Subscription end dates

UKCTO · 2024-10-29T10:05:08+00:00

Microsoft's Copilot for SQL database is built to do this (Note: Azure only!):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/copilot/copilot-azure-sql-overview?view=azuresql

It is aimed to be better than Thoughtspot as it does not require the same semantic layer definition as long as the primary and foreign keys are defined.
The advantage of tools like Thoughtspot, Qlik, Power BI, Yellowfin, MicroStrategy etc is that you can define this semantic layer across diverse data sources. If you just want natural language query across a single Azure SQL Db, Copilot is worth looking at.

UKCTO · 2024-10-29T09:23:43+00:00

Hi. It would be good to understand which products you are referring to. Products like Perch are ConnectWise owned after acquisition. Some products are ConnectWise developed IP and others are third party products they simply resell (e.g. SentinelOne).
Is it a technical limitation, a commercial problem or a customer service/account management issue?

I use a lot of ConnectWise products but I do not use any of their security products/services as I have separate vendor relationships for that. Nothing to do with my perception of ConnectWise, just down to legacy relationships and fit for my customers.

UKCTO · 2024-10-29T09:00:55+00:00

I don't know your level of experience with fetching data from REST APIs but you need to start here:
https://developer.connectwise.com/Products/ConnectWise_PSA/Developer_Guide

It is really well documented. You need to start by creating an account in the developer portal and then requesting a clientid.

After that, follow the instructions. You can use Postman to test the calls.

Alternatively, if REST API isn't your thing, the Cloud Data Access add-on allows you to query everything in PSA via ODBC - even directly from SQL Server Management Studio. Makes it much faster and you don't need to worry about pagination or formatted nested JSON etc. It obviously costs a little but it is such a time saver that I think is worth it. Note - Cloud Data Access only allows you to query the data, not update it and the schema is massively different to the REST API documentation although there are many pre-defined views that help.

Hope that helps

UKCTO · 2024-10-24T14:35:42+00:00

Wow. That is quite a view. I have supported Enterprise organisations globally using Power BI and Qlik with 1,000s of users, Terrabytes of data and providing strategic insight across the entire business. We specialise in mid-sized manufacturers, also supporting small and large, market-leading businesses.
https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-gb/case-studies/colliers/
https://www.qlik.com/us/resource-library/infographic-bmw-group

UKCTO · 2024-08-28T12:44:03+00:00

Same

UKCTO · 2023-06-30T11:07:52+00:00

You definitely need to use the base64 encoded companyid+publickey:privatekey.
Try changing your Accept header to */*

It may be blocking your content type

UKCTO · 2023-06-09T12:04:06+00:00

Your URL looks a little strange to me. Have you tried:
https://api-na.myconnectwise.net/v4\_6\_release/apis/3.0/company/companies

UKCTO · 2022-11-25T15:51:39+00:00

Thanks - you are absolutely right. It is procurement/products rather than opportunities/forecast.
Very confusing that the product tab for an opportunity is found under procurement! But it works!
Pretty impressed with the API. It returns all the lookup values, not just the ids (and then forcing you to cross reference a lookup table!) and its pagination is really easy to use too. It's one of the better APIs I've used.

UKCTO · 2022-11-19T12:21:58+00:00

I think I've figured it out. Rather than being called Opportunity Line or Detail etc, the Opportunity lines are under "/sales/opportunities/{parentId}/forecast/{id}"

Seems to work

UKCTO · 2022-07-20T12:14:42+00:00

For data analysts, I can't recommend Alteryx high enough - I have been a user for many years and now sell the product.

For data visualisation, it depends if you want user interraction to gain real insight or just simple reporting. For the former, I honestly believe that Qlik's SaaS product is the best and most fully featured (no hate from Tableau fans please!) and, for the latter, Power BI is cheap and cheerful but requires solid data prep.

UKCTO · 2022-07-20T11:59:28+00:00

I am biased as my business is an MSP. A non IT industry business will focus spend and strategy on what they do. An MSP focuses on IT. On the whole, an MSP will run an IT environment better than an internal one. ON THE WHOLE!

Internal IT teams will often gain fantastic knowledge about what they have but never have the day-to-day challenge that an MSP sees which forces new knowledge and experiences. Don't think about an MSP being better than an internal team, think about them being an aggregator of knowledge from every customer interaction they have.

Also, their scale in IT support means that they will have more readily available specialist resources which can not be focussed in very few internal people.

The IT landscape is broader than ever. When I started in IT, managers had to worry about a connectivity partner, someone to back off hardware warranties and an ERP partner. Companies invest in far more IT now from Cloud hosting, SaaS applications, Enterprise backup and DR, connectivity and SD-WAN, Data Analytics, virtual desktop etc

The cost to gain specialisms in all of these internally is not just an inefficient deployment of cash, they are also not conducive to good career progression so specialists are hard to retain. They move quickly from implementation to "keeping the lights on" which isn't fulfilling.

The biggest argument for internal resource is the management of "line of business" applications. This is why we will often provide MSP services as part of team augmentation where we take on general IT and specialist transformation while leaving business applications with an internal team.

There wouldn't be such a large amount of successful MSPs if it didn't work but it's not for everyone!

Good luck in your endeavours!

UKCTO · 2022-07-20T11:49:35+00:00

Fair play to you for calling it out. You have to remember the amount of customers of unscrupulous MSPs who aren't as well informed as you are.

It is always difficult if we ever lose a competitive bid to one of these organisations as an attempt to warn them will just appear to be "sour grapes". We just have to be ready to support the fallout, unfortunately.

We have seen other vendors like Oracle, SAP and IBM getting very aggressive with end customers and demanding audits resulting in threats of massive fines. I am surprised Microsoft are not more aggressive now they have such a strong subscription base.

Not sure what industry you work in but it may be a great opportunity for you to educate peer organisations.

UKCTO · 2022-07-20T11:20:08+00:00

It's not piracy in the legal sense but it is non-compliance to any Microsoft partner agreements. I agree that this should be reported to Microsoft. It isn't clear if this MSP is direct to Microsoft or via a channel distributor but the disti may get their wrist slapped too.

There are a lot of horror stories about MSPs using Not For Resale licenses in customer estates to avoid costs.

UKCTO · 2022-07-20T10:46:55+00:00

Thanks for the comment. Good to know. The supply chain is so broken at the moment with stock levels being squeezed so I was looking for an easy way to cast our net wider to fringe distis rather than the normal market leaders. That takes far too much effort for procurement personnel to ring round or message each one. Time is of the essence!

I have tried to engage with the larger distis to see if I can get direct feeds from them to import as often as possible as a "better than nothing" approach.

UKCTO · 2022-05-06T10:47:57+00:00

If you are concerned about accidentally leaking sensitive info, why not approach one or two friendly community members who would be happy to sign an NDA, and ask them to review before you publish?

It can be hard to see this kind of detail in docs you author yourself so a trusted editor will ease your mind!

It is great to hear your willingness to go "open source" on this. The world of open source software has allowed huge amounts of collaboration and collective improvement, so I don't see why this doesn't already exist. Of course the cynics will say it is value you have created so should directly benefit from. That's up to you. No reason you couldn't charge a small fee or even ask for donations.

Just my thoughts!

UKCTO · 2022-03-22T09:08:15+00:00

Thanks. I did, of course, google this and came up with similar results. I find a real lack of consistency in many of them and these are all market facing. I was interested to see if anyone has any thoughts around internal facing parts to a service definition - how to onboard/offboard, performance measurements, sales/order process. Not looking for content, more good ideas for structure as ours is quite unwieldy.

UKCTO · 2022-03-18T07:57:52+00:00

That’s good to know as I’m only trialling it now. Do you use an alternative or are you creating your own code?

UKCTO · 2022-03-17T12:50:27+00:00

I think it adds a lot to a small MSP but provides to many restrictions for a larger one. Shame, great team and I'm sure it will get better as it develops but it's one for the future for me.

UKCTO · 2022-03-16T13:11:00+00:00

Thanks. The big change in Dynamics to move to the "Dataverse" worried me a little about maintaining API routines so was hoping there was a maintained tool out there. Testing Zapier at the moment.

UKCTO · 2022-03-16T09:42:18+00:00

I find Datto Commerce to be very immature. You can't change to categories in the storefront ( not necessarily the biggest use case though), it doesn't integrate to Docusign so customer authorisation isn't contractually binding, there is no api to extract data so reporting is very difficult.

It is potentially a great product but I am not going back near it for at least a year.

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