Blogs Dynamics 365

It has been quite some time since Microsoft announced the use of oAuth to connect between Server environments, but many organizations are still using username and password to connect to Dynamics 365 or the Command Data Service (CDS).

I recently had to work on a migration project, and while this customer was using legacy credentials to authenticate, they had no problems doing so with all of their environments. After they provisioned a new environment, suddenly they started receiving authentication exceptions from their data migration tool (using Kingswaysoft and SSIS).

One of the features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (and some of the previous versions has been document templates). I wanted to validate some of the logic, if we can automate the creation of a document and sending it as an email using Microsoft Flow, and of course Flow did not fail to perform.

In order to implement this logic, the first thing was to create the actual document in Microsoft Word. This document will be the template that we create, and will convert it to an Adobe PDF and finally Send it in an email message using Office 365. This process is based on a requirement to generate a license and send it as an email to the user when a new license is generated (or updated).

With the Power Platform Wave 2 release, we started noticing some progressive changes to the Common Data Service connector. When you do a search for “Common Data Service” in the connector search box, you will see two separate connectors. The first connector which we are used to is still called the Common Data Service connector, but you will notice that there is an additional connector called Common Data Service (current environment) connector.

In many of the projects that I have worked over the past years, either government of private sector, while working with other businesses it has become a common practice to request that Industry information from the companies that you work with, and furthermore the NAICS code. While not every company knows their NAICS code, drilling down to get it using the Industry (2-digit code), Subsector (4-digit code) and NAICS title (6-digit code) might be the way to go, sometimes you might want to bypass this complex search if you know ahead of time your business’ NAICS code and have it auto populated for you.

As part of the 2019 October Release (Wave 2), Microsoft is introducing PowerApps Canvas App Components. Canvas App Components are reusable components that can be shared across multiple screens of your app, without the need to create or copy the component across the multiple screens. Create once, and use multiple times. Canvas App components can also be imported and exported, so that they can be used across multiple applications. This post will demonstrate how to create a simple component, add custom properties and use it from within your Canvas application

As part of the October 2019 release (Wave 2), the Unified Interface will receive a few usability enhancements that will address some of the issues that were reported by the community. These enhancements include: Anchoring error notifications, Viewing inline images for emails that are read-only, Improved usability/density and filtering in views and form header usability enhancements.

Over the past 10 years almost CRM had gone through many revisions and features, and one of the things that has changed multiple times is the lead qualification and conversion process. The idea behind this is to reduce the work effort.

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 2019 Release Wave 2 is not available for early adopters. The release is scheduled to start deployment to production environments starting in October of 2019. During August and September, Microsoft Dynamics customers check out the upcoming list of updates that will be released in October.

Recently I had to work on a PowerApps/Flow solution that would connect to a Dynamics 365 data source. I have done various things previously with the Dynamics 365 connector, but when trying to do the same in my GCC environment, I could not see the Dynamics 365 connector. I thought it was removed, but then I checked my commercial environment and it was there.

I recently ran into a requirement to do a PoC on a PowerApps to be able to add and update records in a single screen in PowerApps. In order to implement the PoC I decided to test this out on the Contact Entity in a Dynamics 365 environment. I did not make any changes to the Contact Entity, but just used some of the Out of the Box fields. In order to implement this, I wanted to get a look and feel of a form that would look the same whether entering new information or editing existing information.

We start by creating a blank Canvas up using the Tablet layout. This will open a blank screen. On the screen we see the message Add an item from the Insert tab or connect to data. We click on connect to data, and select either new connection if you don’t see your dynamics 365 connection from there, or if it is displayed click on the connection. Select the connection (and authenticate if required), select the dataset (instance) and then in the Choose a table, select the Contacts entity. Click on Connect. The image below shows you the Data sources window after you connected to the environment.