I tried many ways to figure out why the “Project Information” form is not opening in Opportunity when a lead is Qualified in D365 PSA. I tried manually opening the “Project Information” form on Opportunity, but, it turns back to default “Opportunity” form. I figured out lastly that the tweak was with one of the fields in Lead form. To open the Project information form on opportunity, the “Order Type” value should be “Work based” this ensures the lead is for Project Service. If we select “Service-Maintenance Based”, it opens “Field Service Information” form on opportunity. Lastly, “Item Based” open the default “Opportunity” Form.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 App Development Services is a new generation business application platform from Microsoft that provides an end to end solution to all your growing business needs starting from design, development till the appsource listing and future enhancements. Our App advancement administration group has profound skills in creating sophisticated business applications on the head of Dynamics 365 for our accomplices. We help you through the whole lifecycle, from Development to AppSource posting and improvement support, permitting you to concentrate on your Business Strategy and Marketing. Once the application is prepared and inside tried, we will work with you to present the application to Microsoft, address any issues and get the application recorded on the AppSource. Project Managers often struggle to manage the project plan, keep the Gantt Chart updated.  As there are many activities under the PM’s umbrella to ensure the project delivery goes out smooth and successful. CloudFronts – PM App helps you to keep your project plan updated. Now, you will ask how does that happen? Following is what we do: 1.       We create the Gantt Chart, in which we: List down the Activities Assign duration Assign Billing Code Assign Resources Assign Predecessor’s to the Activities: This is an important activity. What happens when a predecessor is assigned to the task is, that task goes in inactive State. Unless the previous task is marked complete, the dependent task doesn’t turn active. Now, it is Project Manager’s responsibility to ensure that there is 100% time entry done for that task. This will tell you that the task is actually complete. PM-App also provides you this information. Once you double click the task, you see a Progress Field over that. If that is marked as 100%, means the time entry for the task is done by the developer completely. Now the project manager can safely mark the task as complete which is green in colour, so the dependent task becomes Active. Tip: A well-managed Gantt chart provides a lot of benefit to all the stakeholders, so always keep it updated.

We have been hearing a lot about Agile Methodology for project implementation. But, we also need to see if it is the right choice for Dynamics world. Agile in short says “Do not wait till end, rather let’s see the deliverable in pieces”. Well, that’s justified too. Clients here get to see their baby at regular intervals. Each delivery sprint can go in a controlled manner from End-to-End delivery cycle like the complete projects does, excluding the deployment phase, which happens at the end of the last Sprint of the project. We at CloudFronts practice Agile for all the project implementation. In fact, our PSM solution is getting redesigned to suit the needs of such Agile project implementation. This is done in order to help project managers keep the data intact in CRM and do not scatter it in multiple excel files. Right from Project creation to Resource allocation to Gantt Charts to Time sheet’s we keep all of it inside CRM so that the PM is in pace of the project and all is in single place. Agile generally demands clear requirements for the project to be implemented. Keeping this in mind the project moves through Sprints. The following image illustrates “Where does Sprints come into picture”. We too follow the standard practise dictated by Agile: Daily stand up meeting Iteration planning Unit testing Release planning Burndown/team-based estimation Coding standards Continuous integration Automated builds The project planning is done in MS Project in Sprinted approach. Though MS Project is not the ideal tool to do Agile Planning but taking the advantage of its flexibility that allows us to do it.   We have the following documents in place for each Sprint and the Sprints coming ahead: Daily Agile task allocation Sheet: This is an Excel sheet where we allocate the tasks to the team during the daily stand up meeting and mark the Pending tasks that are incomplete. Sprint Document: This contains the following 4 things: Achievable Backlog Completed Other Remarks All the incomplete tasks from previous sprint are move to next sprints Backlog section. This also then becomes the part of the current sprint. There are multiple benefits of following Agile: Development process gets streamlined and simplified. Higher rate of customer satisfaction. Reduces risk. Improves project Visibility. Success rate for project goes higher by 70% Reduces the cost of development. So, this is what CloudFronts follows as Agile practice. Hope you found this article useful. We will continue to publish more articles as we implement “Agile” that works for Dynamics projects !