Background: In Dynamics CRM, one of the common requirement customer have is to Run a report and save the copy of the report (PDF/ Word/ Excel) as notes/ attachment on the record or send the created document as email attachment to customer. Sounds an innocent requirement, right? With CRM online, it is NOT. What we do to achieve this till now We do one of the following when the customer asks this request: Ask user to manually run report, download PDF and create email record or attach to record notes. Use some paid 3rd party tool. Tell the customer it is not possible For CRM Online. 😀 For On-prem CRM, developers would tweak the Report Viewer and somehow manage to achieve this with lot of effort and custom plugins. Alternative: With Dynamics 365, you have one alternative which does not exactly give you the above solution but is very close or may be acceptable adjustment to client. We all know CRM 2016 also introduced word templates. But with D365, CRM has inbuilt Action to Run a word template and attach that to document without user action. Since it is an action, it can be used in Workflows, Plugins, other actions and even in JavaScript using Web API. Example: I have created a workflow on Account Credit limit update, such that when credit limit is more than 10,000 an Account summary will be created using the Account Summary template and attached to the record. See screenshots below of the workflow and generated document. All this without user intervention. Limitations: We cannot create PDF documents using this approach This is limited to Word templates and they are not yet as powerful as SSRS reports Next Steps: We can extend this functionality by may be having plugin on notes creation to send an email to customer or any other thing? Please post your comments/ suggestions below. Happy CRM’ing

Introduction: In this blog, we will have a look on new updates on Business Process flow. Previous Release Updates: Business Process Type Run process as a task flow (Mobile) Run process as a business flow (Other clients) New Designer New Toolbar introduced with edit buttons, connector, new snapshot button to take screenshots of your business process flow design which can be used in technical documentations Security Note:  Your process will not show up in this tab until you Activate the process.  If you Deactivate it after updating security roles, the process will remain in the available in this tab so you will NOT need to go back and update your security roles again.  It’ll only be removed from the security role tab once you delete the process. Action Workflows Stages can execute workflows with a trigger of Stage Entry, or Stage Exit. Example: You can have the completion of a specific Business Process on an opportunity kick off a workflow that creates a Case, and activates a Business Process on that newly created Case. Stage Active Duration Out of Box feature, to see duration details in BPF- Total time for the BPF being in active state Additional Status Reasons available – Abandon, Finish Maximum number of processes, stages, and steps To ensure acceptable performance and the usability of the user interface, there are some limitations you need to be aware of when you plan to use business process flows: There can be no more than 10 activated business process flow processes per entity. Each process can contain no more than 30 stages. Multi-entity processes can contain no more than five entities. New Release Dynamics 365 July 2017 Update: Business Process Flow entities are now available on Site Maps, Views, Charts: Now the BPF are available in the form of entities and personalized views can be created and we do not need to write any code for getting the BPF in particular stage. Sales BPF will be visible in Sales area and Service BPF will be available in Service area. Site Maps Views Charts Action Steps: Calling an on-demand workflow or a process action from within the Business Process. Action will appear on the UI in the form of a button Business Process Flow in Unified Interface: Different stages of Business Process Flow When you click on pin the stage, the stage is pinned on the right side of the screen and we can see for how much duration the stage was in active stage as shown below The activity duration of the stages is visible even on the Business Process Flow Hope you like the new feature of Business Process flows with some new required functionalities.

Introduction: This blog explains how to add learning path to your solution. Prerequisites: Dynamics 365 (online – latest version, or Dec 2016 update installed). Steps to be followed: Steps for enabling learning path Steps for adding users to Learning Path Authors Creating Learning Path content Stpes to create Guided Task Steps to create Sidebar 1. Steps for enabling learning path: Opt-in to Learning path by going to Settings->Administration->System settings (under General tab). Select Yes for Enable Learning Path and Enable Learning Path Authoring. Confirm that Use Custom Help for customizable entities and Append parameters to URL are set to No. OK. 2. Steps for adding users to Learning Path Authors: Go to Admin Portal. In Admin center Groups->Learning Path Authors security group. Click Edit in the Owner row to add owner of the group. Click + Add Owner, and then select the user from list or search for the user(s). Click Edit in the Members row to add users to the group. Click + Add members, and then select the user from list or search for the user(s) you want to add to the group. Save and close. 3. Steps for Creating Learning Path content: Go to help. Click on content library button Content Library will open. There are two types of learning path content: Guided Task: Interactive “bubbles” which form a sequence to provide help or guide users on specific tasks. Sidebar: Vertically formatted help content, which is initially shown as a “table of content” with items that the user can expand, revealing relevant webpages, videos, or links to existing guided paths content in Dynamics 365. 4. Steps to create Guided Task: Click on + Guided Task to create a new Guided Task. Fill Details. Save. Click on + Add New Steps to add steps to your Guided Task. Step with Next Button: This step has a Next button that can be used to navigate to the next step in the flow. Step with User action: This step does not have a Next button. The user is prompted to click the UI element on which the step is pinned. User action with Next Button: This step does have a Next button. Clicking the Next button has the same effect as clicking the UI element on which the step is pinned. Learning Step: This step can only be at the end of a guided task flow. Drag and drop the step where you want. Give step title. Click on content type to add content it can be text or video. Save. Repeat step number 5 until all steps are added. Click on Preview to see how it will work before publishing. Click on publish select your publishing environment. Output of Guided Task:   5. Steps to create Sidebar Click on + Sidebar to create a new Sidebar. Fill Details. Save. Select the section and add what type of content you want to add in that. Repeat step number 4 to add more sections to sidebar. Click on Preview to see how it will look. Click on publish select your publishing environment. Output of Sidebar: Conclusion: Using learning path newly created  users can easily navigate through the system with ease. It provides basic guidance to the users.

Introduction: In this blog, I will be giving an overview about access teams and a quick demonstration of the same. Brief Description : Access teams provides a way to share records between different functional teams without having to change or update the base security rule in Security roles. Access teams does not mean ownership of the record. The record is only shared so that other users can work on it. Scenario: There are two sales teams “Sales India” and “Sales US” in different business units.The users of both the teams can read the whole organizations data but can write/edit data to only those users data who are in the same business unit.Here if one team member of “Sales US” wants to write/edit a record of “Sales India” it is not possible. This is where access teams comes in the picture. Some users from “Sales US” can be given access to write/edit records of “Sales India” Steps: Step 1: There are two business units “Sales India”  and “Sales US” Step 2: Tom is a part of “Sales India Team” and Harry is a part of  “Sales US Team”. Step 3: Assigned both the users a custom role in which they can do the following as shown below: Read account records of the whole organization Create records at user level Write/edit records at business unit level Step 4: Now to enable access team we must navigate to entity for which access teams needs to be enabled as shown in figure below Here we go to Accounts entity and enable Access Teams then to save the changes made publish all the customization. Step 5: To use access teams we first create an access team template by navigating to Setting > Security > Access Team Templates Step 6: Here create a new template with an appropriate name and select the Access Rights and the Entity as shown in the figure below. Note:The entities field on which Acess Teams are enabled only those entities will be shown in the Entity field dropdown. By adding users, you are granting them the access rights to that record that are defined within the access team template, even if their base security role does NOT grant them those rights. Note, the access rights are ONLY being granted for that specific record. Step 7: Now we add a Sub grid on the Accounts main form so that the users can be added to the access team on the fly. Here in the Team Template field select the template made for the access team. After setting up the subgrid Save and Publish all the Customizations. Step 8: Harry is the owner of two records(Crook Motor Company & Lamborghini) as shown below. Tom is the owner of one record(Tata Motors) as shown below Step 9: Harry can view every record in the organization but cannot write/edit. As seen below harry can only read record created by Tom. Step 10: Now as harry wants to write/edit this particular record, the admin has to add him in the access team sub-grid to give him access to write to this record. Step 11: Now Harry can write/edit to that particular record as shown below. Conclusion: Using this technique we can easily make different user access teams and assign specific records to work on without having to deal with their base security roles.

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.

D365 Field Service is about something other than having the correct instruments for the activity regardless of where you are. It’s tied in with having the option to associate with your most significant resource, your clients. With Dynamics 365 and field administration the board arrangements from PowerObjects, you can make a client support story that traverses different channels, amplifies your workers’ effectiveness, and surpasses client desires.  Accomplish total hierarchical arrangement with Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Field Service groups for client records. Deal with all gear parts for complete perceivability into guarantee and administration understandings; all out income and related expenses; and review history. Field Service Management platform providing enterprise companies with tools to streamline their business processes – from real-time mobility across every major device, to routing and workflow automation. Introduction: This blog explains how to embed D365 Field Service Views  in Dashboard of D365 Online Portal. Steps of Implementation: Create a new Entity List in D365 Field Service. Set key on Entity list as highlighted below. Add View to Web Template as shown below. Note: You can refer blog how to configure Dashboards in D365 Online Portals by referring to link – https://www.cloudfronts.com/embedding-d365-field-service-charts-d365-online-portals/ Conclusion: Above description in blog helps users to embed D365 Field Service Views in Dashboard of D365 Online Portal.

Introduction: There can be a possibility that we lost our plugin code and dlls are already present in Dynamics CRM and we want to extract the code from Dynamic CRM. We don’t have a code backup and we are supposed to make changes in the code as we have some errors in plugin or we need to reconstruct the code. In such situation, we can follow the below steps to decompile the code. We can make use of XRM Tool Box and some tool to decompile dll. Steps: Steps to be followed are given below: Open XRM Tool Box–>  Assembly Recovery Tool–>  Select the plugin–> Click on Export to disk  Dll will be downloaded in the local drive  Download the code Decompile tool. Link is given below https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/ After download Open the Decompile Toolà Open the dll from local drive Your code will be decompiled as shown below Only issue is we must disable the previous plugin and register the plugin assembly and steps again. Now we can make changes in the code. Conclusion: Retrieving the codes from dynamics CRM dlls can be done by following the above easy steps.

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.

Problem Statement: When we want to export Attachments from CRM (both Notes and Email attachments), we can do this using a Console Application where we read the documentbody from CRM using Fetch XML, and then we convert that to bytes and export to a local folder (or any target system) This Method is proper and should work properly, which it doss most of the time, but fails on some occasions. We have observed an issue, where we were not able to open the downloaded document. It would give below error: “There was an error opening the document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired“. This was the code that we used: private static void ExportEmailAttachments()         {             string fetchXML = @”<fetch version=’1.0′ output-format=’xml-platform’ mapping=’logical’ distinct=’true’>                         <entity name=’activitymimeattachment’>                             <attribute name=’filename’ />                             <attribute name=’body’ />                                   <filter type=’and’>                                     <condition attribute=’filesize’ operator=’gt’ value=’0′ />                                     <condition attribute=’filename’ operator=’not-null’ />                                                                   <link-entity name=’email’ from=’activityid’ to=’objectid’ alias=’ac’>                                     <attribute name=’subject’ />                                     <attribute name=’regardingobjectid’ />                                     <attribute name=’activity />                                     <order attribute=’subject’ descending=’false’ />                                     <filter type=’and’>                                         <condition attribute=’regardingobjectid’ operator=’not-null’ />                                         <condition attribute=’modifiedon’ operator=’last-x-months’ value=’3′ />                                                                 >”;             string FolderPath = @”D:\Attachments\”;             EntityCollection allEmailAttachments = crmSvc.RetrieveMultiple(new FetchExpression(fetchXML));             foreach (Entity mimeAttachment in allEmailAttachments.Entities)             {                 string fileName = mimeAttachment.GetAttributeValue<string>(“filename”);                 if (fileName.EndsWith(“pdf”, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))                 {                     string documentBody = mimeAttachment.GetAttributeValue<string>(“body”);                     byte[] documentBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(documentBody);                     File.WriteAllBytes(FolderPath + fileName, documentBytes);                 }             }         } Solution: We triel lot of methods and various ways to solve, but we found the document was not opening properly. This is what we observed: The issue does not happen with all the files It only happens with large files Observed that the document body from CRM is always exactly 2000 characters From the above, we got to know that CRM is not sending all the document body in the Fetch XML response. We were able to solve the above by removing the “distinct=’true’“. We don’t know how it affects the query, but this was the resolution which worked for us. It is strange, but this fixed the issue. This is the final Fetch XML.             string fetchXML = @”<fetch version=’1.0′ output-format=’xml-platform’ mapping=’logical’ distinct=’true’>                         <entity name=’activitymimeattachment’>                             <attribute name=’filename’ />                             <attribute name=’body’ />                                   <filter type=’and’>                                     <condition attribute=’filesize’ operator=’gt’ value=’0′ />                                     <condition attribute=’filename’ operator=’not-null’ />                                                                   <link-entity name=’email’ from=’activityid’ to=’objectid’ alias=’ac’>                                     <attribute name=’subject’ />                                     <attribute name=’regardingobjectid’ />                                     <attribute name=’activity />                                     <order attribute=’subject’ descending=’false’ />                                     <filter type=’and’>                                         <condition attribute=’regardingobjectid’ operator=’not-null’ />                                         <condition attribute=’modifiedon’ operator=’last-x-months’ value=’3′ />                                                                 “; Anyone, who can tell why this is the behavior, please feel free to comment below.

Introduction: “Deprecated” means Microsoft intends to remove the feature or capability from a future major release of Dynamics 365. The feature or capability will continue to work and is fully supported until it is officially removed. This deprecation notification can span a few years. After removal, the feature or capability will no longer work. Microsoft notifies the Customers and Developers well in advance so that they have sufficient time to take action and update the code. Consolidated list of Deprecated Features in July 2017 release of D365 for Customer Engagement: Click on each of the link for details on Microsoft Official documentation site: Dynamics 365 for Outlook (Outlook client) is deprecated Service scheduling in Dynamics 365 for Customer Service is deprecated Dialogs are deprecated Usage of Parature knowledgebase as the Dynamics 365 knowledge management solution is deprecated Project Service Finder app is deprecated Contracts, Contract Line Items, and Contract Templates entities are deprecated Standard SLAs in Dynamics 365 for Customer Service are deprecated Relationship Roles are deprecated Mail Merge is deprecated Announcements are deprecated Ready-to-use business processes available through Add Ready to Use Business Processes setting are deprecated Some client APIs are deprecated – Details of APIs deprecated with their replacements in the link. EntityMetadata.IsInteractionCentricEnabled property is deprecated Silverlight (XAP) web resource is deprecated We will keep posting more on the details and alternatives for each feature above.