Most read blog posts in 2020

Looking back upon 2020 - here is an overview of the most viewed posts on my blog:

1. How to fix a broken Easyrepro project after upgrading Chrome
2. Quick tip: exporting all nuget packages used in Visual Studio solution to text file with PowerShell
3. Notes on learning to work with the Microsoft Graph API
4. Don't forget to update older client applications for Dynamics 365 to the correct .NET Framework version
5. Storage capacity enforcement for CDS instances
6. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement release version transparency
7. SharePoint 2010 Healthcare site templates freely available for download
8. Quick tip: workaround kernelspec module not installed with Jupyter notebooks in Visual Studio Code
9. Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list August 2020
10. Quick tip: keep your Dynamics 365 development tools to date using Nuget

Just one surprise - SharePoint 2010, really?

Team member license enforcement coming up - deadline 31th of January 2021

Technical enforcement for Dynamics 365 Team Members licenses purchased or transitioned after October 1, 2018 will come into effect on January 31, 2021 (extended from the original date of April 1, 2020) for customers with online environments.

This means that user with Team member license will not be able to access custom model-driven apps or some of the standard first party modules they now have access such as the Customer Service Hub or Sales Hub. (for more details check out  Dynamics 365 Team member licenses (Microsoft Docs).

Team member users will only be able to use specific designated app modules:

• Customer Service team member - must be manually installed is not available by default
• Sales team member - available by default in all tenants

You can extend the existing apps and add  both CDS core entities or your own custom entities into the app but you are restricted to 15 entities. There is a Team Member conformance report available for download in the Power Platform Admin Center. Go to the Common Data Service area in the Analytics section, and then select Download to access the report,  use the Change filters link to filter the report by Environment and Date.

References:

• Dynamics 365 Team member licenses (Microsoft Docs)
• Microsoft Partner Community forum thread on Team member license enforcement (Microsoft partners only)

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Wave 2 2020 updates - learn to surf the waves

All Dataverse (the new name for Common Data Service) and Dynamics 365 online environments hosted in EMEA region recently received over 200 new updates and features as part of the wave 2 2020 release. This release cadence is a part of Microsoft's one version vision for the  Dynamics 365 platform (take a look at Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement release version transparency for more details)

Update: Just noticed that Microsoft announced the dates for the next release wave 1 for 2021 - release plan will be available on January 27 and early access will be available on February 2021

It is quite challenge to keep track of the fast pace of innovation/change on both Power Platform and Dynamics 365 so I just made this small recap of things I want to check out in the coming weeks. Luckily there are bloggers like Nishant Rana who do a lot of the hard work for you and already dive into the new releases quite early  - he delivered a whole set of blog posts on Dynamics 365 Release 2020 Wave 2

• Insert knowledge article in e-mail - 2020 Release Wave 2
• E-mail file attachment enhancements in Dynamics 365 - 2020 release wave 2
• Configure Customer Service Analytics and Insights in Dynamics 365 Customer Service Hub (Preview)
• App switcher, back option and other enhancement in 2020 release wave 2

The new/updated relevance search feature is definitely something I will look into as I think it will provide a lot of value for customers:

• Introducing the new search experience in model driven apps
• Introducing the Relevance Search API and Using relevance search to search for rows and Dynamics Relevance search just got relevant

Covid-19 has turned B2B sales into an overwhelming digital experience, so the new sales accelerator, relationship intelligence and the advanced forecasting functionality - all part of the Dynamics 365 Sales Insights module -  are  capabilities to take a look at as they will support the new reality of B2B buyers preferring a digital buying experience.

Other blog posts and pages:

• Dynamics 365 - 2020 release wave 2 | Part 1 by @d365goddess
• Configuration experience for timeline in new form designer
• Configure new timeline features in Dynamics 365 CE
• Create or Edit a Power BI embedded system dashboard (Preview)

Welcome to Azure PowerShell Az module, goodbye to AzureRM

As outlined on Overview of Azure PowerShell (AzureRM) - Microsoft new recommends you to use the Az PowerShell module (released in October 2018) to interact with Azure.

The Azure Az PowerShell module  introduces a number of benefits such as shorter commands, cross-platform support and increased stability.  From a supportability perspective, the AzureRM module is still officially maintained and will receive critical fixes through February 2021. I recommend keeping tabs on the supportability section of the Azure Az PowerShell module documentation page as this date has already shifted.

When you first start to use the connect-AzAccount - you might receive a warning that you still have the old AzureRm modules installed. If you have installed the AzureRM PowerShell modules using a MSI package, you must uninstall it through the Windows system rather than using PowerShell

A nice enhancement is the warning around having multiple Azure subscription linked to the account that you use to login  (something quite common for cloud consultants)  - as outlined in the warning  you can use  Set-AzContext to select another subscription.

References:

• Azure PowerShell - Cross platform "Az" module replacing "AzureRm"
• Microsoft Learn - Automate Azure tasks with PowerShell

Provisioning Azure Automation using Az.Automation module

Azure automation is a cloud based service which allows you to automate, configure and install updates across hybrid environments. Azure Automation focuses on an infrastructure perspective and allows you to  build/deploy resources, handling updates and configuring all type of resources (not only in Azure but also on premise). 

Coming from a development background and using mostly Azure PAAS components (Azure Functions, Web Apps, Web Jobs, etc..) I had not used it until recently when I got a request from the DBA team for setting up jobs to resolve index fragmentation by reorganizing and rebuilding index for which they suggested to use Azure Automation.

The core component in Azure Automation are runbooks which contain the automation code that you want to use to perform the automation task at hand.  There are a number of runbook types:  (textual) PowerShell runbook, graphical runbook, PowerShell workflow runbook and Python runbook

You can use the Azure Az PowerShell module to create an Azure runbook using the following steps:

• Create an Azure Automation Account with New-AzAutomationAccount
• Create the runbook with New-AzAutomationRunbook
• Import PowerShell code using Import-AzAutomationRunbook
• Publish runbook - before you can start using a runbook, you have to publish it - Publish-AzAutomationRunBook
• Create a schedule and associate it to the runbook - schedules can be shared by multiple runbooks - using New-AzAutomationSchedule and Register-AzAutomationSchedule

References:

• Introduction to Azure Automation (Microsoft Docs)
• View and understand Azure Automation job status
• Azure SQL - Index tables using Azure Automation and Manage databases in Azure SQL Database by using Azure Automation
• Azure Automation or DevOps - which is right for me?

Notes on getting started with GraphQL - working with Eurex data

Although I had heard the term GraphQL (www.graphql.org) before I never took a look at it. As outlined on https://graphql.org/ , GraphQL is a query language and specification for your APIs which was initially developed by Facebook as a more flexible and efficient alternative to REST (See GraphQL: a data query language for some background). 

I started looking at the GraphQL to explore the Eurex T7 Reference Data API.  Eurex is the largest European futures and options market and primary deals in Europe-based derivatives (interest-rate derivatives, equity index and equity derivatives and even more exotic derivatives like volatility derivatives, FX derivatives, etc...)

To learn which queries are supported you can use GraphQL introspection to get information about all available requests, filters and response - below is an example of a Postman request

Another easy way to explore the API which is also outlined on the Eurex Reference data API start page is using the GraphQL Playground for Chrome extension

You can also use graphql-voyager to visually explore GraphQL API as an interactive graph - a live demo environment is available as well where you add your own APIs - GraphQL Voyager (apis.guru)

Related links:

• New free and public reference data API (Eurex)
• Azure Tips & tricks - how to use GraphQL on Azure (Youtube) using HotChocolate 
• GraphQL: the big picture (Pluralsight) - good overview in a little over 1 hour by @AdhithiRavi