Overview: Often you miss doing your time entries in PSA for the work done and go on a leave! You either then need to just struggle to find a system and do it yourself or raise some other kind of request to make sure billing is done right. But, you can delegate time entries to a colleague and it is all taken care of. Assigning Delegates in PSA: In Project Service, you can see the entity Delegates. In this entity, all you need to do is create a Delegate record as shown below You can either delegate a fellow resource for Time Entries or for the Expense entries. In this case, I’ll let Somesh make Time Entries on my behalf and hence make him my Delegate in PSA for a week on which I’m on PTO. Entering Time Entries as Delegates: Now, looking at Somesh’s angle, if he has needs to make time entries on my behalf. He would need to go to Time Entries, then he will need to look at the ribbon for his name and change the user to Priyesh Wagh. Once the other user is selected, their Timesheet appears and all the time entries by the other user appear. Here, Somesh can make time entries just as he would usually do for himself and they would actually be registered for the Resource Priyesh Wagh.

Overview: Often, we wonder what could be wrong where we see a generic error on Documents in Dynamics 365. Something like this – That’s when you wonder if all the privileges in D365 Security Roles for SharePoint Site or Document entity are correct or not? In fact, it’s the SharePoint privileges that you must look into. Privileges On SharePoint: Even if the error indicates that you don’t have access in D365, it is actually the SharePoint site that’s missing permissions. Here’ where you need to check for the O365 User’s SharePoint privileges: Navigate to SharePoint Admin Center in the Office 365 Admin center Next, in any of the intended SharePoint sites, navigate to the Gear Icon and then Site Settings. In Site Settings, navigate to People and groups under Users and Permissions area. Check that you might not have the intended user in that list. You can then click on Add and add the user in the list. You can either add an individual user or ‘Everyone Except external users’. and confirm that you see them in the list now. Confirm Permissions: Now, you can ask the users to check and they should be good to go. Hope this helps!

Overview: Here’s a quick helpful control to enter barcodes in D365 fields. Here is how it goes – Adding Barcode Control: Here’s how you can add the Barcode Control. Select Add Control in the Field Property section. Select Barcode Scanner and click on Add. Select the appropriate configuration of devices for the control and click OK Finally, save and publish your customization. Seeing it Work: Now, since I have published a field called Brochure Barcode. I can use the same on the mobile device to capture barcodes without having to type them manually I can see the icon on the right end of the text box of type Barcode. On clicking the barcode icon, my phone’s camera opens. Show it in front of the barcode. And it automatically detects and enters the same in the textbox. That’s it. Hope this helps!

Overview: Auto Scheduling in PSA’s WBS books the hours when you enter the dates and dates when you enter the hours. They are interlocked. I want to schedule a task which is less in no. of hours but will span across more than expected duration of period. Such requirement is when signing a support contract with the client. Scenario While defining WBS for a Project called Abby’s D365 Implementation. I want to schedule a UAT task to span across over 10 which has only 22 hours. If I select the days as 3, I get my 22 Hours. Or select hours as 22, I get 3 days. But then, I can’t change the same to extend for more days. If I select the desired 10 days, I get 80 hours.Hence, I’ll toggle the Task Mode to Manual. Now, I can keep my Effort Hours and Duration as desired. To represent Manual mode, the icon changes to Calendar with a Pencil on it. That’s how you can keep flexible hours for the tasks you want to expand over a long duration.

Overview Xrm.Panel is a new additional to the client-side scripting in Dynamics 365. This feature is still in preview in the D365 December 2016 update. Panel is a simple static place on your D365 web client which loads a Web Page inside it. Perhaps, the best use of the same could be a Web Chat application implementation. Implementation Simple – I’ve made a JS Web Resource that has a function to call the Xrm.Panel.loadPanel(url, title); method and I’ve invoked the same on change of a Phone Number. Here’s a simple JS snippet I’ve written: oAccountCustomization = { loadPanel: function() { “use strict”; Xrm.Panel.loadPanel(“https://cft89.crm.dynamics.com//WebResources/new_SamplePage”, “Hello”); } }; And redirected it to another HTML page in my own D365. Then, I’ve added this to the onChange of the PhoneNumber on the Account record. And saved and Published the customization. Seeing it work: Now, when I change the Phone Number field on the Account, the slider appears on the right hand side of the page. You can click on the arrow to bring it in focus. Here we go! The Panel is now seen. Remember, this works only on the Web Client.

Introduction: In the current 8.2 version of D365 PSA, we can only Hard Book a Resource from the Project Team Member View whereas in the v9.0, we can Soft Book from the Project Team Member View from with a few extra clicks. v8.2 – Current There is a button called Hard Book which lets you Hard Book the resource selected as shown below Then, you can plainly Hard Book the resource. v9.0 There is a generic option called as Book in the Project Team Member Associated View On clicking the same, a separate window opens with the selected Resource to Book them Conclusion Soft Booking from Project Team Members Associated View is not possible in v8.2 but is possible in the v9.0 version.

Overview: Often while working on PS, I was struggling to  get the Chargeability View right. The main reason is not having the right Price List setup at the right places. There are 4 important places where the Price Lists need to be setup properly. Product Catalog with Role Prices having Org Unit A Account having corresponding Sales Price List and the same Sales Price List under it’s Project Price Lists grid. Opportunity having Org Unit A as Contracting Unit and Product Price list having Sales Price List for Org Unit A selected. Quote derived from the Opportunity having the same Account, Opportunity, Contracting unit and Product Price List selected. Organization Unit: For each Organization Unit you add to PSA, make sure you’ve added a Cost Price list to the Organization Unit as well as a Sales Price list exists for the same. Make sure Organization Units on the Role Prices are selected correctly on both the Sales and Cost Price Lists Sales Price List on Account and Opportunity: Account and Opportunity too should have the same Sales Price list whose Cost Price list is associated with the Organization Unit of the Account’s and Opportunity’s Organization Unit. Make sure you’ve correct Organization Unit and Product Price List as a Sales Price List for that Org Unit selected on the Opportunity form. Chargeability View on Quote Lines: Once everything flows from Account to Opportunity to Quote and to Quote Lines, you can see that your Chargeability View pops-up properly. Hope this helps you derive correct Chargeability View without hassle.

Overview: After much wait, the new Email feature in the Unified Interface is finally here. So this blog is about what all the new Email functionality can do in the Unified Interface. This feature is only for the Unified Interface. Now, you can see the Email button appearing on the ribbon. In the To field, you can select the record type in more intuitive way without having to load the Lookup view. Rich Text Editing: Now, the new Unified Interface offers Rich Text Editing capabilities wherein you can add new media to your email body. HTML Preview: Even you get to see the HTML preview of your email Preview of the Email You’d definitely want to see what goes out before sending the email out. You can also preview the final email before sending the same. Email: And this is how it looks when received by the recipient Hope this helps to a great start in email editing in D365!

Overview: Welcome to this 2-part blog series on Data Export Service in Dynamics 365. This is an Add-on service made available as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online solution that adds ability to replicate D365 Online data to Azure SQL datastore in a customer based Azure subscription. Supported Target Destinations – Microsoft Azure SQL Database Microsoft Azure SQL Server on MS Azure Virtual Machine Data export initially synchronizes schema and data and thereafter, delta changes as they occur. Prerequisites: Your Dynamics 365 Online instance must be December 2016 update or higher Entities should be enabled for Change Tracking. Code is run in the context of a user with Sys Admin role. You’ll need to link your Office 365 to the Azure Subscription i.e. add the Office 365 tenant in the Active Directories of the Azure Subscription Azure SQL Database and user with correct permissions to be setup Install Data Export Service from the App Source from within your Dynamics 365 Dynamics 365: You can get this in the App Source of the Dynamics 365 and add it to your organization. On selecting the same, proceed with the Wizard by accepting terms and conditions And it will setup in the background Once completed, it will appear in the Settings area in Dynamics 365. Settings > Data Export 4. One successfully authenticating with Azure, you’ll see this disclaimer to which you have to click OK to proceed. Setup Azure SQL Database: To be able to run the test successfully, you’ll need to setup SQL Database on your Azure Customer Subscription. 1. I have the following SQL Server created in my Azure account. 2. And the following database created under it. To be able to do #3 below, you must do the following: The subscription must support the volume of data being replicated from your Dynamics 365 instance. Configure an Azure SQL Database server-level firewall rule using Azure Portal. Recommended to Allow access to azure services to be enabled. 3. And finally, connect my SQL to the database hosted on my Azure. Create Access Permissions for Users in SQL Open the Master Database and create a user for the user ‘dataexport1’ for the database. This user is then used in the Dynamics 365 Data Export Service to connect to the database Once done, use the below script to create the user in the created Azure SQL database We gave db_owner access to the user to provide full permissions. Link your Office 365 tenant to your Azure AD (if required) If your Office365 and Azure accounts are different, you can add the Office 365 in your Azure by doing the following: Navigate to Azure portal and then select Active Directory Then, click on + New from the bottom and chose Use existing directory as option and proceed. You’ll be logged out and asked to login again using the Office 365 credentials you want to add. Once signed in, the Office 365 tenant will be linked to your Azure Subscription and seen as below in the Active Directory area Now, what we’ve accomplished so far is – Adding Data Export Service to your D365 instance Setting up Azure SQL and connecting the same from your SQL Adding your O365 tenant to the Azure Subscription (option) In the next part, we will see – Creating Key Vault in Azure to store the connection strings to the Azure SQL Creating a Data Export Profile Testing out the functionality. Key benefits of using Data Export Service. Part 2 of this blog series will be out early next week.  

Overview: Now, you may have a requirement where you’d want users to input data in a correct format for better readability and validity. There is a feature for a control where you can achieve this in tablet/mobile app of D365 and on the new v9 version of D365. It is called Input Mask For this example, I’ll demonstrate the feature on the new D365 v9’s Unified Interface. Define Input Mast for a control: Here’s how you can define an Input Mask for a control. Take an example of a Lead where I want business users to enter Business Phone field in a specified format only: Navigate to change the Field Properties on the Lead form: And click on Add Control to add the new type of control for the field. Select Input Mask and click Add. Select where you want the Input Mask to effect and then select the pencil icon to edit the condition Create your format by following the instructions. You can either bind to a value on a field or bind to a static value. I selected to bind to a static value. Confirm your changes and publish the same as below Input Mask Validating user input Since you’ve published the changes, let’s take a look at the Lead form and check the validation message if incorrect format is entered. Navigate to the Lead form in the Unified Interface. And enter the Business Phone which is not compliant to the specified format. You’ll see the validation error. Only when I enter correct format, I’m able to save the same. Hope this quick tip was helpful!