In this blog, we will explore the use of the XrmToolBox and different tools present in the store. XrmToolBox is free to use tool that connects with the Dataverse environment and provide you with various tools that allow performing heavy management task very easily. Many developers have contributed to XrmToolBox Store by creating a tool/library which is beneficial in the regular development and management work of Dynamics 365 CRM Consultants/Developers. You can find the Installation and setup guidance from a website that you can follow as we directly going to start exploring different types of tools available. Home Page: https://www.xrmtoolbox.com/ Connection Setup with Dataverse Environment: https://www.xrmtoolbox.com/documentation/for-users/manage-connections/ Tool #1: “Security Role Sync” created by Bharath Sheelam The tool is created to sync the security roles between two users. I have two users present in the dataverse environment and I have a requirement to sync roles from one user to another. If we need to sync the roles from “Amit Prajapati” to “CRM Admin” we need to select “Amit Prajapati” in Source and “CRM Admin” in Destination. Once you select the user, you need to click on Sync Security roles it will start syncing and notify you once it is completed. Result: Amit Prajapati has below roles: Before Sync Roles on CRM Developer Account After Sync Roles on CRM Developer Account Use Case and Benefits: Developer work can be minimized using this tool as they might be having multiple users to sync the roles and debug the security permission. Remove the manual efforts to check for the reference user’s security permission and apply it to the required user. Let’s say you have to replicate the security permission from User 1 to User 2 and without this tool you need to open the security permission of User 1 and note it down then only replicate the same permission to User 2 If you have a scenario where functionality is working for one user and not working for another user due and you are getting a security permission error. You can use this tool and sync the security roles considering they should be belonging to the same security based on business requirements. Tool #2 “Security Debugger” created by Mark Carrington This tool is very useful, and it helps you to find the solution to all permission-related issues. It will provide you with the details of which security roles are missing considering you have a security permission error log with you which is required for this tool.

In the previous blog, we learn about how to use the Environment variable in Azure Function. Environment variables are most important and confidential as they might contain the system credentials or configure that you don’t want any to access directly. The most unsecure way to store them is directly inside the Configuration of Azure function so in this blog we will see how to store the Environment variable inside the Key Vault and use the Key Vault reference in Configuration. You can create an Azure function and use Environment Variable to do so do refer to my previous blog: Step 1: Create a Key Vault Login to Azure Portal and click on + Create a resource called “Key Vault”. Click on Create You can create a new resource group or select the existing group based on your preference. (You can create all resources related to a single project in one resource group so that it will easier to manage resources project wise) You need to set up the Access policy during the creation or after creating the Key Vault. We will set up an access policy for Azure Function later in the blog. Step 2: Set an Access policy for Azure Function. Open the Azure Function in which you want to use the reference of Azure Key Vault. Navigate to Identity Tab and toggle System assigned status to “ON”. Copy the Object (Principle) ID as we are going to use it during adding access policy. Open Azure Key Vault and Navigate to the Access Policies section. Click on + Add Access Policy We will only Add Get Permission in the Secret permissions section. You need to only add the permission that you want to allow your Azure Function can perform. Select the Principle User. Copy the Copied “Object ID” into search it will be easier to find it. Click on Add. Once you will add a resource in the access policy, it will allow your resource (Azure Function) to perform a Get operation on all the secrets from Key Vault. Do not forget to Save after you add the policy. Step 3: Add Secret and Configure it inside Azure Function Navigate to the Secrets section and Click on + Generate/Import Enter the Name and Value(Credentials/Configuration) Open the current version and Copy the secret URL as it will be required while configuring the Reference. Navigate to the Configuration section of Azure Function. Change the Configuration and add the KeyVault Reference as below: @Microsoft.KeyVault(SecretUri=<Copied SecretURL>) Do not forget to Save after changing the configuration Step 4: Testing using Postman We will require the API testing tool, here I am using Postman and the following is the link to download “Postman”. https://www.postman.com/downloads/ Copy the Function URL and send a post request. As result, you will notice the username is coming from KeyVault as we have to change the configuration. Conclusion: This is how you can secure your Environment Variable using Azure KeyVault. You can set up multiple KeyVault for different deployment and access policies depending on the requirement. When you are storing the Credentials and Configuration in KeyVault, you just need to set up the Access policy. All configuration is managed by the Azure Admin and if origination has a policy that they don’t want to share the credentials they can follow this process and only share the KeyVault URL with the developer so that they only need to configure it.

In this blog, we will learn how to configure and use Environment Variable in Azure Function. Concept of using Environment variable during your development which needs to deploy on multiple servers and connect to multiple systems. Whenever you use Environment variables to store the global constant or system credentials it reduces the time which was required to modify the code base for multiple deployments. Let’s get started with Creating the Azure Function and using the Environment variable. Step 1: Create an Azure Function inside the Visual Studio: I have created the HTTP Trigger Azure function inside Visual Studio and the authorization level is Anonymous Once you create an Azure Function project you will notice there are many files created with the project.  We have a “local.setting.json” file that we are going to use and it holds the environment variable while the development and testing phase of your Azure function. Step 2: Declare credentials/global variable inside “local.setting.json” Information on local.setting.json – This file represents your local application setting for your Azure Function and it stays with your local build only. While you publish your azure function to Azure Portal or commit your code to your Repo this file is never pushed to the server as they are excluded/prevent from committing or publishing. Step 3: Access variable inside the code You can access the environment variable using the Environment class(required System lib). Based on your preference you can either access Environment variable the directly inside the code or you can create a CONSTANT class as mentioned below screenshot. Here, I am passing this environment variable inside a response so that we can test it. Step 4: Testing using Postman We will require the API testing tool, here I am using Postman and the following is the link to download “Postman”. https://www.postman.com/downloads/ To test the application, click on the Start button on top of the Navbar as mentioned below in the screenshot [Button will have Project Name]. It will take a few minutes to Load the Azure Emulator Following is the screen you will be able to see and copy the URL highlighted in the red below and paste that URL into Postman. Result: Now, you need to configure the Environment while deploying the Azure function on Azure Portal, and below are steps for the same: Step 1: Deploy an Azure Function on Azure Portal. You can directly create it on Portal or you can create it from Visual Studio. Here I am going to create and deploy it from Visual Studio: Right Click on the project and select Publish: Select Azure and Click on Next: Click on the + icon to create a new function, You can use the existing resource group or create a new resource group as per your preference: After deployment is completed you can see the deployed Azure function on Azure Portal: Now, if you try to use the Azure Function URL and post the request then you will notice that all the environmental credentials part is missing as we have not configured the environment variable on the Azure portal inside Azure Function App: Step 2: Configure the App Environment variable on Azure Portal for online deployment. Navigate to the Configuration section of your deployed Azure Function Add the Application setting in your Configuration and the Name should same as you have declared in your local.setting.json file. Make sure your click on Save to update the configuration on Portal. After configuration if you test your deployed Azure function using postman you will get your expected result: This is how you can configure and use the Environment variable inside your Azure Function. It will make your life easier while deploying Azure on Development, UAT, or Production Environment. You can store the Source and Destination system credentials, SQL Access credentials, or Custom Global Variable based on your business requirement of integration.

In this blog, we will learn how to quickly design a simple Cloud Flow to post a message in MS Teams Channel when a user submits a response using MS Form. Step 1: Create an MS Form to get the responses from the targeted user. Go to https://forms.office.com/ and click on New Form to create an MS Form. Now, We will create MS Form that will take the Name, Age, Gender, Service ratting and comment which is optional as feedback. Step 2: Create a Team and Channel to post the responses Here, I am creating an Admin Team (Type — Private Team) that will be used by Management Team for organization. Now, we will add the “Feedback Responses” channel to post responses in Admin Team. Step 3: Create an Org Level Team that will be used by all team member to submit the responses (Optional — You can share the form via email or posted it on the website) Now, we will add the MS Form tab in the newly created “Feedback Form” channel so that team members can submit responses directly from MS Teams. After the channel is created, click on the + button on the top ribbon button to add a new channel tab. Look for MS Form and click to select the type of channel tab. Select Add existing form and choose your created Feedback form. After clicking on the Save button, a new Form Tab will be added to the feedback from channel of your Org Level Teams Check if Team, Channel and Form tab is visible from other users Log in with another and open the Team. Here, I have another user who has access to the Project Name team and Org Team but doesn’t have access to Admin Team as it Private Team for Management. Below is a screenshot for the same: Step 4: Create a Cloud Flow to post the response to the Private Teams channel Login to the Power Automate portal and create an Automated Cloud Flow Look for MS Form Trigger “When a new response is submitted” and click on Create to create Cloud Flow Select the Form in Cloud Flow trigger Add new step Get Response Data from MS Form Connect and select Response Id from triggering body Now, add a new step from Teams Connector Post a message (v3) to post the response in Teams Channel Configure the Team, Channel and Message (According to your requirement) Testing I have submitted the response from the MS Teams using another user: After submitting the response we get the message in the Admin Teams: Hope this helps!!!

Use case: I have two entity Awards and Awards category. We have SubGrid on the Awards entity form for Category with Custom Ribbon button. We want to have the button should be visible on specific view only and below are steps to do so. Step 1: Configure the Ribbon Button Create a Ribbon Button, create a command and enable rule. Added enable to Command and command to ribbon button. To enable rule, create a custom rule and pass the JavaScript and parameter. Step 2: Get View id based on the CRM parameter: Now, Get Subgrid view id by passing the CRM parameter in the custom rule. When CRM parameter is Primary Control When CRM parameter is Selected Control Step 3: Write script for Enable Rule for Custom Ribbon Button. We will write a script that will enable or disable the Ribbon based on the view ID using the above code based on the passed parameter. Result: I have written the enable rule that Button should be visible only on the Active Award Category view: Result View of Current View that we get from the Controls in Web Browser Console App Full Code:

In this blog, we will learn how to create an Azure Function App to connect it with Dynamics 365 CRM and perform the CRUD operation in Dynamics 365 CRM. First, we will create an Azure Function project for Dynamics 365 CRM from Visual Studio, and below are the steps for the same. Open Visual Studio and create a new Azure Function Project. Filter platform as Azure, select Azure Function, and click on Next. Name your project and click on Create button. After clicking on Create, you will get the below screen where you need to select the Trigger and Azure Function v1 (.Net Framework) and click on Create. In my case, the Azure Function trigger will be Http Trigger which means when an azure function will receive an HTTP request it will trigger. Your Azure Project will be created and the following will be the structure of the project. Now, we will create Azure Function to connect with the Dynamics 365 CRM we need to add the required NuGet Package [Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies]. To add the NuGet Package right-click on the Project and click on Manage Nuget packages. Add Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies in your Project. Following is the code to connect the Dynamics 365 CRM. Currently, we are going to use the credential by specifying them in the C# Code or you can use it as constant. Later in the series, we will learn how to use Environment Variable and pass the credential more secure way in Azure Function using Azure Key Vault. [Stay tuned..!!] Now, select the code and Refactor the code and make the connection function that will return the IOrganizationService if the connection is established else return null. Now, the final code will be as below: Now, we will create a customer with a Hardcoded name when the function is triggered with an HTTP request. Update the existing code with the below code: Testing: We will require the API testing tool, here I am using Postman and the following is the link to download “Postman”. https://www.postman.com/downloads/ To test the application, click on the Start button on top of Navbar as mentioned below in the screenshot [Button will have Project Name]. It will take a few minutes to Load the Azure Emulator Following is the screen you will be able to see and copy the URL highlighted in the red below and paste that URL in Postman. Open the Postman and click on the create a new tab; Select request as POST and paste the URL: After pasting the URL, click on Send You will get the following response on the Azure Function Tool and Postman If there any error or issue with the Azure Function code, the request will be failed and will be displayed on both Azure Function Tool and Postman [Status will be “4**” or “5**” ] Now, we will take look at Dynamics 365 CRM environment and check whether the account is created or not. We are justing getting started with Azure Function for Dynamics 365 CRM and stay tuned for more in this series. Upcoming blogs 1. How to use Dynamics 365 Credentials securely using Azures Function. 2. How to create Dynamics 365 integration with Third-party Applications. Many more……

In this blog we will see how we can change the currency format in D365 CE. We are using the Currency field named Price on Account form and we wanted to price in XX,XX,XXX.XX format Let see how we can achieve this. Solution: Go to Settings and click on Personalization settings. After clicking on Personalization setting, In Set Personal Options click on Format. Click on Customize -> in Number, Digit group change the format as per requirement. After updating click on Apply and Ok. In our requirement, we wanted currency in XX,XX,XXX.XX  format on Account Entity. Price field Before Changing – Price field after changing –

If you want to keep track of the Commits of any Critical Project and want to discuss with your Project Team Member regarding commits made on TFS. We can create a flow that will post the Commit details of that Critical Project on your Project Channel. Step 1: Create a Team and a channel to post the Checked-in Details. Here I have created a Team with the name “Project Team” and a separate channel “Azure DevOps” to post all the messages related to Development and DevOps. Step 2: Create a Cloud flow to post Message when someone commits any changes in Azure DevOps (TFS) Search for Azure and select the triggering condition as “When code is checked in (TFVC)” Configure the Triggering block with Project for which you want to post a message to MS Team. If you want to track the commits of any specific user then you can set a user in Team Member otherwise it will post a message for all checked-in commits made by all Project Members present in Member. Now, we will add Post a message (v3) block in Cloud flow. Make sure that you should select the right channel while configuring the post message block, after configuring your block it should look like the below screenshot: Save the Cloud flow and Test it by making commits from your Visual Studio or Azure DevOps from the browser. Testing. Here, I will make commit using Visual Studio: Result

If you want to track a user who has opened records of any specific entity then you are on the right blog because today we are going to see how we can do simple customization to track the user activity of who has open which record for how many times. Step 1: Create an Entity to track the log of retrieve activity of the registered entity. Following are fields in the entity to track user activity tracking activity 1. Name — Logical name of Retrieved Entity. 2. Record Id — Record Id of that Retrieved Entity. 3. No of Time Retrieved — Stored number of times a user has retrieved that specific record. Step 2: Create a Plugin to create a Retrieved Log record The record will be created or updated whenever the user opens the entity form to check details and the following is code for the same. Explanation: 1. When the plugin will trigger it will check if the retrieved log of that record is already present or not. 2. If retrieve records is not present it will simply create a log record with the following details a. Name — Type of records which user has opened [Entity] b. Record Id — Record Id of record which user has opened c. User — which the user has opened the record. d. Count = 1 3. If the retrieved record is already existing in the system then it will increment the count of the number of times a user has retrieved that record by 1 so that we can track how many times the same user has open that specific record. Step 3: Register the Plugin on Retrieve of Entity on entities for which you want to add tracking. Retrieve: It will trigger whenever an entity form is open by any user. While registering the new step for the plugin please make sure that Run in User’s Context must be “Calling User” so that we can have a track that which user has opened which record. Note: All security roles which are given to the user should have read, create and update right to “Entity Tracker” Entity. Also, the stage of execution of Plugin and execution mode must be “PostValidation” and “Asynchronous” so that it will not affect any system jobs and it can run in the background process. If you want to track a retrieve activity of opportunity then you just need to register the new step and select Primary Entity as an opportunity as I have already done for Account and Contact. Now, your system is ready to track the user’s entity retrieve activities, and you will see the following records: Using the above record you can create any type of custom charts and put them in your admin dashboard or you can create a Power BI report to track activity. I hope this helps you, if yes please like the blog. And, the next blog will be on the dashboard & charts based on our Entity Tracker records so stay tuned for that!

Requirement: The user will create the record from the Quick Create and on change of specific field, the record should automatically save. Whenever the record will be saved it should open the created record. In our scenario, we are going to use the Account Entity. When the user will enter the main phone data in the Account Quick Create Form, the record will automatically save and it will open the created account record. Steps: Go to Default Solution or your customization solution and Open the Quick Create Form from Account Entity 2. Click on the Form Properties to edit the form properties of Account Quick Create Form and add the script on the form. 3. Click on the +New button to add the JavasScript web resources on the form so that you can use the script function on Form Events 4. If you wanted to use an existing Web Resource then you add it or else create new by click on new 5. Create a new Script and add it on form 6. Now, we need to add the event list and bind the calling function to it. To do it click on the + New on Event Listener of Form Properties. Note: Please don’t forget to pass the execution context as the first parameter to the function. 7. We will use formContext.data.save() function to get the created record’s GUID and open entity record using that GUID. Following is code for your reference: 8. Code Explanation: a. quickCreateonSave is a function that is trigger on change of Main phone fields of Account Quick Create. b. When the function is triggered we are using formcontext.data.save to save the save so that we can get the GUID of the recently created record. c. On formcontext.data.save() we can assign two functions — on success and failure as parameter to .then() [Reference] d. On Success, the function will return the following response where you can get the entityType, entity id, and name of the record. e. After getting the entity id and entity type, we can use the open form to open the record as mentioned in the Code. 9. Publish all the customization that you have done on the Account Entity Demo: I hope it helps you guys!!