Quick tip: Get-AzSubscription and Azure Cloud Shell

The Get-AzSubscription PowerShell cmdlet gets the subscription ID, subscription name and home tenant for subscriptions that the current account can access. You can also pass this values in as a parameter e.g. "Get-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId" to find the name of a subscription. 

The easiest way to execute this cmdlet (without having to install anything on your machine) is by using Azure Cloud Shell.  A handy feature of Azure Cloud Shell is predictive intellisense - use the RightArrow key to accept an inline suggestion.

Large AsyncOperationBase increase in Dataverse/Dynamics 365 CE: the canary in the coalmine

In normal circumstances, you probably rarely look at the System Job views in your  Dynamics 365 environment. But if you see a sudden and unexpected (large) increase in the storage used by the AsyncOperationBase table or AsyncOperation in File storage is like a canary in the coalmine - something is wrong in your Dynamics365/Dataverse environment.

System jobs (or Async Operations) are tasks that Dynamics performs in the background that don't have to be completed straight away. When such an asynchronous task is being setup, Dynamics creates a row in the AsyncOperationBase table and puts in all the details about when to run, what function/plugin/cloud flow to call, parameters to pass etc... 

All of this information used to be stored in columns of the AsyncOperationBase table but a row could  get really large (KB or MBs) depending on the actual task being scheduled.  Part of this payload has now been moved out of the database and stored into files on Azure Blob Storage and the database row now has a reference to the blob file.  You can follow up on the numbers in the capacity details for an instance in the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) - where you will now also see AsyncOperation in the file section after this architectural change from Microsoft. (Also see Storage capacity management for Dynamics 365/Dataverse - how to track storage evolution with Power BI and New Microsoft Dataverse storage capacity (Microsoft docs))

Dynamics 365 has a recurring system job to delete successfully completed system jobs  - see screenshot below - when an asyncoperation record is cleared from the database, the linked file storage is also cleared up.

One of the reasons you might see a large increase in storage consumed is because of a large amount of failed or cancelled system jobs.  The system jobs status (internal name statecode, possible values = ready, suspended, locked and completed)  and status reason ( internal name statuscode, possible values for completed jobs = succeeded, cancelled and failed)  can be used to identify possible issues.

I really like the SQL 4 CDS XrmToolBox add-in to troubleshoot issues with system jobs - it allows you to write simple SQL queries to identify system jobs causing issues. 

I also use  SQL4CDS for further analysis when troubleshooting async plugins using SQL queries e.g. select top 100 * from plugintracelog where typename like 'JOPX.CRM.Plugins.Notification%' but there are also other tools in XrmToolBox which you can use

References:

• Cleaning up records from the AsyncOperationBase/WorkflowLogBase tables
• asyncoperation EnityType (Microsoft Docs)
• Microsoft CRM System Job Views explained
• Asynchronous operation states (Microsoft Docs)
• SQL 4 CDS 6.1 released by Mark Carrington
• Dynamics CRM Data cleaning
• Storage capacity management for Dynamics 365/Dataverse - how to track storage evolution with Power BI

How to disable multi factor authentication (MFA) for a Dynamics 365 trial environment

 You might have noticed that if you now setup a new Dynamics 365 trial environment, users who login are greeted with "Help us protect your account" which requires to setup multi factor authentication (MFA) even for accounts in trial/demo tenants. This is part of the Azure Active Directory security defaults. 

To get rid of this setting you need to login to https://portal.azure.com and change this setting for the Azure Active Directory used by your demo/trial tenant. Navigate to Azure Active Directory in your subscription and select Properties in the left navigation pane. At the bottom of this screen, you will find the Access Management for Azure resources section.

Click the link Manage Security Default in this section and change the setting to Enable security defaults No.

Farewell to the Dynamics 365 Admin Center

In 2019 Microsoft announced that they would consolidate the different admin centers for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Service/Field Service. In the meanwhile, more and more functions seem to be moving to the new Power Platform Admin Center. Although the legacy Dynamics 365 admin center deprecation is not listed (yet) on the Important changes (deprecations) coming in Power Apps, Power Automate and model-driven apps in Dynamics 365. I expect this admin portal to quickly fade away.  

Update June 28th: @jukkan just mentioned that there is an update in Message Center which officially states that the old Dynamics 365 Admin Center will go away. I like the speed of innovation in the cloud but this seems like incredibly short notice.

To be able to access the Power Platform Admin Portal you will need to assign an appropriate service admin role - see Use service admin roles to manage your tenant for more details.

Features/functionality which is now surfaced in the new Power Platform Admin Portal:

• App management in the Applications tab of the legacy Dynamics 365 Admin center has now moved to Power Platform Admin Center - see  Manage Dynamics 365 Apps for more details. This applies to installing and managing Microsoft first party apps like Customer Service but also to other apps installed through AppSource. You first need to select your environment in the new admin center and use the Resources>Dynamics 365 apps menu to open the list of available apps to install. This same screen can be used to upgrade existing apps to newer versions. (Unfortunately there is no indication when there is a new app version available)

• Creating new Dynamics 365 instances has also moved to Power Platform Admin Center - if you try it from the legacy admin portal - you now get a warning message
• Storage details and analytics already moved to Power Platform Admin Center  quite a while ago but recently the documentation about the legacy storage model  got updated
• Backup and restore environments also got some interesting updates with continuous backup. Keep in mind though that backup retention is different for sandbox and production environments