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How Much C# Development can Dynamics 365 Accommodate: A Dash of .NET - Ep. 9
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Mar 16, 2024
Join this live session with Stephen Simon ft. Maria-Anastasia Moustaka for the next episode of A Dash of .NET - live show on February 29, at 09:30 PM (PST). In this presentation, we will unravel the capabilities and possibilities that arise when marrying C# with Dynamics 365. From customizing business logic to crafting tailored solutions, we will navigate the landscape of C# development within the Dynamics 365 framework. GUEST SPEAKER Maria-Anastasia is a technology engineer and a Microsoft IoT MVP. She is currently working as a software engineer. She likes to solve problems, help others, and presenting about new technology solutions. Also, she is a Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, and she has the highest distinction in this community. Moreover, she was won many robotics international competitions with Robotics Club UoP. 📺 CSharp TV - Dev Streaming Destination http://csharp.tv C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers https://www.c-sharpcorner.com #azure #CSharpTV #csharpcorner #CShap #Dynamics365
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C Sharp, Dynamics 365 and today we're getting them married
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Hi everyone, welcome to a new episode of Dash of .NET. Today we are joined by an absolutely amazing speaker
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She's very well known in the community and today we're gonna talk about how much C Sharp
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can be accommodated in Dynamics 365. And to talk about that, we're joined by Maria
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She lives in Greece, beautiful country. She's a Microsoft MVP, software engineer
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and I'm really excited to host her today. So without any further ado
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Maria, welcome to the Dash of .NET show. Hello, I am happy to be here today with you
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Maria, thank you so much for accepting the invitation. We always enjoy you hosting at C Sharp corner events
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We're gonna do a lot of chit chats and towards the end if we get time, but at the moment I'm gonna share your screen
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Everybody else can see your screen in the stream and next 20 minutes is all yours
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Thank you, thank you very much. So our discussion today will revolve
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around the C Sharp integration with Dynamics 365. As Simon told before, I am Maria Anastasia
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a graduate of Computer Engineering and Informatics Department at the University of Batras
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In addition, I have held the title of Microsoft IOT MVP for the past two years
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and I am also a Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador. Professionally, I've been immersed
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in the development world and currently I work as a software developer at BeWise
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specializing in CRM systems implemented with the Power Platform and Dynamics 365
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Beyond my work, I work at the head of a robotics educator
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sharing my knowledge and various robotics centers here in Rhodes where I live
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My passion for technology extends to education, leading me to pursue a master's degree
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in teaching technology, math and science over the past year and a half
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This academic pursuit reflects on my commitment to fostering a deeper understanding
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of technology in others. To share my insights and experiences, I maintain a blog that publishes weekly
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posts that covering topics such as IOT, Power Platform and Dynamics 365
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Additionally, I seize every opportunity to engage with the community through social media
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and through talks on these subjects whenever my schedule allows. Our discussion will explore the landscape
3:07
of C-Sharp development, examine how this language work within Dynamics 365 with a primarily emphasis on solutions tailored
3:19
for customer relationship management, CRM. Furthermore, we will dedicate some time to unravel debugging, a challenging aspect
3:29
often encountered by professionals in this field. To illustrate the concepts discussed
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we will culminate with a demo. Following this, I will share valuable resources
3:47
and references for those angered to delve deeper into the topics we've covered
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Let me provide a brief overview of Dynamics 365 for those that might not be familiar with this platform
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Dynamics is a set of connected modular software as a service applications and services
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built on Microsoft Azure and designed to transform business activities. Dynamics consists of CRM, ERP, AI, mixed reality
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and modular intelligent business applications that offer a complete set of solutions
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across marketing, sales, commerce, service, finance, operations, and talent. It's integrated with productivity apps in Microsoft 365
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such as Excel, World Outlook that we will watch it in our demo too
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and others. And it's connected with Microsoft Power Platform such as Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI
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and Power Virtual Agent. The motivation behind this presentation stems from a desire to engage software developers
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who have a preference for coding but may not have explored the possibilities
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of integrating their code into a low-code environment. In the realm of low-code platforms
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that is platforms that require little code development, there is still a need for custom code
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Customers offers, sorry, customers often require services that the existing platform doesn't provide
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or seek integrations with other platforms necessitating the expertise of custom code developer
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to fulfill these requests. Now, one might ponder, why should I delve into low-code
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instead of continuing with traditional software development? Compiling statistics from the reputable Gartner Group
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forecast that by 2025, next year, 70% of applications will be created
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using low-code or no-code platforms leaving only 30% to traditional development methods
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This signals a significant upward trend in the adoption of low-code and no-code platforms
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presenting an opportunity for us to leverage this growing market. The surge in popularity can be attributed
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to financial resources. Additionally, the shift towards low-code options has accelerated particularly in the wake of the pandemic
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where businesses shiftly embrace the digital realm. While I firmly believe that traditional development
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will always have its place and enthusiasts of course, today's presentation aims to showcase an alternative
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Even if you are a seasoned software developer, there is value in exploring low-code and no-code options
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due to their faster design and development processes. This presentation serves as an introduction
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to this alternative path, providing insights into the changing landscape of software development
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Before we delve into the practical aspects of custom code in the dynamics environment
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excuse me, let's consider one last compelling statistic. The well-known Forrester Group
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conducted a survey revealing that the market for low-code platforms is projected to reach
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200 billion by next year. This sizable figure underscores the immersed growth
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potential within the low-code landscape. As we witness this market projection
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it prompts to ask, why not position ourselves within this dynamic market
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The opportunities appear abundant and it's an opportune time to explore and embrace the potential that this growing market offers
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So, we can develop code in Microsoft's low-code platforms with these three languages
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JavaScript, C-Sharp and SPFx. JavaScript for crafting custom user interface and functionalities that directly interact with users
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C-Sharp for implementing complex functionalities, business logic computations and data management by creating plugins
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And last but not least, SPFx for custom applications and components that operates within the SharePoint ecosystem
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Each of these tools provides different capabilities and the choice of language depends on the specific goals
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and requirements of the application being developed. But today, of course, we will deal with C-Sharp
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Let's transition to the practical demonstration to better understand what custom code truly entails
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within the dynamic environment. So, if you create a new appointment in CRM
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the system automatically sends appointments to attendees. However, there might be scenarios
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where you want to prevent CRM from sending these appointments. While the system itself doesn't provide an option
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to disable this behavior, a workaround exists. To address this, I have developed a C-Sharp plugin
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One specific button here, you can see it here, which I added, I added this button
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which this button is set to no. The plugin automatically appends this line
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send no invitation to attendees to the end of the appointment description
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Moreover, I configured a rule in exchange to delete the automatically created message
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without notifying the recipient. This process ensures that the necessary information is added to the appointment
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and the exchange rule effectively controls the sending behavior. To accomplish this, a user with admin rights
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must log in to the Microsoft 365 admin center or from the admin.microsoft.com or from Outlook
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There, admin has to select the exchange and then mail flow. After that, has to add a rule and create a new rule
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And there, the admin has to apply this rule if the subject or body includes any of these words
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send no invitation to attendees. And also had to select, do the following
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delete the message without notifying the recipient or sender. So here we have our code
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And as I told you before, the code is a dynamic CRM plugin
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designed to control the behavior of sending automatic email invitations when creating or updating appointments
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The primary goal is to append a specific information to the appointments description
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to prevent the sending invitations. The plugin is triggered on the create of all attributes
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and on the update of some of the attributes, the attributes optional attendees
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required attendees, description and invitation sent, which is the button. The get organization service that is here
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This method initialize common parameters such as the plugin context and organization service
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And here it's an if statement for update and create as I told you before
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And here you can take a look at the context and take the information of the entity
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and some error handling here. In the next slide
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we have the rest of the code and we have the process record method
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that is responsible for handling the core logic of the plugin. It retrieves information from the CRM record
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related to the appointment, such as description and invitation not sent, that is the custom attribute indicated
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whether an invitation has been sent. If conditions are met, excuse me
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if the conditions are met, the plugin updates the description attribute with the prevent attribute text
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So this code is for the core logic and we have this if statements
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to handle whenever the description has to be sent to update it and to add this line
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I mentioned before. And the last screenshot from my code, here I think that here it's the registration
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of the description code for the description. And here we have the strip HTML tags method
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that is a helper function that uses regular expression to remove HTML tags from the input text
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This ensures that the description is a clean text only format. The code also includes error handling
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to log any exceptions that may occur during execution. This is done using the eye tracing service interface
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that you can look here or before, as I showed you before
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Now, debugging is hard for many low-code developers. Here is a conversation I had on X
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with an X Dynamics 365 developer. But here this developer told me
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that just seeing the words Dynamics 365 gives me horrible flashbacks. And I wondered why, I wondered why
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And he told me that for a brief time, I worked for a startup that built their entire business
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on Dynamics 365. And I was hired to help them cover their flows to plugins
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Doing actual coding, CSR, for the platform was beyond convoluted and debugging was a nightmare
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Never again will I touch the Dynamics 365. But I don't think that debugging is that hard
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even in Dynamics 365. But I think that you have to get used to it
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With the plugin registration tool, debugging becomes much easier
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At first, you have to register your plugin and its steps. Here is the plugin and here we have the two steps
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create of appointment and update of the appointment. And then you have to attach the plugin registration tool
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in Visual Studio. After that, you can debug as you know
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and as you had in pure CSR. You can see in this screenshot
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it's from the code I showed you before. The debugging is like I have another CSR code
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without all the Dynamics involvement. So let's explore some examples of debugging
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Here are some valuable resources that I have gathered. First, we have Microsoft Learn
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an essential platform for every local developer. Following that, I highly recommend checking out
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Carly D'Souza's blog, the insightful D365 Demi Satisfied blog and Hubside 365
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These have been my go-to references when seeking assistance. And I'm confident that they can be beneficial for you too
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And as we dive into these resources, let me also share my blog, my has no blog
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In my blog, I focus on creating posts aimed at assisting beginners
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However, I have plans to share tips and solutions for more advanced challenges soon, so you can stay tuned
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And here I have my information. And if you found today's presentation interesting
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or simply want to connect and learn more about me, let's stay in touch
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You can catch me on X, where I am actively daily to weekly
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post there. For a glimpse into my professional journey and key milestone milestones in my career
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feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. And for the easiest way to find all of my links
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including X, LinkedIn and my blog, and also my has no blog
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you can check out my bio link. I think it's extremely easy, bio.link slash Maria
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It's a one-stop hub, housing all my social media and various other links that I find useful
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And I'm looking forward to staying connected. So thank you so much for listening to my presentation
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Thank you so much for being here. And I want to give a big shout out to C-Sup Corner
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and of course to Simon for all the content they made for our community
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So thank you and let's continue being passionate about what we do
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Wow, Maria, that was absolutely great session. And just the way the heart is beating on the screen
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you know, when you were giving a presentation, there was so much rhythm, you covered so much in just about 20 minutes
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right from your slides, then you moved the demo. And what I really loved about your presentation
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that you ended with a resource slide, that, hey, you can follow this guy, you can read this blog, you can go to Microsoft Learn
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I'm sure everyone who has bought has got to learn a lot from this session
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And if they go and check those all sessions, the resources that you have shared
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they'll get to learn a lot. Maria's all details, social handles, you can find in the video description
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Thank you so much, Maria. That was great. We always love to have you back
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And yeah, can't wait to host you once again. Thank you so much and we'll see you soon. Bye-bye
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