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What’s new in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.2

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This article describes the features, fixes, and other changes that are included in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.2.

New features introduced

Get insights with Social Selling Assistant

Microsoft Social Engagement’s Social Selling Assistant introduces a new recommendation type: Get Insights. This adds to the existing recommendations for sharing content. This new type provides recommendations for posts about your customers, competitors, and other topics of interest, so you can stay on top of the latest developments. With this addition, you can now get a separate set of recommendations each for sharing content and insights. For more, see Empower your salespeople with the Social Selling Assistant, Personalize the Social Selling Assistant.

Documents now show engagement history with Microsoft Social Engagement user

Microsoft Social Engagement until now showed actions done by your team only after an extra load. Once this update is live any new action your team takes will show directly in the post list with the respective number indicator on the matching action’s button. In addition the engagement action history now shows the MSE user who did the action with name and avatar. We extend the engagement action history to also cover actions done on private message.

Issues resolved

The integration into NAV handles cases with not existing search topic IDs better than before. Although there’s a remaining error case: When looking for a non existing ID in Edge browser, the Microsoft Social Engagement widget will stop loading. See our readme file for more details.


Pick your Dynamics 365 connector of choice using Flow, Logic Apps, or PowerApps

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 (online)

Use Microsoft Flow or Azure Logic Apps to set up automated Dynamics 365 workflows between a Dynamics 365 (online) instance and your choice from many other apps and services available to synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, and more.

 

Create a workflow

 

Use Microsoft PowerApps to quickly generate, customize, share, and run mobile apps with little or no code. With the Dynamics 365 connector, in just a few minutes you can create useful mobile apps to share with your organization.

 

Create apps

 

Get started now!

 

 

– Matt Peart

Using Connectors to simplify data ingestion at scale in Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights (DCI) SaaS offering provides big data analytics and insights for sales, marketing and service functions. To extract the most out of DCI requires bringing in data from different sources. One of the most important data sources is Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.  In this article, I want to walk you through the process of managing data sources and integration with DCI.  The process of extracting insights is a typical walk through steps of scoping insights requirements, modeling data, implementing data map, data preparation, transformation and flow, and finally, data ingestion to DCI.

 

Sample DCI application: Retail bank customer 360

The journey of DCI analytics starts with defining the insights and a use case that fit the insights. Take the example of customer 360 view with DCI for a retail banking customer service center.

 

Customer 360 view in sample DCI application

 

Bank client, Mike Price, just enters one of the bank’s branches. The bank has his demographic profile in DCI. DCI shares the client’s phone number and shows the visuals and pictures of Mike to identify him when he is sitting in front of me. It pulls up rich set of various KPIs calculated inside customer insights by its powerful KPI processing engine. The bank want to see and understand who this customer is. Based on all the raw data, DCI constantly calculate those measures. While it spews out insights, DCI could also share trivial measures, like Mike’s checking account balance, savings account balance, KPIs of KPIs, and so on.  DCI provides widgets that highlights Mike’s communication preferences, what channels Mike is using and how Mike is interacting with the bank. DCI shows the financial instrument, and last but not the least, it shows end-to-end customer journey with all interactions and transactional data that you might want to look at.

Building Retail 360 experience requires multiple steps on data management side. It starts with identifying the data sources and corresponding connectors to bring data in from those sources, modeling the data, transforming the data, and then activating the connector to start the complete end-to-end flow.

 

Using data source connectors to bring data into DCI

The key to DCI success is in its ability to bring in data from multiple sources, and continuously extract insights from data. Once the scope of the use case is defined (e.g., retail bank customer 360 view defined above), the most important task is to bring the data in from multiple sources and model it in DCI. DCI excels in integrating data from multiple different kinds of data sources characterized by different attributes.

Connector’s core functionality

A data connector mechanism facilitates data source connection and data pull to DCI.  Connector performs following functions, including

  • Understand the data source schema, attributes and details (not always possible)
  • Perform the required data transformation
  • Land data in DCI in the format ingestible by DCI
  • Provision the necessary resources to scale data extraction from the data source

 

Connectors absorb the data integration complexity

Data source’s attributes compound connector’s complexity. Data sources differ based on multiple factors, including, but not limited to the following:-

  • Client’s internal v/s external data source. E.g., Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is an internal data source, as against, data from social media like Twitter or Facebook
  • On premises v/s on cloud data source. E.g., bringing data from a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement instance on premises, as against, data from a cloud marketing product
  • Transactional v/s behavioral data. E.g., for Amazon, their customer’s invoice or purchase order data is transactional in nature, as against, customer’s purchase preferences and seasonal buying patterns

 

Many other factors contribute to the complexity of connectors for DCI, e.g., data access interface, data model – including the structure or lack thereof, of schema, operations support, bulk export capabilities, governance requirements, interaction model, speed and volume of data change in the source, etc.

 

Identify the right data sources and corresponding ingestion mechanism

To build a retail bank customer 360 with demographics data from all other sources starts with identifying data sources that meet the use case needs. It could be data from CRM systems, social media, web logs, mobile application logs, or any other database.

Data sources for demographic data 

 

There are three different ways to bring data into DCI. These are:-

  • Using an out-of-the-box connector
    • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connector (i.e., Dynamics 365 CRM connector)
    • Azure Storage Blob connector
  • Stream the data via DCI end point
    • The documentation for point ingestion API is available at Data APIs
  • Custom built connector that performs the connector’s core functions and leveraging Azure blob connector and DCI end-point

 

Ingestion mechanism choice depends upon multiple factors, most important being, and availability of custom connector for your data source or not.

 

DCI data model support inside connectors

DCI data model models data after schema.org concepts.  Key DCI data building blocks are profiles, interactions, and links.

 

  1. Profile– Profile is a description of an entity/person/organization in a particular context. This is the core concept of a DCI data model. Customers look to profile an entity using DCI. DCI gives the ability to model, enrich and interact with profiles in real time. For retail bank customer 360 use case we discuss above, these could be entities like clients, branches, ATMs, etc.
  2. Interaction– An interaction is an event of relevance to a customer’s business. The goal is to allow customers to capture interactions from across the channels (Web, Mobile, Social) or LOB systems (CRM, ERP etc.).
  3. Links– Links correlate the interaction information with profile and are used to enrich the profile data.
  4. KPI – KPI is key insights about business performance calculated against a profile or interaction.

 

Depending upon the type of connector, DCI may provide an out of the box data model. DCI already does that for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connector. If not, users need to create their own data model or enhance an existing one when bringing in data from a new source.

 

Out of the box connectors in DCI

Today, there are two out of the box connectors available in DCI December public preview version, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connector and Azure Blob connector. While Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connector provides very structured connectivity to a clear single data source, Azure Blob connector provides free form data ingestion mechanism to scale amount of data and variety of data ingested in DCI.

 

Key differences between Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connector and Azure Blob connector are captured in the table below.

 

Connector characteristicsDynamics 365 Customer Engagement connectorAzure Blob connector
Data sources to bring data fromDynamics 365 Customer Engagement dataAny data source
Data modelingConnector creates out of the box data model for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement data. Connector maps Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement model to DCI modelUsers model data in DCI by pushing CSV objects to blob and mapping those to DCI model
Data preparationConnector prepares and transforms Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement dataUsers define their own data preparation, cleansing and quality mechanism
Data sync policyComplete sync of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement dataUsers create and deploy custom sync mechanism
Data sync frequencySync as and when data changes on Dynamics 365 Customer EngagementUsers determine sync frequency
Data sync speedNear real time updates of new / modified data from Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement to DCIUsers push data to DCI at desired frequency
Data pipeline and resourcesPipeline from Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement to DCI created and provisionedUsers to create data source to Azure Blob data and control resources and pipeline
Data movement errors handlingOut of the box error handling managementUsers provide error handling and recovery mechanism
Data source metadata changes handlingAutomatic DCI model updatesUsers manage DCI model changes to reflect source metadata changes

 

Building your own connector

Users can build their own connectors for DCI to emulate some of the custom connector functionality. DCI models data after schema.org concepts.  DCI users can build the data model corresponding to the source to comply with DCI data model.  Next, they can combine the Azure Blob connector and point ingestion mechanism to create the connector with custom orchestration, controls and policies. In particular, users will need to implement the following key functionality to create a custom connector.

 

  • Define and build DCI data model for data source
  • Define and implement logic for data extraction and transformation from source, and load via DCI Azure blob connector or point ingestion API
    • Blob connector typically used for bulk data load into DCI
    • Point ingestion typically used for near real time low volumes of data ingestion
  • Provision and manage resources for above operations

 

Additionally users need to define and implement other aspects of connector like data movement orchestration, sync policy, frequency of data updates, speed of data copy, resources auto-scaling, error handling, etc. for a seamless connector experience.

 

Activate the connector

Once a data source connector is added to DCI, activate the connector to let the data flow in to begin the process of insights creation. Exact technical details and steps of how to add connector data source and deploy it can be found in DCI Step-by-step configuration guide.

 

 

– Dev Vidhani

Concurrent business process flows in Dynamics 365

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Applies to: Dynamics 365

The Fall 2016 release of Dynamics 365 introduces concurrent business process flows. This allows multiple processes to run concurrently against the same record, which enables very powerful real-world business scenarios. For example, while the Sales department is running a sales process with a customer, the Customer Service department might be helping that same customer with a previous purchase that generated a support ticket guided by a service process. Concurrently, the Collections department might be reaching out to that customer and following their own process to claim a past payment that was not registered by the system. All three processes run against the same account record, completely isolated from one another.

 

Concurrent business process flow

 

Keep in mind that no two instances of the same business process flow definition can start on the same record, but a cross-entity definition can converge on the same record.

We made this possible by changing the business process flow infrastructure to store processes as full-featured entities. A business process flow definition is represented by an entity and an instance of a process is represented as a record. Each record is associated with a data record (like an account, contact, lead, opportunity etc.) and, in the case of cross-entity processes, with one data record for each participating entity.

 

Cross-entity processes

 

This new architecture provides fine-grained control of access permissions per operation and per security role, and exposure of process data to the charting and reporting infrastructure. Another big benefit is that processes can be manipulated internally by workflows and externally by other services through the OData interface.

Security

Prior to the Fall 2016 release of Dynamics 365, System Administrators and Customizers could limit or restrict processes by security role, but for the Apply (or Create) action only. Once a process was applied, other security roles would have full access to manipulate that process. Now as a full-fledged entity, business process flows follow the organization-level security model and the Create, Read, Update, and Delete actions can be fine-tuned for each security role.

For example, Customer Service Reps could have full access to manipulate service-related processes, while Sales Reps have only Read access in order to monitor the post-sales activities for each customer.

A Collections process might involve critical information that should not leak outside of the Collections department. Restricting that process to only that specific security role guarantees information privacy.

To configure security for a business process flow, follow these steps:

  1. Launch the Business Process Flow designer.
  2. Click Enable Security Roles.

 

Enable security roles

 

  1. Select the security role that you want to change.

 

Select security role

 

  1. Click the Business Process Flow tab, and find the process on the list.
  2. Set the security for each operation per business requirements.

 

Set permissions for each operation

 

Upgrade and Solution Import/Export

Because the process infrastructure in previous versions of CRM have a simpler security model, business process flows from upgraded orgs and imported solutions automatically receive a standard set of permissions for the enabled roles. System Administrators and Customizers should stage and review the permissions before releasing the processes to their production environments.

Programmability – SDK

The full documentation can be found on the MSDN reference page.

Creating (applying), updating and deleting process instances can be done through the OData endpoint:

[org URI]/api/data/v8.2/process_instance_id

… where process_instance_id refers to the process definition unique id, which is the same structure used to manipulate regular data entities.

Create/Apply

HTTP REQUEST

Update

HTTP REQUEST
HTTP RESPONSE

Delete

HTTP REQUEST

Retrieve

HTTP REQUEST
HTTP RESPONSE

Other actions

The SetProcess action (and equivalent SetProcessRequest message) can be used to perform a Create/Apply.

HTTP REQUEST

The RetrieveProcessInstances function (and equivalent RetrieveProcessInstancesRequest message) can be used to retrieve all instances associated with a record.

HTTP REQUEST
HTTP RESPONSE

Programmability – Client API

We made changes to the process-related Client API calls, but maintained compatibility with previous versions by not modifying existing signatures and keeping the general behavior of all functions. More details can be found on the MSDN reference page.

The new or refactored functions are listed below. For all these calls, the user context and security privileges are taken into account:

(Async) Xrm.Page.data.process.setActiveProcess(processDefinitionId, callback)

Receives a process definition id and tries to create a new instance of that process. If there are no instances of that definition running, it creates that process record and associates it with the data record while returning that instance id. If there is already an instance of that process running, it renders that process on the process control and returns that existing instance id. If there are multiple active instances of that process definition running, it renders the “first” and returns that existing instance id. The “first” instance is the last one to be manipulated.

(Async) Xrm.Page.data.process.setActiveProcessInstance(processInstanceId, callback)

Renders an existing process instance on the process control.

(Async) Xrm.Page.data.process.getActiveProcessInstances(callback)

Returns a list of process instances, across all process types, that are running against the record.

For more information on the new Business Process Flow designer, see: Help & Training: Create a business process flow.

 

Carlos Mendonça | LinkedIn

Program Manager

Dynamics 365 team

 

Business process flow automation in Dynamics 365

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Applies to: Dynamics 365

For the Fall 2016 release of Dynamics 365, we made big changes to the business process flow infrastructure. A business process flow definition is now represented as an entity and an instance of a process is stored as a record within that entity. Each record is associated with a data record (like an Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity etc.) and, in the case of cross-entity processes, with one data record for each participating entity.

 

Cross-entity processes

 

This new architecture provides fine-grained control of access permissions per operation and per security role, and exposure of process data to the charting and reporting infrastructure. Another big benefit is that processes can be manipulated internally by workflows and externally by other services through the OData interface. This blog explored the process automation scenarios available from the workflow infrastructure.

Process composition – Calling workflows on demand

You can now call on-demand workflows from inside a business process flow. You can configure this from the new business process flow designer by dragging a workflow component to a process stage or to the Global Workflows section:

  • On-demand stage processes can be triggered on entry or on exit of the stage. The workflow must have the same primary entity as the stage.
  • On-demand global processes can be triggered either on process activation or process archival (status transition to Finished or Abandoned). The workflow must have the same primary entity as the process.

 

Call on-demand workflows in a business process flow

 

Workflow triggers

You can create a workflow whose primary entity is a process entity. Workflows can be triggered by a number events, such as record Create, Update, and Delete, which are configurable from the Workflow editor. In the case of process entities, the events correspond to the following:

  • Applying a process to a data record is a Create action.
  • Stage transition (navigating from stage A to B) is an Update action to the Active Stage
  • Status transition (Active to Abandoned or Finished, Abandoned to Active and Finished to Active) is an Update action to the Status Reason

 

Workflow triggers

 

Other events are also fired by the system, but they are not very common for process entities, such as process instance delete. Instead of deleting a process instance, users would typically archive (abandon or finish) the process. Administrators or users with elevated permissions can choose to delete process instances to clean up the system, but since processes are not yet available on grids for access from the sitemap, that would have to be a workflow or web-service-driven action. But workflows can be associated with the event.

One new very powerful feature introduced in the Fall 2016 release is the ability to monitor changes to the attributes of the second level related records in addition to those of the primary record’s entity. That means, for example, that a workflow on Account can be triggered when the account’s name changes and also when the account primary contact’s name changes. Because this can become an expensive operation depending on how many relationships a record has, this feature can only be used with background (asynchronous) workflows.

This feature is particularly useful for processes because you may want to automate a process stage transition when an attribute of one of the participating data entities changes—for example, when an Opportunity is marked as Lost, automatically abandon the process.

 

Trigger workflow on changes to related records

 

To select the attributes to monitor, first select the entity in the dropdown, and them mark the attribute of interest.

 

select-attributes-to-monitor

 

Process manipulation and condition checking

As the workflow executes, all the actions available to regular data entities are also available to process entities. This means you can create a workflow that creates new records, updates the participating records, deletes records, sends emails, executes any of the out-of-box* or registered workflow actions, or updates the process itself.

  • To apply a process, create a new process record. Using the SetProcess workflow action is an equivalent operation.
  • To check the current stage or to transition to a new stage, read or update the Active Stage
  • To check the current status (Active, Abandoned, or Finished) or to transition to a different status, read or update the Status Reason
  • To check the date/time the process was applied or the date/time the process entered the current stage, read the Created On (createdon) and Active Stage Started On (activestagestartedon) fields, respectively.

* For the Fall 2016 release, we made new out-of-box workflow actions available. They each have a corresponding web service message that was already available previously on Dynamics 365:

  • AddToQueue
  • AddUserToRecordTeam
  • ApplyRoutingRule
  • CalculateActualValue
  • CloseOpportunity
  • GetQuoteProductsFromOpportunity
  • GetSalesOrderProductsFromOpportunity
  • LockInvoicePricing
  • LockSalesOrderPricing
  • QualifyLead
  • RemoveUserFromRecordTeam
  • ResolveIncident
  • ResolveQuote
  • Revise
  • SetProcess
  • SetWordTemplate
  • UnlockInvoicePricing
  • UnlockSalesOrderPricing

For more information on business process automation, see:

 

Carlos Mendonça | LinkedIn

Program Manager

Dynamics 365 team

 

 

My Apps on Home.Dynamics.com

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Applies To:  Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics CRM Online

 

The Dynamics 365 Home page provides users a fast and easy way to access and launch their business applications from a centralized location.  Business applications that are displayed here include all the Dynamics 365 applications and PowerApps.  Each application is displayed in the form of a tile with a description to guide user’s access to the application.

This blog addresses the following areas:

  1. Users are seeing business apps on the Dynamics 365 Home page that they are not familiar with.
  2. Users are getting access denied error when launching business apps.
  3. Users are not seeing a business app that they expect to see.

 

1. Users are seeing business apps on the Dynamics 365 Home page that they are not familiar with.

When a Security Group is not specified in an instance, all active users who have a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online license will be added to the instance.

 

An instance without a security group specified

 

Users will see these Dynamics 365 business apps on the Dynamics 365 Home page regardless of whether they have been assigned a security role for the applications.

 

My Apps

All users who have a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online license will see all the instances which do not have a Security group.

 

To manage the appropriate list of Dynamics 365 applications on users’ Dynamics 365 Home page, a respective security group must be specified for each Dynamics 365 instance.  Only users who are part of the Dynamics 365 instance’s security group will see that instance’s application tile.

See Control user access to instances: security groups and licenses for detailed instructions on creating and assigning security groups to Dynamics 365 instances.

 

My Apps menu showing only apps for a security group

Example: Only users who are member of these instances’ Security groups will see these applications.

 

2. Users are getting access denied error.

If the Dynamics 365 administrator did not assign a security role to the user for a Dynamics 365 instance, the user will see the following error when the user tries to access/launch the application.

 

No security role error

 

Assign the user with an appropriate security role for the Dynamics 365 instance to resolve this issue. See Create users and assign Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) security roles.

 

3. Users are not seeing an application that they expect to see.

When users report that they are not seeing an application that they expect on their Dynamics 365 Home page, one of the following can be the cause of the issue:

 

  1. A Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online license has not been assigned to the user. See  Add a license to a user account to resolve this issue.
  2. The Dynamics 365 instance has not been fully configured.  Admin can review and complete instance setup by Signing in to https://portal.office.com.
  3. User (includes CRM admin) is not in the Security Group of the instance. See Control user access to instances: security groups and licenses to add user to Security Group.
  4. User has not been assigned a Security Role. Create users and assign Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) security roles.
  5. The application has not been synced to the users. The list of applications is cached on the Dynamics 365 Home page, and users who were added to a security group or assigned a security role need to manually perform a Sync to see their updated list of applications.

 

Users who were added to a security group or assigned a security to an instance need to manually perform a Sync to see their updated list of applications.

 

Sync apps on Dynamics 365 home page

 

For a better user experience…

Users can pin apps that they access regularly and navigate to these apps easily from the top of the list or from the left navigation bar.

See Pin your frequently-used apps for detailed instructions on how to pin apps.

 

See Also:

You can troubleshoot issues with signing in to Dynamics 365 using the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365. For more information, see the blog New diagnostic scenario for web sign-in

 

 

– Paul Liew

Big Data and Analytics made easy for Sales, Marketing and Services

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Do you find yourself asking how you can leverage all your data for more intelligent Customer Engagement?

  • How do we quickly learn about a customer’s journey given the information spread across our transactional systems, CRM applications, Web stream logs, Social feeds and in some cases IoT data?
  • How will we put together a unified view of the customer when these systems have different ways to identify the same customer?
  • How do we scale to manage and analyze the growing volumes of data we collect?
  • How do we keep our insights up-to-date with the most advanced analytics and the latest data available across our enterprise?

Transforming data into actionable intelligent insight has several challenges. Joining together data from multiple structured and unstructured sources with different identities is complex. It requires elaborate computational, storage and processing infrastructure that can scale to the ever-growing volume of your data. Also, valuable data science resources should be focused on critical business problems rather than data wrangling.

Transforming data into intelligence is complex

 

What if, there was a service that understands the way data is stored in different data systems, brings together this data easily with near-instant updates and makes it easy to apply pre-packaged analytics that allows you to develop an always up-to-date customer profile?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights is that service for you. It is a cloud-based SaaS service that enables organizations of all sizes to bring together data from multiple sources and generate knowledge and insights for your business.

Customer 360° is first among the many Big Data Analytics apps that is built on Customer Insights  and is currently available for public preview. In the near future, more will be available on top of the Customer Insights service.

The key components involved in having your Customer 360° application up and running are:

 

Key components to have Customer 360 up and running

 

  1. Data Ingestion at Scale through connectors
    A data connector facilitates data source connection and data pull to Customer Insights.
    More details on the connectors can be found through below links:

 

  1. Data Modelling of business entities
    Profiles, Interactions, KPIs, Links and relationships are the foundational pieces of Customer Insights through which the data model is constructed.
    More details on these building blocks can be found here: Customer Insights Overview

 

  1. Prepackaged analytics along with flexibility to define new KPIs
    KPIs can be defined for each step of a business workflow or for a cumulative measure of a business function. Customer Insights can compute these KPIs in real time.
    More details on the defining new KPIs can be found under the Add a KPI section in the following link: Step-by-Step Configuration

 

  1. Point and click app creation for visualization of insights through powerful widgets that can be embedded in LOB systems
    More details on how to create a Customer 360° app can be found here: Step-by-Step Customer 360°

 

– Ashwarya Poddar

Troubleshoot Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Connector for Microsoft Dynamics 365 configuration: Unhandled thread exception when configuring Dynamics 365 organizations

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Problem

Users are receiving an unhandled thread exception when configuring Dynamics 365 organizations, instead of seeing the available entities. This issue is caused by a previous version of the Dynamics 365 SDK in the Connector installation.

Workaround

With the latest release of Dynamics 365 you need to take the following steps to be able to connect to Connector for integrating data.

  1. Download the latest Dynamics 365 SDK.
  2. Before replacing the dlls in the next two steps you may want to make copies of them.
  3. Replace Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy.dll from the <Connector installation directory> with the dll of the same name found in the SDK installation.
  4. Replace Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.dll from the <Connector installation directory>\Adapters\Microsoft.Dynamics.Integration.Adapters.Crm2011 directory with the dll of the same name found in the SDK installation.
  5. Redirect the dependent Xrm Sdk assemblies from version 7.0.0.0 to version 8.0.0.0 by updating or adding the following xml tags to these connector configuration files; these files can be found in the <Connector installation directory>:
    • exe.config
    • Dynamics.Integration.Adapters.Crm2011.Configuration.exe.config
    • Dynamics.Integration.Client.exe.config
<configuration><runtime><assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"><dependentAssembly><assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /><bindingRedirect oldVersion="7.0.0.0" newVersion="8.0.0.0"/></dependentAssembly><dependentAssembly><assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /><bindingRedirect oldVersion="7.0.0.0" newVersion="8.0.0.0"/></dependentAssembly></assemblyBinding></runtime></configuration>
  1. Shutdown all Connector applications
  2. Restart the Connector Service
  3. Restart Connector Client application
  4. Try to configure Dynamics 365 organizations again. You should not receive the error and should be able to see the list of available entities when configuring organizations.

 

 

– Microsoft Dynamics 365 Product Engineering Team


What’s new in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.3

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Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.3 is ready to be released in April 2017. This article describes the features, fixes, and other changes that are included in this update.

New features introduced

Update 1.3 introduces the following features:

Power BI content pack for Social Engagement

Microsoft Social Engagement introduces the Microsoft Power BI content pack to get insights about your engagement and team performance on social media. This content pack is designed specifically for community managers, providing performance metrics for engagement actions taken from within Social Engagement. Track metrics, such as number of actions taken and average response times, and get visibility into the performance of each member of your team. Power BI automatically creates the dashboard and reports that give you a great starting point for exploring and analyzing your Social Engagement data.

Conversation view for private messages and Twitter replies

Starting with this update, Social Engagement shows you any conversation that involves private messages (Facebook or Twitter) and Twitter replies of one of your social profiles. It displays the back and forth between two authors sorted by showing the latest post first. At the top you will see the two authors, including the one that belongs to your team. It also shows the team members who answered as that social profile.

Issues resolved

In addition to the new features, Update 1.3 addresses the following issues and improvements:

* Fixed an issue that led to search topics taking a very to save, and in some cases making it impossible to save a search topic.

* Fixed an issue that assigned every Twitter author the reach value 2.

Introduction to Dynamics 365 – Data Export Service

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Data extraction and synchronization made easy

Have you ever wanted an easy ability to replicate Dynamics 365 (online) CRM data to an Azure database for using Azure analytics tools without the added complexity of managing an ETL tool? Did you ever want to use Power BI based reporting over the entire Dynamics 365 organization data? Have you ever wanted a tool that can push Dynamics 365 (online) delta changes continuously in a matter of a few minutes without running frequent scheduled jobs? Then the new Dynamics 365 – Data Export Service is just the right service for you. The new Appsource app Data Export Service enables administrators to do just that and it’s free to use with Dynamics 365 (online)!

What is the Data Export Service?

The Microsoft Dynamics 365-Data Export Service is a free add-on service made available on Microsoft AppSource that synchronizes Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) data to a Microsoft Azure SQL Database store in a customer-owned Microsoft Azure subscription. The supported target destinations are Microsoft Azure SQL Database and Microsoft SQL Server on Microsoft Azure virtual machines. The Data Export Service synchronizes the entire Dynamics 365 data initially and thereafter synchronizes delta changes on a continuous basis as they occur in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) system. This helps enable several analytics and reporting scenarios on top of Dynamics 365 data with Azure services, such as Power BI or Machine Learning and opens up new possibilities for customers and partners to build custom solutions.

 

Data Export Service

Figure 1- Data Export Service

 

With the Data Export Service, you can quickly set up data replication to a destination database with export profiles in a matter of a few minutes. Each export profile provides an easy ability to choose a set of entities to replicate data from Dynamics 365 to a destination database and thereafter the entire data is available in tables automatically created in the destination database. You can set up multiple export profiles simultaneously to replicate data to different databases to cater to different workload scenarios, such as one export profile can replicate data for sales reporting and another one can replicate data for service reporting. Data is synchronized in 2 stages, first with initial sync and then with continuous delta sync as changes happen in Dynamics 365 with a push mechanism within a matter of few mins.

 

2 - Stage synchronization

Figure 2 – 2 – Stage synchronization

 

The Data Export Service simplifies the technical and administrative complexity of deploying and managing a data export solution – automatically managing both schema and data. Below are the key capabilities of the Data Export Service:

  • Metadata changes such as addition or modification of fields are automatically synchronized
  • Full initial data synchronization
  • Push-based delta synchronization as changes occur in Dynamics 365. Delta changes are pushed in a matter of a few minutes
  • Built-in recovery for addressing transient failures
  • Delete log table to track deletes along with their timestamps
  • Timestamps to compute delta based on sync time
  • Monitoring and diagnostics on sync progress
  • Scalable, reliable, and secure cloud service operated by Microsoft
  • APIs for programmatic management of export profiles

Use cases it can help

Having your data in Azure SQL database enables several possibilities, such as to set up an operational database for reporting with Power BI, build a staging area for data warehouse, or to build machine learning models. In addition, a synchronized database can also help offload any read-only workload centric queries, which  reduces load on the main Dynamics 365 system. The key use case that the Data Export Service can help is to build scalable operational or enterprise BI reporting with Power BI in Azure backed by Azure SQL database.

 

Typical use cases

Figure 3 – Typical use cases

 

How to set up

To install the Data Export Service, go to its AppSource app page. Follow the steps to install the app and wait for the installation to finish. You must be a Dynamics 365 administrator to install applications from AppSource. You can monitor the installation status in the Dynamics 365 Admin Center. Once installed, login to Dynamics 365 as administrator and from the Settings menu, select “Data Export.” You are then taken to the data export profiles list, which displays all your available export profiles.

How to create a Data Export Profile

Creating a Data Export Profile is an easy wizard driven process. All it requires is to select the entities and m:n relationships with a few other additional profile specific settings such as name, table prefix, or enable delete log.

Prior to creation of the export profile, there are a few important prerequisites. They are:

  1. Any entity to be added to an export profile must be enabled with change tracking
  2. The destination database connection string must be maintained in an Azure Key Vault URL to ensure secrets are securely managed. The Key Vault URL must exist in the same tenant as Dynamics 365. Refer to the How to set up the Key Vault URL link below on how to use a script template to automate the Key Vault URL creation.

For more information on how to enable change tracking, refer to the link below Use change tracking to synchronize data with external systems. Most of the OOB entities are change tracking enabled. For custom entities, you must explicitly do so.

The screenshots below describe the steps to create the export profile.

Step 1- Provide basic information

 

Provide basic information

 

Step 2 – Select entities

 

Select entities

 

Step 3 – Select relationships

 

select-relationships

 

Step 4 – Create and Activate

 

Create and activate

 

Export profiles, once activated, starts the data synchronization – first with metadata sync, followed by initial data sync, and then with continuous delta data sync. During initial sync, the existing data in Dynamics 365 for added entities is synchronized with the destination database. After initial sync, delta sync starts, and any create, modify or delete record change for entities added to export profile is automatically synchronized.

With Refresh, you can see the latest progress on synchronization with status and notification counters.

 

Synchronized Sales Data export profile

Figure 4 – Synchronized Sales Data export profile

 

Metadata sync automatically creates and updates tables in the destination database. Here we see tables have been automatically created for various entities such as Account, Lead, Opportunity, Product & Campaign entities using the “sales” prefix provided in the Sales Data export profile. Refer to the TechNet documentation link below on details of all the tables that are created including metadata specific tables for Optionsets.

 

Database tables

Figure 5 – Database tables

 

 

Metrics for data synchronization during initial sync and delta sync are shown in terms of notification counters. A notification encapsulates a record change – it maps to create, modify, or delete change of a record. There are 3 main metrics that are captured:

  1. Total notifications show all notifications to be processed for data synchronization.
  2. Successful notifications show all notifications that have been processed successfully and the corresponding insert/update/delete change that has been synchronized to the destination database.
  3. Failed notifications show all notifications that have failed during processing.

Notification counters at the end of initial sync show a count for all records synchronized from Dynamics 365. For any errors that occurred during synchronization, you can click Download Failed Records to obtain a URL to connect with Azure Storage Explorer to see the log of failures and address the reason behind those failures such as database is down or out of space. Refer to Resolving synchronization issues link below on more details on how to analyze the error logs and various error recovery techniques as well best practices to avoid running into synchronization errors.

Reporting with Power BI

Reporting with Power BI is one of the key use cases that can be enabled with the Data Export Service. To facilitate easy creation of the end-to-end solution with the Data Export Service, we have partnered with Power BI team to build solution templates for Dynamics 365 using the Data Export Service. Solution templates help in the easy setup of an end-to-end reporting solution with Power BI in the customer’s subscription. More information for Dynamics 365 solution templates powered by the Data Export Service is available here.

In the future, we will be releasing more of such solution templates to cater to reporting scenarios across service and marketing.

Summarizing, the Data Export Service can empower administrators to easily replicate Dynamics 365 (online) data into Azure SQL database. This enables full power over CRM data for various analytics and reporting use cases and get past the limits in Dynamics 365 for reporting and analytics.

We welcome your suggestions to improve the service. Please provide your suggestions at CRM ideas portal.

 

Useful Links

 

 

– Narinder Singh

Invite Users to access Dynamics 365 with the Azure Active Directory business-to-business (B2B)

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You can invite other users to access your Dynamics 365 CRM (online) instance.  Your Office 365 Global admin can do this through the Azure portal.  Invited users can access your Dynamics 365 CRM (online) instance using their own login credentials once a Dynamics 365 license and a security role are assigned to them.  You don’t need to create a new user ID and temporary password for these invited users in your own Office 365 tenant.

Invite a user

Users can be added into Dynamics 365 through the Azure Active Directory B2B user collaboration.  Global Admins and limited admins can use the Azure portal to invite B2B collaboration users to the directory, to any security group or to any application. Admins can use one of the following methods to invite B2B users to their Dynamics 365 instance:

Assign invited users a Dynamics 365 license and security role

Your invited users can start using your Dynamics 365 instance once a Dynamics 365 license and a security role are assigned to them. For complete instructions, see Invite users to Dynamics 365 with Azure Active Directory B2B.

See also

Customizable sample apps for Project Service Automation Time and Expense entry

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation

We recently released source code samples for two mobile apps which can be used with the Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation solution.

One of the apps is for project team members to provide Time entries.  The other app is for project team members to provide Expense entries.  For details on time and expense entry refer to this guide .

The sample apps are targeted for phone form factor and are built using Xamarin.  The sample apps are available on GitHub and can be copied for used by developers.  These samples provide examples of mobile applications that can be used to enter time entries or expense entries.  They can be customized or extended as needed by customers or partners.

Note: Microsoft does not provide support for these samples.

Reconfigure Microsoft Dynamics Connector for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Update the SDK to stop the reference to ACS

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Problem

With the deprecation of Azure Access Control Service (ACS), you should modify the SDK authentication code by removing all references to ACS. Effective from versions Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update 1 (v8.1.1) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 (v8.2), we removed Live ID support and ACS dependencies on the server-side. It is required to update the references in all client side components by updating the SDK.

Impacted Version

Verify the <Connector Installation Directory>\Adapters\ Microsoft.Dynamics.Integration.Adapters.Crm2011 directory and right click and select properties on Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.DLL. Click on Details section. If the File Version shows 8.0 or lower, then you need to perform the workaround.

Workaround

With the latest release of Dynamics 365 you need to take the following steps to be able to connect to Connector for integrating data:

1. Download the latest Dynamics 365 SDK.

2. Before replacing the dlls in the next two steps you may want to make copies of them.

3. Replace Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy.dll from the <Connector installation directory> with the dll of the same name found in the SDK installation

4. Replace Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.dll from the <Connector installation directory>\Adapters\Microsoft.Dynamics.Integration.Adapters.Crm2011 directory with the dll of the same name found in the SDK installation

5. Redirect the dependent Xrm Sdk assemblies from version 7.0.0.0 to version 8.0.0.0 by updating or adding the following xml tags to these connector configuration files; these files can be found in the <Connector installation directory>

  • ConnectorServiceHost.exe.config
  • Microsoft.Dynamics.Integration.Adapters.Crm2011.Configuration.exe.config
  • Microsoft.Dynamics.Integration.Client.exe.config
<configuration>  
    <runtime>    
       <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"><dependentAssembly>
         <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" />        
         <bindingRedirect oldVersion="7.0.0.0" newVersion="8.0.0.0"/>      
       </dependentAssembly>      
       <dependentAssembly><assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /><bindingRedirect oldVersion="7.0.0.0" newVersion="8.0.0.0"/>      
       </dependentAssembly>    
       </assemblyBinding>  
    </runtime></configuration>

6. Shutdown all Connector applications

7. Restart the Connector Service

8. Restart Connector Client application

9. Attempt CRM configuration again. You should able to see the list of available entities when configuring organizations.

Changes in Dynamics 365 Portal trial Strategy

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Applies to: Portal capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365

As we are inching towards anniversary year of Dynamics 365 portal service offering launch, I wanted to share with everyone some changes in the trial strategy for Portal service.

As part of Dynamics CRM 2016 SP1 release, we introduced the Portal Service for Dynamics CRM and launched https://crmmanagedtrials.dynamics.com (now https://experience.dynamics.com) where customers can request a Managed Portal trial to use in their Dynamics tenant.

With launch of Dynamics 365 service, whole trial strategy for Dynamics 365 service has been redefined. Portal trials are now bundled as part of Dynamics 365 trials along with other add-ons like field service and project service. Apart from giving an integrated trial experience, the bundled Portal trials get converted into Paid version automatically when you purchase your Dynamics 365 subscription. This functionality was not available with Managed Portal trials before.

To align with our integration trial strategy, Managed Portal trials will be retired from https://experience.dynamics.com on 05/05/2017 .

In case you are already using Managed trial, please note that : –

  • Your existing trial  will continue to work until the trial subscription period lasts.
  • Portal trial offer URL which you got from https://experience.dynamics.com and haven’t used yet will  continue to work.
  • If you are an existing Dynamics 365 customer , you can try out portals using the free Portal subscription which comes along with your Dynamics 365 Plan 1 and Plan 2 offering.

Also, if you are trying to setup a portal trial in your tenant, please follow the steps mentioned here. Same steps are applicable for Managed trials as well as Integrated trials.

I hope this helps you understand the details of our trial strategy.

Dileep Singh

Program Manager

Microsoft Social Engagement infrastructure update May 2017

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The Microsoft Social Engagement team will perform updates to modernize the platform infrastructure and prepare the environments for new features. These updates require a downtime for a subset of the active organizations. For specific dates of the scheduled update for your organization, please refer to the notification emails delivered to the Global Administrators of your organization.

What is the impact when your organization is scheduled for update?

  • Your Microsoft Social Engagement solution will not be available for the duration of the update
  • Social data will continue to be acquired and will show up in the solution after the update
  • There will be a delay in social data acquisition after the scheduled update The Service Health Dashboard in the Office 365 admin portal will reflect the current state of the update and data backlog.

Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

-The Microsoft Social Engagement team


What’s new in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.4

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Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.4 is ready and will be released in May 2017. This article describes the features, fixes, and other changes that are included in this update.

New features introduced in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.4

Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.4 introduces the following features:

Engagement Analytics with Power BI

We are extending our recently introduced Microsoft Power BI content pack for Social Engagement with the new Engagement Analytics report; adding to the Engagement Performance and Team Performance reports previously released. The Engagement Analytics report provides you additional insights regarding your engagement on social media with metrics based on location, sentiment, tags and authors. The data model is also enhanced to include these additional dimensions giving you more power to explore and analyze your Social Engagement data.

Improved usability in Social Selling Assistant

The Social Selling Assistant experience received a first polishing pass: The Done button is now next to all other actions at the bottom of the card. We adapted the forms in the Social Selling Assistant configuration and Social Engagement Settings page User Preferences to industry standards. When editing those forms the Save and Cancel buttons are now the bottom of the input form. Additionally, the main navigation now contains a direct link to the Post view in Analytics, filtered for private messages, so you can get to your customers messages in a single click.

Issues that are resolved in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.4

In addition to the new features, Update 1.4 addresses the following issues and improvements:

  • Improved visibility of links, text and tooltips when using the dark theme.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented sending private messages to Facebook from within Microsoft Social Engagement.

Analyze your Dynamics 365 business processes with Power BI, and add its analytics to your Dynamics 365 dashboard

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Microsoft has just released the new Process Analyzer Content Pack for Power BI for Dynamics 365 Version 8.2 and higher.

This content pack can help you monitor and analyze your business processes based on the detailed process information stored in your Dynamics 365 system. In this blog article, we’ll introduce this new content pack and show you how to get it, add a custom filter to one of its views, and embed the resulting visualization in your Dynamics 365 dashboard.

The content pack links directly to your Dynamics 365 database, creating interactive data visualizations that help provide insights into your business process flows. Track service performance with metrics like volume in processes with average duration in stage (broken down by stage), the process stage funnel, volume over stage completion date, and velocity through stages (with duration and days since completed).

 

Interactive data visualizations

 

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through several, increasingly customized and integrated, ways of working with this new content pack. The post is a bit long, so you can decide for yourself how deep you want to go. The stages we’ll cover are:

  • Add the Process Analyzer Content Pack to your Power BI account
    This will let you analyze and explore your business process data in the Power BI portal, using the default reports and dashboard provided by the content pack.
  • Embed the default Process Analyzer dashboard in Dynamics 365
    This will bring the default business-process analytics into Dynamics 365, so you can monitor them each day without leaving Dynamics 365.
  • Create a personalized report and dashboard in Power BI
    Create personalized business-process analytics that are most relevant to you and explore them using the Power BI portal
  • Embed and mix personalized business-process analytics in a Dynamics 365 dashboard
    Create a custom Dynamics 365 dashboard that combines your personalized business-process analytics from Power BI with other types of customized Dynamics 365 information.

 

Add the Process Analyzer Content Pack to Power BI

To use the content pack, you must add it to your Power BI account and connect it to your Dynamics 365 instance as follows:

  1. Sign in to Power BI using the same account that you use in Office 365 and Dynamics 365.
  1. Click Get Data at the bottom of the left navigation pane (click the Show navigation pane button Show navigation pane button at the left edge of the page if you don’t see the Get Data button).
  1. The Get Data page opens. From here, click the Get button under the Services.

 

Get data

 

  1. The AppSource dialog opens. Use the search form here to find the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Process Analyzer and click Get it now.

 

AppSource
 

  1. The Connect to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Process Analyzer dialog opens. Enter the base domain name of your Dynamics 365 instance in the field provided (for example, “contoso.crm.dynamics.com”; don’t include “https://” or any path information).

 

Connect to Dynamics 365 Process Analyzer

 

  1. Click Next to continue. On the next page, set the Authentication method to OAuth2 and click Sign in.

 

Set the authentication method
 

  1. If an Office 365 sign-in window opens, then use the credentials you normally use to sign into Dynamics 365. Once you are signed in, you’ll return to Power BI and your Dynamics 365 data begins to load, which may take a few minutes.
  2. When the data is done loading, your Power BI navigation pane updates to show a new Dataset, Report and Dashboard in the left navigation column, each named after the Process Analyzer Content Pack.
  3. You have now added the new content pack and can start exploring the report and dashboard included with it.

 
 

Embed the default Process Analyzer dashboard in Dynamics 365

Let’s add the default Process Analyzer dashboard as a Dynamics 365 dashboard, so you’ll be able to monitor process analytics in the context of your daily work.

  1. Sign into Dynamics 365 using the same Office 365 account that you used to sign into Power BI.
  2. Go to any dashboard that you often use in Dynamics 365 (such as Sales > My Work > Dashboards).
  1. In the toolbar, open the New menu and choose Dynamics Power BI Dashboard.

 

Choose Dynamics Power BI Dashboard
 

  1. The Add Power BI Dashboard dialog opens. From the Dashboard drop-down list, choose the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Process Analyzer and click Save.

 

Add Power BI Dashboard dialog box

 

  1. The full Process Analyzer Power BI dashboard is now available right in your Dynamics 365 workspace. Click on any of the tiles here to open a pop-up window that provides an interactive view of the original Process Analyzer Power BI report for you to explore.

 

Process Analyzer Power BI dashboard available in Dynamics 365

 
 

Create a personalized business-process report and dashboard in Power BI

Out of the box, the Process Manager Content Pack shows analytics that include all the processes that you have set up in Dynamics 365. Let’s imagine that you’re a manager that is only interested in one specific process–power BI makes it easy to create a dashboard that is personalized just for you. Here’s how:

  1. Under the Reports heading in Power BI’s navigation pane, select the Process Manager report that you just added. Then select the Process Analyzer Template page (from the panel at the bottom of the report), and finally click on Edit Report in the toolbar at the top of the report. You now switch to the report-edit view.

 

Edit Report
 

  1. The Process Analyzer Template provides a foundation for building your own process-specific reports, so we’ll start by making a copy of this template, and then customize the copy. Right-click on the Process Analyzer Template page name at the bottom of the page and then choose Duplicate Page from the pop-up menu.

 
Create a copy of template
 

  1. With your new page selected, find the Filters heading in the Visualizations pane, which on the right side of the page; here you should see that there is a page-level filter called Name.

 
Page level filters
 

  1. Click on the Expand button for the Name filter (it looks like a hyphen; don’t click the delete-filter button, which is right next to it). The filter expands to show all the business-process names in use on your Dynamics 365 instance. Try marking the various checkboxes here and note how they affect the analytics shown in the main part of the screen. End by marking the checkbox for just one process name that shows interesting results. Your new page now provides analytics specific for your selected process only.

 

All available business processes are seen in the filter

 

  1. Click Save save-button in the toolbar at the top of the page to save your new report page.
  2. Hover your mouse pointer over one of the graphs from your new report page, and note the tile controls that appear in the upper-right corner of the tile. Choose a graph that you would like to include in your new dashboard and click on its Pin Visual button here.

 
Include a graph in your dashboard
 

  1. The Pin to dashboard dialog opens. Choose the New dashboard radio button and then enter a name for your new dashboard in the field provided. Click Pin to create the new dashboard and add your selected tile to it. Power BI dashboards make your visuals accessible from other systems, such as Dynamics 365, and we’ll be taking advantage of this later in the blog article.

 

Pin to Dashboard

 

  1. Using similar techniques, add a few more interesting visuals from your new, single-process report page to your new dashboard.
  2. Your new dashboard is shown under the Dashboard heading in the navigation pane.

 
 

Embed and mix personalized business-process analytics in a Dynamics 365 dashboard

Now that your personalized dashboard is set up in Power Bi and available for sharing, let’s add its visuals to a custom Dynamics 365 dashboard, where you’ll be able to see them more easily in the context of your daily work, and can mix them with other types of Dynamics 365 tiles.

  1. Sign into Dynamics 365 using the same Office 365 account that you used to sign into Power BI.
  2. Go to any dashboard view that you often use in Dynamics 365 (such as Sales > My Work > Dashboards).
  3. In the toolbar, open the New menu and choose Dynamics 365 Dashboard. (Note that you could also choose to create a Power BI Dashboard That option will load an entire Power BI Dashboard into a Dynamics 365 Dashboard all at once, but doesn’t let you add any other tiles or otherwise customize it in Dynamics 365.)

 

Choose Dynamics 365 Dashboard from the menu

 

  1. The Choose Layout dialog opens. Choose any layout that has enough room for the tiles you want to add and then click Create.

 

Choose layout

 

  1. You now see a blank dashboard in Dynamics 365, with tiles arranged in the layout you chose. Each tile shows a collection of buttons in its center, which you can use to add actual tiles of various types to your layout. Choose a box in your layout and click on its Add a Power BI tile to the dashboard button.

 

Add a Power BI tile to the dashboard button

 

  1. The Power BI Tile dialog opens. From the Power BI Dashboard drop-down list, choose the name of the custom Power BI Dashboard that you just made. From the Tile drop-down list, choose the name of a tile from that dashboard that you want to add. Then click OK.

 

Power BI Tile dialog box

 

  1. The Power BI tile is now added to your dashboard. Using similar techniques, continue placing Power BI tiles on your dashboard however you’d like. You can also mix in other types of Dynamics 365 dashboards.
  2. Enter a name for your new dashboard in the Name field, then click Save and Close in the toolbar. Your new dashboard is now ready for use.

 

New dashboard ready for use in Dynamics 365

 
 

Resources and more information

To learn more about the topics raised in this blog post, and to find related resources, see the following:

If you’re an advanced user, and would like to open, analyze, and customize this content pack in detail using the Power BI desktop app, then you can download the Process Analyzer Content Pack here.

 

We’d like to credit the co-authors on this, and give contact details for Christian, who would like to interact with customers and partners who use this content pack. Here are author details:

Christian Abeln

Senior Program Manager, Microsoft

Email: Christian.Abeln@microsoft.com

 

Karl Maybach

Senior Content Developer, Microsoft

Dynamics 365 for Field Service and Project Services Automation February 2017 updates

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We recently released an update in February for Dynamics 365 for Field Service, Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation, Resource Scheduling Optimization solutions. Below are the new capabilities and bug fixes introduced in this update. 

Unified Resource Scheduling Enhancements – for both Project Service Automation and Field Service 

  • Performance improvements for schedule board.  
  • You can now apply resource work template to multiple resources at a time. 
  • Updated sitemap with shorter names 
  • Company address has been renamed to organizational unit in the resource location option set. 
  • There is a new option in the resource start and end location fields on the resource records. The new option is “location agnostic”. Resources that have a start or end location of location agnostic will only return in schedule assistant results if the requirement is location agnostic. Additionally, if start or end location of resource is organizational unit or resource address, those respective records must have a valid latitude and longitude. 
  • Multiple enhancements to map tooltips and pin behavior. 
  • New icons for current location on schedule board map. One for current location and one when the current location has expired. Added option to hide resource current location on map 
  • Selecting resource on schedule board auto selects resource current location, and falls back to start of day location. 
  • Multiple enhancements for selected map pins on schedule board map. 
  • When user selects a record on the schedule board, which should display respective pin on the map, yet the pin cannot show on the map, there is now an error message that gets displayed on the map. For example, if the user selects a booking without any location, error message is displayed. If user selects a requirement from bottom panel yet is excluded from the requirement map view, error message appears. 
  • Schedule Boards can now be shared with specific people. 
    • Each schedule board has three share types. “Just Me”, “Specific People” and “Everyone”.  
    • To have schedule board access at all, user must have read privileges to the schedule board setting entity. 
    • If schedule board share type=”Just Me” then only the owner of the schedule board will see this board. If the board is owned by a team, then no one will see this board. 
    • Schedule board share type of “Everyone” works the same way public schedule boards worked in previous releases. If schedule board share type = “Everyone”, then every user will have access to this board if they have read rights to the schedule board settings entity.  
    • If schedule board share type = “Specific People”, then users who have rights to that schedule board settings record will be able to see this schedule board. This means customers can share schedule boards with specific users or teams instead of needing to share boards with the entire organization. 
  • When searching for availability on the schedule board, resource that are not available in the search can either be dimmed, or removed from the board. For personas who are viewing a specific set of resources and do not want resources removed from the board if they are not a match can choose to dim unavailable resources, while personas without this requirement can have unavailable resources completely removed from the board. This setting can be changed in the schedule board tab settings. 
  • Users can now reorder their schedule boards by dragging the tab names on the top right of the board in the order they prefer. This can also be accomplished by changing the order number on the record itself. Users can only reorder within each share type. All boards that are share type “Everyone” will appear first. Then share type of “specific people”, followed by “Just me”. 
  • Each type of requirement can now have a separate requirement details view, which controls what shows in the details panel on the schedule board when the user selects a requirement in the requirements panel on the bottom panel of the schedule board. 
  • Map toolbar has been reformatted to make better use of space. 
  • When launching new schedule assistant, the default search duration is based on the requirement remaining duration. 
  • When filtering by a specific column in the requirements panel on the schedule board, when interacting with date fields, you can now filter by days, minutes, and hours. 
  • While using new schedule assistant, when user changes the “search for” option in the filter control from search within to search all, existing filters are immediately cleared. 

Resource Scheduling Optimization Enhancements  

  • One resource got multiple bookings at the same time, which is not expected. This overlapping booking issue has been fixed. 
  • Multiple fixes for Right to Left language support for Hebrew and Arabic  
  • Changed the fall back logic: If Bing maps is not able to find a valid route for start/end location, the entire call with multiple bookings will fall back to manual calculation. Now, only that specific booking will fall back to manual calculation instead of entire service call. 
  • In the Scope, when the user configured a time rage in the past, we used to create bookings in the past. This has been fixed.  
  • If one resource has defined multiple breaks in their calendar, this caused an issue with Resource Scheduling Optimization and it could not optimize bookings for this type of resource. This has been fixed.  

 Project Service Automation Enhancements  

  • Performance improvements in Resource booking and fulfilment experiences, WBS and task scheduling 
  • Credit notes: We now support the ability to credit or correct a Project Service invoice that was sent to the customer. Quantity of billable hours, bill rates and other charges can now be corrected or reversed. 
  • Time Entry/Expense:User was not able to see reject comment after time entry /expense got rejected. Now a user can see this. 
  • Expense localizationfix: Currency entered is not shown correctly in Expense when the currency is any other than USD. This have been fixed. 

 

Common Scheduling Solution for Dynamics 365 January Updates

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation, Dynamics 365 for Field Solution, Dynamics 365 for Common Scheduling Solution

 

This past fall, we introduced Common Scheduling Solution in Dynamics 365. Regardless of what type of scheduling your organization is engaged in, be it Field Service scheduling, Project Service Scheduling, Case scheduling, Lead scheduling, or maybe something completely custom, Common Scheduling Solution helps you book your skilled resources to the right work, at the right time, independent of workstream.

With our first major update since our initial launch, we continued to focus on quality, performance and usability. We were also able to respond to some customer feature requests as well!

Below you will find both a list, and a detailed explanation on the additions made in Common Scheduling Solution.

 

New Features Introduced in Common Scheduling Solution

Schedule Board

  • Fulfilled and remaining duration
    • Fulfilled and Remaining Duration is now an out of the box concept. There is now an out of the box way to track fulfillment of a requirement and filter out requirements which have been fully scheduled.
      • Plugins automatically calculate the fulfilled and remaining duration of a requirement.
      • The open requirements view has been updated to filter out requirements in which remaining duration is equal to or less than 0.
      • Explanation of plugin logic – As changes are made to bookings or to the requirement duration, a plugin summarizes all related bookings and subtracts the estimated travel duration. If actual travel duration has a value, then actual travel is used instead. The difference between requirement duration and booking duration minus travel = remaining duration.

Fulfilled and remaining duration

 

  • Configurable Colors on Resource Summary Rows– Resource summary rows for the daily, weekly, and monthly schedule board views now have configurable colors. Colors can be set by double clicking any of your schedule board tabs on the top right of the schedule board, and editing below settings.

 

Configurable Colors on Resource Summary Rows

 

  • Requirement Search– Users can now search for requirements in the requirements list on the schedule board.
    • Type any part of the requirement name in the search bar to filter based on the requirement name. (requirement name attribute must be present on the view)
    • Hover over any column and filter by individual columns. You can apply filters to multiple columns at once.
  • Front Load Warning Message– If user tries to book a resource for more hours than they are available using the front load allocation method, a warning message now appears.

 

Front load warning messages

 

  • Undefined Territories – “Undefined option has been added to the territory filter. You can now display resources of a specific territory + resources that do not have any territories defined on a single schedule board. This also applies to requirements in the bottom panel.
  • When “undefined” is added to the filter control, all resources that do not have any resource territories defined will be displayed.
  • If “apply filter territory” option is selected in the schedule board settings, meaning the requirements list on the bottom is respecting the territory filter, then when undefined is added to the filter control, all requirements that do not have a service territory will be displayed in the booking requirements panel at the bottom of the schedule board.

 

Undefined territories

  • Time Component in Booking Dialog– In the booking dialog, if the requirement is less than 24 hours, there is now a time component in the dialog.

 

Time component in Create Resource Booking dialog box

 

Schedule Assistant

 

  • Initiate Search with One Button – New user experience to launch availability search on schedule board.
    • When selecting a requirement in the bottom panel, there is only one option to find availability instead of two options. We used to initiate the search with a right click, and the user would select between searching the current board and search all resources. These options have been changed to be defaults stored on the schedule board tab settings. Users can still change the search mode on the fly in the filter panel after search has been initiated.

 

Initiate Search with the Find availability button

Search mode

 

 

 

  • Dedicated Schedule Assistant Panel
    • When searching for availability while in schedule board, in an effort to improve the users understanding of the change in schedule board modes from standard drag and drop to schedule assistant, there is now a dedicated panel which displays after launching the schedule assistant search.
      • The panel displays information based on a view for which you can set different defaults for each type of requirement you may want to book.
      • There is also a clear exit indicator in the panel to leave schedule assistant mode.
      • Certain buttons on toolbar are now disabled when user searches for availability to avoid user confusion.

 

Dedicated schedule assistant panel

 

Default view for each requirement type

  • Auto Focus on Filter – When results cannot be returned in availability search, the filter panel pops open, focusing users attention on modifying search criteria.

Auto focus on filters when no results found in availability search

 

  • Default Search Dates– New defaulting logic for search dates when finding availability within schedule board.
    • When a user searches for availability against a requirement, we use the following logic to set the date fields of the search.
      • Check if there are values in time promised fields and if there are values, and they are not in the past, use them.
      • If there are values and they are in the past, use the date window fields
      • If there are no values in time promised fields, use date window fields.
      • If the date window fields do not have a value, default to SB dates
      • If the date window fields have a value but are in the past, use these fields and then we will show error message that they are in the past.
      • If the date window fields have values, use these fields, but still abide by the rule that we never change date to the past.

       

      Default search dates

    • If a user does search for availability on a requirement in which the dates are in the past, the filter panel will slide open and the start date will auto focus.Filter panel with auto focus on start date
    • When a user manually updates the start time on the new Schedule Assistant filter control, if the start is changed to after the end, the end automatically updates as well.

 

Automatic update to the end date when the start date is set to a later date than the end date

 

 

 

Map

  • Change Date of Displayed Bookings – Change booking display date on the map
    • The date field on the schedule board map is now a button. Users can change the date to any date within the range of the currently selected dates on the schedule board.

 

Change date of displayed bookings

 

  • Selection UI Improvements
    • When user selects a map pin, the pin is now highlighted by adding a circle to the bottom of the pin.

 

Improved UI for the map pin selection

 

  • Enhancements to Auto Hiding of Pins – Adjustment to logic that automatically hides pins of a certain type at certain zoom levels.
    • The levels with which map pins are hidden and displayed have been changed to be more inclusive by one level of zoom for all categories.
  • Many general map usability improvements
  • Double clicking map pin zooms map

 

 

Performance

  • Dramatic performance improvements:
    • Map
    • Schedule board load time
    • Booking update time (large impact when customer is using Resource Scheduling Optimization solution.
    • New schedule assistant search (find availability)
    • Load time on pop out schedule board when initiating schedule assistant using the book button on a form or view.
    • Exiting new schedule assistant
    • Creating multiday bookings
    • Loading filter control
    • Overall reduction in:
      • Network calls
      • Client side processing
      • Calendar read time
  • Database calls

 

Other

  • Location Validation on bookable resource entity.
    • Resources of location type organizational unit (formerly company address) must have a latitude and longitude on the resources parent organizational unit.
    • Resources of location type “resource address” must have a latitude and longitude on respective header (user, contact, account).
    • Resources without a location type will not return in onsite searches when using schedule assistant.
  • Default Values on auto generated requirements– Auto generate requirements feature will set the values on the requirement from parent schedulable entity using CRM mappings.
    • When a user creates mappings from header (schedulable entity) to Resource requirement, either via attribute mapping on Booking setup metadata records or through normal CRM 1:N mapping, when the requirement is auto generated as a result of a booking being created which does not have a requirement, the auto generated requirement will use these mappings and inherit the values accordingly.
      • If the “book” button was used for the header, the values will also be set based on these mappings unless they were explicitly set via the schedule board filter control (values such as work location, duration, start and end).

 

Default values on auto generated requirements

 

Issues and minor changes resolved in Universal Resource Scheduling Update 6.1

  • Map
    • Visual bugs on map
    • After manually filtering out a specific resource on the schedule board, refreshing the mini map no longer will add that resource back into the filter.
    • After switching from map to mini map, dragging the route line works
    • Clicking a requirement on schedule board always displays map pin.
    • Removed certain map auto zoom functionality bettering user experience.

 

 Schedule Board

    • Time component of requirement from and to date fields is no longer displayed in booking requirements grid on schedule board.
    • Can now create schedule boards with a space in the name is internet explorer
    • Date and time format of user is now respected in filter control on schedule board.
    • Schedule board details panel now supports the users date format.
    • For right to left languages, the resource name formats to proper size on schedule board.
    • Inactive resources no longer show on schedule board
    • Multiple fixes to schedule board calendar
    • Multiple tooltip fixes
    • Schedule board auto refresh fixes.
    • Dragging a requirement onto multiday views now opens booking dialog
  • Schedule Assistant (new availability search)
    • Schedule board no longer refreshes twice when searching for availability
    • When searching for availability, the dates/time that are outside of the search duration are now grayed out properly in all views of the schedule board.
    • Paging Fixes
      • When user searches for availability for “all” resources and searches for more resources than what the paging setting can support, the paging buttons are now supported.
      • When user pages for availability within the current board, when the user pages to the next page, availability now shows properly.
    • When user is searching for availability, and searching for ALL resources, when paging to a different day, if that resource does not have availability, the resource is now hidden.
    • Preferred resources are now passed in from requirements properly.
    • Finding availability while a resource is expanded no longer throws an error
    • When dragging booking to a recommended slot when searching for availability, travel is added properly regardless of column width of board
    • Align resource name with other values in grid of availability search
    • Visual enhancements to show loading mask when user is searching for availability instead of white space.
    • If a resource location does not have a value (not set to company address or resource address), resource will not return in onsite searches.
  • General
    • Legacy schedule assistant – Time zone fixes for legacy schedule assistant for the search dates
    • Sitemap – Naming enhancements
    • Added additional fields to the associated requirement view

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read about our 6.2 update.

Dan Gittler

Sr. Program Manager, Dynamics Engineering

Universal Resource Scheduling Solution for Dynamics 365 Update 1 (Version 6.1)

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation, Dynamics 365 for Field Solution, Dynamics 365 for Common Scheduling Solution

 

This past fall, we introduced Common Scheduling Solution in Dynamics 365. Regardless of what type of scheduling your organization is engaged in, be it Field Service scheduling, Project Service Scheduling, Case scheduling, Lead scheduling, or maybe something completely custom, Common Scheduling Solution helps you book your skilled resources to the right work, at the right time, independent of workstream.

With our first major update since our initial launch, we continued to focus on quality, performance and usability. We were also able to respond to some customer feature requests as well!

Below you will find both a list, and a detailed explanation on the additions made in Common Scheduling Solution.

 

New Features Introduced in Universal Resource Scheduling Update 6.1

Schedule Board

  • Fulfilled and remaining duration
    • Fulfilled and Remaining Duration is now an out of the box concept. There is now an out of the box way to track fulfillment of a requirement and filter out requirements which have been fully scheduled.
      • Plugins automatically calculate the fulfilled and remaining duration of a requirement.
      • The open requirements view has been updated to filter out requirements in which remaining duration is equal to or less than 0.
      • Explanation of plugin logic – As changes are made to bookings or to the requirement duration, a plugin summarizes all related bookings and subtracts the estimated travel duration. If actual travel duration has a value, then actual travel is used instead. The difference between requirement duration and booking duration minus travel = remaining duration.

Fulfilled and remaining duration

 

  • Configurable Colors on Resource Summary Rows– Resource summary rows for the daily, weekly, and monthly schedule board views now have configurable colors. Colors can be set by double clicking any of your schedule board tabs on the top right of the schedule board, and editing below settings.

 

Configurable Colors on Resource Summary Rows

 

  • Requirement Search– Users can now search for requirements in the requirements list on the schedule board.
    • Type any part of the requirement name in the search bar to filter based on the requirement name. (requirement name attribute must be present on the view)
    • Hover over any column and filter by individual columns. You can apply filters to multiple columns at once.
  • Front Load Warning Message– If user tries to book a resource for more hours than they are available using the front load allocation method, a warning message now appears.

 

Front load warning messages

 

  • Undefined Territories – “Undefined option has been added to the territory filter. You can now display resources of a specific territory + resources that do not have any territories defined on a single schedule board. This also applies to requirements in the bottom panel.
  • When “undefined” is added to the filter control, all resources that do not have any resource territories defined will be displayed.
  • If “apply filter territory” option is selected in the schedule board settings, meaning the requirements list on the bottom is respecting the territory filter, then when undefined is added to the filter control, all requirements that do not have a service territory will be displayed in the booking requirements panel at the bottom of the schedule board.

 

Undefined territories

  • Time Component in Booking Dialog– In the booking dialog, if the requirement is less than 24 hours, there is now a time component in the dialog.

 

Time component in Create Resource Booking dialog box

 

Schedule Assistant

 

  • Initiate Search with One Button – New user experience to launch availability search on schedule board.
    • When selecting a requirement in the bottom panel, there is only one option to find availability instead of two options. We used to initiate the search with a right click, and the user would select between searching the current board and search all resources. These options have been changed to be defaults stored on the schedule board tab settings. Users can still change the search mode on the fly in the filter panel after search has been initiated.

 

Initiate Search with the Find availability button

Search mode

 

 

 

  • Dedicated Schedule Assistant Panel
    • When searching for availability while in schedule board, in an effort to improve the users understanding of the change in schedule board modes from standard drag and drop to schedule assistant, there is now a dedicated panel which displays after launching the schedule assistant search.
      • The panel displays information based on a view for which you can set different defaults for each type of requirement you may want to book.
      • There is also a clear exit indicator in the panel to leave schedule assistant mode.
      • Certain buttons on toolbar are now disabled when user searches for availability to avoid user confusion.

 

Dedicated schedule assistant panel

 

Default view for each requirement type

  • Auto Focus on Filter – When results cannot be returned in availability search, the filter panel pops open, focusing users attention on modifying search criteria.

Auto focus on filters when no results found in availability search

 

  • Default Search Dates– New defaulting logic for search dates when finding availability within schedule board.
    • When a user searches for availability against a requirement, we use the following logic to set the date fields of the search.
      • Check if there are values in time promised fields and if there are values, and they are not in the past, use them.
      • If there are values and they are in the past, use the date window fields
      • If there are no values in time promised fields, use date window fields.
      • If the date window fields do not have a value, default to SB dates
      • If the date window fields have a value but are in the past, use these fields and then we will show error message that they are in the past.
      • If the date window fields have values, use these fields, but still abide by the rule that we never change date to the past.

       

      Default search dates

    • If a user does search for availability on a requirement in which the dates are in the past, the filter panel will slide open and the start date will auto focus.Filter panel with auto focus on start date
    • When a user manually updates the start time on the new Schedule Assistant filter control, if the start is changed to after the end, the end automatically updates as well.

 

Automatic update to the end date when the start date is set to a later date than the end date

 

 

 

Map

  • Change Date of Displayed Bookings – Change booking display date on the map
    • The date field on the schedule board map is now a button. Users can change the date to any date within the range of the currently selected dates on the schedule board.

 

Change date of displayed bookings

 

  • Selection UI Improvements
    • When user selects a map pin, the pin is now highlighted by adding a circle to the bottom of the pin.

 

Improved UI for the map pin selection

 

  • Enhancements to Auto Hiding of Pins – Adjustment to logic that automatically hides pins of a certain type at certain zoom levels.
    • The levels with which map pins are hidden and displayed have been changed to be more inclusive by one level of zoom for all categories.
  • Many general map usability improvements
  • Double clicking map pin zooms map

 

 

Performance

  • Dramatic performance improvements:
    • Map
    • Schedule board load time
    • Booking update time (large impact when customer is using Resource Scheduling Optimization solution.
    • New schedule assistant search (find availability)
    • Load time on pop out schedule board when initiating schedule assistant using the book button on a form or view.
    • Exiting new schedule assistant
    • Creating multiday bookings
    • Loading filter control
    • Overall reduction in:
      • Network calls
      • Client side processing
      • Calendar read time
  • Database calls

 

Other

  • Location Validation on bookable resource entity.
    • Resources of location type organizational unit (formerly company address) must have a latitude and longitude on the resources parent organizational unit.
    • Resources of location type “resource address” must have a latitude and longitude on respective header (user, contact, account).
    • Resources without a location type will not return in onsite searches when using schedule assistant.
  • Default Values on auto generated requirements– Auto generate requirements feature will set the values on the requirement from parent schedulable entity using CRM mappings.
    • When a user creates mappings from header (schedulable entity) to Resource requirement, either via attribute mapping on Booking setup metadata records or through normal CRM 1:N mapping, when the requirement is auto generated as a result of a booking being created which does not have a requirement, the auto generated requirement will use these mappings and inherit the values accordingly.
      • If the “book” button was used for the header, the values will also be set based on these mappings unless they were explicitly set via the schedule board filter control (values such as work location, duration, start and end).

 

Default values on auto generated requirements

 

Issues and minor changes resolved in Universal Resource Scheduling Update 6.1

  • Map
    • Visual bugs on map
    • After manually filtering out a specific resource on the schedule board, refreshing the mini map no longer will add that resource back into the filter.
    • After switching from map to mini map, dragging the route line works
    • Clicking a requirement on schedule board always displays map pin.
    • Removed certain map auto zoom functionality bettering user experience.

 

 Schedule Board

    • Time component of requirement from and to date fields is no longer displayed in booking requirements grid on schedule board.
    • Can now create schedule boards with a space in the name is internet explorer
    • Date and time format of user is now respected in filter control on schedule board.
    • Schedule board details panel now supports the users date format.
    • For right to left languages, the resource name formats to proper size on schedule board.
    • Inactive resources no longer show on schedule board
    • Multiple fixes to schedule board calendar
    • Multiple tooltip fixes
    • Schedule board auto refresh fixes.
    • Dragging a requirement onto multiday views now opens booking dialog
  • Schedule Assistant (new availability search)
    • Schedule board no longer refreshes twice when searching for availability
    • When searching for availability, the dates/time that are outside of the search duration are now grayed out properly in all views of the schedule board.
    • Paging Fixes
      • When user searches for availability for “all” resources and searches for more resources than what the paging setting can support, the paging buttons are now supported.
      • When user pages for availability within the current board, when the user pages to the next page, availability now shows properly.
    • When user is searching for availability, and searching for ALL resources, when paging to a different day, if that resource does not have availability, the resource is now hidden.
    • Preferred resources are now passed in from requirements properly.
    • Finding availability while a resource is expanded no longer throws an error
    • When dragging booking to a recommended slot when searching for availability, travel is added properly regardless of column width of board
    • Align resource name with other values in grid of availability search
    • Visual enhancements to show loading mask when user is searching for availability instead of white space.
    • If a resource location does not have a value (not set to company address or resource address), resource will not return in onsite searches.
  • General
    • Legacy schedule assistant – Time zone fixes for legacy schedule assistant for the search dates
    • Sitemap – Naming enhancements
    • Added additional fields to the associated requirement view

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read about our 6.1 update.

Dan Gittler

Sr. Program Manager, Dynamics Engineering

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