D365 CE 2019 Wave 2 Preview: Dynamics 365 Business card scan preview feature

Top request by customers: scanning business cards and capturing the information will be available in the upcoming Dynamics 365 release and is now available in instances with early access enabled. It worked remarkably well except for my own business card ...


 

The functionality seems to be provided by the new "AI Builder Business Card control" which is added on the quick create contact form. Next on the todo list - testing out modifying the mappings.

D365 CE 2019 Wave 2 Preview: enable contextual email communication

One of the upcoming enhancements that a lot of my colleagues were excited about is  Contextual email communication in Dynamics 365 for Sales & Customer Service.  Contextual email communication allows you to overlay an email composition screen on top of the existing Dynamics 365 forms without having to navigate away from the screen that you are on. After you have enabled your environment for early preview access you can go to App Settings > Enhanced email  to enable this new functionality. (You might need to do a hard refresh after enabling use CTRL-F5)

After you enable this feature, adding an e-mail to the timeline will open the composition overlay allowing you to consult information on the contact while creating your e-mail.

Early opt-in to Dynamics 365 CE release wave 2

You can now enable the features coming in the 2019 release wave 2 update by opting in to the updates in the Power Platform Admin Center. Opting in will enable all changed user experience updates for Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement.

Don't do this on your production environment but test it out on a copy of production - once enabled you can not turn this off

From October 2019, all environments will be enabled for 2019 release wave 2. Opting in now, allows you to get hands on experience with wave 2 changes and testing out the impact on your specific solution setup.

• Details Early opt in to 2019 release wave 2 - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/preview-october-2019-updates
• Dynamics 365 release schedule and early access – key dates for 2019 release wave 2 - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/get-started/release-schedule
• Overview of Dynamics 365 for Sales 2019 release wave 2 scenarios - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-sales/ 

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list July 2019

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Announcing the general availability of embedded canvas apps in model driven forms
• Automatically validate your solutions using the PowerApps solution checker PowerShell Module
• Preview instant Flow steps in business process flows
• Use of React and Office UI Fabric React in the PowerApps Component framework is now available in public preview
• Comparing the three main ways to get Dynamics 365 data into Power BI
• Source code for Google Address Autocomplete PCF control
• How to trigger a Microsoft Flow from a custom button in Dynamics 365
• Using Admin PowerShell cmdlets with Power Platform 
• Preview: Integration between Finance and Operations and Common Data Service – Phase 1 
• Dynamics 365: Notification error message – “You are using apps designed for the legacy web client”
• Dynamics 365 FastTrack Techtalks – FastTrack TechTalks provide technical and functional best practices and guidance for Dynamics 365 deployments
• How to user Solution Layers in Dynamics 365 v9.x
• Service Update 72 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 9.1.0
• Unified Interface Community
• Increase productivity of CRM users by using Dynamics 365 Virtual Agents
• Remove “The email below might contain script …” warning in Dynamics 365 by modifying orgdbsettings

Topics for Dynamics 365 Business Application Platform analysts, project managers and power users

• Introducing the PowerApps Center of Excellence Starter Kit
• Does staffing the Microsoft Power Platform practice need a refresh?
• PowerApps Portals Licensing October 2019
• Top 10 anti-patterns in sprints, daily scrums, sprint planning, review and retrospectives 
• Power Platform and growth mindset of learning – part 1 and Power Platform and growth mindset of learning – part 2
• Satya Nadella demos Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (Youtube 00:05:25)
• Building an SFD in Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform
• Make a great first impression with your virtual agent
• Unilever’s digital journey leads to real results for consumers and employees

Azure Databricks training material on Microsoft Learn

Still on my todo list – reviewing the 15 modules on Azure Databricks and the learning paths for data engineering with Databricks.
Modules : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/browse/?products=azure-databricks
Learning Path : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/browse/?products=azure-databricks&resource_type=learning%20path

Code tip: Nullable datetime in C#

Nullable types are used when you need to represent the value of an underlying type. By default DateTime is not nullable in C# because it is a Value type, but using the Nullable construct (or the ? shorthand), you can assign the null literal to the DateTime type. Syntax is below:

 DateTime? dt = null;  
 Nullable<DateTime> dt = null;