A Few Encore Resources From Community Summit Nashville
Community Summit North America Wrap Up & Recap
Community Summit gave us a lot to think about, and hopefully you came home with a few new ideas of your own.
We’ve brought together the slides, companion white papers, and practical cheat sheets from our three Microsoft Fabric sessions in one place. Whether you joined us in the room, missed a session, or simply want to take a deeper look at something Chris Smith covered, you’ll find the resources below.
And Fabric wasn’t the only thing people were talking about. We’ve also included resources addressing some of the other big conversations we heard throughout the week: where to start with AI, how to get more from Business Central, and how to maximize your Microsoft 365 and Copilot investments.
Continue Your Microsoft Fabric Journey
Chris Smith, Director, Data & AI at Weidenhammer, presented three sessions designed to take Microsoft users from Fabric fundamentals through architecture selection and advanced governance.
Explore each session below. For every presentation, you can read the corresponding white paper or download a resource packet containing the complete slide deck and any available cheat sheets and quick-reference guides.
Expand Chris’s Bio
With more than 25 years at Weidenhammer as a senior technical leader and architect, including service as Director of Analytics and Intelligent Automation, Chris brings deep institutional knowledge and platform-scale architectural experience. He serves as chief architect for complex, data-driven platform ecosystems, specializing in cloud-native architecture, analytics, attribution, and integration-heavy commerce environments. His hallmark is building scalable, maintainable platforms that evolve with the business without requiring disruptive rewrites.
Software Development & Architecture. Chris defines target-state architectures across multi-system ecosystems, favoring API-first, integration-centric platform design with abstraction layers that manage vendor dependencies and enable composable architectures. He leads technical discovery and modernization assessments — evaluating replace-versus-adapt economics, integration cost, and long-term platform value — and translates business requirements into evolvable technical designs. His data- and integration-first mindset ensures the platforms he shapes remain composable, transparent, and future-ready as they scale.
AI & Intelligent Automation. Chris brings a pragmatic, results-driven approach to AI and machine learning, embedding predictive and prescriptive capabilities directly into the analytic and operational workflows decision-makers rely on. He champions generative-AI-driven software development, leading Weidenhammer’s adoption of an AI-assisted SDLC — including GitHub Copilot & Claude Code — and pioneering the instruction files, prompting practices, and repeatable patterns that make AI a consistent part of client solution delivery. He also applies GenAI-assisted architectural review and modernization analysis to accelerate assessment, documentation, and decision-making while grounding recommendations in long-term platform economics.
Microsoft Data & Analytics Platforms. As a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Partner, Chris specializes in the Microsoft data ecosystem — including Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse Analytics, Databricks, and Power BI. He architects end-to-end data lakehouse solutions for Weidenhammer clients that unify ingestion, transformation, and consumption layers into cohesive platforms built for performance, governance, and scale.
Data Engineering & Integration. Chris’s work spans data engineering, ETL/ELT, and integration architecture, ensuring clean, reliable data flow across disparate systems and establishing a trusted single source of truth. He has designed systems where attribution, financial transparency, and auditability(traceability, revenue splits, commission logic, and transaction tracking) are mission-critical requirements.
Known for his ability to engage cross-functional stakeholders from executive leadership to front-line operators, Chris translates complex technical and data concepts into clear, compelling narratives that drive adoption and cultural change. Throughout his career, he has delivered business-changing results across a range of industries and functional domains. His focus remains constant: designing modern data and automation solutions that are not only make full use of an organization’s data, but that fundamentally reshape how organizations compete, operate, and grow.
01 • Fabric 101
Microsoft Fabric for the D365 Power User:
From Curious to Confident in 60 Minutes
Level: New to Fabric
If you’re accustomed to working with Dynamics 365 and Power BI but are still trying to understand where Microsoft Fabric fits, start here.
This practical, beginner-friendly session explains Fabric’s core components, including OneLake, lakehouses, warehouses, dataflows, and semantic models, and shows how they connect to the Dynamics 365 reporting work many organizations already do.
You’ll come away with a clearer understanding of Fabric’s role in the Microsoft data ecosystem, how its components work together, and where it could fit within your organization’s analytics strategy.
02 • Fabric 201
Data Warehouse vs. Lakehouse vs. Fabric:
Making the Right Architectural Choice for Your Organization
Level: Intermediate
Data warehouse? Lakehouse? Microsoft Fabric? The technology isn’t really the starting point. The better question is which architecture best fits your organization’s data, existing investments, analytics maturity, and future goals.
This session compares traditional data warehouses, modern lakehouses, and Microsoft Fabric, giving you a practical framework for evaluating the strengths, tradeoffs, and appropriate uses of each approach.
Rather than treating the decision as an either-or technology choice, the presentation helps you consider how data structure, governance requirements, workload patterns, team capabilities, and Microsoft’s broader data ecosystem should shape your architecture.
What’s Included in the Resource Packet
Eight Cheat Sheets & Quick-Reference Guides:
Fabric vs. Databricks vs. Snowflake
Why Mature Your Data Estate
Star vs. Snowflake Schema
ETL vs. ELT in a Kimball Warehouse
ACID Transactions: Four Guarantees
Parquet Files vs. Delta Lake Tables: Comparison
Data Lakehouse: Sources to Insights
How OneLake Changes Enterprise Data Design
03 • Fabric 301
Governing Your Lakehouse:
Data Quality, Lineage, and Security in Microsoft Fabric
Level: Advanced
Building a lakehouse is one thing. Building one that people can trust, secure, understand, and operate at scale is another.
This advanced session takes a hands-on look at lakehouse governance, including cataloging data assets and lineage with Microsoft Purview, applying least-privilege security to Dynamics 365 data, integrating governance into deployment practices, and automating data-quality monitoring in Microsoft Fabric.
The goal is not governance for governance’s sake. It is to build a data environment with clear definitions, accountable ownership, reliable quality, appropriate access, and repeatable operating practices so that people can confidently use the information it produces.
What’s Included in the Resource Packet
Twelve Cheat Sheets & Quick-Reference Guides:
Why Mature Your Data Estate
Corporate Data Catalog
Purview Data Catalog Implementation Sequence
Purview with Fabric: Included vs. Added
Row-Level and Object-Level Security in Fabric
Git Repositories with Fabric Deployment Pipelines
Fabric Notebooks for Data Quality
Data Quality: Purview Rules vs. Fabric Notebook Checks
Governance as Definition of Done
Governance Maturity Model
Ninety-Day Implementation Roadmap
Governed Fabric Lakehouse: Reference Architecture
What Else Were People Talking About?
Three Questions We Heard Again and Again
Fabric wasn’t the only topic in Nashville. AI, Copilot, Business Central, and Microsoft 365 came up in conversations throughout the week.
The questions were practical. Where should we start? Are we getting value from what we already own? How do we move beyond isolated pilots and workarounds? And what does it take to make these platforms secure, scalable, and useful across the business?
Here are three places to continue those conversations.
01 | AI & Copilot
We Know AI Matters. Where Do We Actually Start?
For many mid-sized organizations, the challenge isn’t generating ideas for AI. It’s deciding which opportunities are worth pursuing, whether the underlying data can support them, and how to move from isolated experimentation to measurable business value.
Some employees are already using AI extensively. Others haven’t started. One department may be testing an agent while another is focused on automation, data cleanup, or Copilot adoption. Each effort may be useful on its own, but without shared priorities, those investments rarely build on one another.
The Mid-Market AI Blueprint creates a practical path forward. We examine three to five business processes alongside your data estate, identify and score AI opportunities based on ROI, effort, and data readiness, and turn the findings into a prioritized roadmap with near-term wins and a longer-term path.
The goal isn’t another disconnected pilot. It’s a clear view of where AI can deliver value, what needs to be fixed first, and where your next investment should go.
02 | Business Central
Are We Getting Everything We Should From Business Central?
Going live with Business Central is only the beginning. As the business changes, configurations that made sense during implementation can fall behind. New employees may learn from coworkers rather than structured training. Manual workarounds become embedded, integrations grow fragile, and useful capabilities remain untouched because nobody has gone back to evaluate them.
Over time, organizations can end up paying for a powerful ERP platform while still relying on spreadsheets, duplicate entry, manual processes, or reporting that users don’t fully trust.
Weidenhammer’s Business Central Health Check provides a fresh look at your environment, including configuration, extensions, data quality, security, financial controls, integrations, licensing, business processes, and user experience. The result is a prioritized roadmap that separates immediate quick wins from longer-term improvements.
The objective is simple: reduce risk and friction while helping your organization get more value from the Business Central investment it has already made.
03 | Microsoft 365 + Copilot
Are Microsoft 365 and Copilot Delivering the Value We’re Paying For?
Microsoft 365 is much more than email, Teams, and a collection of licenses. The value your organization receives depends on how the environment is secured, administered, adopted, governed, and continuously optimized.
That includes identity and access controls, Teams and SharePoint configuration, endpoint management, data protection, external collaboration, application adoption, licensing, and the policies and information architecture Copilot relies on to deliver useful results safely.
Weidenhammer’s Managed Microsoft 365 services bring these responsibilities together through tenant and collaboration administration, unified endpoint management, security and compliance management, user adoption, licensing optimization, ongoing monitoring, and strategic reviews.
The result is a Microsoft 365 environment that is easier to manage, safer to use, better aligned with the business, and better prepared to support Copilot and future AI capabilities.
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