In Dynamics 365, you may want to perform an Organization Request in a piece of custom code in order to trigger an Action, or perform an undocumented SDK operation.

When attempting to do this from JavaScript, this can be a lengthy process which involves building a SOAP request and then posting to the organization service endpoint. When using a plugin or a console app to perform the same operation this is comparatively much easier.

The Dynamics 365 SDK comes with the Organization Request class, which all Organization Requests in the SDK are derived from. This class can also be used to execute custom requests, as it can take in the name of a request, and the parameters for the request as a series of key-value pairs. These can be added to the Organization Request in a couple of different ways (shown below).

This can then be executed in the normal manner through use of the .execute method of the IOrganizationService. The SDK will construct the request, and will automatically detect the parameter types from the .NET types passed in to the class, and will use these when constructing the request.

After sending this off, the response is returned as a corresponding Organization Response object, which can then be interpreted to get the status of the operation performed and any output from the request – this may be in the form of output parameters when using this functionality to trigger actions etc.

Aside from triggering Actions, this functionality can also be used to call a number of CRM messages – including messages for internal use only. While it is not officially supported to call these internal CRM messages using the Organization Request class, it remains that it is possible to do so. There is a rather comprehensive list of messages available to call via this functionality here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309482(v=crm.8).aspx, with a further few here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334698(v=crm.8).aspx.

There may also be other undocumented messages that are available to be called using this functionality, but this will not be officially supported.

A variety of functions can be performed, for example, publishing customisations:

Project Considerations

1) Start with the concept of a glossary and agree on terminology. This seems like such a trivial concept, but has huge ramifications as the systems grow and mature. If everyone agrees on terminology then when fields are named, and option sets defined, the terminology is consistent throughout the system. In fact I know of a company that has a department that defines and manages all of the option set values in every system that they release. This three person team keeps terminology consistent not only in one application, but across all applications created for internal use.  Alignment to the bigger picture and more consistency for the entire company.

2) Now about those status fields. If the status field(s) are option sets then aligning the values to a glossary offers more common understanding.  Each option has a reason and these reasons generally align to business rules. Given the sometimes difficult nature of understanding business rules, common vocabulary can help.

There is a beauty to simplicity.

So how do you simplify complex business rules? Focus the system on the people who are using it and what they care about. Complex business rules are not complex to those who work with them every day. This is their life, so make sure that business rules align to the roles of those who need and care about them.

Eliminate noise: User's do not want to see what they do not care about. Use good definitions of security to allow the system to hide what people don't need to see. This also greatly simplifies the system for their use.

Leverage the power of the out of the box ability to segregate data by business units. Business units are all about segregating data, eliminating noise, speeding up processing and so much more and although they occasionally line up to offices, defining offices is not their primary goal.

Very, very, very carefully consider why and how many status fields you are using and determine a way for the system to manage and keep these status fields updated based on normal human day to day activities.

Understand the personality types of the users in different roles. Are these people task driven? Do they like to complete a list of things to do or are they more organic givers and workers who react to the day? Make sure the system can handle multiple styles of getting work done.

Re-evaluate and Refactor as many times as is necessary to simplify the system.

Microsoft Flow is a new workflow engine that was released in 2017. Flow has many connectors to many different applications and file types. The bulk of the connectors are free, any connections tagged as ‘Premium’ are not free. To name a few, Flow can connect to SharePoint, Twitter, RSS, Outlook, SQL Server, Dynamics 365, Excel Online, Bing Maps and many more connectors (see https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/ to see a full list of currently available connections).

This post is going to highlight the strengths and weaknesses when using Flow in conjunction with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (D365CE).

To clarify some frequently asked questions:

• Flow is not replacing the built in Process engine that we are all used to
• Flow is async, so no real time workflows. Depending on your plan you could be waiting up to 15 minutes for a flow to trigger (https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/)
• Flow will work with custom entities and fields
• Flow can connect to more than one Dynamics organization, and can also trigger on and update a single organization
• Despite the FAQ from Microsoft this is not something I would put in the hands of a “line-of-business user”, the ability to create and manage flows should definitely be kept in the hands of an administrator (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/flow/frequently-asked-questions)

Strengths:

• You can loop through related records. One weakness that the built in Processes have is that we do not have any ability to loop through a list of records based on a relationship. With Flow’s ability to loop through related records means that some of the functionality that was reserved for custom plugins or an ETL tool is now within the realm of a free GUI tool.
• Simple Integrations and data loads. If you do not currently have an ETL tool, Flow is a great tool to keep your meta data lookup tables in sync between your production and development environment (*note you cannot force the GUID of a record created by Flow, so your lookups will still break when pushing from on environment to the other). If you are using the import wizard, Flow is also a great tool for staging data in Dev, getting business approval, then pushing that data into a production environment.

Weaknesses:

• Cannot have multiple triggers for one flow logic and cannot pass parameters between Flows. This means that if your flow needs to trigger on create and update of a record type, you need two individual flows.
• Add a filter to your Flow’s trigger. Even if the first step of your Flow is a check condition with no False Branch, the evaluation of that check condition counts toward your monthly execution number.

Use Cases

Iterate through and update child records:

In a typical D365CE implementation there will inevitably be at least one record type that will only ever exist as a child to another record (think Incident and Account/Contact). We will commonly populate the Primary Field of such records with a specific set of data points. That way these child records are consistently named and the end user does not have to enter a value. For Incident’s we will typically set the Primary Field to “[Customer] – [Case Type]” or something along those lines. The issue is that if our customer’s name changes all of our Incident’s will still have the old customer name in the Primary Field. There is no way to fix this using the built in workflow engine. You could add JavaScript to set the primary field value, but that means that the Primary Field will be wrong until someone opens the Incident form.

However, Flow can handle this requirement quite easily. On update of Account, list all Incidents for that Account, Apply to each, and an update to fix the Primary field of the Incident.

In the screen shot below I am setting the Primary Field to [Account Name] – [Subject] and as the Subject is a lookup field I need a Get Record step to get the text value of the subject field. This example also highlights one of the weaknesses of Flow. An Incident could be the child of an Account or Contact, so you would need a flow for Account updates and Contact updates.

Roll up indirectly related record values or through multiple relationships

The List records step is also the star of the show for this use case. When creating a list record step, you define a Web API filter query. This gives a significant amount of flexibility when it comes to what records are getting returned. The records do not need to have a direct relationship to the record that you are rolling up to.

In the screen shot below I have a Pet Owner entity and a Pets entity. I want to roll up a value from the Pets entity to the Pet Owner record. My filter statement returns all of the pets where the Pet Owner lookup = the Pet Owner record that triggered the flow.

The rest of the steps will increment a variable for each Pet record, then set the field that on the Pet Owner record to that variable. The field on the Pet can be a simple, calculated, or a rollup field. The field on the Pet Owner has to be a Simple type field.

These are only two outlined examples of  the more exciting possibilities that the Microsoft Flow engine provides.

To learn more about how you can take advantage of this and other Dynamics 365 features, visit RSM’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 resource. To make sure you stay up to date with the Microsoft Dynamics Community, subscribe to our Microsoft Dynamics Community Newsletter.

For more information on Microsoft Dynamics 365, contact us.

By: Steve Trefz

The post Microsoft Flow Functionality and Use Cases appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professionals.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 pricing has been updated for 2018, effective April 2. This article will outline the changes and updates to Dynamics 365 licensing and pricing. For full pricing and licensing info. and an overview video visit our Dynamics 365 Pricing & Licensing page.

Sales Professional

There is a new sales license - Sales Professional, $65 per user/month. Microsoft describes this license as "core sales force automation". It enables a user to manage Leads, Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts, Activities, Quotes, Orders, Invoices, Marketing Lists and Sales Campaigns.

Sales Pro. users do not have access to Competitors, Sales Goal Management, Territory Management, InsideView, Relationship Insights or Mobile Offline.

There are also limits on Custom Entities (15), Business Process Flows (5) and Custom Workflows (15)

The Sales Enterprise license is unchanged at $95 per user/month.

You can mix & match Pro and Enterprise but not in the same tenant.

Both Pro and Enterprise Sales licenses now have Case Management included.

New Marketing Automation Module

Microsoft has released their new Marketing application, Dynamics 365 for Marketing. It can be licensed as a standalone application or added to your Dynamics 365 subscription.

Pricing - $1500 per month standalone

It is included for customers who license the Customer Engagement Plan with at least 10 licensed users.

Add it to your Dynamics 365 subscription for $750 per month.

Each level has a max. number of contacts. The contact limitations are based on the total of both active and inactive contacts in your Dynamics 365 database. You can buy 5000 additional contacts for $250 per month.

Business Central

Business Central is the newly released version of the "Small Business Edition Financials" application (code named Tenerife previously). Business Central is the full version Microsoft Navision in the cloud. There are three license options:

Team Member - Light use - $8 user/month

Essential - All the core functionality - $70 user/month

Premium - Everything in Essential plus Service Management & Manufacturing

For a complete detailed look at licensing and pricing as well as an in-depth overview video visit our Dynamics 365 Pricing & Licensing page.

About the Author: David Buggy is a veteran of the CRM industry with 18 years of experience helping businesses transform by leveraging Customer Relationship Management technology. He has over 14 years experience with Microsoft CRM and has helped hundreds of businesses plan, implement and support CRM initiatives. In 2017 he founded Strava Technology Group, a firm that is focused on helping businesses achieve success with Microsoft CRM and Dynamics 365. To reach David connect with him on LinkedIn. To learn more about Strava Technology Group visit www.stravatechgroup.com

The post Microsoft Dynamics 365 Pricing Updated for 2018 appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.

One of the most promising new features added to Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the Learning Path. As we already know, the Learning Path was first introduced in Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update 1 and with the December 2016 update for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft has invested a lot of effort in offering us an updated version that we can customize to our own specific needs.

Really cool, right? But what does this mean? For those who aren’t yet familiar with this feature, we’re going to answer the following question:

What is the Learning Path for Dynamics 365?

The Learning Path is a tool that allows us to enhance the final user experience with CRM, and helps us strengthen engagement and user adoption of the system. It provides the ability to deliver custom content specific to the user who logs into to the system. It can help reduce training time and costs, it enables users to be more productive, and helps them discover diverse ways of using business processes – all at their own rhythm.

Important Considerations

With this in mind, there are a few things we should consider if we want to create our own customized Learning Path for our organization(s).

• Learning Path Authoring is only available for Microsoft Dynamics 365 online version.
• Customizable help though is available for both on-premises and online Dynamics 365 versions.
• We can use either the Customizable Help or the Learning Path, but we cannot use them both within the same organization.
• You must have the December 2016 update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 to be able to author Learning Path content, but users who have CRM Online 2016 Update 1 or later enabled, can VIEW the Learning Path created by Microsoft though.
• Learning Path is currently supported in the web client, interactive service hub, Dynamics 365 for Tablets, and Dynamics 365 for phones.
• Users who want to see Learning Path content MUST have opted in for the Learning Path under their user options. (See further for instructions on how to do it).
• You MUST have a system administrator or system customizer role in order to have access to the Learning Path Content Library, or in another words, in order to perform any customizations to the Learning Path.
• Learning Path Authoring must be enabled in the System Settings.
• Users who want to customize the Learning Path must be members of the Office 365 Learning Path Authors Security Group. (More on how to add Office 365 users to the security group in the following pages).
• You can display Learning Path content included with Dynamics 365, create your own Learning Path content for your users, or both.

Learning Path vs. Customizable Help

First, it is important to understand the difference between the Learning Path and the Customizable Help for Dynamics 365.

The Customizable Help refers to the standard help created by Microsoft and it can be replaced and point users to a different URL for customized help.

You will be redirected to the default Microsoft Help when your help button looks like this:

The Learning Path on the other hand, enables us to add customizable Guided Tasks and Sidebars that can be triggered when a user opens a specific page, performs an action, or clicks the Help button.

You will be redirected to the default Microsoft Help when your help button looks like this:

Enable Learning Path Authoring for the Organization

Learning Path is an optional feature and we must make sure that it’s turned on for each organization that we want to enable it for. To do so, we must follow the next steps:

1. Make sure that you have a System Administrator account.

2. Go to the System Settings: Settings >Administration >SystemSettings

3. On the General tab, under Set custom Help URL make sure that Enable Learning Path and Enable Learning Path Authoring are set to Yes.

Note that the custom Help for customizable entities is set to No. Remember that we can use either the Customizable Help or the Learning Path, but not both at the same time.

How to Opt in/Opt out Learning Path

One very important thing that we have to consider is that we (the author) and every single user that we want the Learning Path to be visible to, needs to make sure that we have “Opt in” the Learning Path.

To do this, users will have to go to their user settings and select the Opt in/Opt out option.

Note that a user might want to Opt out of Learning Path when they no longer want to see it or they have completed the activities included in sidebars and/or guided tasks.

Add an Office 365 user to the Security Group

Once we make sure that we have enabled the Learning Path, the Authoring for our organizations, and we have opted in for the Learning Path, another very important action that we have to perform is to add all the Learning Path authors to the Learning Path Authors Security Group within the Office 365 Admin Center.

This is a very important action, otherwise users won’t be able to access the Learning Path Content Library – meaning that they won’t be able to perform any customization to the Learning Path.

To add Office 365 users to the Learning Path Authors security group, follow these steps:

1. Go to the admin portal for your Office 365 tenant by clicking the Navigation to other applications (waffle) button in the top-left corner of the page when you’re signed in to Dynamics 365, and then select Admin. You may be asked to re-enter your password.

2. In the Admin center, click Groups.

3. On the Groups page, select the Learning Path Authors security group.

4. Click Edit in the Members row to add users to the group.

5. Click +Add members, and then specify or search for the user(s) you want to add to the group.

6. Click Save when you’re finished adding users.

Create Learning Path Content

Now that you have enabled the Learning Path and the Authoring, have Opted In, and have added users to the Learning Path Authors Security Group, you will be able to access the Learning Path Content Library where you can create your Learning Path content.

To access the Library Content, go to the main navigation menu, click Training and then Content
Library under Learning Path.

By doing so, you will be redirected to the Dashboards screen and you will have to wait a little bit until the Library Content opens. Be patient, if you don’t see it immediately. Once the Library Content opens, you will see the following screen:

There are two types of Learning Path content: Guided Tasks and Sidebars.

A Guided Task is typically a series of tasks that guide the user through a specific process or task within the system. A user can launch a Guided Task by clicking a link on a sidebar, by navigating to a page or by clicking a link on a page for which you have created content. In each step, the user clicks the Next button or completes a defined action to proceed to the next step or to complete the Guided Task.

Guided Tasks are useful for guiding your users through common or new tasks. They can also be used to ensure that tasks are performed consistently in your organization, or that data is entered a specific way to support your organization’s processes or workflow. You can include links, YouTube video links, and other information in Guided Tasks to help users become familiar with and learn more about that part of the user interface.

A Sidebar is displayed when a user clicks the Help button, navigates to a page or clicks a link or button of a page for which you have created content. You can also create Home sidebars that are displayed when the user opens the page or screen or clicks the Home icon on a sidebar.

You can also define Error sidebars that appear when there is a problem displaying the intended sidebar. You can include links, videos, and other information in sidebars to help users become familiar with the page, the form displayed, or the actions they can take on that page or form.

Exporting and Importing Learning Path Content

You can export content that you create, perhaps to share with an author of another organization, or to make backup copies. The export feature creates a compressed .zip file that contains the .json files used for your content in Learning Path. There will be one folder in the .zip file for each selected Learning Path Sidebar or Guided Task.

Privacy

By enabling Learning Path Authoring for a Dynamics 365 organization, Learning Path content will be stored in Azure SQL Database. Which means that enabling the feature allows Azure Cloud Services to capture the following data associated with a Dynamics 365 organization:

1. List of organizations in the Tenant
2. End users’ Dynamics 365 client and applicable browser / OS configuration
3. Usage data of end users – such as time spent on Learning Paths or clicks recorded
4. Aggregated end-user data – Location, security role, user language
5. Aggregated end-user data – Location, security role, user language
6. Verbatim feedback from end users

Note that this applies to all types of online hosting, including Government hosting. The information listed above will always be accessible by Azure Cloud Services.

Conclusion

Learning Path is definitely a very helpful tool. It can open an entire world of possibilities regarding training, user acceptance, self-study, business processes comprehension and more. Imagine that you could customize training based on security roles and even based in a specific language!

Even though this is the first Learning Path Authoring release, and it does come with a few issues. We will list the main issues that we encountered:

• Guided tasks are related to specific records. What does this mean? It means that if you want to guide a user on how to fill in the information of a Web form for a given entity and you create your Guided Task pointing to a specific record, the Guided Task will be linked ONLY to that record. If you later want to export and import your Guided Task or publish it to another organization, you will probably get an error message since that record does not exist in the new organization.
• Sometimes users can’t see the Sidebars. You may encounter that some users don’t have access to the customized Learning Path sidebars. You can try to fix this, double-checking the Sidebar and user’s security roles, whether or not the user has Opted in for Learning Path, but maybe sometimes can also be a local PC configuration. Remember that the Learning Path information is stored in Azure Cloud, so maybe you must make sure that the users have the right privileges to access the information.
• Another thing that you may find is that you can see the Learning Path content one day and have troubles accessing the other. You might want to Opted out the Learning Path and Opted back in. This may fix the problem.

We’re sure Microsoft will continue to make improvements to Learning Path – so let’s wait for the next release to see what new features are added to this really cool tool.

For more updates and guides to Dynamics 365 – subscribe to our blog!

Happy Dynamics 365’ing!

The Dynamics 365 V9.0 (Fall 2017 Release) is finally here for existing customers! It seems Microsoft is following in the footsteps of their operating system and software, coming out with an annual update to their enterprise applications. In fall of 2016, Microsoft completely overhauled the marketing/branding of what was Microsoft CRM and changed it to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for (Sales, Service, Finance and Operations, Talent, Marketing, Etc.). Now you have apps specific to the operation or department. Other than the branding and some back-end changes, you really wouldn’t notice any differences except for the additions of Insights, Organizational Insights and Relationship Insights. That was it.

In the fall of 2017, Microsoft released V9.0, which was a major front-end update for the User Interface (UI) and other anticipated functionality that users have been demanding for quite some time.

A new user interface

First off, let’s take a look at the new UI. You can easily notice the differences when first looking at the Sales Activity Dashboard.

Microsoft has continued to modernize the layout by making it flatter and filling out white space as you can see below.

They’ve also added word wrap to the labels attributes. Previously you used to have to manually space out the width of the box pixel by pixel, now it automatically adjusts itself.

Additionally, there is was an enhancement around the branding experience on a form. The new feature allows for you to have color on your sub-grids. Maybe you want to color code a process and have an order with color or you just want to make the form more colorful for your users. With that, each sub-grid header can be colored.

In addition to the enhancements on the existing forms, there is an entire new Unified User Interface (UUI) which keeps the experience consistent across Dynamics 365 product family.

Even the timeline has more filtering capabilities and visuals.

Additional improvements as part of the UUI include:

• Skype for Business status indicator across all supported web browsers (This was limited to just IE previously)
• OneNote create functionality will be available on mobile devices
• Improved dashboard chart filtering

Multi-Select Option Sets

You read that right. What we’ve all been waiting for!  Multi-Select option sets.

You can set it up like any other field in the system. Just select “MultiSelect Option Set” from the list (it is identical to a traditional Option Set as far as the setup goes).

Once it is set up, put it on your form and you should see something similar to this example.

How can I upgrade to the latest version?

If you are setting up a brand new organization with a new instance, you will have the latest v9.0 (Fall 2017 release). For existing customers, Microsoft is now scheduling updates over the next couple of months. Contact your Dynamics 365 representative to schedule yours today!

How much does the upgrade cost?

There is no cost to upgrade if you are already on Dynamics 365 licensing. The answer gets a little more complex if you are on 2016 or an earlier version.

If you would like to discuss specific issues you might have or how your business can benefit from Dynamics 365 for Sales (CRM), please contact our professionals for more information about our services at 855.437.7202 or crm@rsmus.com. If you like these tips, consider subscribing to our Dynamics Community News publication.

By: Brian Jason Smith – Florida | Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales (Formerly Microsoft CRM)

The post Upgrade to V9.0 (Fall 2017 Release) today! appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professionals.

Time is ticking. Don’t miss out on your last chance to register for Summit EMEA. From 24-26 April, the Convention Centre in Dublin, Ireland will be taken over by nearly 1,500 Dynamics users and partners from all over Europe for Summit EMEA.

Register Now.

Get Inspired by 200+ Sessions

The Summit EMEA programme offers attendees the opportunity to hear about the latest trends and developments within the industry and attend technical and functional training for all product versions. At the moment, 128 D365UG/AXUG sessions and 100 D365UG/CRMUG sessions have been announced within the conference schedule.

Don’t Miss These Side Events

Alongside the main conference, there are also plenty of inspiring side events that will allow you to enhance your Summit EMEA experience and get the most out of your visit to Dublin. Learn more about these can’t miss events:

Pre-conference Academy - Monday, 23 April, The Convention Centre Dublin

Summit EMEA Partner Exchange– Monday 23 April, The Convention Center Dublin - Liffey Hall

Summit EMEA Executive Programme– Wednesday, 25 April, Dublin Marker Hotel

This Video Says It All

Hear why the User Group community is heading to Dublin to take part in Summit EMEA:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Join us in Dublin for a week of content, community and networking - secure your registration for Summit EMEA today.

Register Now.

If you are familiar with the Interactive Service Hub in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you will feel more accustomed to Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM‘s new Unified User Interface in the Version 9 update.

This new user interface is based on the old interactive service hub but with a lot more enhancements and capabilities.

You can access it by navigating to your Dynamics 365 App directory. Also, each app can be controlled through security roles.

The Navigation Bar

The Navigation Bar is not displayed across the top, as you would see it on the Web interface.

On the left-hand side of your screen, you will see your Navigation Bar, which includes Leads, Opportunities, etc. There, you can access previously viewed areas, among other key things.

Dashboards

The dashboards shown in the new Unified User Interface are the same as you have in your normal interface, but the default colors and layout are a bit cleaner.

All of the dashboards you have created in the Web interface have been converted into the Unified interface in its own format.

Drilling is a bit different in the Unified User Interface, however. If you go into different screens, you will see you cannot access your drilling as far down as you can in the Web interface.

Interactive Dashboards are also available in this interface and can be done against any of the core modules.

Forms

The layout of the Forms inside the Unified User Interface has some core differences from the web interface: Tabs are back, a new Timeline, and Sub Grids are now more condensed.

The Related Tab is especially handy, as it shows all of the related entities against the entity you are viewing.

Adding another User Interface did not double the amount of work for the System Administrator. The same form used for the Web Interface is also used for the Unified User Interface meaning modifications only need to be done on one form and they show up within both interfaces.

Timeline

The Timeline is a new control that lists all Posts, Activities, and Notes in a chronological list. This provides an easier way to view any notes or correspondences anyone has had with the record you are on.

As shown above, the Timeline replaces the Social Pane within the new Unified User Interface.

Within the Timeline, you are able to filter by Record Type, Activity Status, or Activity Type:

You are also able to create Activities, Posts, Notes, and OneNotes from the Timeline:

The Timeline also provides a summary of new posts, activities, and/or notes that have been created since the last time you visited that record:

Email

One of the last pieces missing from recommending Users to start using CRM to create and send emails from inside CRM was a nice email body editor. The unified interface provides this editor now. The email editor is the same control used for creating Knowledgebase articles.

You can now add HTML code to your emails, if you like, and preview how the emails will appear on different hosts.

Business Process Flow

The Business Process Flow has a different look and feel inside of this interface compared to the Web interface.  You are still visually able to see what stage you are at within the business process.

To see the steps you need to complete in each stage, you select the stage and a drop-down appears with the list of steps:

Mobile-friendly

The new Unified User Interface is called this because it provides you the exact same experience by a web browser or through your mobile device. The above look and feel along with all the features and functionality is available on your tablet or phone app (iOS, Android, Windows).

The Unified User Interface is clean, user-friendly, and ready to use. Any new customers to Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM will be immediately welcomed by this interface, but those using Versions 8.0 or 8.2, for example, will need to update.

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Updates!

Join our monthly Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM User-Group webinars.

In this version of Dynamics 365 there is a bug when you click on the lookup icon on a connection form. The error that occurs is:

Where the field changes depending on the lookup you press. This is a bug in CRM and is due to four functions missing in the Connection_main_system_library.js.

THE FIX:

On the connection form create a new onload JavaScript event that sets the following functions.

Then on the onload event you just call the onLoad function above.

Issue Explanation

When writing FetchXML to use as a data source for a custom report, a nice place to get a head start is to use advanced find  within the environment and use the Download Fetch XML button. I often head to advanced find for a quick way to get my field schema names. The Download Fetch XML button is great for retrieving the bit value of an option set or the GUID of a lookup value as well.

For example, if I want to create a report that returns Cases for a specific Subject, I could open advanced find, and set the ‘Look For:’ to Cases and add a filter criteria of Subject Equals [Any subject value].

Download Fetch XML will give me the following Filter node:

<filter type=”and”>

<condition attribute=”subjectid” operator=”eq” uiname=”Service” uitype=”subject” value=”{111DE3D1-21D5-E411-80EB-C4346BAD3638}” />

</filter>

In order to convert that statement into a filter statement that accepts our SSRS parameter we just drop the uniname attribute and change the GUID to a reference to our parameter:

<filter type=”and”>

<condition attribute=”subjectid” operator=”eq” uitype=”subject” value=”@paramSubject” />

</filter>

Converting an option set or lookup field into a single select parameter is easy enough, but if you try to take the same approach to creating a multi select parameter you will not be very successful.

<filter type=”and”>

<condition attribute=”subjectid” operator=”in”>

<value uiname=”Service” uitype=”subject”>{111DE3D1-21D5-E411-80EB-C4346BAD3638}</value>

<value uiname=”Query” uitype=”subject”>{0F1DE3D1-21D5-E411-80EB-C4346BAD3638}</value>

</condition>

</filter>

As you can see, Dynamics adds a value node for each value that I select as lookup value to return. If you were to do some googling you would find a huge number of articles suggesting that you could embed a piece of custom code to modify your FetchXML source text on the fly to add these value nodes for each option selected in the multi select parameter. Unfortunately, if you are working in an online deployment any custom code in an SSRS report will not execute successfully, meaning that the code to modify your FetchXML on the fly will not work.

Solution

I tried a number of different configurations and eventually found a statement that will work:

<filter type=”and”>
<condition attribute=”subjectid” operator=”in” value=”@paramSubject”>
</condition>

The above filter statement has been tested in and functions as expected in v8.2 and v9.0 for mutli-select lookup and option set parameters.

To learn more about how you can take advantage of this and other Dynamics 365 features, visit RSM’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 resource. To make sure you stay up to date with the Microsoft Dynamics Community, subscribe to our Microsoft Dynamics Community Newsletter. For more information on Microsoft Dynamics 365, contact us.

By: Steve Trefz

The post Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online/Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online FetchXML Filter “In” Parameter appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professionals.

Data migration is when data is moved from one place to another. In many projects, the data is moved from a legacy system to a current and updated system.

There are three main parts of a data migration process, and they are:

1. Understanding the data
2. Understanding the data source
3. Understanding the data destination

Figure 1: Source Link

For Dynamics 365, it is very important that we understand the source and destination very well, especially if the source is coming from different countries and different source systems. Every business user wants their data to be migrated in the same way as it is in the legacy system, for ease of use, training, and understanding of the new technology. In this blog, we will share the “Do and Don’ts” for an enterprise level data migration project.

First, we must identify the correct technology to migrate the data. Most use technologies such as Kingsway Soft and SSIS instead of free tools such as Talend, Mulesoft – for which there is less support.

For such open source technologies:

• Source and Target should be well defined. We must identify different sources and possible duplicates for various systems that might use different technologies but have the same data.
  • There will be instances when the same data should go into different entities with different statuses.

Figure 2: Source Link

• For lookup values, we must create a master list and map all the possible source values in that list. Providing multiple files for each system will lead to confusion and re-work.
  • All countries and data owners must provide the master data and agree to use the data globally.
• Identify the entities which allow active and inactive records migration in single step. For example:
  • We can migrate inactive accounts and associate child records to the inactive accounts.
  • We must migrate all activities as active records. We cannot create a canceled appointment in single step. We might have to create a scheduled appointment and then add an additional step for updating the appointments. We can call this a two-step process.
  • For a two-step process, we must also migrate the child records, if any, before updating the statecode for the parent.
• Statecode and Statuscode must be included for all entities for migration, even if there is only one active status for the entity.
  • Statecode and Statuscode are hierarchical. Hence, it must be used together.
  • If we use only statecode, default statuscode is applied by Dynamics 365, which might not be correct according to the data.
  • If we use only statuscode, Dynamics 365 might throw an error. For example: if we assign statuscode as active and inactive and not include statecode, Dynamics 365 assigns an active statecode by default. In such cases, inactive statuscode will throw an error because of a hierarchical relationship.
• The main purpose of the project is laying a 360^o picture to understand the needs of the business. Creating a migration script without understanding the needs of the project will create incorrect data migration.

Figure 3: Source Dilbert Cartoon, Google

• Involving the key stakeholders in each step and engaging them effectively is equally important to understanding the data, system, and mapping lookup values.
• Integration between technologies and teams is necessary to understand the duplicates in the data and source systems.

With this, if we can introduce a concept for requirement inspection, we might encounter several issues during the initial phase of the project. We might be able to identify the missing pieces in the data migration during the requirement phase and save cost for the project in later stages.

For more guides to Dynamics 365, check out our blog!

Happy Dynamics 365’ing!