Introduction: In D365 Operations, when we create a workflow for Purchase Order we face a formatter error related to Time zone. This error is caused due to conflict as same time zone specified twice for a legal entity. First for the legal entity and second time for the address. In this blog, I will tell you how to resolve it. Solution: Go to Organization Administration -> Legal Entities In Address Tab, select More options -> Advanced In General Tab, Edit the Time zone to a different time zone.

Introduction: This blog explains how to open  report from custom ribbon button on entity form. Steps to be followed: 1. Add custom button on entity form using Ribbon Workbench. (If you don’t have ribbon workbench solution installed, you can install it from here. ) 2. Once button is added on form, navigate to the Quote entity and run the report. Take note of the URL, it should look something like this. (I am doing it for quote entity) URL: https://portals1.crm.dynamics.com/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?action=run&context=records&helpID=Quote.rdl&id=%7b18c85c59-7d04-e711-80e6-00155db8652a%7d&records=%7bBD891D3F-C92C-E811-A831-000D3A37CC26%7d&recordstype=1084 Specifically note the items I’ve bolded, these are the report name, report unique identifier, and the entity type code of the main entity. 3. code to our new JavaScript web resource. function OpenQuoteReport() { debugger; var rdlName = “Quote.rdl”; //Replace with your report name var entityType = “1084”; //Replace var entityGuid = Xrm.Page.data.entity.getId(); var reportGuid = “18C85C59-7D04-E711-80E6-00155DB8652A”; //Replace with your report guid var url = Xrm.Page.context.getClientUrl() + “/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?action=run&context=records&helpID=” + rdlName + “&id={” + reportGuid + “}&records=” + entityGuid + “&recordstype=” + entityType; window.open(url, null, 800, 600, true, false, null); } 4. Create Command i.e. add JavaScript web resource to the button using Ribbon Workbench. 5. Add command on button. 6. Publish. 7. Now go to Quote entity and click on the custom button which you have created, your report will get open.

Introduction: In this blog we will see how to create a marketing email in Dynamics 365 for marketing preview. Dynamics 365 for marketing provides an easy drag and drop tool to design marketing emails with dynamic personalized content. Implementation: Step 1: We navigate to Marketing Emails and Click on New. We can see there are a number of pre defined email templates The templates are also categorized by purpose Step 2:  At the top of the page we see three required fields Name, Subject and Form. The Name is the internal name for the designed email, Subject is the message that will be displayed in the emails subject and the From is the Dynamics 365 user who email recipients will see as the sender Step 3: In the toolbox we can see content blocks which can be used to design the email. We can add text, images , buttons etc as shown below. We can also add Surveys and Marketing Pages to the email which creates a button and on click the user is navigated to the Survey form and marketing page respectively. Step 4:  The assist-edit button </> can be used to add dynamic content to the email. Step 5: Once the email is designed as per the requirement in the HTML tab we can see the code is auto-generated. In the preview tab we can see how the email would look in different clients like Desktops, Tablets and mobiles Step 6: It is important point to note is that every email message must include both a subscription centre link and your organizations physical address. These are required by the law in many jurisdiction and Dynamics 365 wont let you publish any marketing email that doesn’t have them. Email templates include them already but when we are working with a blank template you must add them yourself. Step 7: Once the email designing is done we can check for error by clicking on the button in the navigation bar. We can also Test send the email.

Introduction: Free text invoice is useful to book sales without creating Sales order. It is used to sell a quantity of services and goods which are not inventory item. User cannot select Item in Free Text Invoice. It contains order lines that include ledger accounts, descriptions, and a sales amount. Steps: Below are the steps to create Free Text Invoice Click Accounts receivable> Invoices >  All free text invoices. On Action Pane, Click new button to create new Free text invoice. On header, select the customer account, Invoice date, currency. Other fields are non-mandatory fields. In the Invoice lines grid, enter a description, select the main account, Sales tax and enter the quantity and unit price for the invoice line. On the Line details FastTab, enter any additional information. Click on Total for check the total amount of invoice. After filling all the data, click on Post button to Post the Invoice. To check Posted Free text invoice, click on Invoice journal button. To check the ledger entry, click on view accounting button.

Introduction: In this blog, we try migrating Email Template records under Email Marketing module in ClickDimensions. ClickDimensions has many modules like Email Marketing, Analytics, Event Management etc. Under Email Marketing Module, we have entities like Email Template, Email Sends, Sent Emails, Unsubscribes and so on. While trying to migrate all the Email Templates from D365 v8.2 to v9 using TIBCO Cloud Integration, we encountered an issue. We could not find any field or entity that stored the HTML code which formed the body of the Email Template. The reason behind this issue is the HTML code is stored on the ClickDimensions side and not on ours. Therefore, in order to migrate Email Templates successfully, we need to use the Import/Export options in ClickDimensions Settings. Steps: 1. In your Source environment, go to Settings and click on ‘ClickDimensions Settings’. 2. Click on ‘Export’. 3. Select the entities you want to export and click on ‘Next’. 4. Click on ‘Export’. A .zip file will be downloaded. 5. Now, go to your Target Environment and click on Settings -> ‘ClickDimensions Settings’-> ‘Import’. 6. Click on the ‘Upload ZIP File’ button and select the file you just downloaded from the Source Environment. Click ‘Import’. Conclusion: The Email Templates will now be present in the Target System. This process did not change the GUID of the record, which is important to note as it may be required further on in the migration process. I hope this blog contributed to clearing things up when it comes to migrating Email Templates in ClickDimensions. I will be adding more blogs about migrating records in other entities of Click Dimensions soon. Stay tuned!

Introduction: Deployment of Power BI to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is done by Embedded Power BI in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Configurations of Power BI in operations: Configure your LCS project within Dynamics 365 for Operations Navigate to System Administration –> System Parameters –>Go to Help Tab Here you will be asked to Connect to Life Cycle services. This operation is mandatory, it enables Dynamics 365 for Operations to established a trusted connection to LCS using your user credentials. Click on “Click here to connect to Lifecycle Services” On successful connection, you will be able to choose a set of LCS projects from the drop down menu. Select the LCS project Enable Power BI: Register Dynamics 365 for Operations deployment as an web app. 1. Login to you Power BI account 2. There are some fields we need to fill in: AppName (e.g. “D365PBI”) AppType (Server-side Web app) Redirect URI (this will be your instance URL with “oauth” at the end. E.g https://D3651611aos.cloudax.dynamics.com/oauth) Home Page URL (This will be your instance URL. E.g https://D3651611aos.cloudax.dynamics.com/) 3. Choose APIs to access 4. Then hit “Register App”. This will generate a Client ID and a Client Secret which we are going to input inside D365. 5. Keep this window open, we need to copy paste the keys into D365. Deploy Power BI Files: Navigate to System Administrator –>Deploy Power BI Files .Click on Deploy Power BI Files Here you will be asked to Authorize Power BI, Click on Authorize Power BI. Click on Deploy Power BI Files

Introduction: By default, Delete button is visible on every page in the Home tab but if we do not want the user to delete any record from the page then we need to hide this delete button. This article explains how to hide the Delete button from the Home tab of  page. Pre-requisites: Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 Steps: 1. Open the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Development Environment, navigate to the List Page where you want hide the delete button and go to properties of the page. 2. Set the DeleteAllowed property to No.  3. Repeat the step 1 and 2  for the Card page 4. Save and Compile the page. 5. We can hide the Edit button by setting InsertAllowed to No and ModifyAllowed Property to No  

Introduction: Email can fill your Outlook Inbox quickly – new messages, replies, and forwards. Before you know it, you could have thousands of messages. Keep your Outlook inbox and its folders under control by moving older items you want to keep to an archive. Email archiving helps in saving and preserving data contained in email messages so it can be searched and accessed later. An archive mailbox is a specialized mailbox that appears alongside the users’ primary mailbox folders in Outlook or Outlook Web App. Users can access the archive in the same way that they access their primary mailboxes. Enabling In-Place Archive: For moving the mailbox items to Archive, firstly we need to enable In-place archive for that mailbox. Go to Exchange Admin Center > Recipients > Mailboxes. Select user for whom you want to enable In-place archive. You will be getting the option to enable archiving as shown in below image. After In-place archive is enabled, in the mailbox type you can see Archive in brackets (as shown in below image). Within 15 minutes, user will be able to see In-place archive folder in their mailbox which is a secondary mailbox and can be accessed as primary mailbox is accessed. Creating Retention Tag and Retention Policy: Retention Tag – Retention tags define and apply retention settings to messages and folders in a user’s mailbox. Retention tags specify how long a message is kept and the action taken when the message reaches the specified retention age. After enabling In-Place Archive, we need to move the items to archive. We can move the items by – 1. Moving the mailbox items manually. 2. Move messages using Inbox rules. 3. Move messages using retention policies. Here, we will see how to create retention tag and policy so that the mailbox items will be moved to Archive. Go to Exchange Admin Center > Compliance Management. To create a Retention Policy, firstly we need to create Retention tag and then attach that tag with a policy which is called retention policy. You will be getting 3 options to create a Retention tag – a. Default policy tag which will be applied to entire mailbox. Note – DPT will be applied to all items in the mailbox that don’t have a retention tag already applied to it. b. Retention policy tags which will be applied to a default folder, such as Inbox (Does not support Archive action). c. Personal tags which can be applied by users to items and folders. Select default policy tag. Provide a name to tag and choose the retention action which will be taken after the items reaches retention age which also needs to be mentioned in no. of days (see below image). In this case I have created a retention tag so that when the items will reach 90 days it will be moved to archive. After creating Retention tag, we need to create retention policy, provide a name to the policy and add the retention tag. After the Retention Policy is created, it needs to be assigned to the users. For the same, go to Recipients > Mailboxes. Select User and click on edit. Go to Mailbox features and apply  Retention Policy to user. It may take some time for the retention tag to appear in the mail settings > retention policies (see below image). After the Retention Policy is applied to the mailbox, the items which has reached their retention age of 90 days will start moving to In-place Archive. Note – It can take up to 7 days for the items to be moved in to In-Place Archive depending upon the number of items. Conclusion: In this way we can create Retention tag and policy for Email Archiving which will keep Outlook inbox and its folders managed by moving the older items to archive.

Objective: In NAV 2017 Emailing the PDF by running the report using Report.SAVEASPDF is now not allowed in NAV 2018. The reason is that temporary server file as not allowed to be saved for some security reasons. Thus this blog demonstrates the workaround solution for this issue. Pre-requisite: NAV 2018 Demonstration: 1. Concept: With respect to NAV 2018, Microsoft says that Emailing the attachments should be done using Streams. Thus, we’ve to convert the PDF generated by running the report into a stream and pass the stream as an attachment (https://community.dynamics.com/nav/f/34/t/270046). Before running the report, the data needs to be passed appropriately to the Report. Report.RUNMODAL method cannot be used as running report requires XML Parameters. For this, we make use of XMLParameters that are sent to the report through either a request page or as XML Text which contains a list of parameters to be passed and then the report is run. 2. Procedure: Step1: Generate the XMLParameters(Text) using the RUNREQUESTPAGE method and copy the results. REQUESTPAGE is used to set the filters prior to running the report. The filters selected are passed to the report in XML format. Value in XMLParameter: Here, Rec.Contract No. is the primary filter to be passed to the report. Step2: Create the Instream and Outstream variables and a temporary table having BLOB field. Create the OutStream variable for the BLOB field of the Temporary Table. Save the data of OutStream variable using Report.SaveAs method. Copy the data of the BLOB field to Instream Step 3: Pass the attachment as a Stream using Instream Note: Perform the Step 1 only if there is any filter to be applied to the report. Conclusion: This workaround is to be used where the Report.SAVEASPDF cannot be used because this method is not allowed in AL.

Main cause of Performance Issues: Bandwidth and latency are the primary characteristics which affects the performance of Dynamics 365 client application on the web browser and other apps like D365 for Outlook It is also important to note that even if there is high bandwidth, the performance may be still slow because of latency issues. Let us define these two terms: Bandwidth is the width or capacity of a specific communications channel. Latency is the time required for a signal to travel from one point on a network to another, and is a fixed cost between two points. An application designed to send a request, wait for a reply, send another request, wait for another reply, and so on, will wait at least five seconds for each packet exchange, regardless of the speed of the server. How to Check Latency in D365 Online Applications: Dynamics 365 includes a basic diagnostic tool that analyzes the client-to-organization connectivity and produces a report. To run the Dynamics 365 Diagnostics tool, follow these steps. On the user’s computer or device, start a web browser, and sign in to a Dynamics 365 organization. Enter the following URL, https://myorg.crm.dynamics.com/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx, where myorg.crm.dynamics.com is the URL of your Dynamics 365 (online) organization. Click Run You can see the results like below: What to make of this? The report displays a table with test and benchmark information. Of particular importance is the Latency Test row value. This value is an average of twenty individual test runs. Generally, the lower the number, the better the performance of the client. Although users may receive a satisfactory experience by using connections with more latency, for best application performance we recommend that the value be 150 ms (milliseconds) or less Other Notes: One of the reasons of high latency is that sometimes D365 tenant is setup in a region far from the home region. For e.g. Customers in USA using D365 which is setup in Australia. This will result in high latency for the end users. In these scenarios where most of the customers are in USA, you can contact Microsoft Support to help move your tenant to USA or nearby region. Best practices for improving application performance Maximize how quickly your forms load. More information: Optimize form performance Make sure you aren’t using legacy form rendering, which can make forms take significantly longer to load. More information: System Settings dialog box – General tab