Introduction Small and medium businesses today have systems that were put in place based on the need back in time and served the purpose well. As organizations grow, they feel the need to consolidate information that is in these siloed systems. Siloed systems work well on their own but also pose challenges as business grows and more visibility into the systems is needed.   This article puts forward some thoughts on re-thinking siloed systems vs. integrated systems under one platform.  Challenges with Siloed Systems Need for Integrated Systems Conclusion   Read more about our Customer Success Stories. We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com  

On some instances, there are Managed fields in Dynamics 365 CRM (or CE if you want to call it) where we can’t change the required level of the field from Fields i.e. on the database level. And you get the below error – Here’s an alternative way to do it. Scenario Let’s consider this scenario. Although Microsoft suggests you don’t change the behavior of Managed fields since they are designed with a purpose. However, let’s consider this scenario where you want to make the Parent Account for Lead as required on the form.When you try to change the Requirement Level as follows And while saving this change, you get this error. So how do we do it? Let’s see. Workaround – Business Rule Now, to overcome this particular scenario you can implement a simple Business Rule to make it required as follows – If the field can’t be made Required on a database level, you can make it required on the form using Business Rule. Here’s how you create your Business Rule.As the Business Rule starts with the condition, here’s the check you need to add in case the field value is not entered. The condition I used is as below – Check if Parent Account for lead Does Not Contain Data If this is True, then go ahead and add a Step for True condition. Add Set Business Requirement Level And in this, you need to set the Business Required Status to Business Required as show below. And the result is the Business Rule which looks like in #1 above. Now, save your changes, Publish the Rule, Activate and check. The result will be that the field is not required once it doesn’t have data forcing the user to enter data for the same. Hope this is helpful!

Preparing an Excel Template for Notes entity is a little tricky. Doesn’t work when you just Export directly as a Template from the Templates Wizard and try to include all columns and import as is. Why? Because there’s no Regarding field exported when you export/import that template. Here’s what you can do as a workaround. Scenario Now, let’s assume you want to Export a standard Excel Template for import so that you can re-import into Dynamics for Notes entity for a regarding entity. Exporting Excel Template Your Document Templates are where all your Excel Templates can be exported from – Now, follow the below – Select Notes entity and Edit Columns you need to Export the Excel with your required columns Select the columns you need. Observe that you don’t get Regarding column to export Then Download the file. Modifying the Excel Now, since you don’t have the Regarding field in the Excel you exported from Templates, here’s what you need to do – Add a column yourself, give it a proper name based on what the Notes’ Parent entity should be. In this example, I’m importing Notes for Account. So, I’m adding a column called ‘Account Name’ A new column will be created as below Now, populate your data based on how the Notes should be imported and tagged to which records. Now, by default, this template is exported in Microsoft Excel Worksheet (xlsx) format. You’ll need to Save As in CSV format Re-Importing Up until above, your Excel is ready to be imported. Let’s begin – Import the file as a usual Excel Import in Dynamics 365 CRM. Since this is not a direct Template importing as is, but a CSV, you’ll get to map this file manually. Then, you’ll need to manually select the Note entity from the drop-down and then proceed Now, whatever is mapped automatically will be mapped. For the newly created Account Name field, you’ll need to expand the Not Mapped dropdown and select Regarding (Lookup) Now, you’ll need to select the entity you want the Notes to appear under. In my case, this is Accounts, so I have it right there Since this Regarding fields supports several entities, scroll all the way down to Confirm your selection Now, your Regarding field is set and you are ready to confirm and Import Now, my Import here is completed. (You’ll need to take care the Import is successful) Imported Notes If you look at the records now, the Notes will be attached to the respective Regarding records Hope this helps!!

Very easy tweak but this will save loads of your time. One of the most important asks by Salespeople is perhaps this – “Add multiple Products on Opportunity at once!“ Here’s how you can do this – Classic Experience In current/classic experience, if you open Opportunity Lines and go on to add a Product as below – It’ll either open in a New form.This isn’t intuitive. You definitely need better experience. Enhanced Experience In System Settings, under Sales, you’ll need to enable the Adding Products to Yes. This will enable the enhanced experience. Now, when you click on Add Products in the Opportunity’s Product Line Items tab, you’ll see a Quick Create Form like form on which you can Add Multiple Products in one go. And then go to + Add products Now, a Quick Create form will appear on which you can select multiple products Now, when you click on any + sign in blue, you can directly enter what quantity you want to add. Also, if you go to the Selected section which indicated how many unique products you’ve added, you’ll be able to remove the added Products in case you don’t want them and then Delete the same if needed. Now, let’s say I have this finally and when I click on Add to Opportunity, they get added as Opportunity Lines And they appear as belowHope this helps!!

At times, ever wondered what happened to the Mailbox? You ran some tests, you also got results, but the Alerts section is empty or not generating Alerts. Here’s what’s missing and how the behavior is – Turn on Mailbox Alerts In System Settings, you can turn on what type of Mailbox alerts should be shown. Navigate to Email and scroll down. You can then choose what type of info should be generated in Alerts area in a Mailbox. Error, Warning or Information. Behavior Now, the behavior is a little confusing. Here’s what it is – Any previously generated errors will show if the setting was On initially and was later on turned off down the line.In my example, the last error was generated on 1st July 2020 Now, I turned the setting Off And post that, if there are any new errors/messages, they won’t show up But, after I turn the settings back on New errors after that will start showing up again. Meaning, the duration in which the Alerts are off, those will not be generated. And the duration in which the Alerts are On, they will keep populating the Alerts section. Hope this was useful.

One of the major pet-peeve is not understanding why the code isn’t working. And you for sure know you’ve written the correct code. But, thing just don’t work. One such tricky situation is that of applying custom filter to fields using JavaScript in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps. Scenario Let’s say you have a custom filter to be applied to a field and you’ve written your JS code on Load to apply the filter and everything (you know what you need to do!) Example: But the above is just not working. Why??? Reason The reason is pretty simple! Because, the Lookup field is still using the one set on the field itself. Check that – The above should be turned off to make your code work since the field’s default OOB filtering takes precedence. And now, your code should work (Provided everything in it correct) Hope this quick tip helps!

In D365 CE Apps, you have 2 options to display the currency fields, by symbol or by the currency code. Symbolic representation Currency Code representation Setting With a simple setting, you can apply this change organization wide. Navigate to Settings > Administration > System Settings and under General tab, look for Set the currency display option. Pretty simple! 🙂

Among the fabulous sessions at MBAS 2020 Online Conference, Introduction of Project Operations was the most anticipated for me. Here are my takeaways from the same – Gurkan Salk & Kevin Horlock provided an overview of what to expect for Project Operations/  What is Project Operations? Some key points –  Project Operations is an extension of capabilities to existing PSA in Dynamics 365 to a whole new product called as Project Operations. This is a new offering by Microsoft. GA is 1st Oct 2020 Project Operations will utilize the Project based Sales Capabilities including quotation and resourcing  Project Management capabilities will run from Microsoft Project and utilize the power scheduling engine it has to offer. Taking capabilities directly from Project for the Web. Will now be embedded inside Project Operations Capabilities of D365 Finance will be utilized for Costing and Invoicing/Accounting capabilities. Better Teams Integration to bring in Project Team Members on a Teams channel to be able to better collaborate. Flexible and easy to use Gannt Chart for Tasks. Clicking on the bars would let us configure the attributes of the Task Resource Manager has all visibility across all Projects. Revenue Recognition in Finance and Operations – Looking into Project And Operations for Outstanding Invoices. Overview of the Revenue Recognition angle of a Project can be over-viewed in FnO. AI to interpret receipts what have been scanned and entered against the Project. When is Project Operations available? General Availability is 1st Oct 2020 Some good QnAs in the session Could Integrate with Azure DevOps.Ans: Won’t be available out-of-box integration, but we can use Power Automate. Planned Integration?Ans: No direct Planner usage. PO and supporting CDSAns: PO will run on Dynamics platform. Will encapsulate PSA capabilities. All PO data available in CDS. Hope this initial info helps and we’ll keep you posted as we approach GA.

Suppose, you want to show a loading/waiting screen to let people know there’s some heavy processing going on in the back-end and they shouldn’t navigate away to do anything else with the record, you can use loading screen by using showProgressIndicator() and closeProgressIndicatory() methods. Xrm.Utility methods There are 2 methods are documented in the Xrm.Utility of Microsoft Docs that you can use to achieve this. Microsoft reference here. In this scenario, let’s say you want to show the Loading page while your Action is being performed by the JavaScript code. You can place the Xrm.Utility.showProgressIndicator(message); before you begin your code to invoke an action and place Xrm.Utility.closeProgressIndicator(); in your success and failure messages. Execution Whenever your JS code will call the action, the progress message will be displayed on the screen as below  – In Classic UI   In Unified Interface –   And once the process is complete, the Xrm.Utility.closeProgressIndicator will remove the message as below and bring back the form you were working on – Side Note: If you are using action calling from JS using invokeProcessAction, as of the day of this post – This doesn’t work well and results in action not supported error on the UCI – invokeProcessAction does not work in UCI   Hope this helps!

RSS is powerful and taming it wisely really helps! 🙂 Here’s an example where I used it to get a notification whenever a new blog was posted by Microsoft in their Dynamics 365 Blog page. It is my attempt to stay updated on the latest posts so that I don’t miss anything. Scenario Let’s say, for example, this is the website I want to read RSS feeds from. So click on the RSS icon – https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/ Copy the URL from the Feed page Build your Power Automate Start by building your Power Automate, you can select the Trigger as RSS. Paste the URL copied from your RSS source above, and then add a step to send a Notification. You can have anything here, it’s up to your use case of what you want to do with the Power Automate further on. Getting RSS Feeds on Phone using Power Automate Now, once all this is set, here’s how I’ll get notifications on the phone once I have Power Automate setup and authenticated to the correct environment of Power Automate. Whenever there’s a new blog posted on https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/, I get a Power Automate notification on the phone like this And when you click on it, you’ll see what has been posted, it will open up in the Power Automate app And when you click on the link, it will take you to the actual blog Post   Hope this helps you in your application or use case! Cheers!!