Show notes

🎙️ In This Episode of Joe Reads the News:

Special Guest: Murray Fife (21:01) Joe Christensen is joined by Murray Fife, a storyteller, author, and tinkerer now back at Microsoft. Murray is a “digital B2B fashionista” and three-time Grammy winner (jokingly) who has been deep-diving into the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Dynamics 365 F&O.

The War Room: Pre-Valentine’s Day Edition (01:49) Broadcast live on February 6, 2026, Joe sets the romantic mood by reading from Ferdinand the Bull and reminding “young lovers” to buy flowers.

The Weekly Algorithm Award (10:39): Awarded for the first time to a company, Item by Item, for their scalable D365 training platform featuring 100+ learning paths and 24 modules.

MCP Servers & D365 F&O (23:18): Murray describes MCP as “close to magic,” allowing AI agents to act as a “crowbar” to configure systems, create legal entities, and handle payables/receivables programmatically.

AI for Sales Coaching (32:57): The duo reviews a post by Mark DiGiorgio regarding the use of meeting transcriptions and Copilot to provide autonomous coaching on discovery calls and objection handling.

The “Wood Chipper” of LLMs (09:46): A discussion on “feeding” Murray’s famous bare-bones configurations into Large Language Models to accelerate system implementation.

OpenAI on OpenAI (41:14): A look at how OpenAI uses its own AI-powered models to scale support and turn reps into “builders”.

The “Tower of Babel” (25:06): Murray reflects on his “ascending mountain” book covers and how AI’s hyper-communication mirrors the ancient tower’s story.

Featured Comments & Shoutouts:

Carol Smock (38:04): On leading requirement sessions with the “five W’s and an H” reporter mindset.

Beau Suiso (46:39): Warning that duplicating item IDs for variations is “arts and crafts,” not master data management.