Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail Management Solution is one of the best and popular ERP cloud solutions. It is a lot efficient and effective than a lot of other similar products that you can now find in the market. Even in the peak hours of the day, you can give the best customer experience to your clients. And the best part is that you can achieve this without gaps or duplication. It is one of the main reasons why a lot of business people rely on this ERP solution. It is easy to install and use this app.  However, if you are a new user, you might find it a little difficult to manage this application. Here’s how you should handle AX retail POS error. Introduction: In AX Retail POS, the Implementation Administrator created a new Windows user ID. But new user trying to open the Retail POS, he is getting error “Retail POS Cannot connect to a database. Try again Later or see your system administrator. “.  As we all know for the online store required the Store channel database and store Massage database. The system administrator created this database from the Administrator user ID or Administrator Permission. But still this Error occurred? Error: Why this error occurred? Answer:  Store channel is the database where all retail POS transaction data stored Like ( sales Transaction, shift details, POS profile, store and terminal details…etc.).  User ID can to connected to this Database or user ID does available for store channel database in SQL. Because of this reason when new user tries to run the Retail POS application, he gets this error message. How to solve this issue? Follow the below steps: Login Point of Sales system from administrator. Then Open the store SQL server. After opening SQL, In Object Explorer go to Security -> logins Right Click on Logins and select New Login option In the General tab, select the Windows authentication option and after that click on the Search button. Add the new user ID. <Domain Name>\<New User ID> (Note:- Make sure that your system should be in the domain while adding new user). For demo use, I am using my domain CloudFronts\Amol Select User Mapping Page, In User Mapping Page Map Store Channel Database and Store message database. Select Database Role membership for Store channel database and store message Database. Role should be db_accessadmin, db_datareader, db_datawriter, db_excutore and click on OK button. Restart the Async client Service and run the Retail POS. Conclusion: Adding User with permission in SQL for Store channel database and Store Message Database, allow windows users to interact with the database from Retail POS application.  

In this article, we are going to see how to configure CSV file as source in TIBCO Cloud Integration. Prerequisite: TIBCO Cloud Integration Subscription. CSV file (Here, Journal.csv) Steps: Provide access to your Text files. The FolderAccess.txt file controls access to the files that can be opened by TIBCO Cloud Integration or processing. Open the FolderAccess.txt file in Notepad. Location for FolderAccess.txt: Here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Scribe Software\TIBCO Cloud IntegrationAgent\Connectors\Scribe.Connector.Text Add a line in the FolderAccess.txt file for each directory path that contains text files. Open ODBC Data Source Administrator. In the System DSN tab, add a driver of Microsoft Access Text driver Add Data Source name and description. Select directory where your CSV file is stored. ‘Save as ‘the .CSV file as schema.ini file. Login to TIBCO Cloud Integration URL: https://app.scribesoft.com/ Create a new connection by selecting the connector type as Text as Source. Fill in the required details. In the Location Tab, paste the path where your .csv file is stored. In the Entities tab, give the entity name and fill the details. In the Fields tab, click on settings icon and Refresh schema. All the fields in the CSV file will appear. The data type of all fields are by default ‘Text’, you can change the datatype of the fields. Test the Connection and press ‘OK’ to save the connection.

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. So many companies are developing ERP software to streamline the processes. Dynamics 365 is one of the ERPs that will help the companies scale up high swiftly. You need to work with the best ERP system providers like CloudFronts if you want this software to make a difference in the lives of people.  Microsoft Dynamics Nav is an ERP app that is developed by Microsoft. It is very much part of the popular Microsoft Dynamics family. Companies that use this product can streamline departments such as manufacturing, electronic commerce, supply chains, customer relationship management and so forth. Small and medium-sized companies are going to benefit greatly when they use this software.  Here is a segment that you should know in this ERP application. Introduction: Upgradation of objects/data in NAV have to be done after the application has been upgraded to the latest version. Code from different versions of NAV application have to be merged to upgrade the data. This process of merging objects in NAV between different versions is known as code/data upgradation. Pre-requisite: Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows PowerShell ISE The following objects have to be exported and saved: All Standard objects of the previous version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV in .txt format. All objects of the modified database of Microsoft Dynamics NAV in .txt format. All Standard objects of the higher version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to which the objects have to be migrated in .txt format. After all these steps are performed, install the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to which objects need to be migrated. Purpose: The main purpose of Data Upgradation is to move customizations done in any previous version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to the new Higher version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV database. Steps: Create 4 folders i.e. Original, Modified, Result and Target in the system. Fig 1: Create four folders as specified above Save the backup of ‘All Standard objects of the previous version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV in .txt format’ in the Original Save the backup of ‘All objects of the modified database of Microsoft Dynamics NAV in .txt format’ in the Result Save the backup of ‘All Standard objects of the higher version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to which the objects have to be migrated in .txt format’ in the Target Open Windows PowerShell ISE as administrator. Run the following commands in it and refresh PowerShell. Import-Module “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\100\Service\NavAdminTool.ps1” Import-Module “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\100\RoleTailored Client\NavModelTools.ps1” These commands help to load Dynamics NAV Cmdlets into the runspace. Fig 2: Windows Powershell ISE commands to load Microsoft Dynamics NAV Cmdlets In Windows Powershell ISE, go to Merge-NAVApplicationObject Cmdlet and enter the path of the four folders created initially i.e. Original, Modified, Result and Target folder. Fig 3: Merge-NAVApplicationObject Cmdlet Fig 4: Merge-NAVApplicationObject Cmdlet gives details of the merge process After running the Merge-NAVApplicationObject Cmdlet the Result folder will automatically be filled with all objects in .txt format. Each object file will be stored separately. Fig 5: Result folder contents Now, in order to create one .txt file by joining all the .txt files present in the Result folder, navigate to Join-NAVApplicationObjectFile Cmdlet in Windows PowerShell ISE. Enter the path of the Result folder as the Source and enter a name of the Destination as ‘Merge.txt’ Fig 6: Join-NAVApplicationObjectFile Cmdlet This will create Merge.txt file in the specified location. Fig 7: Merge.txt file created Now import the txt file into the new database of the Higher version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Errors if existing will be displayed during the import process and the import process will stop there. The errors have to then be rectified and the Upgradation process has to be repeated again from step 6. After all errors are rectified and conflicts are resolved, the Merge.txt will be successfully imported. Now, compile all the objects of the new database. You will have a new database with a fully application and data/code including all the modifications and customizations. Conclusion: Using the above process, modifications and customizations done in the previous version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV can be successfully migrated to the Higher version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV.  

Error in Scribe Insight: “Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string” when connected to SQL Adapter. When do we get this error? When we create a SQL connection using ODBC or OLEDB adapter in Scribe Insight and use the same either as Source or Target connection in Scribe DTS. What is the root cause of this error/issue? It’s the date-time format of the machine where the scribe Insight DTS is being run. How can we reproduce the error? In the windows, DateTime settings, change the format for time with separator as (.) instead of (:). Open the Scribe Workbench and create a sql connection using odbc\oledb connection, create a target connection, map some fields and run the DTS. You will get the error. Resolution: Simply change the time format to have the colon separator instead of (.) Hope this helps. I have found that having the time format other than colon separator creates error while working with other ETL tools as well.

CloudFronts recently implemented and went live with Microsoft Social Engagement to analyze the reviews of their services using twitter handler @cloudfronts and #askCloudFrontsPM and use it to track Leads in Dynamics 365. So, Microsoft Social Engagement helps to analyze people’s views about the company, product and services on Social Network like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It collects the information from Social Media and helps examine the positive, negative or neutral sentiments of the posts. There are three main key aspects of Social Engagement: Listen Everywhere: The information from where you hear it, what is it about, how people feel about the business i.e. your products and services. Analyze the Language/ Location/ Sentiments: The language in which the post is made or the location from where the post is done and Influence of products in Market is it Good or Bad? Drive Engagement: To Capture Feedbacks, Provide Service based on the Cases or Create a Lead. Let’s see an example how Microsoft Social Engagement is used to drive information out from Twitter Profile for certain keywords like in our case say #askCloudFrontsPM that is posted by people anywhere around the world and based on the posts a lead is created in Dynamics365. Note: So being a Global Admin, I have configured the settings in Microsoft Social Engagement. Microsoft Social Engagement can be accessed from https://portal.office.com Overview on Navigation Areas Search Setup: This application area is where the Manager defines the search topics for the posts. Analytics: This area is where the Manager or Analyst can see their data in Visual Metrics i.e. with various factors like Sentiments, Phrases, Location, Source and Language they can also filter out relevant data as per their business needs. Social Center: This is a Subset of Analytics. Here the user can see posts from last 14 days. Streams capture the posts that are more relevant and can be configured using the filters. Activity Maps: Activity Maps are real time visualization of post with Location. This Map shows the area that where in the world the topics are discussed. Message Center: Message Center is used to manage alerts based on the trends or posts and get notified by email to specified recipients. Settings: This area is where the Admin can configure Social Profiles, Dynamics 365 Connection, Automation Rules and additional settings. Setup Below are the steps which needs to be configured to get the desired results. Configuration: a. Personal Settings Here Admin can set the default setting of Language, default filter for Analytics, Theme, Date Format and Number Format. b. Social Profiles Three type of Social Profiles can be created i.e. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. So once the admin creates the Social Profile, the profile needs to be authenticated with username and password. Here in this case I have configured a Twitter Profile. This Profile has two key main sections: User (Ownership): This is where the Admin can decide about the ownership of Profile and can also add users in that profile who can access and share that Social Profile. Search Topics: This is the area where the Admin can decide on the Search Topic Keywords and can assign a Search Topic in a particular Channel to this specific Social Profile. c. Default/ Global Settings As the name suggests, this setting applies to the entire organization i.e. to setup Default Preferences. Different Parameters are configured like Default Screen Language, Time Frame, Date Time Format, Number Format, Search Topics, Location Groups and Additional Settings. Default Preference: This section will cover the Solution Name, Screen Language, Date Format and Number Format. Search Language: Here the Admin can manage the languages that should be enabled for Search Setup. Search Setup Defaults: This Section defines the area about where the search should work and in which Language that is Search can happen from Blogs, News, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Forums etc. for English Language. Sentiments: This is Adaptive Learning i.e. it allows the system to learn the sentiments from the user’s posts. People using MSE can also change the sentiment value of the posts and can help the system train well. So this section allows the Admin to enable and reset these settings. Labels: User can define certain labels to categorize the posts in the Analytics and Social Center. Location Groups: Location Groups can be used as filters in Analytics. In this section the user can add the Location Groups and can add the Number of Locations based on their Preferences. User Management: This is only visible to Admins. Here the user can be assigned roles and permissions for Microsoft Social Engagement. Dynamics 365 Connection: This section is to establish the connection between the Microsoft Social Engagement and Dynamics 365 (in this case) and will create a Lead Record in Dynamics 365. Automation Rules: Automation Rules can be defined to filter down the posts and then automatically create new cases, leads or events or assign it to user or set a label. Only Manager or System Admin can manage Automation Rules. Admin can create new automation rules, provide filters and based on those filter conditions, the admin can decide to perform actions of linking the post in Dynamics 365 or assigning the post to some user or to set the label of the post. The graph on the extreme right shows the analysis of the posts that fall in that particular filter criteria specified earlier. Search Setup Search Setup is required to make sure that the Analyst is capturing the right conversations of Customers from Social Media. Analyst can also fine tune the searches and drill down the data based on their Business Requirements. While defining the Social Profile in Settings, the search topic needs to be configured and should be applied to that particular Social Profile. One Option is to create the Search Topic while configuring the Social Profile and Second Option is from the Navigation Area. Note: At least on Active Search is required to acquire the social data. Also it takes some time to fetch in the data … Continue reading Microsoft Social Engagement →

Introduction With new release of Microsoft Teams, CloudFronts decided to analyse and check if Teams could be used for communication within the organization and we figured out few points between Yammer and Teams as which tool can be used as the best to enhance the communication within and outside the organization. Following are some points on Yammer and Microsoft Teams based on different key points. # Yammer Microsoft Teams Basic Idea – Yammer is like Forum Discussions – Especially used for Asynchronous Communication – User Interface is like Company Facebook – Chat Group- Real Time Conversations – No external/guest access – Integration with third party services Support – Discontinued the Desktop Client but Mobile App Available – Available on both Desktop Client and Mobile Client. Mobility – Supported on Android, iOS, Windows phone – Supported on iOS, Android phones Multimedia Support – No Audio, Video Conferencing – Supports both Audio and Video Conferencing External access – External groups feature in Yammer enables us to extend and makes it easier for External teams to work together. – Integrates with Office 365 Groups. CRM Integration – Yammer can replace the Activity Feeds solution in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online organization, though your Activity Feeds components will remain in the same state they were before installing Yammer. Yammer simply replaces Activity Feeds in the users’ workspace. – No integration with CRM. Praise /Polls – With Yammer Users can do announcements, praise and have poll. – Microsoft Teams does not provide functionality to have praise and polls. Alerts /Notification – Posts in Yammer can be notified via Emails (Personal Settings) – Notification appears only when we chat (Desktop App). Whereas there is no intimation when users post in Channels though the channel name is highlighted in bold. Meeting Invites/ Calendar – – With Teams users can schedule, view and update their Meetings and can view Calendar from Teams. They also highlight the number of attendees who have accepted the Meeting. Connectors – – Teams can be connected to Third Party Installers. For Developers Team can connect to Yammer, TFS etc. – TFS can help the Development Team to organize the task and see the status and manage them easily within the Team Window. Additional Points – Files uploaded on Yammer stays in Yammer and are not uploaded in SharePoint or OneDrive. But Files from OneDrive can be added in the post on Yammer. – Yammer, you can search for public groups and ask to join them. In Yammer, you have private groups which cannot be seen at all. – Microsoft Teams is Business Casual – No outside people can be added to the conversation. – Teams is built on top of all of the existing Microsoft technologies. Under the hood, every Team is actually an Office 365 Group – When the user is creating or uploading the files in the team it is actually uploading and creating files in SharePoint – T-Bot is a training bot at this time. It’s designed to allow you to ask questions and get a quick reply on how to complete a particular task. – In Teams, you only see the Teams in which you have been invited to. Conclusion – Yammer is the social network – Yammer is a bulletin board for the entire organization – Teams is the social interaction with fresh UI. – Teams works well asynchronously, for more informal, Business Casual conversation. Conclusion Thus, we at CloudFronts use Yammer to connect to External Groups but Microsoft Teams for our internal communications and awaiting more enhancements in Team in near future.

Overview: At CloudFronts, we use our Dynamics 365 PM App to track and manage Projects with Task and Resource Scheduling, Project Billing and Invoicing, Timesheets, Gantt Chart, Time and Expense Entries, User Skillsets and many additional features. We recently implemented an intelligent time entry reminder notification workflow to intimate users about pending time entries with the goal of establishing a culture of doing time entries on a daily basis. Why do we need this? A Professional Services company relies on team members who contribute to billable entries which in turn helps the company estimate Project Costs, Forecast Revenue and most importantly ensure billing is done on time and accurately. High Level Flow Diagram The below image shows the diagrammatic representation of high level flow of what we implemented. Custom Logic The Custom Workflow logic has series of steps that checks and based on the conditions it sends out email to that particular User. Check if it’s a Weekend As the step name suggests, this will check if today is a Saturday or Sunday and if the condition is true the workflow will stop. Check if it’s a Public Holiday If current day is not a weekend, there is a possibility that it might be a public holiday. So in this step it checks if today is a Public holiday. If true, then the workflow stops. Get Previous Working Day This step fetches the Previous Working Day as in if today is Monday then the previous working day in our case is Friday. Else if Tuesday then, previous working day is Monday. Check if the Previous Working day is Public Holiday Now there might be the case, that the previous working day was a Public holiday then in that case the time entries will not be there for the users. So if the Previous Working day is a Public Holiday then the workflow stops. Fetch Users This step will get the users who enter time entries in the system, be it a billable resource or a non-billable resource. Fetch Time Entries Here in this step, fetch the time entries less than 8 hours. If we have complete 8 hours’ time entry, then no alert is sent to that particular user. Else if we have incomplete time entries then the next step is to check if the user was on Leave. Is User on Leave? If we have less than 8 hours’ time entry, then there is a possibility where that person was on leave on the previous working day. In that case no reminder will be sent to that particular user. Send Email With the above criteria’s and conditions, if we get that user was working and has not completed his/her daily time entry, then an alert will be sent to that user. So with this simple logic and series of steps, CloudFronts was able to achieve this and intimate their users to complete their time entries.

Introduction: Document Recommendations are one of the preview feature that is added in Dynamics 365. In this blog let’s see how we can enhance the use of this feature in our Business Requirement. Note: Since it’s a preview feature, it is advised not to use and it is subject to change. So not recommended on Production Environment. Pre- Requisites Document Recommendations are supported on Dynamics 365 Online. Since it’s a preview feature the System Administrator needs to enable this from Settings -> Administration -> System Settings -> Previews Tab. User should have access to SharePoint Online 2013 or SharePoint Online 2016 for Document Repository. Document Management must be done before hand i.e. enabling SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. Relevance Search should be enabled. Azure Text Analytics can be used optionally to determine the Document Suggestions. System Administrator must define the similarity rules. Working Suppose we have a Sales Representative and Sales Manager that is working with Opportunity in D365 and all documents related to this are associated with this particular Opportunity. Now another Sales Representative starts working on this Opportunity and she is unaware with all the previous details and deals. So with Document Recommendations, CRM provides her with all the documents to understand about previous conversations, assets and makes it easier for the new Sales Representative to work with this particular Opportunity. Now the question is how this works? So there are certain prerequisites that are required to establish this feature. Configuration Enable Document Recommendations Enable SharePoint Settings -> Document Management -> Enable SharePoint Online. Enable Relevance Search Configure Similarity Rules Create Similarity Rules Similarity Rules can be created from Settings -> Data Management -> Similar Records Suggestions Settings ->New Rule as shown in the first image. While the second image shows how to configure rule.  So when we create a new rule below are some details that System Administrator needs to fill. Source Entity – For which entity the rule is enabled. Document Recommendations is supported only for COLAC Entities (Case, Opportunity, Lead, Account and Contact) + Custom Entity. Filter results by Status – Whether it is Open, Won or Lost in case of Opportunity and different in the case of other entities. Use Text Analytics – Yes or No. By Default, the value is No but then if using Cognitive Service Text Analytics then set the value to Yes. Maximum Number of Key Phrases – this is used to determine the keywords or key phrases to determine with text search which helps to achieve key word based similarity between source and target records. The acceptable value is from 0-1000. Create Match Fields Once the Similarity Rules are created the next step is to create the Match Fields, so on Similarity Rules a sub-grid is present to display all the Match Fields. Match Fields involves the following details. Criteria – Whether it should be Exact Match or Text Match. In Exact Match, fields from the source entity is matched. In Text Match, text in these fields are used to find the key phrases. Entity – Choose an entity to use in creating a text search rule to find the matching records. Fields – Select a field to find the matching target records. To enable field for Exact Match, the field should be added in Quick Find View of that particular Entity. Once the Match Fields are created, simply activate the Similarity Rule. Manage Document Suggestions Document Suggestions can be managed under Settings -> Document Management -> Manage Document Suggestions. Once we open this setting we can only see the list of entities for which the similarity rules are listed. We can also provide the External Base URL for querying the results as shown in the images below. Example So based on above steps, I tried Document Suggestions on my trial environment and below screenshots will demonstrate the same. Here I have created Similarity Rule for Opportunity Entity and document recommendations will be displayed for the records. So I have created two different Opportunities, to buy IPhone 7 and IPhone7s and I have added the documents regarding the deal cracked for buying IPhone 7 so when I view suggestions for IPhone 7s it will show the related documents associated with IPhone 7 on Document Associated Grid of Opportunity to Buy IPhone 7s. The above screen shot shows that since the topic name had similar key words that’s the reason I could see the recommendations. This happened due to Similarity Rule created where in Match Fields I had declared the Text Match of the Field “Topic” on Opportunity. Also Document Recommendations will read documents stored in SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business or Office 365 Groups. Document Recommendations is not supported in Offline Mode. Whereas on Mobile/ Tablet Clients the recommendations will be shown as shown below.  

D365 field service or Dynamics 365 for field service is one complete field service management software. It is a product from Microsoft. It helps large and medium businesses to become quite efficient. This software can hold stuff such as service agreements, service locations, customer assets, preventive maintenance, resource management, work order management and so forth. You will have total control over your field service management teams. The scheduling options available on this software is quite flexible. You can significantly boost customer service when you use this particular ERP solution.  So many excellent features are available in this particular ERP solution. Integrating the Outlook calendar with the field service is entirely possible when you are using this ERP suite.  Introduction: This blog explains how to configure work order bookings for Field technicians who need them to show in the Outlook calendar. Prerequisites: 1. Dynamics 365 Field Service licenses 2. Office 365 Enterprise E3 licenses Configuration: Enable and Test email mailbox for relevant Users is successful. Working: Below are steps for setting up Outlook Integration with Field Service to set this up in the system Login to Dynamics 365 Field Service environment as an “Administrator”. Next, go to Settings > Administration > System Settings > Synchronization and check Synchronize resource bookings with Outlook. Login to Dynamics 365 Field Service environment as a “Technician”. Navigate to Options > Synchronization. And check Synchronize resource bookings with Outlook. Login to Dynamics 365 Field Service environment as an “Administrator” and schedule a Work Order to Technician. Login into Outlook with the User related to that “Field technician”. Open Calendar and booking is shown as below. Note: The Booking may take 10+ minutes to show in Outlook. This is because it is an asynchronous service.  

In CRM, when a file is attached in Notes sections, it gets stored in “Annotation” Entity. Notes with Files attached have the isDocument set to 1 and without notes to 0. Since Annotation entity contains files attached in all other CRM entities, it is determined by “ObjecttypeCode”. Example for Account ObjectTypeCode is 1. ObjectId field in Annotation holds the GUID of the related entity’s Primary Key whose file is attached. Example Accounts Accountid is ObjectId of Annotation. When we create a CRM connection for Annotation, we get 2 fields as highlighted below “bodybinary” and “documentbody”. When we migrate from CRM   to SQL, we need to Map the source CRM bodybinary field to vfAttachment in Target. If you map to document body, the files gets migrated however when you open it, it looks like corrupted. (During CRM to CRM migration, ensure that both the fields objecttypecode and objectidtypecode are mapped, else migration will get fail.) If we need to pull the attached files from CRM and insert the same in SQL Table and write the same files in to Windows folder, things get bit tricky here. While creating the SQL Table what will be the datatype for column that will be storing the attached file?  The datatype you need to select is as “Image”. If you select longvarchar or text or binary, when the file is written on disk and open, you get a gibberish file with unreadable content. Please note even though the Data type of the SQL Table for DocumentBody is defined as “Image”, Scribe shows the datatype as “binary”. Also during mapping it is advised to map the documentbody field at the very end. We had encountered this issues of files getting corrupted and Scribe support team suggested this approach and it worked. With above tips, you can ensure successful migration of documents from CRM to SQL and later when writing to local drives.