Summary Our client is a US-based manufacturer of premium connected countertop cooking appliances, sold direct to consumers and through retail partners. Their in-house support team works warranty, returns and device troubleshooting cases in Dynamics 365, but the rules for handling those cases lived outside it, in documents that had to be opened in a second tab. We built what they call the troubleshoot guide using the side pane, a part of the app shell most implementations never touch because the out of the box app only uses it for the productivity pane and the Copilot panel. A Quick Reference Guide icon in the right-hand rail opens a business rules library beside the record, it stays open while the agent moves from one case to the next, and it is edited in place by the people who own the rules. The content sits in Dataverse rows instead of in a solution, so adding or correcting a rule is a data change rather than a deployment. This post covers why we chose that surface, the two design calls we reversed mid build, and the limits we would design around on a second pass. ⓘPart of a wider engagement The troubleshoot guide is one piece of a longer programme of Dynamics 365 enhancements, reporting and third-party integrations for this client. Read the full Customer Success Story. Table of Contents Summary→ Business Challenges→ Solution Overview→ Technical Approach→ Impact→ Conclusion→ Let’s Talk→ Business Challenges The problem was never that the rules did not exist. The problem was where they sat relative to the work. The handling rules lived in documents outside CRM, so finding the right paragraph meant leaving the case form and giving up the record context Rules changed more often than anyone could republish them, and a correction had to go back through whoever owned the file Nothing tied a rule to the moment it was needed. The agent already had the case open and still had to remember which policy applied Anything that put the content on a form tab would have turned a typo fix into a customisation, an export and an import ⚠The cost was the switch, not the search Opening a document is quick. Rebuilding where you were in a case after you come back is not, and that happened on every lookup. Solution Overview The troubleshoot guide is a side pane. Most users only ever meet that surface as the productivity pane in Customer Service, and most project teams reach for a dialog or a form tab because those are the shapes everyone already knows. The pane is the only one of the three that keeps the reference material and the record on screen together. The entry point is a Quick Reference Guide icon in the right-hand rail of the app. It is there as soon as a case is opened and on a case the agent is still creating, so somebody taking a call does not have to save the record first. The launcher sits in the right rail, available on an open case and on a new one. One click opens the pane, and it stays pinned as the agent moves to the next record. Content is organised in two levels: a business rule heading, and sub-sections under it, all collapsed when the pane first renders so the agent sees the index before the detail. The pane in the right column of the app shell, beside the live form. What the pane does Two level structure. A business rule heading holds any number of sub-sections. Everything renders collapsed, so the agent reads an index first and opens only the rule they need Search across both levels. One box matches heading names and the body text of every sub-section at the same time, and auto-expands whatever it hits. Clearing the box restores exactly which sections were open before the search started Inline authoring. Add a heading, add a sub-section, write bold text, colour a warning line, insert a link. No second screen and no admin rights Insert images two ways. Upload from the device, or point at an existing URL. Either way the image is resized and compressed before it is stored Paste from Word and Outlook. The rule owners draft in Word. Pasted formatting is cleaned on the way in, and a screenshot sitting in the clipboard is embedded as part of the same paste Sort by dragging. Headings reorder against each other, sub-sections reorder within their heading, and the new position is saved the moment the item is dropped Move a sub-section to a different heading. Drag it out of one section and onto another. A collapsed heading opens itself when the item hovers over it, so nothing has to be expanded first Light and dark themes. A toggle in the pane header, remembered per browser, because the pane is open all day beside a form whose theme the agent does not control Delete that deactivates. Removing a heading deactivates its sub-sections first, then the heading, so nothing is orphaned and nothing is destroyed ⓘNothing here is a customisation Every heading and every sub-section is a Dataverse row. Publishing a new rule does not touch the solution and does not need a developer. Technical Approach Why the side pane and not a form tab We looked at three places to put the guide before writing anything. The deciding criterion was not how it looked, it was what survives the agent moving to the next record. Criteria Form tab Custom page dialog Our choiceSide pane Readable at the same time as the case fields partial ✗ ✓ Survives navigating to the next case ✗ ✗ ✓ Width the agent can drag to suit their screen ✗ ✗ ✓ Keeps scroll position and open sections between records ✗ ✗ ✓ No change to the form layout to adopt it ✗ ✓ ✓ The side pane has been available in the Dynamics 365 app shell since 2021 and almost nothing in the standard app uses it beyond … Continue reading How to Extend Dynamics 365 CRM Using Side Panes: A Practical Implementation for a US-Based Kitchen Appliance Manufacturer →

Introduction: From the version 10.0.10 Platform update 34, Microsoft has added a new feature Message::AddAction() which is shown in the message bar.  Details: Message API associated with display or action menu items, which is visualized as a hyperlink/link button.  It is linked with a single record at a time, called single action. In below taken example, we will show sales order is navigated to the form SalesTable from the message bar. For testing it, we’ll create the runnable class also know as job in AX 2012.  class CFSMessageAPI { public static void main(Args _args) { SalesTable salesTable = SalesTable::find(‘SH-000121′); MenuItemMessageAction actionData = new MenuItemMessageAction(); actionData.MenuItemName(menuItemDisplayStr(SalesTable)); actionData.TableName(tableStr(SalesTable)); actionData.RecId(salesTable.RecId); str jsonData = FormJsonSerializer::serializeClass(actionData); int64 messageId = Message::AddAction(MessageSeverity::Informational, “Sales order details”, salesTable.customerName(), MessageActionType::DisplayMenuItem, jsonData); } } Let’s see how it works,  In my case it’s showing Mitchell. Click on the link.  After clicking on the action link, it is navigated to the sales order record form as shown in the above link.  Hurray, How pretty feature is released !!! Conclusion: In above example, we have seen how Message API is routed to the record. Thanks for reading !!!

“Run Jobs” – as the name suggests is a process between Retail Channels and Retail essentials through which we transfer data between channels and database. Please Note: Jobs Run at a specified time which may be different for every Retail Scheduler. Be aware of what the time is set for jobs to run automatically.  Running jobs at a specific time requires setting to be done so that we can schedule a specific job to run at specific time. It can be easily done manually. You’ll have to follow the below steps: Step 1: Go to distribution schedule or Channel database in Retail Dynamics 365. If the job doesn’t run from distribution schedule run it through channel database. Step 2: Go to download sessions and make sure your Job is available or in applied state. If it is in available state, go to “Batch Jobs“. Step 3: Now you will have to find the same batch job that you were searching and need to run it at a specified time. Step 4: Here, since the Job is in waiting state, you need to change it’s scheduled date and time to current time. This change must be according to the time at which you want your job needs to be run. The specified time will make your job run immediately.   Step 5: You can check if Job is being applied in “Download sessions” whenever required. Step 6: You can also change how often the job should run from going to Recurrence. Step 7: Only things highlighted in Red boxes should be checked. Hope this helps!!! Thank you! Please feel free to post any doubts you have.

Sorting can be used for defining an order direction for your Custom Visual. There are 3 different ways using which you or a user using your visual can sort your visual. They are as follows: Default Sorting: This is the easiest sorting option and gives users the ability to sort the visual by any field used in the visual. The following code needs to be added to the capabilities.json file.  “sorting”: { “default”: { } } After this the user will get the below sorting option: Implicit Sorting: Implicit Sorting can be used for pre-defining your sorting order in your capabilities.json file. Here, the user cannot manually change the sorting order. This can be done with the following code block where direction 1 is ascending and 2 is descending. Role is the data mapping name for which you would like to define your sorting. “sorting”: {         “implicit”: {             “clauses”: [                 {                     “role”: “category”,                     “direction”: 1                 }                 ]         }     } Custom Sorting: Custom sorting can be used for defining sorting in your visual.ts file and not in the capabilities.json file. Since you are defining your sorting order in your code, you can use various different logics to define your sorting(For example, you can define a formatting toggle option in the format pane that will sort the visual when turned on). A simple codeblock that can be used for sorting your datapoints in ascending order is as follows. sort((obj2, obj1) => { if (obj2.category< obj1.category)  return -1 else return 1; }); With so many options available, it is pretty easy create a visual just the way the user wants.

Introduction: Microsoft released a PDF cheat sheet of which machine learning algorithms can be used on Azure Machine Learning Studio. This Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Algorithm Cheat Sheet helps you choose the right machine learning algorithm for your predictive analytics solutions from the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning library of algorithms. The algorithms have been grouped in 5 different groups. These groups are: Regression: For predicting values. For Example when predicting a stocks price. Anomaly detection: For finding unusual data points. For example, any highly unusual credit card spending patterns which deviates from the normal credit card spending patterns. Clustering: The data points have no labels associated with them. Instead, the goal of an unsupervised learning algorithm is to organize the data in some way or to describe its structure. For example, discovering companies with similar marketing strategies. Two-class classification: When there are only two choices, it’s called two-class or binomial classification. For example distinguishing between a Cat or Dog. Multi-class classification: For predicting three or more categories. For Example predicting the winner of a Race. To read the cheat sheet, read the path and algorithm labels on the chart as “For <path label>, use <algorithm>.” For example, “For speed, use two class logistic regression.” Sometimes more than one branch applies. In this case it is better to create scored models with both the algorithm and compare both of their accuracy to decide which algorithm is the better fit. Even a beginner can easily use the cheat sheet provided to select which algorithm is apt for creating their predictive solution. There are some generalizations and oversimplifications, but it points you in a safe direction. It also means that there are lots of algorithms not listed here but these many algorithms are more than enough to give you a good head start in the ML world.