Introduction: In this blog we will discuss how we can solve XML issue while importing solution from one environment to other. Scenario and Steps: 1. Deploying a solution from one environment to other causing issues below issue. This error occurs when there are some integrations enabled for your entity. 2. Click on “Help me resolve this issue” and a Dialog will be opened which shows the specific error. As you can see element “IsMSTeamsIntegrationEnabled” is present in the solution which is not present in target solution. Thus we will remove this element from XML and import the solution. 3. To remove the element from XML follow the below steps: Extract the solution you want to import. Open customizations.xml file. Remove “isMSTeamsIntegartionEnabled” element from XML and save the XML. Zip all the files and import the solution to your environment. Your solution will be imported to the targeted environment.

Introduction: Dynamics 365 service team regularly sends email notifications to the administrators in your dynamics 365 organization. Now with simple mail box rule, you have complete control who should receive the mail. Description: As an administrator you can setup the mail box rule to automatically redirect email communications from dynamics 365 to additional recipients. People outside of your Dynamics 365 organization, such as your partners. People inside and outside of your company. Send email notifications to multiple recipients: By default, admin will receive the email notification but if you want to change the email notification to some other user. follow the below steps: 1. Sign in to portal https://portal.office.com. 2. On the Office 365 menu bar, click Admin centers > Dynamics 365 > Instances tab. 3. Choose an instance that has notifications you want to change. 4. Click Notifications. 5. Enter the email addresses of people to receive update notifications for the selected instance and click Save.

Introduction: This blog details steps for displaying Company Insights V 4.2 for Custom Form in D365 Customer Engagement. Pre-requisites: 1. Company Insights solution installed with version 4.2 2. Custom Form for Entity Steps: Below are steps to configure Company Insights on custom form “FSA Account” for Account Entity 1. Open custom form “FSA Account” 2. Insert new section and label as Insights 3. Insert new web resource as detailed below Select Webresource – “iv_/webpages/summary_mashup.htm”. Insert details in Custom Parameter(data) – “solutionVersion=4.2&crm_version=v140”. Check setting – Pass record object Type code. 4. Insert new Navigation Link for Insights in Common area as detailed below. Set Name as “Insights”. Select Icon – “iv_/images/insights_32px.png”. Select WebResource – “iv_/webpages/detail_mashup.htm”. 5. Add new Parameter in Form Properties with below details. Set Name as “iv_onLoadAction”. Set Type as “SafeString”. 6. Publish Custom Form and Company Insights is rendered as below. Note : If User skips step 4 will get error – “You do not have the ‘ISV Extensions’ privilege assigned to your security role”. Conclusion: Hope this blogs helps CRM Administrators to  enable Company Insights V 4.2 on Custom Form in D365 Customer Engagement with no errors.

Introduction: If the Voice of Customer solution is accidentally deleted or misconfigured, it might not be able to receive survey response. You can repair or restore the Voice of the Customer configuration. Steps for restoring configurations are listed below for Web client and Voice of Customer app. Web client: Sign in to Dynamics 365. Go to Settings > Voice of the Customer Configurations. Select Configure from the toolbar at the top of the screen. Voice of the Customer app Open Voice of Customer app. Go to Settings > Configurations. Select Configure from the toolbar at the top of the screen. Hope you find this helpful!

Introduction: Many people face issues in installing Voice of Customer solution on v9 environment and trying repeatedly to install the solution but failed. Below is the error that usually people get. How to install? Installing Voice of Customer is an easy process. If you are facing some error, you might be doing something wrong. The steps on how you can install Voice of Customer solution are listed below. The Voice of the Customer for Dynamics 365 solution can be installed from Dynamics 365 Administration Center. It is compatible with Dynamics 365 version 8.2 and later. Sign in to your Dynamics 365 solution as administrator. Go to the Dynamics 365 Administration Center, and then select the Applications Select the application row titled Voice Of The Customer, and then select Manage. From the Dynamics 365 Instancedrop-down list, select the instance where you want to install the solution. Accept the license terms. Select Install. By following the above steps you can see the solution gets configured properly. Note: You must be a tenant administrator to install the solution. The list of instances only displays the organizations with Dynamics 365 version 8.2.

Introduction: Voice of the Customer features creating and sending out surveys to gain valuable feedback from your customers about your products or services. Respondents can take your surveys on a phone, tablet, or computer. You can see your customer’s feedback history as you work a sale or resolve a service case. In this blog we will have look on the solved issues by Microsoft till now. Resolved issues in Voice of Customer version 9.0.1162: The survey minimum and maximum values revert to their default values on saving the question. Invitation Link Text field gives HTML Validation Error when you provide input like <<<Hello>>>. The mandatory date question response validation fails for locales with dd/mm/yy date format in Google Chrome. Multiple survey responses are created when you open a survey link in different tabs or browsers and submit. Rotation of headers in Single rating in columns and Multiple ratings in columns questions do not work. In French locale, a few emoticons are not displayed while previewing the Smilies rating question. You were unable to preview or publish a survey if “>>>” or “<<<” characters are in the Invitation Link Text field. Resolved issues in Voice of Customer version 9.0.1113.10: Footer URLs are opened in the same tab as survey. Unable to enter negative value as the answer to the numerical response question. All answer options of a mandatory question are highlighted if an option is not selected by the respondent. The Response column under the Question Responses section in a survey response allows only 100 characters. Resolved issues in Voice of Customer version 9.0.959.8: Feedback entity does not work properly on all locales specified in Dynamics 365. Unable to clone surveys on a French organization. The default count resets to five in a start-rating question even after modification. The unsubscribe link is not visible on the survey. Respondent can skip Single Rating question even though it is marked as mandatory. Translation corrections for few strings in the Japanese language. The error messages are not appropriate in case of a survey exception. The social sharing dialog box is not displayed completely on the survey. You can refer our previous blogs on Voice of Customer for proper understanding of Voice of Customer solution.

Introduction: This blog is the continuation of Part 1 and it will show you the code that are required for the action to work and the workflows created in CRM. Steps: 1. Add a button on marketing list using Ribbon Workbench and script which calls the action. 2. Create an action “MailChimpBatchCreateCall” that triggers on Sync button click. When the button is clicked, action is called using JavaScript. This action Retrieves configuration and Marketing list records from CRM and add the members to Mail Chimp Marketing list by Mail Chimp API Call (Batch request). The code to be included in the action is given below: This is a POST request as we are creating list members in MainChimp using (WebClientEx client = new WebClientEx()) { string authorizationKey = string.Empty; authorizationKey = Convert.ToBase64String(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, “{0}:{1}”, username, api))); client.Timeout = 60000; client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.ContentType, “application/json”); client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Authorization, “Basic ” + authorizationKey); tracer.Trace(“jsonData: ” + jsonData); createBatchResponseJSON = client.UploadString(basicURL, jsonData); } tracer.Trace(“createBatchResponse :” + createBatchResponseJSON); Model.MailChimpContactCreateBatchResponse createBatchResponse = GetInfoFromJSON(createBatchResponseJSON); CreateMailChimpSyncRecord(createBatchResponse, tracer, service, marketinglistid); The JSON request to be passed is given below: The JSON response for the BATCH call is given below: 3. Create an action “MailChimp status” which triggers on MailChimp Sync record creation. Mail Chimp API call is made to get the status of the synchronization process. Batch ID is the unique value which helps to retrieve the status of sync call. If status is finished, sync process is completed. The code to be included in the action is given below: This is a GET request to check the status and update the status record in CRM. //// Call the web service using (WebClientEx client = new WebClientEx()) { string authorizationKey = string.Empty; authorizationKey = Convert.ToBase64String(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, “{0}:{1}”, username, api))); basicURL = basicURL + “/” + batchId; HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(basicURL); request.Accept = “application/json”; request.Method = “GET”; request.Headers.Add(“Authorization”, “Basic ” + authorizationKey); using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse()) using (Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream()) using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream)) { getBatchResponseJSON = reader.ReadToEnd(); } } tracer.Trace(“createBatchResponse :” + getBatchResponseJSON); Model.MailChimpContactCreateBatchResponse createBatchResponse = GetInfoFromJSON(getBatchResponseJSON); //// Update the MailChimp Sync record with new status UpdateMailChimpSyncRecord(createBatchResponse, tracer, service, currentRecord.Id); The JSON response for the GET request is given below: 4. Create workflows that keep on checking the status of the batch call. The initial batch call is a sync process and we get a status showing no. of record finished and pending. Thus, the syncing process takes place in background. Therefore, we need to create workflows to keep on checking in specific interval. In the initial call, we have kept waiting time of 5 min and then kept waiting time of 1 hour and called the same workflow again till we get the status of batch call as “finished”. a. Main Workflow: b. Child Workflow 1 Check Mail Chimp Sync. c. Child Workflow 2 Check Mail Chimp Sync. For more code details, you can refer the GitHub link. Hope it help you and thus we can integrate the CRM with Mailchimp and make use of MailChimp API calls listed in their documentation. Members can be added individually or by using the batch operations. You can refer the below links from MaiChimp  which shows how we can make individual and batch calls. i. Creating a new member ii. Batch Operations

Introduction: This blog will depict an idea on how we can integrate the members of CRM Marketing List to MailChimp Marketing List. Description: We had a requirement to add all the members from CRM static marketing lists to Mail Chimp marketing list. There were many marketing lists in CRM and exporting/importing data for each marketing list was a repetitive process each time we add a member to the list. Thus, we created some customizations in CRM with respect to the MailChimp API functionalities. These customizations will help your organization to minimize the manual efforts of adding members to Mail Chimp marketing lists. Only thing you need to do is to click on the custom sync button present on the marketing list record. CRM customizations are listed below: Provide a manual option on CRM marketing list to sync the list members to the MailChimp marketing list. These will work for members of type Contacts and Leads. Account members cannot be synched because it does not have an email address field. (MailChimp API main parameter for synching any member is the Email address of the member. It does not create duplicate records in MailChimp). Create a field on Marketing list which stores a unique marketing list ID from MailChimp. This value is important as this will help usl to link CRM and MailChimp lists. Create an configuration entity in CRM to store Mail chimp API key, MailChimp username, MailChimp URL.MailChimp URL for developer purpose is given below: https://<dc>.api.mailchimp.com/3.0 The <dc> part of the URL corresponds to the data center for your account. For example, if the last part of your MailChimp API key is us6, all API endpoints for your account are available at https://us6.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/. Below is the link to get or create a API key in MailChimp. How to create/get API key Write a custom action which calls the MailChimp API. Below are the links for synching the members individually and to perform the sync operation in batches. Each Member Sync Sync Members In Batches Create a MailChimp sync entity to record the sync status. The sync takes place in background in MailChimp thus we need to create this entity and keep a sync check by calling the MailChimp API to retrieve the batch status. Once the status is finished, sync will complete and all the members will be synched to MailChimp Marketing list.Below is the screen shot which will show the below details: How many records completed How many records errored Submitted and Completed date Status of the sync process. You can see the status of the sync by opening the record. Status finished denotes the syncing process is completed. In the next blog, we will discuss on the MailChimp API call in action.

Disconnected systems cause your business processes to be inefficient. How quickly can you get new products up on your eCommerce store? How long does it take you to update inventory counts? When these processes are too slow, it negatively impacts your performance. You can’t keep up with your competitors. Overall, these issues can lead to poor customer experience. You won’t be able to process orders quickly enough or give customers the accurate information they need to make a purchase. Coordinating with CRM NAV integration permits you to consequently synchronize information between your ERP and different frameworks. You don’t need to contact any catches. You get the opportunity to characterize rules on how information is shared by your operational needs. Introduction: SMS Messages can be sent from a D365 CRM Online to an individual using the Twilio Web Services. In this blog, we will see how can we send SMS Messages from CRM using Twilio Web Service Scenario: We will create a message record from CRM which on save will call the Twilio web service via a plugin and send the message to the destination based on the information passed to Twilio from the D365 CRM. Process: Step 1: Creating Entities Create the following 2 Entities which are ‘SMS Configuration’ and ‘SMS Message’. The SMS Config entity will only consist of three fields which are Username which will have the value of ‘Account Sid’. Password which will have the value of ‘Authentication Key’. From which will have the value of Twilio ‘Account Phone number’. The SMS Message entity will consist of the following two fields which are as follows To which will have the value of the ‘Receiver’s Phone number’. Message Body which will have the value of the ‘Message text’ that the receiver will receive.  **Note: The purpose is to provide dynamic data and to not hardcode any value. Step 2: Creating Plugin Code to Call the Twilio Web Service The plugin code will be consisting of two main code blocks: Web Service Code Block Main Execute Code Block Web Service Code Block We will be using the Web Service code in our plugin code while calling the Twilio Web Service from CRM. For more information on how to call Web Service using plugin refer the following link : https://www.cloudfronts.com/call-web-service-plugin-dynamics-crm/ In this case we need to make modifications to the Web Call Service function block of the Web Service plugin code. Changes made to the ‘Try Block’ of the Web Service Call. We won’t require to make any changes to the WebClientEx code block of the Web Service Call Code. Main Execute Code Block In the Main Execute Code Block we will be calling the above Web Service Code Block. Retrieving of the SMS Configuration Record can be done using fetch XML method. Conclusion: Thus, in this way we can send SMS Messages from D365 CRM Online using Twilio Web Services. Hope you find this helpful.

Customer service is the backbone of any organization. Any company that desires to progress or scale-up high should focus on providing the best customer service to their clients. But, with so many things happening at the same time, it is pretty tough to provide it. Hence, it is wise to use  Dynamics 365 customer service, an ERP solution. It will not only help you to become effective but, it will help you and your team to be more efficient. Since it is cloud-based software, you get information from your team in real-time.  The best part about this particular enterprise resource planning software is that it offers a host of different features. For example, ‘Voice of Customer Survey,’ is one of those salient features that you will love using.  Voice of Customer is a feature of Dynamics CRM where you can create and send out surveys to gain valuable feedback from your customers about your products or services. Respondents can take your surveys on a phone, tablet, or computer. Anonymous surveys can be triggered in different ways: Email Social sites like Twitter, Facebook or other web pages SMS In this blog, we will discuss how we can achieve sending surveys using SMS. We had a requirement for the client that whenever work order status is changed to completed, send a survey SMS to the contact to fill out the feedback for the service provided. Pre Requisites: Voice of Customer Solution installed Power SMS solution. Download Power SMS from here- http://www.powerobjects.com/powerpacks/powersms/ Choose a Service Provider CallFire(for US numbers) Twilio Configuring Power SMS. The configurations steps can be found in Power SMS User guide here- http://www.powerobjects.com/guides/powersms/. Steps to be followed to send survey using SMS are listed below: Create survey in Voice of the Customer as per your requirement and publish the survey. Create a workflow on work order status field that creates Survey Activity. On creation of survey activity, survey link will be created. Populate and store the survey link in work order contact some custom field on work. Step: Create survey activity Step: Update contact Create a workflow that creates a SMS message on update of survey link field. After creation of SMS, set the status of the survey as “Pending Sent”. Step: Create SMS When a work order status will be changed to completed, SMS will be send using workflow. You can see the status reason whether the SMS send successfully or not. Thus, surveys can be distributed using SMS and feedback can be stored for analysis and improvement of the organization. For more information on Voice of Customer you can refer our blog “Voice of the Customer for Dynamics CRM 2016”.