

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)

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[Aaron Back]

Jumping in here to hopefully help with a few questions or comments in this thread…

At the core of all the comments here I am seeing a central theme of content in various forms. Many of us have been the beneficiary of content or a contributor of content in different ways whether it’s been webinars, conferences, blogs, vides, etc…all of which has helped us further our careers, roles, and skill sets. I personally have been the beneficiary and contributor of content through the years and have felt the passion in the community in both roles. And, to me, the most important aspect of this was that it didn’t matter the medium used to share the information, as long as there was a place to go that had information. 

What the new DAC site represents for me is the next evolution of content sharing which allows content creators to hit a broad or narrow audience. The ability to create content under your own profile allows you to be those community content advocates that I see in this thread. Have a great video you recorded on the latest tips for GP? Share it in DAC through the YouTube option. Have a new blog you want to write, but don’t have your own blog platform? Use DAC as your blogging platform. Have your own content on your own page? Create a link share DAC to describe it and launch them to your post. 

Also, the content can be specific to GP, a mash-up of GP and other things (integration to CRM, data warehousing, BI, etc), or content for anyone in the finance or ERP. The content can be as narrow or broad as you make it.

Another way to engage with the community is to join in on the free Binge Days, thanks to the awesome sponsors. This is a chance for you to learn and chat live with speakers and attendees from all over and many unique roles such as yourselves. These are free to attend and will happen throughout the year on many different topics and themes. An interesting fact to note is that in a recent Bizzabo study they found that webinars accounted for only 2% of the popular virtual event types, while 43% was conferences and conventions. However, the length of the conferences is typically one day or less. 

What does all this mean to you? This means that the DAC site provides you with the tools to create and share content and engage in discussions around the content without intrusive banner ads or pop-us. Use the site to share your voice on valuable topics to help folks such as yourself who are trying to make decisions about when to start their migration efforts, integrations with other systems, leveraging the cloud in conjunction with GP, and much more. All of which are great content topics that I know you shared through the years.

So, I would encourage you to check out the DAC site with all this in mind. If we are in this for the community, then let’s be those positive community advocates!

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Aaron Back
Decision Acceleration Community Director | Dynamic Communities
Email: aaron.back@dynamiccommunities.com
GPUG All-Star
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[Kathy Kim]

Thank you Aaron.  I appreciate your insight.  I know that you are working hard to make the community one that is valued by its users.  I’m not trying to be a “negative Nellie”, but I think it is important that the users’ voices are heard.  Especially the many people who have worked hard to develop the community – many of whom have benefitted from that association as you say, but I dare say that their participation for the most part was truly for selfless reasons.  I, for one, am a much lesser contributor than many here, but I have not changed careers and have actually needed to reduce my time spent on GPUG activities to focus on my company’s needs.  I always come back because I hate to see the Phoenix chapter (yep, chapter :-))  die, which is exactly what’s been happening.  I know that change is hard.  We’ve all certainly had more change than we ever wanted this year and maybe that’s contributing to how I feel about this particular change.  I just know that I don’t feel the same love of community that I used to feel.  That started a while ago when we started being told who we could and couldn’t have present at our user group meetings and has just continued from there. I will attempt to embrace the change, but I won’t put my company’s money where I don’t find value.  That’s really the bottom line.  I have a few months to decide.

Thank you again for everything that you have done for this community throughout the years.  You were a valued member of this community long before I joined and I truly appreciate it.   I sincerely hope that it survives and thrives because I met an amazing group of people through this community and would hate to lose those connections.  Not so that I can succeed, but because I have come to care about them.

Take care and here’s to 2021.

Kathy

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Kathy Kim
Director of Finance
Donor Network of Arizona
Tempe AZ
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[Beat Bucher]

,
Oh well.. that resonates about the same for me.. I’ve joined GPUG way back in the days when I was on the user side and because I cared to help others and share my experience and knowledge. A few years later I started a local GPUG Chapter because I hoped (and felt) it could benefit other users around town that are using GP. I knew that I would have to work hard to get it off the ground and the people from the DCI community were of tremendous help to start it.. but believe it or not, the same fate happened to the local CRMUG group a few years earlier, as it vanished due to the lack of interest of engagement of its members. I had the chance to get the chapter meet on a regular basis for a few years, but since I went my own path, it has become incredibly difficult to organize the meetings more and more, especially once our local Microsoft branch changed the rules to host meetings (prioritizing evening meetings and keeping the day slots for the partners or themselves).

The momentum fell flat after a few meetings had low attendance or were cancelled due to lack of registrations, and despite the ‘virtual’ options (which Montreal was one of the very first chapter to use back in 2015)?, it’s been going downhill and I fear the chapter is on it’s way out too. The pandemic doesn’t make things easier, as one of the primary reason people attended the meetings were to get away a short moment from their office and get an opportunity to meet live other users and exchange / chat on various topics related to their work with GP.

I’ve always been jealous of ‘s chapter meeting attendance with 50+ members, as I would have only dreamed of those numbers.. this also says it all: engagement by the chapter leader(s) is key and requires a lot of effort, which was all based on volunteer time and resources (mostly), next to what DCI was providing as material (and welcomed catering). When LUG leaders get too busy (like myself) or lose interest, and if no one takes the lead, then it is very likely that the chapter will not survive very long. 

Let’s see what 2021 brings to us for the community.. I’ll always be grateful for what the community gave to me, even if I’m too not sure to renew my membership this year.

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)

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[Kathy Kim]

  I too always envied and his numbers along with when she was a chapter leader.  Michelle’s support of the community even as her duties within her organization have moved away from the GP space is impressive.  I fear that the Phoenix chapter is destined to become a memory, but I can’t really devote any time to changing that.  
???

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Kathy Kim
Director of Finance
Donor Network of Arizona
Tempe AZ
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[Kathy Kim]

  I wanted to add that I know that you were definitely a big supporter of GPUG as a user and understand that change is a part of life.  I should take back my note that I can’t shoot an email with my unsolicited opinions, because I’m sure I could still do so.  I appreciate your role in the community and should share that you recently reached out to me to assist in some providing some content for users.  I was unable to assist at that time, but hope to do so in the future.  I think that my fear is that Microsoft has been less and less supportive of “traditional” GP and this was the place that users could share their passion and knowledge of GP without the “clutter’ of the other platforms.  Those platforms may have value to us, but are also being pushed on us.  And although not a “success”, it was why I loved Amplify and the concept of going back to the days of GP-only conference.  No amount of “wishing” or nostalgia will take things back to where the used to be.  I have always embraced change and I will try to do so here.  However, this is the most time I’ve spent on this site in at least a year, so trying to find things on a new site AND not having access to all the recorded webinars for my staff (please correct me if this is not the case), will be a consideration when determining the value of our membership going forward.  Thank you again for your dedication.?

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Kathy Kim
Director of Finance
Donor Network of Arizona
Tempe AZ
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[Aaron Back]

Thank you for the kind words. Something I would love to do is start a video interview series on “Why GP Still Rocks!” and run this through the new DAC platform. This would help bring focus to how GP is still important to many around the world in so many different industries. If you, or anyone you know, would like to be a part of this, please let me know at aaron.back@dynamiccommunities.com??

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Aaron Back
Decision Acceleration Community Director | Dynamic Communities
Email: aaron.back@dynamiccommunities.com
GPUG All-Star
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[Matthew Arp]

, out of curiosity I had a post on the DAC Answers forum that was a bit of a mirror of this GPUG post. That post is now hidden from the DAC Answers list, can you explain? 

https://mydacfeed.com/dac-answers/view/2945

?

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Matthew Arp
Business Systems Developer
Hunton Group
Houston TX
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[Dan Johnson]

I’m with a partner and I agree with all of this ^. The only thing I’m here for are the user forums.

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Dan Johnson
Vice President
GraVoc
Tewksbury MA
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[Luc St-Yves]

, thank you for explaining the way you see things and they idea behind the new DAC.

Now if you let me express my feelings, I understand you are trying to narrow down the access to the content by letting everyone having access to diffuse or link to their micro content.  To me, doing this is like closing the big hall of the convergence center and all the big rooms, and replacing them by small tiny rooms.  Many small tiny rooms…  So instead of hearing an expert in some area of a subject, and gathering the information from A to Z, even having the chance to ask my own specific questions, I will have access to this in multiple morcels of experiences, where I will hear in room A that it was a bad idea to do something during a migration, then in room B, to have the experience of another user migrating with payroll, then in room C another user experiencing migration with a Nodus product, ….  and so on and so on…

Will I have time to surf all this ?  Not sure…  Is this replacing my actual valuable window where I can easily search throughout discussions if someone already ask what I am having issue with, then being able to ask the community if not ?  I understand I will be able to produce my own content…  What if I do not have time for this ?  What if my reality is to be in implementations twice a year, having free time only in short periods of time ?  Will I want to create my content ?  No.  To leverage good content, it takes constant time an effort to feed in a regular basis.  But with a forum, I can do it when I can, and use it when I need it, and attend fabulous content being presented for free by some people having time at the moment I am free to attend, in the big hall at happy hour time.

Finally, putting too much importance on “You need something ?  Click on these nicely presented features and we’ll call you!” is really not my type.

Now, I don’t have any choice other than trying it and I’ll do it frankly.?

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Luc St-Yves, Senior Business Analyst
Humanware Technologies, QC (Canada)
Implementation projects leader
-Essilor Instruments USA and Canada
-Essilor International S.A.S., France
–Promoting Dynamics GP in Europe–
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[Aaron Back]

thank you for the reply and your thoughts and thank you for your commitment and contributions to the community. I apologize if my prior post caused some confusion. But, actually, the content access is quite the opposite. The creation of the content is under your personal profile, but the accessibility to that content is open to anyone. Once you create some content, add a description and tags, this content is available on the main home page for access. The content presented on the home screen is dynamically displayed based on your personal preferences under the “Personalize DAC” option in the profile menu.

Personalizing DAC allows you to see content based on your areas of interest. This is done through tags you choose that will feed your home page with the content. For example, if you choose “Integration”, “Migration”, “ERP”, “GP”, “Cloud”, etc., then content that is tagged with any of those tags will appear in your content feed on the home page. So, if you create a great blog on integrating GP with CRM, and tag it appropriately, then this content will appear on the home page for folks who have personalized their feed for this type of content.

For more information on this, you can check out the following helpful videos:
> How to personalize your DAC feed: https://mydacfeed.com/view/video/how-to-personalize-your-feed
> How to add content into DAC: https://mydacfeed.com/view/video/how-to-add-content-or-link-share-in-dac

If you have additional questions, perhaps we could arrange a call to discuss these details further. 
?

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Aaron Back
Decision Acceleration Community Director | Dynamic Communities
Email: aaron.back@dynamiccommunities.com
GPUG All-Star
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[Beat Bucher]

Thank you for posting this..
Certainly DAC is more demanding in terms of user profile than the old GPUG used to be, the later being more ‘discussion’ centric and a repository for webinars and user shared files (something I haven’t seen yet in the DAC). As such the new DAC is more about a learning site where users can fine tweak their own interests and “nail” it to their profile, so they can go back any time and find their preferred topics.
The danger with the content tags is that after selecting a few topics of interests, you get quickly overwhelmed with content, and as Jo said in another thread, not sure how well (or bad) the search engine is optimize and much AI is put into it to return relevant content. ?I only selected a few tags and already find there is too much content.. will see how I can ‘learn’ to navigate on this new platform, but I’m missing the user loadable content (i.e. file share) and the forums. 
Is DCI going to keep the old GPUG platform forever just because of those 2 (main) features (forums & file content) ?

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)

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[Thaddeus Suter]

I found this link https://mydacfeed.com/topic/gpug/0 that looks like the same type GPUG discussion forum as here. Has a few posts on it.

Of course the obvious thing to do is to port the discussion history from here to the new site….and then cutover….. then everything is ok and the value is not lost.

Some times the obvious is not so obvious to new administrators….

Of course for those of us on social security and medicare who still have flip phones we like to keep things simpler……

I remember a VW New Beetle forum where we had thousands of forum posts/users. It all just went away when new administrators made a new site and didn’t have the skills or would not transfer history….told people just remake or create new content….oh well….

Gotta go take my pills now…

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Thaddeus Suter
Retus, Inc
HELOTES TX
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[Steve Erbach]

Hi, ,

I’ve said from the beginning that the generic graphics used in the DAC feeds ?are unnecessary. One can’t get a feel for what’s cooking if one has to page through a snoot-load of irrelevant images. Yes, the list of Forum topics on gpug.com is dry as toast; but I firmly believe that a generic image adds zero to the comprehension of the topic.

See you tomorrow!

Regards,

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“Sparkly” Steve Erbach – Green Bay, WI
Co-Chair, GPUG WI (Green Bay) Chapter
Blog: https://www.gpug.com/blogs/steve-erbach
Twitter: twitter.com/serbach

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Excel Webinar List as of June 10, 2020
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[Beat Bucher]

,
I’m going to do my best to love the new DAC site, but I tried this morning for possibly an hour or so to recreate the content of the Montreal GPUG chapter.. no members.. all gone.. so I have to re-invite them one by one (yes you read that right! one at a time..)
I tried to change some interest tags on my profile, but somehow the system doesn’t want to register it (or maybe it’s my chrome browser?).. finally got to change it from another place, which seemed to keep the changes..
I read somewhere in the “new” forum posts that DCI had some challenges when it came to transfer the content from the legacy site, especially about the LUG’s and chapters..
Well, as Thaddeus said, sometimes you lose an entire community for the wrong reasons, just because of technical changes that have big hurdles to overcome and if it doesn’t adhere to the KISS principle, people just won’t embrace it. Sometimes, wanting the best is the enemy of the change.??..

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)

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[Luc St-Yves]

said “I’m going to do my best to love the new DAC site”

Love is a battlefield 😉
?

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Luc St-Yves, Senior Business Analyst
Humanware Technologies, QC (Canada)
Implementation projects leader
-Essilor Instruments USA and Canada
-Essilor International S.A.S., France
–Promoting Dynamics GP in Europe–
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[Steve Erbach]

,

Pat Benatar! https://youtu.be/IGVZOLV9SPo

Regards,?

——————————
“Sparkly” Steve Erbach – Green Bay, WI
Co-Chair, GPUG WI (Green Bay) Chapter
Blog: https://www.gpug.com/blogs/steve-erbach
Twitter: twitter.com/serbach

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Excel Webinar List as of June 10, 2020
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[Steve Erbach]

, mon ami,

>> Sometimes, wanting the best is the enemy of the change.??.. <<?

One of my favorite authors, the late Jerry Pournelle, always said (going back to his BYTE magazine days), “Better is the enemy of good enough.”

Regards,

——————————
“Sparkly” Steve Erbach – Green Bay, WI
Co-Chair, GPUG WI (Green Bay) Chapter
Blog: https://www.gpug.com/blogs/steve-erbach
Twitter: twitter.com/serbach

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Excel Webinar List as of June 10, 2020
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[Blair Christensen]

Just going to chime in here, but I think the most dangerous notion in the software world is that change is inherently good.  It’s simply not true.  Change has to have real value and application in improved processes and time savings for it to be beneficial.  Unfortunately, nearly every major software vendor has bought into the notion that if they just throw enough spaghetti at the wall it will eventually stick; the notion of ‘iterative development’ in which the users have to deal with ten versions with problems only to get one which worked.

Value isn’t in a slick new interface.  Value lies in the content and enabling users to access that content effectively.  If the content and its access become second-tier concerns to making money, DAC will fail.  I am going to reserve judgement on DAC for the time being, but initially I have significant concerns because the primary reason I use the GPUG site is the Q&A forums – which I visit every day.  The second one is to access the free recordings of webinars.  Third is to manage my chapter meetings.  I don’t use GPUG to find software vendors.  I don’t really WANT GPUG to turn into a social platform.  I have LinkedIn or Facebook or [insert anything else here] for that.  What I want is a user community – emphasis on USER – where the people involved focus on helping each other find solutions to their individual problems.  If DAC supercedes GPUG but ceases to hold this focus, it will devolve into nothing more than a marketing platform no one pays any attention to.  But worse, it will destroy the fantastic product and community built around Dynamics GP.

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Blair Christensen
Database Administrator
Oppenheimer Companies, Inc.
Boise Idaho GPUG Chapter Leader
GPUG All-Star
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[Beat Bucher]

,
I don’t know what the future holds for this GPUG community site, but I agree that for now DAC looks more of product marketing front store than any community forums (at least in the form we used to know them, like the MS Dynamics site). I know the new DAC site does have a forum, but it’s buried somewhat under multiple layers of stuff most users probably don’t care.. maybe it’s just an organizational problem with the site and the forum part hasn’t gotten yet the love it requires to suceed ?

In any cases, for those who fear about the DAC becoming just another commercial sales front, they can always turn to the Microsoft Dynamics Community site, but I’ve always believed that the later was more for technical oriented people.. (my perception).
For those who are looking to get another down-to-earth User centric community site, there is one that’s been around for 20+ years in the Dynamics world, but had not much content for GP as it is located on the other side of the pond :  ?https://dynamicsuser.net/dynamics-gp

They newly added a section for Dynamics GP after hearing about all the rumble around what’s happening here, and this is truly a no-fluff, completely free user forum, just for GP (OK, other Dynamics product too if someone has interest for CRM, NAV, AX or Power Platforms).. 
Registration is FREE and everyone is encourage to join.. 

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)

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[Michail Konstas]

To reiterate ‘s earlier note: based on the feedback from you and the rest of the folks on the GPUG forum, we have invested to keep the GPUG site on for the foreseeable future. And it is the user’s option to register to the DAC  – we are not pushing people to DAC for discussions. Obviously, Dynamic Communities has been hit dramatically by Covid-19 and we are doing the best we can do. We feel that DAC can provide additional assets, and we will provide choices for you. But it is up to the individual user to decide what is best for their needs. As simple as that. 

We are listening and reacting as swiftly as we can, and we will continue to do that and support the community.

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Michail Konstas
Finance
Dynamic Communities
Phoenix
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[Matthew Arp]

, this may be a bit more believable if DC would remove the banner that basically says GPUG is legacy data from the GPUG homepage…

?

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Matthew Arp
Business Systems Developer
Hunton Group
Houston TX
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[Michail Konstas]

, Ok, I get it. We changed the wording to be more clear. Hopefully this clarifies…?

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Michail Konstas
Finance
Dynamic Communities
Phoenix
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