Overview: At CloudFronts, we use our Dynamics 365 PM App to track and manage Projects with Task and Resource Scheduling, Project Billing and Invoicing, Timesheets, Gantt Chart, Time and Expense Entries, User Skillsets and many additional features. We recently implemented an intelligent time entry reminder notification workflow to intimate users about pending time entries with the goal of establishing a culture of doing time entries on a daily basis. Why do we need this? A Professional Services company relies on team members who contribute to billable entries which in turn helps the company estimate Project Costs, Forecast Revenue and most importantly ensure billing is done on time and accurately. High Level Flow Diagram The below image shows the diagrammatic representation of high level flow of what we implemented. Custom Logic The Custom Workflow logic has series of steps that checks and based on the conditions it sends out email to that particular User. Check if it’s a Weekend As the step name suggests, this will check if today is a Saturday or Sunday and if the condition is true the workflow will stop. Check if it’s a Public Holiday If current day is not a weekend, there is a possibility that it might be a public holiday. So in this step it checks if today is a Public holiday. If true, then the workflow stops. Get Previous Working Day This step fetches the Previous Working Day as in if today is Monday then the previous working day in our case is Friday. Else if Tuesday then, previous working day is Monday. Check if the Previous Working day is Public Holiday Now there might be the case, that the previous working day was a Public holiday then in that case the time entries will not be there for the users. So if the Previous Working day is a Public Holiday then the workflow stops. Fetch Users This step will get the users who enter time entries in the system, be it a billable resource or a non-billable resource. Fetch Time Entries Here in this step, fetch the time entries less than 8 hours. If we have complete 8 hours’ time entry, then no alert is sent to that particular user. Else if we have incomplete time entries then the next step is to check if the user was on Leave. Is User on Leave? If we have less than 8 hours’ time entry, then there is a possibility where that person was on leave on the previous working day. In that case no reminder will be sent to that particular user. Send Email With the above criteria’s and conditions, if we get that user was working and has not completed his/her daily time entry, then an alert will be sent to that user. So with this simple logic and series of steps, CloudFronts was able to achieve this and intimate their users to complete their time entries.

Introduction: Document Recommendations are one of the preview feature that is added in Dynamics 365. In this blog let’s see how we can enhance the use of this feature in our Business Requirement. Note: Since it’s a preview feature, it is advised not to use and it is subject to change. So not recommended on Production Environment. Pre- Requisites Document Recommendations are supported on Dynamics 365 Online. Since it’s a preview feature the System Administrator needs to enable this from Settings -> Administration -> System Settings -> Previews Tab. User should have access to SharePoint Online 2013 or SharePoint Online 2016 for Document Repository. Document Management must be done before hand i.e. enabling SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. Relevance Search should be enabled. Azure Text Analytics can be used optionally to determine the Document Suggestions. System Administrator must define the similarity rules. Working Suppose we have a Sales Representative and Sales Manager that is working with Opportunity in D365 and all documents related to this are associated with this particular Opportunity. Now another Sales Representative starts working on this Opportunity and she is unaware with all the previous details and deals. So with Document Recommendations, CRM provides her with all the documents to understand about previous conversations, assets and makes it easier for the new Sales Representative to work with this particular Opportunity. Now the question is how this works? So there are certain prerequisites that are required to establish this feature. Configuration Enable Document Recommendations Enable SharePoint Settings -> Document Management -> Enable SharePoint Online. Enable Relevance Search Configure Similarity Rules Create Similarity Rules Similarity Rules can be created from Settings -> Data Management -> Similar Records Suggestions Settings ->New Rule as shown in the first image. While the second image shows how to configure rule.  So when we create a new rule below are some details that System Administrator needs to fill. Source Entity – For which entity the rule is enabled. Document Recommendations is supported only for COLAC Entities (Case, Opportunity, Lead, Account and Contact) + Custom Entity. Filter results by Status – Whether it is Open, Won or Lost in case of Opportunity and different in the case of other entities. Use Text Analytics – Yes or No. By Default, the value is No but then if using Cognitive Service Text Analytics then set the value to Yes. Maximum Number of Key Phrases – this is used to determine the keywords or key phrases to determine with text search which helps to achieve key word based similarity between source and target records. The acceptable value is from 0-1000. Create Match Fields Once the Similarity Rules are created the next step is to create the Match Fields, so on Similarity Rules a sub-grid is present to display all the Match Fields. Match Fields involves the following details. Criteria – Whether it should be Exact Match or Text Match. In Exact Match, fields from the source entity is matched. In Text Match, text in these fields are used to find the key phrases. Entity – Choose an entity to use in creating a text search rule to find the matching records. Fields – Select a field to find the matching target records. To enable field for Exact Match, the field should be added in Quick Find View of that particular Entity. Once the Match Fields are created, simply activate the Similarity Rule. Manage Document Suggestions Document Suggestions can be managed under Settings -> Document Management -> Manage Document Suggestions. Once we open this setting we can only see the list of entities for which the similarity rules are listed. We can also provide the External Base URL for querying the results as shown in the images below. Example So based on above steps, I tried Document Suggestions on my trial environment and below screenshots will demonstrate the same. Here I have created Similarity Rule for Opportunity Entity and document recommendations will be displayed for the records. So I have created two different Opportunities, to buy IPhone 7 and IPhone7s and I have added the documents regarding the deal cracked for buying IPhone 7 so when I view suggestions for IPhone 7s it will show the related documents associated with IPhone 7 on Document Associated Grid of Opportunity to Buy IPhone 7s. The above screen shot shows that since the topic name had similar key words that’s the reason I could see the recommendations. This happened due to Similarity Rule created where in Match Fields I had declared the Text Match of the Field “Topic” on Opportunity. Also Document Recommendations will read documents stored in SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business or Office 365 Groups. Document Recommendations is not supported in Offline Mode. Whereas on Mobile/ Tablet Clients the recommendations will be shown as shown below.  

D365 field service or Dynamics 365 for field service is one complete field service management software. It is a product from Microsoft. It helps large and medium businesses to become quite efficient. This software can hold stuff such as service agreements, service locations, customer assets, preventive maintenance, resource management, work order management and so forth. You will have total control over your field service management teams. The scheduling options available on this software is quite flexible. You can significantly boost customer service when you use this particular ERP solution.  So many excellent features are available in this particular ERP solution. Integrating the Outlook calendar with the field service is entirely possible when you are using this ERP suite.  Introduction: This blog explains how to configure work order bookings for Field technicians who need them to show in the Outlook calendar. Prerequisites: 1. Dynamics 365 Field Service licenses 2. Office 365 Enterprise E3 licenses Configuration: Enable and Test email mailbox for relevant Users is successful. Working: Below are steps for setting up Outlook Integration with Field Service to set this up in the system Login to Dynamics 365 Field Service environment as an “Administrator”. Next, go to Settings > Administration > System Settings > Synchronization and check Synchronize resource bookings with Outlook. Login to Dynamics 365 Field Service environment as a “Technician”. Navigate to Options > Synchronization. And check Synchronize resource bookings with Outlook. Login to Dynamics 365 Field Service environment as an “Administrator” and schedule a Work Order to Technician. Login into Outlook with the User related to that “Field technician”. Open Calendar and booking is shown as below. Note: The Booking may take 10+ minutes to show in Outlook. This is because it is an asynchronous service.  

In CRM, when a file is attached in Notes sections, it gets stored in “Annotation” Entity. Notes with Files attached have the isDocument set to 1 and without notes to 0. Since Annotation entity contains files attached in all other CRM entities, it is determined by “ObjecttypeCode”. Example for Account ObjectTypeCode is 1. ObjectId field in Annotation holds the GUID of the related entity’s Primary Key whose file is attached. Example Accounts Accountid is ObjectId of Annotation. When we create a CRM connection for Annotation, we get 2 fields as highlighted below “bodybinary” and “documentbody”. When we migrate from CRM   to SQL, we need to Map the source CRM bodybinary field to vfAttachment in Target. If you map to document body, the files gets migrated however when you open it, it looks like corrupted. (During CRM to CRM migration, ensure that both the fields objecttypecode and objectidtypecode are mapped, else migration will get fail.) If we need to pull the attached files from CRM and insert the same in SQL Table and write the same files in to Windows folder, things get bit tricky here. While creating the SQL Table what will be the datatype for column that will be storing the attached file?  The datatype you need to select is as “Image”. If you select longvarchar or text or binary, when the file is written on disk and open, you get a gibberish file with unreadable content. Please note even though the Data type of the SQL Table for DocumentBody is defined as “Image”, Scribe shows the datatype as “binary”. Also during mapping it is advised to map the documentbody field at the very end. We had encountered this issues of files getting corrupted and Scribe support team suggested this approach and it worked. With above tips, you can ensure successful migration of documents from CRM to SQL and later when writing to local drives.

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”.  

In this blog article, we will explain you on how to connect Microsoft Visual Studio TFS inside of Power BI. Below are the steps to connect over Financial OData: Open the Power BI.com online account Select Get Data option from the bottom menu Click on the Get service option Select Visual Studio TFS from the list and click on “Get it Now”. New Connection window appears which asking for Account Name to connect TFS. You need to write only name of the account (beginning name of visualtstudio.com) and write specific project name or * if you want to get data for all existing projects. After Connecting it will ask for the Authentication so need to login with your id who has access on TFS. So finally, you get out of the box dashboard inside of Power BI. As per below screen shots, it gives so many individual sheets to give information on Open Bug Status, Latest Version Control, Top Updated users, Different Project Build analysis and all. We can also connect TFS from Power BI desktop tools as well, so using that we will design reports and charts based on our requirements. In the Power BI Desktop, we need to choose Visual studio team Services option from Online service. After that it will ask for same account and Project details of the TFS, and we can have list of tables objects for selecting data inside of Graphs or charts.  

Problem Statement: Data in you CRM is critical and storage space for CRM is expensive i.e. $9.99/GB/Month. Often, CRM space is taken up by Attachments and background data (ex: completed system jobs and it is difficult to realize where our space is being consumed. This blog is about some quick tips to free your storage space and optimize CRM data usage to reduce costs. Step1: Request Consumption of your storage in CRM to Microsoft Support We can create a Service Request with Microsoft requesting the storage details of CRM environment. Here’s how you can create a service request under the correct category in Office 365 Service Request to request the storage details of CRM. The type of Service Request should be Dynamics 365. Then, select Feature as Online Service Availability and Administration Center and Symptom as storage. Mention your description something like the below: Click Next and provide your details, email and phone number. Once Microsoft acknowledges this, they will provide you details of the top 10 utilized tables in Dynamics 365 / CRM. You’ll get an email from a Microsoft Support Representation mentioning the details of the storage consumption something like this: In this example I used, I could see that Attachments was the table that consumed about 13GB of data! That is very expensive to store attachments in CRM. So first, we will proceed towards how we can curb the usage of storage in CRM by first putting all attachments in SharePoint Online (which is available in most Office 365 plans). Since, SharePoint space is way cheaper than CRM ($0.20/GB/Month) and SharePoint provides 1TB in my base subscription at no additional cost. Step 2: Use PowerAttachment by PowerObjects to migrate attachments to SharePoint A very useful tool is PowerAttachment by PowerObjects. PowerAttachment moves your attachments from CRM to SharePoint, thus freeing up critical space in CRM which can be utilized for important data Once the PowerAttachment is configured with your CRM / D365, the attachments are moved to SharePoint and the attachment link in the parent items, say, email – is replaced by the link to the SharePoint location to where the file was moved. Thus, moving attachments to SharePoint frees a massive amount of space from CRM which usually attachments take and moves them over to a cheaper storage option. Step 3: Bulk Delete Background Data – Mailbox Alerts and Workflow/System Jobs Examples Now, among several types of background data, what applied in my case, was the alerts created behind the scenes since I configured the Mailboxes of users for Server Side Sync. As you can see in the above, you can see that there were about 3,808,246 records when I requested them. That was consuming way too much of data that was irrelevant to me. So, I chose to eliminate the same using Bulk Delete. Mailbox Alerts Mailbox Alerts are something created by Mailboxes when certain tests/authentication fails. In my scenario, they created gigantic amount of records. Using Bulk Delete, I queries all of those and started the Bulk Delete to Delete them. Here, we will use Bulk Delete. Navigate to Settings > Data Management > Bulk Record Deletion. I defined the Search Criteria to query Traces entity and I didn’t select any criteria since I wanted all the records to be removed. And this is how records will be shown. The above example shows very less records. Let’s assume there are huge records like more than 100,000 records. Depending on how many records are queries, the Bulk Delete operation took several hours but freed a great deal of expensive storage space. Completed System Jobs / Workflow Jobs Another important chunk of huge data is consumed by completed, failed System Jobs and workflow jobs from the System which take up hundreds and thousands of records of data. As shown in the above example, I am using Bulk Deletion job to remove the System Jobs/Workflow jobs. Below is the criteria I select considering that I might need to look at a few records in recent past and delete the rest of them: Also, I kept this Bulk Deletion job to re-occur every 90 so that it takes a fresh batch of records older jobs created in 1 month’s span. Above are only 2 of several types of data that can be cleaned depending on what is needed. Also, more effective ways are also mentioned by Microsoft. Here’s the link to the same: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569.aspx  

In Dynamics 365 for Operation, user can now start a depreciation run for assets across all legal entities from a single page. There is also a new option to automatically post the journals after they are created. The creation and posting of the journals can be sent to batch processing, allowing the depreciation to run in the background. Before running the Depreciation proposal, the user needs to do some setups in Fixed Asset Parameters. (Fixed Assets->Setups->Parameters). The user needs to add the journal names in the Fixed Asset Proposal with the respective Posting layer. This exercise needs to be done in all the entities for which depreciations needs to be ran. Once the setup is done, user can run the Depreciation proposal. (Fixed Assets->Journal Entries->Create depreciation proposal). In the Legal Entities dropdown, user will see the list of all entities where the initial setup of Journal names in parameters was done. The user can select all the entities or an entity based on his requirement of calculation and posting of depreciation. After selection of entities if the user requires that the entries should be posted automatically, he can just activate the Post journals button. This will calculate the depreciation and post all the required entries of depreciation. The user can also set the batch which will then run this process in background based on schedule and recurrence in batch. Conclusion These enhancements reduce the inefficiencies of starting individual depreciation runs separately for each company, as well as better centralized management of all the fixed assets.  

Accounting team can correct posted sales invoice if there is mistake in Invoice or want to make some changes. This functionality help to correct posted ledger entries as well as other changes like Invoice discount, currency code, Payment terms etc. User cannot correct sales invoice which has been paid. By using below steps you can correct posted sales invoice: In the top right corner, choose the Search for Page or Report icon, enter Posted Sales Invoices, and then choose the related link. Select Posted Sales Invoice for which you want make correction. On the Home tab, In the Manage group, click on View. In correct group, click on correct button to make changes in Invoice. You will get below pop up when you click on correct, select yes to continue. System will create new sales invoice with new invoice number. Make the changes which are required example: Quantity, price, Invoice discount etc. Click on Post in posting group to Post Sales Invoice. Select yes to Post Invoice. You will get below pop-up once Invoice has been posted. Click yes to Open Posted Sales Invoice. Open original invoice for which you have made corrections and click on Show Cancelled/Corrective Credit Memo to view the posted sales credit memo that voids the initial posted sales invoice. You can see Posted Sales credit memo which has been posted for Sales Invoice. In Posted Sales Invoice, you can see closed and cancelled status for original invoice for which correction has been made. Conclusion By using this functionality you can correct Posted Sales Invoice if you make mistake, or customer request a change.  

Introduction: This article specifies how to add a group called ‘Quality’ in the Item Card Page using VS Code in NAV 2017. The requirement to add this group is to have all the quality related parameters for a particular item. Based on these parameters, when and what test needs to be done is decided. Quality play a very important role in case of a pharmaceutical company and these changes are done keeping in mind the pharmaceutical process. This group contains the four fields. QC Enabled Check box: The checkbox decides whether the quality test should be done or not on a particular item. Retesting Period:  Retesting Period is the time span when the item will be tested again. Spec ID: The Specification ID is a look up to the page called ‘Specification Page’ which contains a list of specification which helps in deciding what test needs to be done in testing. WIP QC Enabled Checkbox:(Work In Progress) This checkbox is used to define the quality test should be done or not for a particular item, when that particular item is in WIP WIP Spec ID: The WIP(Work In Progress) Specification ID is a look up to the page called ‘Specification Page’ which contains a list of specification which helps in deciding what test needs to be done in testing when the particular item is in WIP. Prerequisites: 1. Visual studio Code (VS Code) 2. Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client Steps: A folder is created named ‘Quality extension’. All files with extension as .al are placed here. Firstly, we create a file named ‘Itemtabext.al’ then typing the shortcut ‘ttableext’ a layout for table extension is created. We add the fields here. Here the Spec ID and WIP Spec ID have a look up to the Specification Header table field Spec ID. We create a page extension typing the shortcut ‘tpageext’ which creates the layout for page extension.The ‘Quality Section’ group is added after the Warehouse group hence we use ‘addafter’ Here QC Enabled,Restesting Period and Spec ID are mandatory fields so we set the ‘ShowMandatory’ field to True. In the No. Series Page in the web client, we specify the default number series for Specifications and look up is assigned to Quality Control Set up Page An Action is created in the Item table for calling the Specification Page and Quality Control Setup. Here the Specification No is a look up to the No. Series Code created in Step 3. Here Spec ID is manually typed and the specification name is specified in the description. We need to create a new table ‘Specification Header’ table which contains a list of specification which helps in deciding what test needs to be done in testing. In the table Specification Header, we declare variables and specify a record ‘Quality Control Setup’ and Codeunit ‘No Series Management’. On the Insert trigger of the ‘Specification Header’ table we set the created date as the work date, created by as the UserID. We declare Quality Control setup record to fetch the default number series specified in the No. Series Page. The Quality control Set up table is created which has a table relation to the ‘No. Series’ table field code and page is created which is called in the Web client through an action We create a Codeunit to Test and Validate the field and send the Item for Sampling. We then create a navx package by building it using Ctrl+Shift+B which creates the app.json and to publish our extension we use the shortcut F5 which creates the launch.json file. Here we specify the Extension name and the publisher. In the Web client in the ‘Extension Management’ Page we can view our extension We browse to the ‘Item’ page to view our output. Error faced in the previous Development preview Spec ID in the Quality group is a look up to the Specification Page which contains a list of specification which helps in deciding what test needs to be done in testing. This look up wasn’t working in the previous development preview of NAV using VS Code, this was a bug on table relation/drill down property https://github.com/Microsoft/AL/issues/39 Error resolved after the January development preview update After the Development preview January update, the bug on the Table Relation Property was resolved. Below is a screenshot attached justifying the same. Below is the screen shot of the Issues in the previous preview update which were solved in the January update.