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Thursday, February 06, 2020

Quick tip: keep your Dynamics 365 development tools up to date using Nuget

I recently encountered an issue when I tried switching the view of the registered plugins & custom workflow activities in the Plugin Registration Tool.

When updating to the latest version using the PowerShell script listed on Download Dynamics 365 development tools from Nuget the error got resolved. Lessons learned: make sure that you keep your Dynamics 365 development tools up to date.

Monday, February 03, 2020

Lessons learned about Dynamics 365 solution layering - Part 1

This is the first in a series of blog posts on Dynamics 365 solutions and solution layering in which I will cover the basics about Dynamics 365 solutions and gradually delve deeper into the mysterious world of the inner workings of Dynamics 365 solutions.

In my opinion, based on how managed solutions and solution layering work - I think that in the majority of cases you should only use a single managed solution to avoid issues down the line. Read on to see why...

This blog post assumes that you are using managed solutions to deploy to all environments and only have unmanaged solutions in your development environment.

Dynamics 365 solutions fundamentals

If you work with Dynamics 365/CDS solutions, you should be aware of the concept of solution layering. Solution layering occurs on import of solutions when a specific component is affected by a change within one or more solution. Solution layering will determine the kind of behavior that a user will see in Dynamics 365.

The figure above shows how layering works: at the bottom, you have the standard CDS solutions on top of which you might have some first party apps installed like Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Service etc... If you deploy custom managed solutions, they will go on top based on the order in which they are installed. Direct customizations and unmanaged solutions are always at the top but there is no real layering of unmanaged solutions - they all end up directly modifying the base behavior.

Solution layers describe the dependency chain of component from the root solution introducing it, through each solution that extends or changes the component’s behavior. Solution layers are created through extension of an existing component (taking a dependency on it) or through creation of a new component or version of a solution. So it is very important to understand that layers should be considered on a per component basis.

In April 2019, Microsoft introduced a new user interface component which visualizes the different solution layers which are impacting the behavior of a specific component - View solution layers for a component. Below is an example of the solution layers of the case form which was quite an interesting example.

Going beyond the basics

But what happens if two or more solutions define solution components differently? This article - Introduction to solutions - conflict resolution explains the two conflict resolution strategies - Merge and Top Wins. The article is also valid for online according to Microsoft support - even though it was written for Dynamics 365 on premise and last updated in December 2017.

When importing a managed solution with the overwrite customization option, it is possible to override the "top wins" conflict resolution but this does not apply to components which apply a “merge strategy” - for more details see Understand how managed solutions are merged

So you need to be very careful when adding components which apply a merge strategy in multiple solutions with different publishers since the merge behavior might cause unexpected side effect such as creating a separate active layer on top which would block your customization to appear to the user.

An active layer can emerge in two scenarios - a direct customization was done in the instance but it seems that it is also possible that a managed active layer is created when using only managed solutions without direct customizations in the system. This happens when managed solutions in one system, with different publishers (the Microsoft solutions count as a different publisher) are trying to update the same component. It is a defense mechanism that Microsoft has built in when there are object inconsistencies across managed solutions.

The general recommendation is that you keep the number of managed solutions with common components (e.g. forms with a different form layout) to a minimum. This will avoid merging issues across the layers.

Single solution to rule them all?

Taking into account all of the above it seems that you would opt to use a single managed solution to deploy to other environments.

Single solution approach
Pros: Easier to version control Avoid solution layering issues Less environments needed Easier to promote across environments	Cons: Longer duration of solution import Long list of components

I do think that a single solution might make sense in the majority of cases but there are of course exceptions to this rule. I would recommend you to take a look at the Solution Lifecycle Management: Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement Apps whitepaper and especially the section on solution boundaries which outlines some of other valid scenarios for having multiple solutions e.g. the scenario where you need to deploy to multiple regional production instances with small variations with a core solution approach and on top local solutions or the scenario where you need to release subsets of applications on different cadence/timeline.

Friday, January 31, 2020

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list December 2019

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

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

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Dynamics 365 or Power Platform New Year's resolutions

We are already 3 weeks in 2020 but there is still time for New Year's solution so choose one of the 12 potential Dynamics 365/Power Platform New Year's resolution as proposed in Episode 69 of the CRM MVP Podcast hosted by @gusgonzalez2.

I will try to take at least 10 out of 12 in 2020 so what is yours?

Write a valuable blog article every week - I probably want to go for 52 blog posts this year.
Deliver at least 4 webinars or community presentations in a year
Register for the Dynamics Insider program and commit to test every new release and provide feedback to Microsoft
Answer 60 questions on the forums (Microsoft Dynamics Forums, CRMUG Forums, etc...)
Attend a training from a Dynamics 365/Power Platform expert that you admire or who you consider to be a top expert in the domain
Create a XrmToolBox plugin
Speak at a major conference
Contribute 24 tips to @crmtipoftheday by sending an e-mail to jar@crmtipoftheday.com
Learn something new about Power Platform/Dynamics 365 every month - you can learn a lot by dedicating 8 hours a month on a single topic
Teach something new about Power Platform/Dynamics 365 every month e.g by delivering a lunch&learn session in your company
Use "new" functionality in Power Platform/Dynamics 365 at least once every month e.g. use Flow/Power Automate instead of using workflows or use the new Admin portal and solution designer
Release a free solution to the community e.g. a PCF control

Update on Dynamics 365/CDS request limits

End of August Microsoft announced an API based limitation which is based on users and the type of licenses they have - the latest documentation is available on http://aka.ms/platformlimits as well as PowerApps and Microsoft Flow licensing FAQs for October 2019. I would recommend regularly checking these pages as they have been updated quite a few times in the last months.

During interactions with Microsoft the last couple of months, they explained that the allocated number of API calls within the different licenses are based upon internal telemetry on the current Dynamics 365 customer base. The claim is that 95% of customers fall within the standard allocated API limits. But if you are using a lot of integrations, you might need to re-architect part of your solution.

Listed below are the key takeaways:

Users with a Dynamics 365 Enterprise Application license have 20.000 API requests allocated in a 24 hour window.
Technical/non-interactive/application users get allocated 100.000 API requests if at least one Dynamics 365 API license is available.
If a user exceeds the limits the admin for the tenant/environment will receive a notification - end users will not be blocked from using the app.
This new licensing went into effect for new customers who on boarded after October 2019. Existing customers have a transition period until October 2020 or when their licensing contract expires. Whichever is longer. For customers with an enterprise agreement this will be the end of their EA (in most cases I know these contracts are valid for 3 years), customers on a CSP contract typically have a yearly expiration date. Reach out to your licensing partner or Microsoft for more details.
The currently available statistics in the Power Platform Admin Center are still quite rudimentary but are a good starting point to assess the impact on your environment
It is possible to purchase additional blocks of 10,000 daily API requests for $50 per month (For details reach out to your licensing partner)
Batch requests (Executemultiple) only count as 1 API call, so you can wrap a 1.000 individual calls in one ExecuteMultiple call.

References:

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

My perspective on the PowerApps Build Tools for Azure DevOps

Mid July 2019 Microsoft released a preview of a set of PowerApps specific Azure DevOps Build tasks. In the last months this tooling has been updated on a quite regular pace which indicates that ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) for Power Platform (and Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Service/etc..) is high on the priority list for Microsoft.

For those of you who are new to Azure DevOps, here is a small summary. Azure DevOps is a set of services hosted on Microsoft Azure cloud which support your full software development lifecycle e.g. you can use Azure Boards for work tracking and backlogs, Azure Pipelines for CI/CD, Azure Repos for source control, and much more. Azure DevOps is successor to Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and the best thing of all you can get started with it for free. (For more details see Pricing for Azure DevOps). You can start learning Azure DevOps by exploring the Azure DevOps Hands-On Labs

In the past most Dynamics 365 CE consultants largely relied on a BYOALM (Bring Your Own ALM) approach meaning that you need a combination of PowerShell script, SDK extensions, etc … to automate the build and release of Dynamics components. I even think that in the majority of cases there is no fully automated build and release process in place - meaning that a deployment relies on a number of (hopefully documented) manual steps. In one of the projects I recently worked on - we have been using the excellent Dynamics 365 Build Tools for Azure DevOps from Wael Haemze so there are other extensions available for Azure DevOps as well.

After you have installed the PowerApps Build Tools you will see a whole set of build and release tasks that you can use in your build and release pipelines. To explore the possibilities you can start with the PowerApps Build tools for Azure DevOps Hands On Lab files which contains a walk through of the different scenarios like for example using the PowerApps Solution Checker (see reference section for more information on this)

If you compare the PowerApps Build Tools with the Dynamics 365 Build Tools, you will probably see that Dynamics 365 Build Tools currently still offers more capabilities but it does seem worthwhile to start exploring the newly released Microsoft tooling. I recently also got feedback within the context of a Microsoft support case that they recommended to use the new PowerApps build tooling because they would not troubleshoot issues with other extensions on top of Azure DevOps in combination with Dynamics 365.

I also expect more information to come available in the coming weeks as we are getting closer to the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2020 Release Wave 1 . In the meanwhile I will be sharing more information in some upcoming blog posts.

References:

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement release version transparency

By now, you should be aware know that all Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online environments are on the same “major” version but it is also important to understand that Dynamics 365 CE receives continuous updates on a weekly release cadence. You probably already saw these updates being announced in Office 365 message center.

Each update is deployed as part of a Release Train, stopping at each ‘station’ along the way before rolling on to subsequent station. Not all regions would be on the same release as any time. Early station will have lower levels of number of customers impacted, ending with Europe and North America where majority of our customers are and then dedicated scale groups where customers with larger organisations are hosted. For a more in-depth session on this topic I can highly recommend the recording BRK2039 - Microsoft PowerApps and Dynamics 365: Modernizing the way we update

In November 2019 Microsoft updated their documentation and provides a lot more transparency on this release process - so you can now get a full overview of Released Versions of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement which outlines all previous releases as well as the upcoming releases in the different stations.

The version number mechanism for Dynamics 365 CE instances has also been updated so it is now easier to see which update has already been rolled out to a specific instance.

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list November 2019

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

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

Friday, November 29, 2019

Microsoft webinar redelivery Dynamics Power! Saturday Brussels December 3th

Two weeks ago we had Dynamics Power! Saturday Brussels - a community event on Microsoft Business Applications with over 250 attendees and 25 different international speakers.

For those of you who were not able to make it, Microsoft will organise a short redelivery of 3 sessions in webinar format on Tuesday December 3th - more info and registration available on https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x8855388abcd

Agenda:

Updates on Power Platform (UI Flows, AI Builder, … )
Integration between Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Service and Dynamics 365 F&O (ERP)
Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Transition to the Unified Interface presentation from Dynamics Power! Saturday Brussels 2019

I had a lot of fun presenting at Dynamics Power! Saturday Brussels 2019 together with @philipverlinden and @stephanedujour

Dynamics Power! Saturday Brussels 2019 - transitioning to the unified interface from Joris Poelmans

The presentation was largely composed using the slide decks that Microsoft made available in the Unified Interface Playbook

References:

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list October 2019

Dynamics 365 – 2019 Wave 2 topics

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

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

Monday, October 21, 2019

Using Twitter analytics data in Power BI – Part 1

I have been using Twitter for over 10 years but I never paid a lot of attention on engagements or impressions statistics but after listening to the Microsoft flow with Jon Levesque podcast from @nz365guy I decided to take a look at what are drivers for more impressions or engagements on my Twitter account. So I decided to create some Power BI reports based on Twitter activity exports.

I only used Power BI in proof of concepts up until now so this was a good opportunity my Power BI skills which got a little bit rusty after not using it for more than a year. To get started I first exported my tweet activity report in CSV format from Twitter Analytics (I did it manually but there is a REST API available as well). Next I combined the different CSV files while loading it into Power BI (I followed these instructions - How to load data from a folder in Power BI). After the usual data cleansing (remove unused columns, rename columns, setting appropriate date types) and data transformation I started extending the data model. Since I also wanted to know whether there is a difference in engagements/impressions based on the day of the week the tweets was sent, I created a custom date dimension. Power BI creates a default date dimension as well but I decided not to use this – see Power BI Date Dimension: Default or Custom? Is it confusing? for more info.

I also wanted to remove the urls/hyperlinks from my tweet text before building up a word cloud with the most common terms. Luckily Power Query supports some interesting transformation, you can temporarily transform a text into a list using Text.Split(text, “”), perform operations on each word and then reassemble it again using Text.Combine(list, “ ”) (Trick found on Multiple replacements or translations in Power BI and Power Query)

I used a similar trick to found out the number of hashtags used in a specific tweet.

The Power BI report is still a work in progress but if you already want to have a temporary copy - DM me on Twitter

References:

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Quick tip: Using XrmToolBox with a MFA enabled login

More and more customers are introducing Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for Dynamics 365 CRM and while this is a good idea, there are some gotchas. If you are using XrmToolbox – the Swiss army knife in the Dynamics CRM consultant tool belt – you will need to revise the way you setup connections to your CRM/CDS environments.

Use the SDK Login Control when choosing a connection method

Next click on Open Sdk Login Control – this will open the standard browser login page and will allow you to fill in the details required in MFA.

References:

MFA, PowerApps, XrmTooling and XrmToolBox

Tuesday, October 08, 2019

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list September 2019

Preview 2019 Wave 2 release topics

Announcing experimental release of the PowerApps component framework for Canvas apps
Announcing new Microsoft Dynamics AI-driven insights applications and our vision for the future of retail and Extending the power of Azure AI to business users

Integration between Dynamics 365 CRM and Microsoft Teams in Wave 2 Release
Dynamics 365 2019 release wave 2 plan – number of updates published on September 26th
Release wave 2 launches with over 400 updates, new apps and industry solutions
Requests limits and allocations for Power Platform – also impacts Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service and Field Service
What’s new in Dataflows and Data Integration (PowerApps) – September 2019
User experience improvement – fix user input errors quickly in D365 2019 release wave 2
Introducing the Unified Action Center

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensiblity)

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

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Getting started with Forms Pro : customer feedback is the ultimate truth

On July 1th, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Forms Pro. Microsoft Forms Pro is an enterprise survey tool built on top of Microsoft Forms and the Common Data Service (CDS). Forms Pro allows you to design surveys in a user-friendly manner, distribute these surveys to your target audience and afterwards analyze the results using the built-in dashboards or using Power BI. Microsoft Forms Pro has been part of the Microsoft Forms Pro April 2019 release.
Forms Pro has been built on top of the Common Data Service (CDS) which allows for a deep integration with Dynamics 365 for Sales & Customer Service. (For background on CDS and Dynamics – read Making sense of XRM,PowerApps and some other acronyms (CDS,CDM, etc..)).

The goal of Forms Pro is to capture customer's (or employees) feedback about their experiences with and expectations for your products or services. By analyzing the response and taking appropriate action, you can increase customer loyalty, decrease customer churn and improve the way that your organizations interacts with customers, etc …

The goal of this blog post is to highlight some of the features I have been using on the project I’m currently working on – for more extensive information I can highly recommend the blog posts by Megan Walker on the subject (see list at bottom of only few out of the 20+ posts) as well as her Youtube FormsPro play list. Another option is to listen to Episode 58 of the CRM MVP podcast

Getting started
To get started you need to install Forms Pro from AppSource (the Forms Pro solutions are already installed on a Dynamics 365 CE instance but are hidden by default) which will enable the forms editing and management environment. When you open it for the first time (https://forms.office.com/FormsPro/Pages/DesignPage.aspx) – it will show you a sample survey which is created in the default CDS instance.

If you want to create your surveys in a specific CDS (or Dynamics 365 instance) – you need to select this instance in the top right corner.

Creating a survey
I really like the survey design environment which is very easy to use. You can quickly add different types of questions – choice, text/long text, rating, date, Likert, Net Promotor Score, … with the ability to also format the questions (basic options such as bold,italic, font type/size, etc…). Some question types you will have additional features e.g. render choice questions as dropdown or choice options, for ratings using stars or numbers and ability to use 1-5 options, …

You can personalize your surveys by inserting placeholders/parameters but also by adding conditional branching rules in your surveys for the different questions – e.g. if a low NPS rating is given, you might want to ask extra feedback. You can hide questions and then make them visible using the conditional rules. For more details see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/forms-pro/create-branching-rule

Theming your surveys is quite easy with the ability to change colors and add images (for background and header) as required – at the moment there is no support (yet) to add custom CSS.

Distributing the survey
There are many ways of distributing your survey, manually send it, embed it in a web page, using your own distribution channel (e.g. SMS or other marketing platform) or using a QR code. But Forms Pro also comes with Microsoft Flow integration which provides Flow templates to send Survey invitation on common business transactions like sending out a survey when a customer case has been closed, asking feedback after a purchase, etc …. You can customize these Flow templates or create from scratch depending on business needs.

Viewing and analyzing survey responses
On the overview tab, you are able to see summary data about your survey like number of invites, number of responses received, Net Promotor Score (NPS) etc… You are also able to drill into the details of the question responses etc and export the data to Excel from here. Another interesting functionality is Survey Insights which uses AI and machine learning to find correlations between question answers and calculation of a sentiment score for text-based questions.

Summary

Forms Pro is a new product but it builds on top of both Microsoft Forms and the CDS platform of which a lot of functionality is leveraged. Although the foundational functionalities are very strong, there are still some gaps and rough edges that you will encounter during an implementation. But having worked with the Forms Pro product team in the previous months reassures me that the product team is open to feedback and are working hard on improving the product. Customers who are currently using the Voice of the Customer module should plan a migration path since (source: Replace your Voice of the Customer Surveys with Microsoft Forms Pro) If you think that some functionality is missing I highly recommend you to use the Forms Pro Suggestion box on UserVoice .
In a next blog post, I will delve a little deeper into some of the gotchas and share some tips and tricks when implementing Forms Pro.

References

Blog posts by Megan Walker on Forms Pro:

Sunday, September 08, 2019

Introducing the PowerApps Checker PowerShell module to check PowerApps solution quality

Microsoft recently updated their tooling for checking the quality of CDS/PowerApps/Dynamics 365 solution files by releasing the PowerApps checker PowerShell Module . With this new PowerShell module it is possible to receive a detailed report for your solutions identifying problems/issues taking into account best practices around performance, usage, upgrade readiness, supportability and maintainability. The static code analysis is based on rulesets which are provided by Microsoft and which are updated on a regular basis.

The main difference with the previously released tooling in the PowerApps maker portal (See Announcing general availibility of Solution Checker) is that you can now also do checks to validate both managed and unmanaged solutions (CRM2011 to current) so include on-premise solution validation.

The PowerShell module can be installed from https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Microsoft.PowerApps.Checker.PowerShell/1.0.2 and provides a number of commands that you can use to perform the checks.

Before you can use the Invoke-PowerAppsChecker PowerShell cmdlet , you need to create an Azure Active Directory (AAD) application in a tenant with PowerApps or Dynamics 365 licenses. Follow the steps on Get started using the Microsoft.PowerApps.Checker.PowerShell module to correctly do this using either PowerShell or manually.

The PowerAppsChecker cmdlets in interactive-mode (meaning you need to login everytime you run the checker) or using an application-based token.

Behind the scenes the PowerShell module will connect to the PowerApps checker Web API

The output of Invoke-PowerAppsChecker is a zip file containing one or more reports in a standardized JSON format. The report format is based on static analysis results referred to as Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF).

By analyzing results and fixing indicated errors, you can learn how to write high-quality code and decrease the cost of fixing issues later.

Depending on the size & complexity of your project, I might be recommended to include it as part of your ALM strategy.

Other blog post:

Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list August 2019

Preview 2019 Wave 2 release topics

Dynamics 365 release overview – short PDF guides and videos which outline the main features soon to be released
Preview 2019 Wave 2 release: enhanced functionality in unified interface grids
Preview 2019 Wave2 release: customize the opportunity close form
Preview 2019 Wave 2 release: always show important information on the form header in the Unified Interface and introducing Microsoft Wave 2 release new feature – high density header
Youtube video – adding a PCF component in a Canvas app
Dynamics 365 Preview 2019 Wave2 release: business card scan preview feature
Dynamics 365 Preview 2019 Wave2 release: contextual e-mail

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

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

Monday, August 19, 2019

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.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

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.