Introduction: While migrating Cases, the migration of activities of type ‘Case Resolution’ is necessary. However, the complexity in migrating this increases due to the fact that when the status of a case is updated, a blank case resolution activity is created automatically by the system. This system-generated case resolution needs to be deleted as this would result in each case having two case resolution activities after migration – one system-generated and one with the correct migrated data from the source. Solution: To tackle this issue, one must follow the following steps during migration: 1. Send all Cases (no matter what the status in the source environment) to the target with their status as ‘Open’. 2. Send all related activities to the target environment. 3. Update the case status in the target environment to its status as in the source environment. 4. For cases with status ‘Resolved’, a system-generated case resolution activity will be created. 5. In your case resolution migration map, first add a step to delete the existing case resolution in the target and then insert the case resolution from the source environment. 6. Now your case with status ‘Resolved’ will have only one case resolution and that will be the one migrated from the source environment with the correct data. Conclusion: Above steps shed some light on how to preserve the integrity of case resolution activity data in your target environment during data migration.

Introduction: Recently, we encountered an error while integrating Sales Orders from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics NAV via Scribe displaying the following error message. Error Details: “The Sales Header Extension does not exist. Identification fields and values: Document Type=’Quote’, No=’ ‘ ” Reason for the error: Upon further debugging, we found that a field in the Target NAV environment was throwing the error when Scribe was trying to input data into it. Solution: The configuration of the field in the Target NAV environment needs to be changed so that it can populate data being integrated by Scribe. This will allow Scribe to integrate the record successfully!

Introduction: Once a User exports a report to Microsoft Excel from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment, they may want to further filter the report in Microsoft Excel. Issue: An issue I came across recently was that the report, when exported to Excel, would not allow me to filter in Excel for the first few columns, as shown in the screenshot below. On further testing, I found that this was due to the Title text box above the table. Solution: Once the side of the text box was extended to the very end of the report (as shown above), near the end of the page, Excel allowed the filters to be applied to all columns in the exported SSRS report. That solves it!

Introduction The September 2018 Update of Power BI has finally brought to users, the functionality to copy data from a table or matrix in a report. This has been a much-requested feature as one often finds themselves needing to copy a value or columns of data from a report with no option to do so. Steps: Now, if you want to copy a value, several columns  in a table or matrix you can do so by following the steps below: Copying one value :  Select the value->right-click on the selection -> select ‘Copy Value’ -> An unformatted value will now be added to your clipboard. Copying several columns of data: Select all the data in the required columns->right click on the selection and select ‘Copy Selection’.-> The required data and column headers are copied to the clipboard. In a Matrix, when you select one value->right-click-> ‘Copy Selection’-> All measures required are copied along with the value ( as shown in the screenshot below). Conclusion: This is a long-awaited feature of Power BI and will definitely enhance user experience while navigating and using Power BI reports.

The September update of Power BI features an important functionality: the option to drillthough to another page in that report. For example, if a user wants to see detailed data of a product ‘Product 2’, then they can right-click on Product 2 in the main report, select ‘Drillthrough’ and the relevant sub-report to have it automatically filter the sub-report for Product 2. To do this, open your sub-report page and add any filters you require to be applied when the main report drills through to this report. For example, ‘Product’ and select ‘Used as category’. Go to the main report and select (right-click) on the Product you want to use to drillthrough, click on ‘Drillthrough’ and select the name of your sub-report. This will re-direct you to the sub-report, now filtered by the selected product. Additionally, to go back to the main report, one can simply click the back ( <- ) button on the sub-report. This feature enhances the users’ understanding of the data as well as greatly improves user experience.  

Issue: While trying to integrate records from SFDC to Dynamics NAV 2017, I faced an issue in Scribe saying “The record already exists.”. When I checked in Dynamics NAV 2017, there were no records similar to the one I was trying to integrate when the error occurred. Additionally, when I tried to create a new record in NAV, I got the same error if I filled some other field before filling out the ‘Name’ field. Solution: After some trial and error, I found that this error gets triggered when there is a record not having a value for ‘No.’ which is the Primary Key. Once I deleted this record, creating new records in NAV was no longer an issue for Scribe.

In the August 2018 update of Power BI, we can now apply conditional formatting based on field value. This allows us to use a measure or column that contains a color name, a hex name/code and apply that color to the background of the cells and the font in the cells of that column. For example, if I want to use color to signify the product name, we can create a calculated column to assign color names to each product as shown below: Then add that calculated column (‘Color’) to your table, and go to the Conditional Formatting dialog for ‘Color’. Select ‘Background Color’.   Select ‘Field Value’ in the ‘Format by’ drop-down menu. Since I only have one color name per row, I will select First ‘Column Name’, Summarization ‘First’  and click OK. The background color of the cells in the calculated column will now be according to the color name in the cell. If you don’t want to see the color names, repeat the steps but select ‘Font Color’ as shown below. The entire cell will now be filled. If you want to use hex names/codes instead of color names, you can create a calculated measure/column using them as shown below. Now follow the same steps as above to apply conditional formatting to the table using hex codes/names. This can help highlight sets of data easily based on their values and without the need to set rules.

Introduction: While migrating Email Activities from D365 v8.2 to v9, I came across the following error: “Operation failed. Label: Create email, Name: emailCreate2, Message: -2147220969: ActivityPointer With Id = XXXXXXXXXXXX Does Not Exist” This can cause some confusion as activitypointers do not need to be migrated before you begin migrating emails. What are ActivityPointers? The activity pointer (activity) entity represents any activity or task that is performed, or to be performed by a user. An activity is any action for which an entry can be made on a calendar. Whenever you create an activity record in Microsoft Dynamics 365, a corresponding activity pointer record is created. This indicates that the activity record and the corresponding activity pointer record have the same value for the ActivityId attribute. For example, if you create an Email record, the attribute values of Email.ActivityId and the corresponding ActivityPointer.ActivityId will be the same. This should not be confused with ActivityParties which represent a person or group associated with an activity. An activity can have multiple activity parties. Cause: Upon inspection, I discovered that those emails are linked to themselves, having the ‘parentactivityid’ field populated with its own activity GUID. The error was being caused because Scribe could not find the parent activity in the Target environment (since it had not yet been created). Solution: Remove the ‘parentactivityid’ mapping from the ‘Create Email’ block. Add an If-Else Block below the Create block to check if the Email has been created, and if true, use an Update block to update the Email with the ‘parentactivityid’. Now, the Email activity will be created with the correct GUID and once created, will be updated with the required GUID as ‘parentactivityid’. This solution resolved the above issue and email activities  can now be created without this error occurring.

Introduction: PowerBI introduced the feature to format line styles and legends for line charts a while ago. However, these features were not applicable to lines in combination charts like ‘Line and Stacked Column Chart’ and ‘Line and Clustered Column Chart’. With the April update of PowerBI Desktop, we are now able to customise the format for lines in combo charts to different styles, which then reflect in the legend, making the chart easier to read and understand. Steps: While using a combo chart, all line series are in the ‘Solid’ format with just the defined colours differentiating them and the legend only displays their respective colours as shown below. To format the line or line series, go to the ‘Format’ pane and under the ‘Shapes’ card, you will find several options to customise the format of the lines. Shade Area can be switched On to shade the area each line encompasses. ‘Stroke Width’ allows you to adjust the thickness of all the lines. ‘Line Style’ allows you to select whether the line will be displayed as a solid line, dashed or dotted line as shown below. The next option is ‘Show marker’, which when switched On allows you to select the Marker shape, size and colour. To customise each line in a series individually, switch On ‘Customize series’. You will get a dropdown to select from the line values and options to customise the format of each line based on the line value selected from the dropdown. Coming to the customisation of the legend, you can do so by going to the ‘Legend’ card under the ‘Format’ pane. In the Style option, you have three options in the dropdown menu – Markers only: This will display only the respective markers in the legend. Line and markers: This will display both the respective lines and markers in the legend. Line only: This will display only the respective line style in the legend (shown below). Conclusion: As we can see, the new April update allows us to completely customise the lines in a combo chart, which not only add more visual appeal but also enables the user to easily read and understand the chart and the data it represents.

Introduction: With the latest update of Power BI, you can now ask top-n type questions and get answers based on your dataset. Questions like ‘What are the top 3 products by sales?’ or ‘Top Manufacturer by country’ are examples. This is also valid for bottom-n type questions like ‘Least selling product in a country’. Steps: 1. Go to your PowerBI Workspace and select your report. 2. Click on the ‘Edit’ button. 3. Select ‘Ask a question’. 4. Type in your question and the visualization will form with the answer based on your dataset. 5. Make changes to your Axis, Legend and Value fields if required. Conclusion: This feature enables the User to obtain important information from the dataset quickly and easily using natural language thereby enhancing the capability of Power BI to provide self-serving business intelligence.