Category Archives: Dynamics 365
PSA Quick Tip: Use Project instead of Project Template while creating a project in Dynamic 365 Project Services Automation V3
Problem definition Often clients using PSA V2 used to complain of the feature missing was copying the project as the template. A few of the Construction Company clients of mine have huge projects and have almost similar structure for many of their projects. Undoubtedly templates use to serve the purpose, but, only to a certain extent. When you have an option to copy a project exactly, I would always prefer that. Below is how you do. Mitigation: Navigate to Project Services and try creating new project by Clicking on New Project button: Type the project name which you want to copy in the Project Template field. This will start copying the tasks from the project onto Schedule of the new project. You are done. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using Dynamic 365 Project Services Automation for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.
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Getting the Price right post the time entries are approved in Dynamics 365 Project Services Automation
Dynamics 365 Project Services Automation demands a perfect configuration and that is the proof of being a sophisticated application. You won’t see any result unless the configurations are all set right. Use Case: I am observing from quite sometime that my Accounting Team complaints that when the Actuals are created on the project they are with 0 value. This was an issue as I went out to check a couple of things: Is the project having a currency tagged to it. Is the project price list existing for the project. Is the resource having a Resourcing Unit tagged to himself. In the approval tab is the time entry submitted by the resource having a Role and is it Chargeable. To my surprise all of the above were looking correct. Out of curiosity I digged in one more step and that’s where I found out the issue: Issue Resolution: Step 1: I navigated to D365 Project ServiceàResources. Search for the resource who is working on that project. Step 2: Open the Resource by clicking on it and then navigate to the Scheduling Tab. Step 3: Make a note of the Organizational Unit mentioned for him. In this case it is CloudFronts Mumbai (USD). Step 4: Navigate to Projects and Sales Tab and Open the Project Contract Header by clicking the link in the Project Contract grid. Step 5: Navigate to Project Price Lists and Open the Price List in the project price lists. Navigate to Role prices. Check the Role and the Resource Unit mentioned for that Role should be exactly the same as the Resourcing Unit mentioned for the Resource mentioned in Step 3. Now when you try approving the time entries the Actuals will have correct price. You are done. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.
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Why fields go missing from Advanced Find in D365
At times, end users are used to working with Advanced Find a lot without having much control over what they can customize. Because for obvious reasons, they are users. And not someone who customize the system. In this case, they might also not know what they can’t search for in the Advanced Find and are led into believing that all the fields are being shown. And they could even wonder why it doesn’t appear in Advanced Find when they can see it on the Form/View. However, there’s a configuration which can either hide/show the fields in the Advanced Find. Making Fields Searchable So this is the answer. If fields are not Searchable, they don’t appear in Advanced Find Advanced Find field list with the missing field And, when the Searchable is set to Yes, they appear in the Advanced Find. Advanced Find showing the Searchable enabled field So that’s why. Hope this helps!
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Outlook appointment/Meetings to be allocated on Schedule board in Dynamics 365 Project Services Automation using MS Flow
Business Use Case: Often there are team members who share the need of getting allocated on schedule board in Dynamics 365 Project Services Automation directly as soon as they book an appointment or have a meeting invite. One of the reasons for the same is for the team or anyone concerned about allocation to understand that the said team member is either having a meeting with someone or has an appointment. Hence, they do consume some time of the day. This is one of the reasons that I get when I think aloud. Since, there is lot of argument and justification the team needs to provide for these additional non-billable time that they spend. There can be many other reasons as to why this is needed by other organisations. Mitigation: Though there is an (Out of the Box) OOB solution for marking an appointment in Outlook calendar from Schedule Board, but, vice-versa is not provided OOB. MS Flows helped me here. I created a flow between Bookable Resource Booking entity and Outlook entity in Flows. I have explained the steps as to how to do the same. Steps: Step 1: Login to https://portal.office.com with your credentials. Step 2: Click on Flows as shown in below image. Step 3: This will take you to the portal where you can mange and create all your Flows: Step 4: Click on +New. Step 5: Click on Create from Blank. Step 6: Click again on Create from Blank. Step 7: Select the Outlook connector by searching the Outlook 365 Connector from the search box as show in the image below. Also, select the Triggering event on when the flow should be triggered. So we selected, When a new event is created (v2). Step 8: Select Calendar id as Calendar. Step 9: click on next step. Step 10: Select the target connector i.e. Dynamics 365 by searching in the connectors. Step 11: Click on create a new records. Step 12: Select the Organisation and the Entity where you want to create a record. Since the booking that shows up on the schedule board comes from Bookable Resource Booking, we shall select Bookable Resource Booking. Step 13: Add the mappings to the fields as shown below, by searching them from the right pane. Step 14: Once done, click on save and your flow is ready. Step 15: Once created do not forget to Turn it On. Test it by creating an event in calendar and see in the event history of the flow whether it is successful or not. Conclusion: This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.
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Change navigation in D365 for Sales
Introduction: With update of Microsoft dynamics many new exiting features has been introduced in Dynamics 365 sales one them is Unified Interface with Navigation. By default, form December organization will start receiving the new UI. But if you are still interested you can enable it by yourself. Description: To enable the UI navigation you need to have organization Id, You will find the organization id can be found at Developer resource. To get the organization id you need to follow the below path 1. Go to setting -> customizations -> select “Developer Resource”. Highlighted in red is the organization Id. Once you have organization id you need to execute a small script in developer script console. To do so you need to press key F12. Also you need to make sure that you are logged in to the same system where you want to change the UI. You can see that navigation has change from old to new UI. Conclusion: Hope this blog help you to use make UI look and feel more better and comfortable
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User Reference Panel in D365
Introduction: With update of Microsoft dynamics new exiting features has been introduced in Dynamics 365 sales one them is Reference Panel. Description: While putting the Quick create or any subgrid in a section extra space gets added which looks weird. Most of us has feel the same situation. But with the introduction of “Reference Panel” we can now overcome this issue. Solution Let’s start with adding a reference section and view 1. Go to setting -> customizations -> select “Customize the System”. 2. Open the account entity Form. Now you can add the Reference panel by adding the section. If you try to add more than 1 Reference Panel you will receive below error. After adding the reference panel, you will not be able to identify the which one is the general section or reference. There is only way to know if it is reference panel, as name of reference Panel is generated by default as you can see in the below screen shot. I have added below two grids on account record. After adding you need to save and publish. Now go to account record and refresh the page you will able to see the sections with no extra space as you can see in the below screen shot. Conclusion: Hope this blog help you to use reference panel wisely.
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Create Notes Attachment using WebAPI
Introduction: After the introduction of web API in CRM, user can execute all the requests which is possible through C# or JavaScript. In this blog I will explain how to attach a document to record using the postman. Description: Notes attachments has been tested with a custom entity and tested on Postman. To work this, you can follow the below blog to get the Access code. https://www.magnetismsolutions.com/blog/johntowgood/2018/02/12/dynamics-365-online-authenticate-with-user-credentials METHOD: POST URL: https://instancename.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.1/annotations Authorization: Header: Content-Type:application/json In Authorization select the type Bearer Token Type and pass the token value which we got before. Body: You need to pass the below 4 parameters with value. Key Value subject Filename objectid_cf_document@odata.bind documentbody Json Body: { “subject”: “Test From Web API”, “filename”: “Untitled2.png”, ” objectid_cf_document@odata.bind “:”/cf_documents(23e6ee7c-5812-e911-a96b-000d3a3638df)”, “documentbody”:”iVBORw0KGgoAAAANS……….” } CODE: Postman Description: Image attached you need to pass it as base64 string as document body. var settings = { “async”: true, “crossDomain”: true, “url”: “https://instancename.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.1/annotations”, “method”: “POST”, “headers”: { “Content-Type”: “application/json”, “Prefer”: “return=representation,odata.include-annotations=\”OData.Community.Display.V1.FormattedValue\””, “Authorization”: “Bearer eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGci………………………..”, “cache-control”: “no-cache”, “Postman-Token”: “b57b2d5b-c8d5-4f26-abf0-a3ea1f499637” }, “processData”: false, “data”: ” {\r\n \t \”subject\”: \”Test From Web API\”,\r\n \”filename\”: \”Untitled2.png\”,\r\n \”objectid_cf_document@odata.bind\”:\”/cf_documents(a60fbc96-f00f-e911-a96b-000d3a3638df)\”,\r\n \”documentbody\”:\”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\”\r\n }” } $.ajax(settings).done(function (response) { console.log(response); }); In the above code I have posted- Post Request Response
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Share SharePoint document programmatically
Introduction: Sometimes it is required to share the certain documents with outside users. It is possible that user can share that document as hard copy. If that document is hosted on SharePoint user can make a shareable link. Description: Sharing a document to the outside users are possible via directly going to SharePoint and creating a shareable link. But what if you want to generate a shareable link using the C# code. You can follow below code to generate shareable link in Online SharePoint. 1. Get the link You need to pass the document link to below function as shown. currentLink = https://organization.sharepoint.com/cf_car/JTN_89330b3c-beb5-e811-a968-000d3a324f4c/Untitled2.png 2. Get the base url of your SharePoint and generate the service context using (var context = new ClientContext(Model.SharePointBaseURL)){} 3. Authenticate the user foreach (var c in Model.AdminPassword) passWord.AppendChar(c); context.Credentials = new SharePointOnlineCredentials(Model.AdminUserName, passWord); 4. CreateAnonymousLink method which will generate the shareable link var orgEditLink = Web.CreateAnonymousLink(context, currentLink, true); 5. Execute the query context.ExecuteQuery(); 6. Finally get the public link editUrl = orgEditLink.Value; Complete code: private static string UpdateLinkTOShareable(string currentLink, Entity document) { string editUrl = string.Empty; using (var context = new ClientContext(Model.SharePointBaseURL)) { var passWord = new SecureString(); foreach (var c in Model.AdminPassword) passWord.AppendChar(c); context.Credentials = new SharePointOnlineCredentials(Model.AdminUserName, passWord); try { var orgEditLink = Web.CreateAnonymousLink(context, currentLink, true); context.ExecuteQuery(); editUrl = orgEditLink.Value; } catch (Exception ex) { } /*Code to make link Public End*/ return editUrl; } }
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Outlook appointment/Meetings to be allocated on Schedule board in PSA using MS Flow
Business Use Case: Often there are team members who share the need of getting allocated on schedule board in PSA directly as soon as they book an appointment or have a meeting invite. One of the reasons for the same is for the team or anyone concerned about allocation to understand that the said team member is either having a meeting with someone or has an appointment. Hence, they do consume some time of the day. This is one of the reasons that I get when I think aloud. Since there is a lot of argument and justification the team needs to provide for these additional non-billable time that they spend. There can be many other reasons as to why this is needed by other organizations. Mitigation: Though there is an (Out of the Box) OOB solution for marking an appointment in Outlook calendar from Schedule Board, vice-versa is not provided OOB. MS Flows helped me here. I created a flow between Bookable Resource Booking entity and Outlookentity in Flows. I have explained the steps as to how to do the same: Steps: Step 1: Login to https://portal.office.com with your credentials. Step 2: Click on Flows as shown in below image Step 3: This will take you to the portal where you can manage and create all your Flows: Step 4: Click on +New Step 5: Click on Create from Blank Step 6: Click again on Create from Blank Step 7: Select the Outlook connector by searching the Outlook 365 Connector from the search box as shown in the image below. Also, select the Triggering event on when the flow should be triggered. So we selected When a new event is created (v2) Step 8: Select Calendar id as Calendar Step 9: click on next step Step 10: Select the target connector i.e. Dynamics 365 by searching in the connectors. Step 11: Click on create new records Step 12: Select the Organisation and the Entity where you want to create a record. Since the booking that shows up on the schedule board comes from Bookable Resource Booking, we shall select Bookable Resource Booking. Step 13: Add the mappings to the fields as shown below, by searching them from the right pane. Step 14: Once done, click on save and your flow is ready. Step 15: Once created do not forget to Turn it On. Test it by creating an event in the calendar and see in the event history of the flow whether it is successful or not. The End. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for the last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project management, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, the implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in Cloud Front Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.
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Shortcut to Settings from Unified Interface: D365
If you’re spending time looking and wondering that you always need to go to the app switcher to go the Settings from the Unified Interface, you need to do the following – Once you are in the Unified Interface, click on the Gear icon next to the help icon on top-right corner as shown below and click Advanced Settings – Right on the next tab, Settings with the classic UI is shown – And there’s nothing else on the SiteMap. Hope this helps!