Introduction: ERP solutions are complex and hence it is significant for any enterprise to analyse the necessity and extract the complete understanding of the solution so as to derive the full benefits of it internally before it decides to deploy one. Having said this, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is one such platform which rather offers a clarity on the solutions. Microsoft now offers two ERP based solutions on Dynamics 365 Platforms. D365 Business Central D365 Finance & Operations The companies planning to implement D365 ERP need to choose prudently which product will suit their business requirements or best, consult their IT partner for the same. Here is the table comparison of two products which will help the decision makers to take the right decision. I have listed down product features with a general comparison view so that it is easier to understand them in a better way. General Comparison: Product/Feature D365 Business Central  D365 Finance & Operations Multiple Legal Entities Yes Yes Intercompany Postings and Consolidated Statements Yes (only within same country/localization) Yes Complete ERP with – Finance (AR/AP), Manufacturing, Logistics, Inventory, Warehousing Yes Yes Supplier Evaluation Module No Yes Quality Management Module No Yes PowerBI Embedded for Analytics No Yes Dynamics 365 Talent (Core HR, Attract, Onboard) No Yes Dynamics 365 Sales with Integration to ERP No Yes Dynamics 365 Customer Service No Yes Dynamics 365 Marketing No Yes Dynamics 365 Social Engagement (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc) No Yes Dynamics 365 Customer Satisfaction Surveys No Yes Dynamics 365 Customer Support Portal No Yes Mobility (Apps for iOS/Android) Yes Yes Browser-based (Chrome, Edge, Safari) Yes Yes Dev and Production Environments Only Production Yes Minimum User License requirement No Minimum 20 Licensing Cost (US $ per user/month) $100 $200  Module Wise Comparison   D365 BC D365 FOE General Customer Type Small to Medium Medium to Large Deployment Period Short Long   Financial Management Auto Elimination Accounting – Available Consolidation Available Available Budgeting Available(Basic) Available(Advanced) Budget Control – Available Fixed and Variable allocations Available Available Ledger Allocations – Available Fixed Assets Available Available Cost Accounting Available Available Multicurrency Available Available Financial Dimensions Available (Upto 8 dimensions) Available (Unlimited) Multi-company Available Available Multi language Available Available Bank Reconciliation Available Available Electronic Funds Transfer Available Available Global Chart of Accounts – Available Multiple Posting Layers – Available Supply Chain Management Sales Orders Available Available Returns Management Available Available Sales Tax Available Available Purchase Orders Available Available Requisitions Available Available Serialized inventory Available Available Bins Available Available Assembly Available Available Inventory Transfers Available Available Procurement and sourcing – Available Global Customer & Vendor – Available Global Products – Available Advanced Warehouse Management License Plate Tracking – Available Basic Warehousing Available Available Aisle, Rack & Shelf – Available Transport Management – Available Quality Management – Available Warehouse Monitoring – Available   Production Basic Production Available Available Process Based manufacturing – Available Lean manufacturing – Available Multi Plant & Multi Schedule Planning – Available Human Resource Employee Master Available Available Recruitment Process – Available Attendance – Available Payroll – Available Performance – Available Training – Available Skill Sets – Available Project Management Job Costing Available Available Project Accounting – Available Employee Timesheets Available Available Employee Expenses – Available Schedule Board – Available System-wide Capabilities Office 365 Integration Available Available Microsoft user interface Available Available Workflows Available Available Web/mobile client Available Available E-mail Integration Available Available Document Management Available Available

Introduction: I have worked on several D365 Retail implementation projects. The largest one being for one of the clients in South Asia who was a sports goods retailer and owned several stores across the region. Just in case any body needs introduction, Dynamics 365 for Retail provides mid-market and large retailers with a complete head office and point of sale (POS) solution that includes support for online and brick-and-mortar stores. It can help retailers increase financial returns, improve service, manage growth, reach customers, and streamline efficiencies. A lot of retailers approach us with the requirements related to the induction of Coupons in Retail stores. It is a set up that is done to provide coupon in Retail stores. For this, I have decided to list down detailed process of the Store code set up Manual. Store Code Set up Manual Process: Step1: Create Barcode Mask Character for Coupon Code: Step 2: Create a New Barcode. Mask set up. Keep the type as Coupon. Step 3: Create Bar Code for Coupon. Assign the Mask ID which was created in step 2. Step 4: Create Number Sequence for Coupon Code ID and Coupon Number. Step 5: Set the Retail Parameters for Coupon. Assign the Mask ID that was created. Step 6:  Create a New Discount. Mention the discount Price, Products in Lines, Price group, Valid Discount Account and enable coupon code required. Step 7: Create a new Coupon. Mention the usage limit, usage type, associate discount to the coupon, Create a new line for coupon. Activate the Coupon. The Barcode will be generated. Make a note of the Barcode.   Next, To Redeem the Store Coupon Code: Scan the product that is under Discount. Scan the Barcode or Manually inter the Barcode. The discount will be applied to the product along with the discount name. Make Payment. This is it! Hope the above information helps! 😊

Introduction: A very handy approach for admins and users of Dynamics 365 who want to bulk clean up field values – And just selecting them in Bulk Editing them as shown below doesn’t help!! So here’s the scenario – You want to clear the selected records for their Credit Score field. Because primarily, you can commonly put a value in a field using Bulk Edit, but not clear the value. Workaround: What you can do instead, create a quick and simple workflow to clear the field. 1. Create an On-Demand workflow on Contact entity with an Update step for Contact 2. In the Update step, point to the field and then select the Operator on the right hand side to select Clear. 3. Make sure the Clear appears on the field you want to Bulk Update. 4. Once done, save and Activate the workflow. Run on the selected records you want to clear at once. 5. The values will not be cleared for these records. Hope this helps!

Introduction: This blog explains how we can add files from D365 Portal directly into SharePoint which was long awaited feature missing from Portals. Below are the Steps: Step 1: Set up SharePoint integration from Portal Admin Center 1. Go to the Dynamics 365 Administration Center page and select the Applications tab. 2. Select the name of the portal for which you want enable SharePoint integration, and then select Manage. 3. Click on Set up SharePoint integration –> Enable SharePoint integration. 4. Click on Enable button it will then ask you to sign in again. 5. Enter D365 CE (MS CRM) credentials to sign in again. 6. Click on Accept to grant the required permissions. 7. You will get the below message. Step 2: Enable document management for entities (Customization in D365 CE) NOTE: If document management is not enabled already then follow below steps. Go to Settings –> Document Management –> Document Management Settings Select entity Click on Next and Finish. Step 3: Configure the appropriate form to display documents We need to add Document Location subgrid in the form which will get displayed in portal. (NOTE: Add subgrid on Edit form to edit the record in portal only.) Step 4: Creating and Assigning Entity Permissions. 1. Create entity Permission of Scope “Global” for Case (Incident) Entity. 2. Click on “+” to Add Child Entity Permission for “Document Location”. 3. Click on “New”. 4. Enter below details. Entity Name: Document Location Scope: Parent Parent Entity Permission: Case_Global(Select the name of parent entity from lookup) Parent Relationship: Select the name from drop down. Select all the Privileges. 5. Save the record. 6. Your Global Entity Permission should look like below. 7. After Creating Entity Permission successfully assign web role to the entity permissions. Sign in to Portal 1. Open any Case record. 2. You can see Document Section below from where you can “Add files” or Create “New folder” 3. Click on “Add files” button you are shown a pop-up window from where you can choose the files to upload. 4. You can see the New Folder is created in SharePoint for that Particular Case and file is also uploaded inside respective folder. 5. Click on “New Folder” to create new folder this will get created inside the parent folder “Case_CaseGUID” in SharePoint. 6. From portal you can go inside the folder and then upload files which gets uploaded inside the respective folder in SharePoint. “Add Files” in newly created folder. New Folder and Files in SharePoint.

Introduction: This blog explains the steps on how to enable OnDemand Workflow in D365 CE UCI Apps. Scenario: After clients are upgraded to D365 CE V9 version, Users are unable to use Classic App functionality to run OnDemand Workflows which was showstopper since it was routine task and much needed functionality. Steps: Below are steps to be performed for enabling functionality 1. Admin user should enable the “Microsoft flow” option for all the users. Below are the steps: Navigate to the ‘users’ in Office 365. Post navigation, open a specific user. Enable license for “Flow for Dynamics 365” in D365 CE Plan. (below screenshot for reference). 2.  Enable setting to Show Microsoft Flow in Sitemap. Navigate to Settings → Administrator →System Settings by System Administrator Role User. Open Customization Tab and Enable Microsoft Flow option. 3. Navigate to any Entity below screenshot for Account. Open Account Entity record. Navigate to Flow button on Ribbon and expand options, you will view all OnDemand Workflow for Entity under Run Workflow header. Conclusion: This is how enabling Microsoft Flows setting on specific environment allows Users to run OnDemand Workflows in UCI Apps of D365 CE. Hope the above process helps!

Introduction: In this blog we will see how we can create folder structure in SharePoint for Leads when the record is created in CRM using MS Flows Pre Requisites: SharePoint Integration must be enabled for the required entities Implementation Step 1: Here in our Flows we have used “Create of a record(Leads)” as trigger condition. Step 2: Then we create the folder structure in SharePoint using the “Create File” action Here we will create a text file which can be deleted later if not required. Folder Path: /Lead/Topic_toUpper(replace(triggerBody()?[‘leadid’],’-‘,”)) Here “Topic” is Dynamics value and for the record ID copy paste the expression written above in the Expressions tab and add it at the end of the Folder Path. After we have created the folder structure if the file is not required we can delete the text file by adding the delete step as shown below Step 3: We will also store the Folder ID in a variable “FolderId” to use in the later steps Step 4: Now we will create the same folder structure in CRM (Document Location) Here for the parent site or Location we have we have added the GUID of the Parent Document Location site for Leads. We can get this from the URL of the Parent Document Location record from Advanced Find (Document Location Entity) Lead document location record URL: https://org.crm8.dynamics.com/main.aspx?etc=9508&extraqs=%3f_gridType%3d9508%26etc%3d9508%26id%3d%257b1957C431-5F15-E911-A96F-000D3AF29269%257d%26rskey%3d%257bF5B008AC-07D9-4554-8509-2C05767BFF51%257d&histKey=17520860&newWindow=true&pagetype=entityrecord&rskey=%7bF5B008AC-07D9-4554-8509-2C05767BFF51%7d#371473802 Step 5:  Similarly we can also create sub folders within the main folder as per the requirements Hope this Helped!

Often, when a real-time workflow is being executed in the background, users don’t know how long it will take for the processing to finish. setFormNotifications in D365 v9 come handy! Scenario Here’s how I put my scenario – I call the Real-Time workflow using JS, example, on change of a certain field or the JS being called from the Ribbon button. The JS will trigger the Real-Time workflow I have. Now, while the Real-time workflow is running, the user doesn’t know it has been called and should the user retry the same action? Here’s when the form notification is vital. While the processing is happening, the message will remain as a notification on the form. Once the processing is complete, the notification will be cleared. JS Implementation: For the JS code implementation, the function to call the workflow needs ProcessJS which is available on https://github.com/PaulNieuwelaar/ So on the Form, I’ll add my file after ProcessJS file. Here’s the Account Form code I wrote. I created a JS file to call the Real-Time workflow. In the above code, the Xrm.Page.ui.setFormNotification(Message, Type of notification, Unique Identifier); This will set the notification. Page.ui.clearFormNotification(UniqueIdentifier); will clear the notification from screen. Using this, When the Process enters in Processing mode, the message is shown on screen as “Please wait while processing”. And once the execution is finished successfully, the notification is cleared. Similarly, you can even use this approach for WebAPI calls and have clearFormNotification set in the Success/Failure callbacks. Hope this helps!

Anyone who uses a CRM on a regular basis hopes that it will work seamlessly without errors. But from time to time, when creating and qualifying a lead, confusing error messages popup and leave users wondering about a resolution.  A very common error in Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation comes up when trying to qualify a lead using the Project Information form when the lead is type is set as “Work Based.” The popup below shows the error message: This error cropped up after I did the following steps: Step 1: Create a lead with the basic required details Step 2: Ensure the form selected is Project Information form Step 3: The Type of lead field should have the value Work Based Step 4: Save the lead Step 5: Try Qualifying the lead. This will lead to the above error shown in the screen shot. The best way to resolve this issue is to check the parameter settings, shown in the screenshot below. Upon researching the issue, I found that there is an important parameter setting that is missing, which needs to be changed in order to get to a resolution. When the lead is created, even though we do not have a customer specific price list, PSA asks for a default price list, inferring that this could be a potential customer. The go to place where PSA checks the global parameter setting is Project Service–> Parameters. Click on the default organization unit. In my case, CloudFronts Mumbai. Click on the price list tab (shown in the screen shot below) and then click on the add new project parameter Price List button on the grid. A pop-up opens that asks for the price list. Select the price list and save. Now, when you create your lead in the Work Based type and qualify it, the error will not reappear. With these changes, the price list for the organization unit is updated in PSA. Whenever we use the organization unit again for a quote, contract, or project, this price list will be the default setting. Most importantly, the parameter helps to qualify the lead successfully. This process reflects my personal findings, based on my experience using PSA for the last five years. We have benefited a lot from the implementation of PSA, because we save time and money due to easy access to resources and the ability to manage them.

I was trying to explore the Extend Booking functionality in Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) and saw that the users were getting allocated for the entire 24 hours in a day. Immediately, I realized that the issue was coming up because the work hour template was not set properly. When the new work hour template was created, the work hour parameters for the resources were not set back to eight hours. To check the work hours of a resource, navigate to Project Service–>Resources–>Select a Resource. Click on the button “show work hours” as highlighted in the screenshot below. A popup opens. The screenshot shows that the work hours are not defined for the resource as of now. As a result, the resource will be allocated for 24 hours if they are selected for a project unless there working hours are defined.    I selected the resource in the Default Work Hour Template and then created the work hours for that resource (eight hours a day and Monday-Friday working). I assigned these work hours to all the resources in the navigation shown below. Select all resources and click on the ‘Set calendar’ button from the Ribbon Control. I assumed that the new work hours will be set for all the resources selected. I then tried to allocate via extend booking and saw that the resource was still not reflecting the new work hours set. Upon further research I worked out a solution that follows the proper way to define the work hour template of the resources. I created a new work hours template by navigating to Project Service Work Hour Templates. This new work hour template was created to define the following: Working hours per day of the resource. Working days in a week. Holidays in a year. The resource selected should have the proper work hours defined. Select all the resources and assign the newly created work hour template. Because Kuldeep Gupta is a template resource in this example, all the resources will get assigned from Kuldeep Gupta. As a result, it’s not possible to select more than one resource. Now while creating the project select this newly created Work Hour Template  and the project will respect the new work hours. A word of caution: You will not be able to change the work hour template for the old projects as the field is locked and you are not allowed to change it in the midst of the project. I hope that these steps help you to create and assign the work hour template effectively.

Introduction: Microsoft’s Voice of the Customer (VoC) application, part of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, empowers users to create surveys without the need of a third-party product. Some elements of the experience can be configured in VoC like logos and custom images. The theming layer allow users to edit a survey’s look and feel with custom colors and other details using CSS to align with the organization’s brand. In this article, we’ll take a look at how to customize a response page and setup a redirection link to the thank you page. The problem: Customizing a thank you GIF image: One of our retail industry clients had a requirement of adding a “thank you” GIF image and another linked image to their survey thank you page. When clicked, the linked image would take the survey respondent back to the first page of survey. But VoC has no such default customization functionality on its thank you page. Solution: Since it is not possible to meet this requirement using VoC alone, we tricked the program with CSS. Here’s what we did: 1. Go to active surveys and click the survey that you want to modify. 2. Go to survey designer and select “Complete Page,” which is the page seen upon completion of the survey. The survey designer section shows your complete survey, with all elements. You can design your survey here with desired questions, their types, and can even add pages to your survey. The thank you page, or complete page, is the last page of the survey and the one in need of customization, per the customer’s requirements.  I added some “descriptive text” here. Text in the footer is the redirection link, and I marked it as a footer to separate it from the main section here. I used CSS to hide the text “footer” and add an image which will be clickable to the first page in the next steps. 3. Here is the survey’s first page: 4. Now, here you can add text. I added text but in italics to differentiate it. Giving CSS properties to the<i> tag (italic content) means it will be applied only here and nowhere else. You can use any other tag, too. If you want multiple images, you can add multiple tags and then style them accordingly in custom CSS. 5. Upload the images that you want to use here (under the custom icon). 6. Click on themes. You can do all customization under this page. 7. Under theme, you can get options to provide color to different elements of your survey form. 8. Below this color section, you will find the CSS section, where you can add your custom CSS. 9. In this step, I played with the HTML tags that I used on the thank you page. I gave them predefined height and width and set the required image as the background. Since it is just a tag and might contain text, I hid the text using CSS properties. 10. In the same way, I added a background image to the survey complete link URL using the CSS property on the tag (classes are pre-defined by CRM), so that the user can click and go back to the required page.  11. The survey link now shows both images properly, with the lower image clickable to bring the user back to the first page of the survey. Conclusion Although this is not a part of default customization of VoC, it is a very useful trick which I followed to improve customization of the VoC thank you to meet our client’s requirements