An Old Dog Learns a New Trick

At the risk of seriously dating myself, I’ve been working with Microsoft Dynamics since version 3.0 – has it really been 15 years? Over this time, I’ve become accustomed to certain terminology and lexicons when working with the system, specifically on the backend…you know, things like entities, attributes or picklists, etc.

These terms have been a mainstay within Dynamics from the beginning and have been immune from the constant flow, or Power Automate (#dadjokes), of name changes and rebranding we typically see with other Microsoft products – until now. As many System Admins and power Users have seen over the past few weeks, the below changes have been made to most environments, updating how these objects are referenced within the UI.

Obviously, there is some logic that went into these changes – my guess is the intent is to standardize the terminology across a broader app-building community, allowing for more normalized and intuitive naming conventions. For an old dog like me though, this one is going to take some time to adjust to – for my current clients, prospects/future clients, and colleagues, I will apologize in advance for each and every time over the next eleventy hundred years when I will, without a doubt, call a ‘Column’ an ‘Attribute’ or a ‘Table’ and ‘Entity’.