Dynamics 365 monthly reading list November 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Dynamics 365 FastTrack Architect bootcap – security, scale groups, releases and some technical stuff
• How to create realistic test data for your CRM project and why you should
• “Sorry something went wrong while initializing the app” – Outlook CRM app error after upgrade to Dynamics 365 9.1
• Connect Power BI to Common Data Service
• Microsoft Flow – Business Process Flows from a traditional CRM perspective
• Microsoft Ignite 2018 Event Recap – PowerApps & Microsoft Flow
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online Deployment – MB2-715 study notes
• Microsoft’s Common Data Model – what users – not just Dynamics 365 users  need to know
• Demo scenario using Dynamics Customer Engagement with the Titanic demo set
• CDS and data object prefix
• Dynamics 365 architecture: examining record status and flagging strategies
• How to override out of the box buttons behavior in Dynamics CRM
• Upgrade to new Xrm client API object model (v9) smoothly using XrmToolBox plugins
• Personalizing custom entity icons with Metro Studio
• Using PowerApps to support warehouse processes in Dynamics 365 F&O
• Solutions for image rendering problems in Dynamics 365
• Power Platform Administration Center
• Using PowerApps and Flow with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations – Part 1

Topics for Dynamics 365 CE business analysts, project managers and power users

• Embedded Intelligence with Email engagement in Dynamics 365
• Using marketing lists to enhance advanced find in Dynamics CRM
• Using Microsoft Flow with Excel to publish data to Dynamics 365 ( Youtube 00:34:00)
• Dynamics 365 – Consumption vs licensing

LearnAI: Enterprise Knowledge Mining bootcamp training material

I recently stumbled upon this interesting training material https://azure.github.io/LearnAI-KnowledgeMiningBootcamp/ . It explains how to built an enterprise search solution by applying knowledge mining to business documents like contracts, memos, presentations and images and expose these using a bot.  You will use Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search, Azure Bot Framework, Azure Functions, etc..

Dynamics 365 Saturday Belgium slidedeck on Dynamics 365 and bots

Dynamics 365 Saturday Brussels 11/2018 - Dynamics 365 and chatbots from Joris Poelmans

Dynamics 365 Organization Insights revamped - welcome Common Data Service App Analytics

I’m a big fan Dynamics 365 Organization Insights and I have been using for more than a year now  since it was released in February 2017.   Organization Insights provides a number of key statistics about the usage, activity and quality of service (failing API calls, plugin execution failures, etc…) for your Dynamics 365 (online) instance.  A couple of weeks ago Microsoft moved the Organization Insights functionality to the new Power Platform Admin Center . You will find the Organization Insights dashboards by selecting Analytics in the left navigation bar and selecting Common Data Service for Apps.  The analytics for Common Data Service for Apps provides more detailed information and also allows you to filter and download the information in CSV format. The filter functionality allows you to select the specific instance for which you want to see information as well as see define a time frame for which you want to see information.

Please remember that the new Power Platform Admin Center is currently still in preview, so you might stumble upon some quirks but overall I like it a lot. For more information read the Microsoft documentation at Use the Organization Insights Solution to view metrics about your instance

Microsoft Ignite 2018 session downloader

If you want to download all the videos and powerpoint decks of Microsoft Ignite 2018 – you can still use the PowerShell script written by @mderooij. It allows you to download individual sessions by using the schedule code or by solution area. To download all 134 sessions about Dynamics 365 and related applications use this syntax

  .\Get-EventSession.ps1 -downloadfolder "d:\ignite2018" -solutionarea "Business Applications"

Speaking at Dynamics 365 Saturday Brussels 2018

I will be delivering a session about chat bots and Dynamics 365 at Dynamics 365 Saturday Brussels on November 17th. Registration is free. Dynamics 365 Saturday is a Technical & Strategy event organized by the community with the following credo: “Learn & share new skills while promoting best practices, helping organizations overcome the challenges of implementing a successful digital transformation strategy with Microsoft Dynamics 365”.

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list October 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement on-premise October 2018 update brings new user experience
• Continuous integration, deployment and test automation for Dynamics CRM
• Getting started as a Dynamics 365 CE developer
• Managing auto save in Dynamics 365
• How to upgrade deprecated client APIs to support Dynamics 365 v9
• How to disable Javascript in Dynamics 365 Apps
• Best practice: apply labels in TFS to deployment versions
• Announcing changes to new trials and new Common Data Service (CDS) for apps environments
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales: Sales automation and productivity with Microsoft apps (Ignite 2018 recording 00:47:42)
• Powering digital transformation with business applications: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (Ignite 2018 recording 01:33:15)
• Public preview of Dynamics 365 Channel Integration Framework is released – bring your own channel provider with ease
• Case closed: managed or unmanaged solutions in Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM
• Canvas App samples by Scott Durow
• Configuring dashboards for business process flows
• If you’re using ILMerge with your plugins – make sure you read this by Scott Durow
• Power Platform Admin Center aka the new Dynamics 365 admin center (Youtube 00:06:10)
• Create a customer sentiment solution in Dynamics 365 CE using Azure Cognitive Services and Microsoft Flow
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online release (Microsoft support)
• Introducing Dynamics 365 App for Outlook

Topics for Dynamics 365 CE business analysts, project manager and users

• Announcing new AI and mixed reality business applications for Microsoft Dynamics
• Dynamics 365 CE licensing guide changes October 2018
• Features that are new to the next release of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement applications (on premise)
• New languages, regions and pricing for Dynamics 365 for Marketing
• Dynamics  365 AI for sales – how to sell smarter with embedded AI-driven insights (Youtube 00:01:52)

Quick tip: CRMServiceClient vs CRMConnection

Starting with Dynamics 365 build number 9.*  you must use the XRM Tooling assemblies and the CRMServiceClient instead of the CRMConnection class – see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/developer/choose-development-style for more information.
First you will need add the nuget package Microsoft.CrmSdk.XrmTooling.CoreAssembly (Core assembly required to develop managed code using the Xrm Tooling Connector)

Afterwards, there are a number of ways that you can instantiate a CRMServiceClient object – see  Use CrmServiceClient constructor to connect to Dynamics 365 or Use connection strings in XRM tooling to connect to Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list August 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• How to configure Dynamics 365 Server to Server (S2S) authentication
• Update SDK tools required to connect to 9.x Dynamics 365 organizations
• Open progress indicator using Xrm.Utility in Dynamics 365 v 9.0
• Walkthrough: execute Azure function from Microsoft Dynamics entity form
• Introduction to Dynamics 365 mobile apps for 9.0 Part 4: new UI components and the CCF
• How to retrieve OData v4 fast in Power BI
• Dynamics 365 Online Deployment  tips: set your security group
• Proof of Concept – speech to text notes in Dynamics 365
• Preview feature: integrate Dynamics 365 customer engagement with Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2018 – sessions on demand
• When data in CRM is updated I want to send it to another application
• Dynamics 365 – drawing activity sequence diagram – display sequence of activities on CRM form using the js-sequence-diagram library
• Dynamics 365 Web API batch request, transaction integration and logic apps
• FTP to Dynamics CRM using Azure functions
• Five ways to improve quality and productivity of Dynamics 365 development
• Advice on improving as a CRM developer
• Getting to know the Dynamics 365 Data Export Service
• When does the plugin registered on setstate message fire in Dynamics 365?
• Enabling feedback for entities
• Delegable or not delegable – things to consider when creating queries in PowerApps
• Turn on soft delete for Azure Blob storage – handy to know in combination with the Attachment management solution

Topics for Dynamics 365 business analysts, project managers, power users and end users

• Thoughts on CRM design and converting user requirements in CRM solutions
• Sample PowerApp: quick capture customer visits into Dynamics 365 
• Entity dashboards in the new Dynamics 365 UI
• Dynamics 365 Sales Professional license
• Why you should move to Unified Interface in Dynamics 365 and how to make it happen (Recording Business Applications Summit)
• Common call center metrics for Dynamics 365
• Collaborating for a successful Dynamics 365 project

Introducing the Dynamics 365 Health Accelerator

The Dynamics 365 Health Accelerator is directly available from the Microsoft AppSource and allows you to rapidly develop healthcare solutions by providing a data model which supports entities based on the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (https://www.hl7.org/fhir/index.html) framework created by HL7. Besides the data model, it also contains  pre-built dashboards, workflows, and sample data, as well as other tools to help partners build and deploy new healthcare solutions. The Dynamics 365 Health Accelerator is part of Microsoft’s Industry Accelator initiative which supports industry partners by extending the Common Data Model.

Figure 1. Patient timeline:  presentation of clinical information about a patient in chronological order enabling providers to visualize all patient interactions and make informed care decisions

Figure 2.  Care Team Visualization: A connected view of the care team associated with a patient and their roles that can be configured to include family and other related relationships


References:

• Health accelator comes to Dynamics 365
• Rapidly build and deploy Business Applications using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Health accelerator
• Installing  the Dynamics 365 Health Accelerator
• Basic configuration of Dynamics 365 Health accelerator

Dynamics 365 October 2018 release notes available and why you should care

Microsoft recently decided to change its update policy for Dynamics 365/CRM online – see Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (administrator guide) – manage updates  for more details. One of the important changes is that all customers will need to be on the latest version from February 1, 2019 onwards. Therefore it is highly recommended to keep up to date with upcoming changes. Microsoft therefore committed to delivering the release notes of upcoming versions a couple of months in advance.

You can read the October 2018 Dynamics 365 release notes (239 page PDF) yourself and if you still need to catch up on the Spring 2018 release notes – there is a now a Business Applications Release Notes page -  or you can read about the highlights below:

• Microsoft previews what is coming in Dynamics 365 this October by @maryjofoley
• My favourite PowerApps/Dynamics CE features in the October 2018 release by @scottdurow
• Favourite features announced in October 2018 release by @ramontebar
• Winter in July – release notes for next Dynamics 365 version by @jukkan
• My highlights from the October 2018 Business Application release notes by @joegriffin

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list July 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Displaying related entity data using calculated fields
• Timeline: the new and improved social pane in Dynamics 365 unified interface
• June Power BI Desktop Update: Dynamics 365 9.0 OData endpoint
• How to find the Object Type Code for any entity
• Row-level security in Power BI with Dynamics365
• Using SSIS to mask data to assist with GDPR compliance (Kingswaysoft)
• Internet of Things (IoT) device considerations for Dynamics 365 and Connected Field Service
• Modernizing the way we update Dynamics 365
• Using Canary and Plugin Trace Viewer to track down performance issues
• Introducing PowerApps Preview Program
• Dynamics 365 – about the unified interface  (Updated documentation)
• User Security Manager – XrmToolBox Plugin – new features added
• Dynamics 365 for Outlook version 9 – Installing and using the updated add-in
• Announcing the new sales companion sample app (PowerApps & Dynamics 365)
• Tip #1137: learn language and study the API to simplify your code
• FAQ for Dynamics 365 update policies (Updated documentation July 12th 2018)
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online release notes
• Enable and use activity logging (Updated documentation June 2018)
• Thank you GDPR! A new Dynamics 365 security feature is available – audit user read access to CRM records
• Chart your security roles in Dynamics 365
• Record specific Power BI reports in Dynamics 365 (only one click away)
• Conditionally enable plugin context logging via secure configuration
• Convert Dynamics CRM 2011 Datetime to server local time in a plugin
• Passing data between a CRM form and a custom HTML web resource
• Use fetchxml in Power BI with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
• Resolve $ undefined error for CRM HTML web resources
• Sample code for autonumbering in Dynamics 365
• Custom indexes and solution upgrades

Topics for Dynamics 365 business analysts, project managers, power and end users

• How to integrate Power BI with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
• Dynamics 365 Spring 2018 release overview
• Displaying Dynamics 365 data in your PowerApps application
• How to prepare for a Dynamics 365 global data migration
• Dynamics 365 – our big leap into CDS
• PowerApps – restricted entities requiring Dynamics 365 licenses
• How to optimize omnichannel customer journeys with customer journey analytics
• Select the right analytical option for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
• Beyond Email: 9 other ways to use marketing automation in Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365/CRM Podcasts

Keeping up to date with all of the information on Dynamics 365 is quite a challenge – luckily a number of people  - did a great job by creating these podcast shows which help me during the daily commute

• The CRM MVP Podcast hosted by Gus Gonzalez
• CRM.Audio – The Dynamics 365 Podcast hosted by Joel Lindstrom
• Microsoft Business Applications Podcast  hosted by Mark Smith aka @nz365guy
• XrmToolCast hosted by Daryl LaBar and Jonas Rapp

All of these podcasts are available on Spotify but you can also use another podcast listener tool

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list April 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Machine learning implementation strategy for a customer service center
• Automatically executing HTTP POST requests in Dynamics 365 iFrames – part 2 by @lucas_is
• Dynamics CRM Javascript Web API Client
• How to open an email activity with a custom button
• Using Liquid Templates and FetchXML to retrieve data in a Dynamics 365 Online Portal
• Geo-code Dynamics 365 records using Microsoft Flow
• Business application platform sessions at Microsoft Build 2018 – great overview of sessions to watch by @jukkan
• Updating Dynamics 365 v 8.1 organizations to the latest version
• Running Kingswaysoft SSIS Integration Toolkit on the cloud
• PowerApps is dead, long live XRMPowerApps
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions: intro and panel discussion
• Gotcha: Don’t use nested security groups to shield access to Dynamics 365 (online) instances
• Using virtual entities with Dynamics 365
• Keep you data at home with Dynamics 365 virtual entities by @TimADutcher
• Creating a custom portal API to retrieve data
• Solution management in Dynamics 365 by @cclearpartners
• Authentication to Dynamics 365 using Azure Apps

Topics for Dynamics 365 business analysts, project managers, power and end users

• What’s new in Voice of the Customer version 9.0.1113.10
• What’s new in the Unified User Interface in Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM v9 update?
• CRM is not a magic wand: why CRM implementations fail and how to make sure yours succeeds!
• How Dynamics 365 helps throughout the customer buying journey
• The top 5 KPIs that determine your email marketing ROI (and how to improve them)
• Adding fields to the create form in the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook
• How to create a doughnut chart to view campaign leads
• What is the learning path for Dynamics 365
• Using LinkedIn for LeadGen
• What’s new in Microsoft Social Engagement 2018 Update 1.5
• Which PowerApps plan do I need for model-driven apps and CDS for Apps?
• New email feature in Dynamics 365 v 9.0 by @inogic

Azure Data Factory v2 supports new data connectors for Salesforce Marketing and Oracle Responsys

Microsoft recently announced that Azure Data Factory (v2 functionality in preview) now enables you to copy data from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Oracle Responsys by using Copy Activity. These two connectors are currently available in ADF copy activity authoring user interface.

For more information, see the Salesforce Marketing Cloud connector and Oracle Responsys connector articles. And you can always find the full supported connector list from supported data stores.

References:

• Azure Data Factory v2 Preview Documentation
• Visually build pipelines for Azure Data Factory v2
• Azure Data Factory - new capabilities (Roadmap)

GDPR and Dynamics 365 - the Waldorf and Statler perspective slidedeck available

GDPR and Dynamics 365 - the Waldorf and Statler perspective from Joris Poelmans

Update on Activity Log Management for Dynamics 365

Update: thanks to @powerobjects and for directing me to the new documentation (Posted updated on April 13th based on this info)

Last summer Microsoft announced a number of updates on the way that auditing functionality would be made available as outlined in Dynamics 365 July 2017 update: activity logging and session management for security and compliance . A couple of weeks ago Microsoft, updated their official documentation on these two features:

• Enable and use Activity Logging (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Administrator Guide)
• Security enhancements: user session and access management (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Administrator Guide)

In this post I will focus on the new activity log management functionality, which extends the existing auditing functionality in Dynamics 365 with support for auditing on all data and all operations (including admin operations), with near real-time support, out of the box SIEM integration (Security Information and Event Management systems which provide real-time monitoring, correlation of events, alerting, etc ...) and seamless integration with Office 365 and Azure. Since auditing occurs at the SDK layer of Dynamics 365, much more data is available than just activities.


It is important to notice that the documentation states that this feature might change as well as limited availability so it might be that on your Office 365 tenant the functionality is not available (yet).

The only recently updated Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) security and compliance planning guide also does not (yet) make a mention of this functionality within the Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center.

I however briefly looked into the Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center in one of the tenants that  I administer, and  listed below are a number of my findings:

• Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center (accessible from https://protection.office.com) now indeed seems to surface some audit log events from Dynamics 365. It is however unclear whether you still need to activate audit logging first on your Dynamics 365 instances
• Available Dynamics 365 activities – a number of pre-configured audit log reports for Dynamics 365 (see screenshot figure 1 below) are already visible in my tenant but not all events as described in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/enable-use-comprehensive-auditing are visible.   I also tested out some scenarios to track user login/logoff but no results were returned so this functionality is probably not activated yet in my tenant. But if you look at the documentation in  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/enable-use-comprehensive-auditing  you will notice that the auditing settings screen gives different options which might (which were not visible in my D365 organizations – neither 8.x and 9.x) also indicate that the functionality is not activated.

Figure 1. Pre-configured Dynamics 365 audit log search reports.

Figure 2. Auditing settings screen when activity logging is enabled.

• Audit log search capability: administrators can indeed query for different types of events using the audit log search functionality (See Search the audit log in the Office 365 Security and Compliance center for a general overview of the functionality)
• SIEM vendor integration is available using SIEM agents which will probably leverage the Office 365 Management Activity API –  I will probably test the API integration out later on when the functionality is fully available

The documentation gives already a good indication on the way that Microsoft will proceed with this new functionality so I’m really eager to get my hands on this and see how this functionality can be used. In the meanwhile you might also take a look at the Actionable Audit App (Appsource) to access audit logs functionality as an alternative to see if it covers your specific needs and requirements.

References:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) security and compliance planning guide (Updated April 9th, 2018)
• Microsoft Trust Center - Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list March 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Importsequencenumber field in Dynamics 365
• Implementing machine learning in Dynamics  365 – Part1
• Implementing machine learning in Dynamics 365 – Part 2 – using Microsoft Flow to integrate opportunity win probability into Dynamics 365
• Dynamics 365 Online v9 – need to postpone the upgrade?
• Fixed – unable to create or update record after upgrading Dynamics 365 CRM
• Streamline Javascript web resource development using Fiddler and Autoresponder
• Dynamics 365 monthly update February 2018 from Dynamics CRM PFE team
• Empty or disable cache while working with web resources in Dynamics 365 (Chrome)
• CRM Tip #1075: get off the bad server process
• How to disable hyperlink property of a lookup in Dynamics CRM (Unsupported way)
• Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement: Inviting guest users with Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration
• Browser extensions for Dynamics CRM
• 10 things about LinkedIn Sales Navigator a CRM Admin needs to know
• Multi-language Javascript messages in Dynamics 365 9.0 using resx files
• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 App for Outlook version 9.0 – the D365 Outlook app finally hit GA
• Trial & Error: Understanding Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Trials
• What is a system entity message?
• Updating icons the right way on custom entities
• Key considerations when selecting a portal (for Dynamics 365)

Topics for Dynamics 365 business analysts, project managers, power users and end users

• Voice of the Customer help and  training
• Functional consultant: a Dynamics 365 story
• Entity dashboards in the new Dynamics 365 UI
• Dynamics 365 supported browsers – updated February 2018
• Option set, lookup or autocomplete – a timeless blog post which every Dynamics 365 consultant should read
• Dynamics 365 Spring 2018 release notes
• Raising Dynamics 365 awareness through Microsoft stream – how to use Microsoft stream videos to drive user adoption
• Top 6 most exciting features in Dynamics 365 Spring 2018 release
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 version 9.0.2 is a go
• Leads – the junk drawer of CRM
• Customer 2.0: Understanding the modern buyer through relationship selling

Dynamics 365/CRMUG Belux chapter meeting on digital transformation, D365 for Marketing and GDPR

On April 18th the Belux CRMUG chapter organizes the next local chapter meeting – check out the agenda below and register for the Q2 2018 CRMUG Belux Chapter meeting .

• Digital transformation at MLOZ and Partenamut with Dynamics 365 (Presented by: Olivier Callebaut, MLOZ and Etienne Gonsette, Partenamut)
• Dynamics 365 for Marketing (Presented by: Dieter De Cock, Microsoft)
• GDPR and Dynamics 365 – the Waldorf and Statler perspective (Presented by: Stephane Dorrekens, Business Elements and Joris Poelmans, Realdolmen)

This is a free event, but registration is required .

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list February 2018

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Watch out for issues with Version & updating plugin assemblies in Dynamics 365 (CRM)
• Dynamics 365 Data Integration (Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Enterprise Edition)
• Dynamics 365 post deployment steps – what to check after you have imported your solutions
• Data Export Service: How to handle lookup columns
• Using FetchXML with the new Dynamics Web API
• How to calculate number of days between two date and time fields in Dynamics 365
• Dynamics 365 Data Migration Testing Best Practices
• Using an external scheduler to run on demand workflows
• How to export and import Voice of the Customer surveys
• Dynamics 365 v9.0 – Developers delights
• Validate Web API calls using Custom Actions
• Diving into new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Portal capabilities and official guidance from Adxstudio Portals
• Dynamics CRM Theme generator

Topics for Dynamics 365 business analysts, project managers, power users and end users

• Drill into CRM records from Power BI
• Dynamics 365: updating entity icons
• Work continues on Dynamics 365 digital assistant experiences – current Cortana integration preview discontinued
• Dynamics 365 and Outlook – the road forward
• Getting started with campaign management in Dynamics 365
• New from Microsoft Labs: Change tracking solution for Dynamics 365 released!
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 integration [Video]
• Dynamics 365 – Are you reporting or engaging? by Steve Mordue
• CRM Tip of the Day #1085 – Using voice of the  customer to survey users
• Managing Customer Engagement with Microsoft Dynamics 365 – free self-paced online course on Dynamics 365, ideal for first-time users, young professionals, and students to highlight how to use the application

Presentation Dynamics 365 Saturday Amsterdam - Dynamics 365 and chat bots

Dynamics 365 Saturday Amsterdam 02/2018 - Dynamics 365 and chatbots from Joris Poelmans

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list December 2017

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Searching for business process flow stages in Dynamics 365 CRM by @MeganVWalker
• Import data with multi-select option set values in Dynamics 365 
• Is Dynamics 365 server-side sync filling up your database? by @PFEDynamics
• How to trigger Plugins on custom messages using Actions in Dynamics 365 by @Magnetism Solutions
• How to work with Record Create and Update rules null(Channel properties) in Dynamics CRM
• 10 techy tips your team will want to know about Dynamics 365 mobile applications for phones & tablets
• Microsoft Flow and change tracking - Microsoft Flow requires that Change Tracking is enabled to work with Dynamics 365 when looking for updates or deletes to records in CRM.
• Dynamics 365 Online Navigation fix – remove the “Switch to another app” menu – highly unsupported but you might have customers requesting for it
• Workflow scope and security in Dynamics 365
• What’s new in extensibility and app platform in the Enterprise Edition for Dynamics 365 (Online)
• Option sets and statuscode – doing some testing – see how they behave when setting them using Javascript
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 v9.0: Usage of the new OOB WebApi functions – Part 3 by @a33ik
• What is unsecure/secure configuration on a Dynamics 365 plugin
• Best practices for automating business process stage progression in Dynamics 365
• Dynamics 365 Data Integration feature (for Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations)
• Not all business process flow entities are created equal
• Solution export error  - known issue in Dynamics 365 with “orphaned” roll-up fields
• Global option sets in Dynamics 365 by @PowerObjects
• Searching customer web resource content – how to write code to retrieve javascript/html code to check for unsupported code
• Customer Driven Update for Dynamics 365 version 9.0 is coming – scheduled updates begin in February 2018 and end in August 2018
• How do you get started with the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Preview

Topics for Dynamics 365 business analysts, project managers, power users and end users

• Automatically collect and track emails with Dynamics 365 Auto Capture
• Getting around in the Dynamics 365 Customer Service App (Youtube 00:02:45)
• Which emails should I track in CRM?
• Visualizing data in Dynamics 365
• Beginner’s guide: how to perform simple data validation on records in Dynamics 365
• Use story time workshops and not backlog refinement
• Scrum certification for Dynamics 365 practitioners

Speaking at Dynamics 365 Saturday Amsterdam

I will be delivering a session about chat bots and Dynamics 365 at Dynamics 365 Saturday Amsterdam on the 3d of February. Registration is free.
Dynamics 365 Saturday is a Technical & Strategy event organized by the community with the following credo: “Learn & share new skills while promoting best practices, helping organizations overcome the challenges of implementing a successful digital transformation strategy with Microsoft Dynamics 365”.

Searching in knowledge base articles in Dynamics 365

Knowledge base articles are a base component of the Service Management module in Dynamics 365. The knowledge base is a repository of informational articles that can be used to help customer service representatives resolve cases. Knowledge base articles can be emailed to a customer, which can be sent either through the Dynamics 365 interface or through the Microsoft Dynamics apps for Outlook.
With the introduction of the new knowledge articles entity data model (KnowledgeArticle) in Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update 1   and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 SP1 (for on premise) (Release documentation 8.1 – January 2017) , the existing entities for knowledge management: KbArticle, KbArticleComment and KbArticleTemplate were deprecated.

You should now use the newer KnowledgeArticle in your code  (See Important changes coming in future releases of Microsoft Dynamics 365), which also support versioning and translation support.
In version 8.1, these knowledge articles became visible in the interactive service hub which was revamped into the Customer Service Hub in version 9.0 (Dynamics 365 July 2017 update). The Customer Service  Hub also contains a number Knowledge Base dashboard - one with "your knowledge base articles" and one specifically for a knowledge manager (see screenshot below).

If you want to learn more about how to work with knowledge base articles, you should really take a look at Reduce call handling times with knowledge articles in the Customer Service Hub . Knowledge base articles are also directly shown in a tab on a case form (see screenshot below).

It is also possible to execute full-text searches against the new knowledge articles using the FullTextSearchKnowledgeArticleRequest which uses the following parameters:

• QueryExpression: used to set additional query criteria and for which you also need to set the PagingInfo otherwise no results are returned
• RemoveDuplicates: remove duplicate versions of the same Knowledge Article
• SearchText: the text to search for in Knowledge Articles
• StateCode: required parameter which accepts an integer for the different statuses of a knowledge article such as Published, Draft, Approved, etc…
• UseInflection: searches for all different tenses of a verb or both the singular and plural forms of a noun. Underlying SQL full-text search is used (For more details see Searching for the inflectional form of a specific word

Code sample: searching within knowledge base articles using FullTextSearchKnowledgArticleRequest

References:

• Knowledge management entities (MSDN)
• MB2-718 Certification: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service – Knowledge base
• Work with knowledge articles in Dynamics 365 (MSDN)
• KnowledgeArticle entity messages and methods

Quick tip: finding all users with Dynamics 365 Service Administrator role in Office 365 tenant with PowerShell

Unfortunately the Office 365 Admin Portal, does not contain a predefined view to show all users who have the Dynamics 365 Service Administrator role – this role allows you to manage Dynamics 365 at tenant level (See Use the service admin role to manage your tenant for more details). But luckily you can also retrieve this information using PowerShell.

First make sure that you install the different prerequisites as outlined in Connect to Office 365 PowerShell – next open Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell. To connect to Office 365, simply type connect-msolservice . Get-MsolRole will give you a list of all administrator roles. You will see that the internal role name which is listed is still "CRM Service Administrator". The last line will export all users with this role to a CSV file

 connect-msolservice  
 get-msolrole | select name, description  
 $role = get-msolrole -rolename "CRM Service Administrator"  
 get-msolrolemember -roleobjectid $role.objectid | export-csv d:\temp\serviceadmins.csv  

Fix for unable to login to Dynamics CRM 9.0 with CrmServiceClient and .NET 4.7

When you try to connect to Dynamics 365 9.0 from within a console app using the CrmServiceClient, you might still encounter an error “Unable to login to Dynamics CRM” even though you have updated to the latest version of the different assemblies (9.0.0.7 at the moment of writing).

This might be caused by the fact that you compiling against .NET 4.7 where the default value of the ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol is SecurityProtocolType.SystemDefault (See What’s new in .NET 4.7 for more details).

If this is the fact, you might need to explicitly change the protocol to TL1.2 - which is a requirement for Dynamics 365 9.0 as announced in September 2017 in Updates coming to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connection security  - by adding a line ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls12