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!

Overview: With the new v9 release of Dynamics 365, a lot of user-friendly features have made life easier. Talking about the slick new Unified Interface! And if you want to make an App based on the same with components you need, it’s a hell lot easier too. New App with Unified Interface: You can either design an App in the Web Interface or in the new Unified Interface in v9 of Dynamics 365. Here’s how you can do it – Navigate to Settings > Apps. Then, click on create new App button as shown below. Now, you only get to choose either from the Web Interface or the new Unified Interface. So, it takes just a moment to get the interface ready for you to design.  Once prepared, you can start making your app, designing your site-map, dashboards, entities etc. For the sake of this blog, I’ve added a basic SiteMap, some Dashboards and a few Entities So typically, this is how I want my App to have! Once I have made all the changes, I’ll save and Publish the same. Accessing Unified Interface App: Once the App is published, it will appear in My Apps section as shown below: And I can then open and get the new Unified Interface. Now, you can work in the new Unified Interface with your custom app.

Overview: The new July 2017 update of the D365 is the latest update to Dynamics 365 and is called v9. This is a major change from not only functionality perspective but also from a visual perspective as well. And one such part of the visual upgrade is the refreshed web client UI. This is a major change since it’s 2013 Online version! What has changed: The traditional UI has been redesigned to appear more intuitive and eliminate issues with the previous UI. Some of the changes are: Removal of White Spaces: They’ve removed all the extra white spaces from the current version making the UI look more occupied and tightly bound. As you can see in the screenshot above. Boxes have been added to house the sections on the form. This makes the white spaces disappear making the UI look more occupied. In the previous UI, the short length of fields and unexpanded subgrids used to leave a lot of white space causing a disjoint in the UI. That has been taken care of here. Word Wrap Fields: With the new refreshed UI, the lengthy field names are taken care of. In the previous version, the lengthy field labels used to disappear behind the field making it a hassle to hover over the label and read the name of the field. With the new UI, the field labels are not wrapped and if you have lengthy field labels, the entire text is seen as below: Color Coded Subgrid on Form: Further, they’ve enhanced on how sub-grids should appear on the form. Example, if you have a  lot of sub-grids on the form and you need to read to know which sub-grid is where. Now, you can have colored Sub-grid headers that give you a visual feedback of what entity sub-grid it is. See sample screenshot below: As seen above, I can have a uniform color for Contact across all forms where I have Contact subg-grid. This is available only on the form level. The color can be modified from the Sub-grid properties on the Form as shown below: Other Improvements: Along with these, there are other significant improvements that can be seen across the new UI: Improved Form tab formatting. Standardise fonts. The new UI looks promising and will provide an easier visual feel.

Overview: Another new feature announced in the Dynamics 365 July 2017 Update is that the Business Process Flows are now available as entities in D365! That means, you can access them like entities from SiteMap and see the records of their respective entities in an Entity View like you would do with other entities. Turning BPF Entity customization support: Since this is in preview for Dynamics 365 July 2017 Update, you’ll need to turn it on from the Previews section under Settings > Administration. BPF as Entity in Solution: Just like any other entity, the Process appears like an entity. Accessing BPF as entity records: Once this is enabled from the Previews section, you’ll see the entities in the default Sales area as shown below: Business Process Flow as records: Now, so far you’ve seen records having the same business process flows and once you open them, you’d see which records were in which stage. This view gives you which records use a particular Business Process Flow and where has the record reached in the flow. In the above view, each record will open the record of their respective entities. Ex. Jake Cormick is in Process stage and Process stage belongs to Opportunity entity. So opening this record will open the Opportunity record as shown below: Quite Simple! Hope this was helpful.

Since this is in Preview, it won’t be available for users until next update. However, this is how it works and seems so easy to implement it. Enable Step Action from System Settings: Since this is a Preview feature in Dynamics 365 July 2017 update, it appears in the Previews section where you can go and enable the same. Once you’ve enabled the Preview feature, you should be able to see Action Step visible in the Business Process Flow editor as shown below: Add Action Step in BPF: You can trigger an Action or a Workflow in the Step Action feature. I have a Workflow to create a New Invitation entity record in D365. I’ll be adding the same in the BPF. In the Business Process Flow editor, I’ll add an Add Action Step in one of the stages as shown below: I’ll add the already created a Workflow to the Business Process Flow in the Step Action. Once done, I’ll simply activate the BPF and we can see it in action. Working with Step Action: Let’s see how easy it is to execute this workflow using the Step Action. On the Business Process Flow, I can see that the step appears from what the Display Name in Business Process Flow is set. And clicking on it, the workflow will run the background performing it’s operation. (You’ll see a quick ‘Processing’) message while it triggers the workflow. As seen below, the record for New Invitation was created as directed in the Workflow I created. Conclusion: Putting it simply, it works very quickly and is as simple as clicking a button.

Introduction: Finally, one of the most sought after feature is here in the D365 July 2017 Update. The Multi-Select Option Set! A new attribute type added to D365, you can now create Multi-Level OptionSets in D365. Creating a Multi Select OptionSet: A new attribute type is now available that lets you create Multi-Select Option Set. 1. When you create a new field, you’ll see an option to create a Multi-Select Option Set. 2. Here, I’m creating an Option Set for choice of Subjects for Newsletter Company. I’ve named the field as Subjects and I’ll let users select which all subjects is a particular customer interested in in the Enrollment entity. 3. The Multi-Select Option Set looks like a usual option set and my options look like this 4. And I’ll add the same in my form as well and Publish all my changes. Using Multi-Select Option Set: Below is how you can select multiple values in the Multi-Select Option Set. Once on the form, here’s how you can use the Multi Select Option Sets 1. They come with auto-complete feature, so you can start typing the options and they will show up 2. Now, I have selected 3 options namely Technical, History and Science and my subject of interests. 3. Once selected, they appear separated by semicolon (;) And I’ll save the record. Multi Select Option Set on Views: You can see selected values in the Multi-Select Option Sets on the entity views as well. Some Features: Below are the features of the Multi-Select Option Sets Auto-complete the results. Can hold up to 150 values Can be used in Advanced Find as well as FetchXML queries. Hope this was helpful!  

Now often, you want to have a common mail address for everyone within a team to monitor and interact through like info@domain.com or support@domain.com Office 365 provides this capability with something called as Shared Mailbox. Features of Shared Mailbox Shared Mailbox doesn’t need an Exchange license. Shared Mailbox doesn’t have its own credentials. Users add this mailbox to theirs and use their own credentials to access it. Shared Calendar is available in a Shared Mailbox where everyone can see who is available when Setting up Shared Mailbox You’ll need to be an administrator in Office 365 to be able to create a Shared Mailbox. Navigate to Office 365 Admin Center and find Shared Mailboxes options under Groups. Click on Add a mailbox I’ll call it Sales@domain.com, for example. And click Add. I selected both the users seen in above step to add to the Shared Mailbox. Those members are seen on the detail pane of the selected Shared Mailbox as shown below Shared mailbox gets created within moments! Adding Users to the Shared Mailbox Only users who have an Exchange Online license can be added to Shared Mailboxes. Click on the mailbox and then on Edit in Members area to add O365 users to the mailbox as shown below Click on +Add Members to add users to the mailbox. You’ll find all the members who already have an Exchange Online license are eligible for adding to the shared mailbox. I selected both the users seen in above step to add to the Shared Mailbox. Those members are seen on the detail pane of the selected Shared Mailbox as shown below Adding Shared Mailbox to Outlook I will show the OWA example in this blog to show how to add the shared mailbox to the user’s Outlook Let’s assume we have the mailbox pwagh@cft79.onmicrosoft.com and we want to add the shared mailbox sales@cft79.onmicrosoft.com to pwagh’s mailbox. In OWA, right click on the root folder of the mailbox and click on Add shared folder Start typing the name of the Shared Mailbox and it should auto-populate the same for you. Select the Shared Mailbox and click Add. The mailbox should then appear in your OWA. Note: It takes a few minutes until the Shared Mailbox is accessible from your mailbox after adding it Hope this was helpful.

Overview: Connection entities provision an easy way to connect and describe relationships between two records in D365 CRM. This is supported across most Entity types in Dynamics 365. Some of the features of Connection entities are as follows: All Business and Custom entities can be enabled for Connections. Provision to add descriptive information between the relationship between the 2 records. Enabling Connections for an Entity: In my example below, I’ll enable Connections for 2 custom entities – I have a custom entity called Family Members and have these records details of Family Members like their blood groups and medical history. This entity is a child entity of another customer entity called Patient. Connections must be enabled for this custom entity at the entity level as shown below: Connections need to be enabled on both entities between which connection is to be made. Once Connections have been enabled, navigate to the record and navigate to the related records, you’ll see Connections is now available. Connection Roles: Connection Roles are the description that defines in what way is record A related to record B. Connection Roles can be added to a Solution or even created as below: In a solution, look for Connection Roles on the left hand menu Then, create a Connection (Existing ones in an Unmanaged Solution can be added as well) I am creating a new Connection Role by the name Father and I’ve enabled the same only for Patient entity. and Family Member After saving the record, I’ll create a Matching Connection Role to the role Father I just created. Now, I’ll create a matching Role called as Son Now, the two roles have been created which match each other Associating Records: Once my Connections have been enabled on source (connection from entity) and target (connection to entity), I’ll associate the two records as follows: I will navigate to the Family Member entity I created above and will associate a record with a record to Patient entity. This way, I can derive what is the relation between the family member and the patient. In the Connection Associated View above, I’ll associate the Family Member Gary to the Patient. So I’ll select To Another in the connection menu as shown in #1 above. Then, find the Patient Alexander James which I created in the Connect To tab as shown below. And then I relate the current record to the target record as the Father. Note: As soon as Father was selected in the Connected To tab, the Details tab auto-filled Son as it was the only role associated with the Father when we created Connection Roles in above section in this blog. In case there are multiple Connection Roles associated with one Role, the Details section’s As This Role field will be empty for you to select the related role from. And the record is saved as below. Likewise, a record can be connected to multiple other records as well. Retrieving Connections: Connections are useful if you want to draw reports, graphs or charts.

Overview: O365 Message Encryption is a service based on Microsoft Azure Rights Management (Azure RMS). Once an RMS is setup, Email messages can be encrypted under certain rules set and provide the recipients with 2 options to read the encrypted email – By an OPT By signing into organization account. Pre-Requisites: Activate Azure RMS in Office 365. Setup Azure Rights Management for Exchange Online Setup transport rule to enforce message encryption in Exchange Online. Activate Azure Rights Management in Office 365: Following are the steps to enable Email Encryption. I’m going to enable encryption on one of my trial environments- Log in to Office 365 Admin Center as a Global Administrator Navigate to Settings section and then select Services and add-ins Then, look for Microsoft Azure Information Protection Open the same by clicking on the highlighted link as shown below On the rights management page, you’ll see the rights management is not activated and you’ll get an option to activate the same. Once you activate the same, it will be activated and you’ll see a page like this Here, Rights Management has been activated! Setup Azure Rights Management for Office 365 Email Encryption: Following steps are carried to setup Azure RMS for Email Message Encryption. Enter the following steps to authenticate and connect to the session. As shown above, enter the commandsSet-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSignedEnter Y/y when asked about changing the Execution Policy.Then, enter $cred = Get-CredentialThen, enter the admin credentials to your O365. 2. You’ll be authenticated, then enter the following commands$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection 3. Then, Import-PSSession $Session as shown below 4. Next step is to verify that IRM is not configured yet.   Get-IRMConfiguration 5. Now, configure with key-sharing location. For my North America environment, I’ll use the following –Set-IRMConfiguration -RMSOnlineKeySharingLocation https://sp-rms.na.aadrm.com/TenantManagement/ServicePartner.svc Here’s the list of key sharing locations depending where your tenant resides Location RMS key sharing location North America https://sp-rms.na.aadrm.com/TenantManagement/ServicePartner.svc European Union https://sp-rms.eu.aadrm.com/TenantManagement/ServicePartner.svc Asia https://sp-rms.ap.aadrm.com/TenantManagement/ServicePartner.svc South America https://sp-rms.sa.aadrm.com/TenantManagement/ServicePartner.svc Office 365 for Government https://sp-rms.govus.aadrm.com/TenantManagement/ServicePartner.svc1 6.  Import TPD i.e. Trusted Publishing Domain from RMS Online Import-RMSTrustedPublishingDomain -RMSOnline -name “RMS Online” 7. Now, test the successful setup of IRM in Exchange Online Test-IRMConfiguration -sender crmadmin@cft77.onmicrosoft.com (Enter your Admin username) 8. Enable InternalLicensing and test again Set-IRMConfiguration -InternalLicensingEnabled: $true And you’ll get the passed result. 9. Few more steps – Disable IRM templates in OWA and Outlook Set-IRMConfiguration -ClientAccessServerEnabled $false and Enable IRM for O365 Message Encryption Set-IRMConfiguration -InternalLicensingEnabled $true 10. Now, check the IRM Configuration Get-IRMConfiguration IRM is now setup! Configure Rules in Exchange Admin Center: Now, we will setup a very simple rule which where the Exchange will send out an encrypted email Navigate to Exchange Admin Center in O365 Under Mail Flow section, create the below rule And set the conditions as – If the sender is CRM Admin, encrypt the email. And then save. And try sending a sample email – The email will be received like this Download the HTML file and open the same. The HTML file will have the following options – Let’s say, I select OPT, I’ll get another email as this And I enter that OTP, I can then see the message And you have the encrypted message feature as shown above! Hope this was helpful!