Quick tip: Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams network assessment tool

To ensure that your network meets the requirements for using Skype for Business or Microsof Teams for audio and/or video calls, you can download and run the Skype for Business Network Assessment tool.

Generating Azure Application Insight Key in Azure DevOps pipeline

If you want to generate an Application Insights key in your Azure DevOps pipeline - you can use the the PowerShell code snippet below in a Azure PowerShell task.

Look at Automate Azure Application Insight resources using PowerShell and New-AzureRmApplicationInsightsKeyApiKey for more details.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Install-Module AzureRM.ApplicationInsights -force -verbose -scope CurrentUser Import-Module AzureRM.ApplicationInsights $resourcegroupname ='rg_func****' $aicomponentname ='func****' $permissions = @("ReadTelemetry", "WriteAnnotations") $apikeydescription = 'testapikey' New-AzureRmApplicationInsightsApiKey -ResourceGroupName $resourcegroupname -Name $aicomponentname -Description $apikeydescription -Permissions $permissions

Azure Application Insights for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform solution architects and consultants

A best practice which is quite often overlooked is enabling monitoring and logging capabilities in your applications or solutions. You should always monitor your applications/solutions whether they run in the cloud or on premise because you want to know when something fails (before the users start complaining) and also understand how users are working with your solutions.

Both Dynamics 365 and Power Platform have the option to enable integration with Azure Application Insights - but what is Application Insights?

Azure Application Insights  is a feature of Azure Monitor and it is basically an APM (Application Performance Management) tool. Application Insights provides standard integration with a lot of Azure components adding automatic monitoring capabilities but you can also extend it with custom monitoring so if you get an exception in your code that is unhandled Azure Application Insights will pick this up. You can use it for on-premise and cloud applications but the ease with which you can instrument your applications might differ.

You can integrate Application Insights into your model-driven apps (either Dynamics 365 first party apps which you extended or completely custom-model driven apps) by using the Javascript SDK (See Application Insights for web pages for more details). Unfortunately the old documentation on this topic has disappeared - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-insights-sample-mscrm/ now does a redirect to the general document. 


Luckily @DanzMaverick wrote an interesting plugin for XrmToolBox which allows you to easily instrument your different model driven forms.  Be sure to update to the latest version though since it contains a number of fixes. If you want to keep up to date with updates on this interesting tool follow https://github.com/Power-Maverick/ApplicationInsightsManager

Using Application Insights Manager plugin you will be able to instrument a number of different model forms using just a number of clicks - behind the scenes it will wire up your forms with the required JavaScript web resources.

A recent update on the Power Platform also allows you to log telemetry for your Canvas Apps using Application Insights.

Dynamics 365 can also leverage Azure components like Azure web apps, web jobs or Azure functions which will also require monitoring and logging capabilities. Depending on the type of component you might get out of the box monitoring or you might need to use code based monitoring - most scenarios are described in the documentation - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/app-insights-overview

Things I learned when using Azure Application Insights in the last couple of months:

• To analyse the metrics from the Application Insights logs you can leverage the same Log analytics engine which is available in Azure monitor. Queries are written using the Kusto Query Language. There is also a Pluralsight training - The basics of KQL (Kusto Query Language) from scratch
• You can also feed Power BI from Application Insights or use the Azure Application Insights REST API to overcome the 10.000 item limit of running KQL queries in the Azure Portal
• Pricing for Application Insights is based on the volume of telemetry data that your applications sends (and web test if you are using these) - so to avoid increasing costs take a look at Sampling in Application Insights if you are instrumenting components which are handling a large amount of request

Enabling C# 7.1 in Visual Studio 2017 projects

Today, when I tried to compile one of the Visual Studio projects in our solution - I received the exception "Feature 'default literal' is not available in C# 7.0. Please use language version 7.1 or greater". (For more info see default literal in C# 7.0)

To enable C# 7.1 you need to following these steps:

• Right click on your project and select Properties, next navigate to the build tab and click Advanced

• Next you can either choose C#7.1 from the list or choose C# latest minor version (latest).

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list January 2020

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform - 2020 Wave 1 topics

Starting April 2020, new features in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform will be activated, but you can already try out some of the new features by enabling early access - for a full list of available features see 2020 release wave 1 features available for early access

• Dynamics 365 release schedule and  early access
• Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan
• First impressions on Power Platform 2020 Release Wave 1 by @jukkan
• Marketing Release wave 1 2020 by @MalinMartnes
• 2020 release Wave 1 - random picks by @ashlega
• Microsoft Power Platform 2020 Release Wave 1 Plan: the bits which excited me by @leontribe

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• CDS vs CDS: what connector should I use in Power Automate? by @lagerquistsara
• How to run Microsoft Flow through custom ribbon button using httprequest
• 7 golden rules of Flow development in Power Automate
• Enable collaborative bot development across your organization for any user
• Dynamics 365 Org DB Settings
• How to avoid the "Get Record" action to retrieved related data in Power Automate
• Create your own Insight Cards with Power Automate in Sales Insights
• Create a Power Virtual Agent in 10 easy steps
• Using Power Virtual Agent and Power Automate to create a simple bot for cases in Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Send and store surveys responses in Dynamics 365 CRM using Forms Pro by @inogic
• Introducing Test Studio to build end-to-end tests and maintain your (canvas) app quality
• 10 things I wish I knew before I started with PowerApps
• Power Automate + Adaptive cards introduces business form scenarios on Microsoft Teams
• What are environment variables?
• Can Azure Functions replace plugins in Dynamics 365? Well yes but ...
• Power Platform Admin role vs Dynamics 365 Admin Role in Office 365 Admin center
• Power Virtual Agent - Extend and Customize

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

• Omnichannel for Customer Service and Power Virtual Agents by @ParkhurstNeil
• Scrum Dynamics 32 - Measuring customization
• Get ready for licensing enforcement in Dynamics 365 
• Update to the Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit
• Don't confuse Digital Transformation with Customer Experience

Forms Pro Quick tip: switch between Microsoft Forms Pro and Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms Pro is an enterprise survey tool which leverages both Microsoft Forms and the Common Data Service (For more details see Getting started with Microsoft Forms Pro: customer feedback is the ultimate truth.)

Once you are assigned a Forms Pro license, it is not so obvious that you can still use Microsoft Forms (at least not for me) To switch between Microsoft Forms Pro and Microsoft Forms you should select your photo in the Office 365 header and then select Switch to Forms

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.

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.

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list December 2019

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Introducing improvements to data storage in Common Data Services
• New improvements in Embedded Canvas Apps which are undocumented/unannounced
• MVP Advent Calendar 2019 - excellent initiative by @MeganVWalker
• Microsoft Flow vs Dynamics 365 Workflows
• Power Virtual Agent Series - add Power Virtual Agent to Microsoft Teams by @TomaszPoszytek
• Sentiment analysis for Power Virtual Agent using Power Automate & Azure Cognitive Services
• Performance benefits of unified interface
• Get notified in Dynamics 365 when a contact is no longer with a company.
• Generate demo data for Dynamics 365 using Power Automate and Mockaroo by @DylanHaskins
• Connect to Dynamics 365 Web API using oAuth2.0 - Authorization Code Grant Type
• Custom Insights Cards for Sentiment Feedback
• Filtering a lookup based on the linked entity by @Himbapinfo
• PowerApps: using the Common App Connector vs the Dynamics 365 Connector by @ccognetta
• SalesSpark and the PowerApps Component Framework by @ScottDurow

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

• Proactive chat in Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service
• 2019 in Microsoft Business Applications by @jukkan
• How Microsoft publishes product release plans using Power Platform
• Microsoft Access: the database software that won't die
• Predictive lead scoring in Dynamics 365 Sales Insights
• Dynamics 365 Scrum - what to measure in your Scrum projects
• Less code, More Power II by @ManuellaPichler_
• Using AI to better understand your customers

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?

1. Write a valuable blog article every week - I probably want to go for 52 blog posts this year.
2. Deliver at least 4 webinars or  community presentations in a year
3. Register for the Dynamics Insider program and commit to test every new release and provide feedback to Microsoft
4. Answer 60 questions on the forums (Microsoft Dynamics Forums, CRMUG Forums, etc...) 
5. 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
6. Create a XrmToolBox plugin 
7. Speak at a major conference
8. Contribute 24 tips to @crmtipoftheday by sending an e-mail to jar@crmtipoftheday.com
9. 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
10. Teach something new about Power Platform/Dynamics 365 every month e.g by delivering a lunch&learn session in your company
11. 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
12. 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:

• How do the PowerPlatform API limits affect Model Driven Apps? by @ScottDurow
• API per user limits – The good, the bad and the ugly by @crmgustaf
• PowerApps and Microsoft Flow licensing FAQs for October 2019

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:

• Announcement: automate your application lifecycle management (ALM) with PowerApps  Build Tools (Preview)
• PowerApps Build tools for Azure DevOps Hands On Lab files
• PowerApps Build Tools for Azure DevOps Overview (Microsoft docs)
• Introducing the PowerApps Checker PowerShell module to check PowerApps solution quality 
• General availability of PowerApps Solution checker makes it easier to check Dynamics 365 solution quality
• Ignite 2019 sessionon ALM/DevOps for Dynamics 365 - Azure DevOps for Power Platform ISVs:Automate ISV solution deployments and release regular upgrades and patches toall customers concurrently by @MimCRM

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)

• Microsoft Ignite 2019 - sessions related to Power Platform
• Public preview of custom help panes (formerly Learning Path) for Unified Interface
• Installing Dynamics 365 Developer tools (Code generation tool, configuration migration tool, package deployer, plugin registration tool  and solution packager)
• Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 (Trial) - Part I
• Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 (Trial) - Part II
• Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 Customer Service - Entities
• What you need to know about Power Automate (Flow) Connectors for Dynamics 365
• Dynamics 365 Data Migration - how to keep the original Modified On date
• Getting started with Power Virtual Agents (Youtube 00:18:07)
• Best practices for fields in Dynamics 365
• Modern datawarehousing using Azure Data Lake, CDM Folders and Power BI Dataflows - Part 1
• Metadata-driven CDM folder creation using Azure Databricks Part 2
• Customer Insights vs Power BI
• Anatomy of the Dynamics 365 Outlook App Panel
• Announcing Power Platform dataflows general availability
• General availability of the "Improve data source experience and Common Data Service views” feature
• Refresh Power BI Dataset programmatically from Dynamics 365 by @inogic
• Yet another address autocomplete PCF control using Bing Maps
• Auto activate Power Automate Flows during solution import
• Evaluating Power BI Connection options for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement by  @joejgriffin
• Choosing the right model-driven app supporting technology by @ashlega

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

• Our vision for the Microsoft Customer Data Platform
• Microsoft Forms Pro updates to help improve customer feedback management
• The global state of customer service
• Power Platform Adoption Framework by @andrewdwelch
• New AI Business School addresses key challenges to AI adoption
• Power Apps - Licenses vs Passes by @stevemordue

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

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: an overview of the new Unified Interface
• Getting a head start with Unified Interface transition materials
• Don’t be surprised if you don’t see the classic interface for new Dynamics 365 instances
• Announcing the timeline to move to unified interface
• Card forms and timeline in unified interface
• Dynamics 365 Release Wave 2 overview
• UCI Timeline control learnings

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list October 2019

Dynamics 365 – 2019 Wave 2 topics

• New digital messaging offer enhances omnichannel features in Customer Service
• Exporting CDS data to Azure Data Lake (Preview)
• Integration between Dynamics 365 CRM and Microsoft Teams in Wave 2 Release
• Innovations in business applications starting October 2019 (Virtual launch event)
• PowerApps Portals are now Generally available (October 14th)
• Dynamics 365 Marketing 2019 release wave 2 update is rolling out starting now (October 4th)
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – October 2019 release notes
• Examples of extending Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with Azure ML

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Microsoft Flow – not just for nerds – sending tweets to your mailbox
• How to run Microsoft Flow through custom ribbon button using http request by @Inogic
• Using PowerApps environment variables (Preview)
• Preview: Environment variables overview (Microsoft docs)
• Power Platform: when a Canvas app saves a project
• How to embed PowerApps in CRM without Code! (On demand webinar) by @PowerObjects
• Forms Pro Power BI App
• Convert PowerApps Checker SARIF files to Excel using Power Query
• Replace classic Common Data Service workflows with flows
• SQL 4 CDS XrmToolBox Plugin
• Send and store survey responses in Dynamics 365 CRM using Microsoft Forms Pro
• Refresh your Power BI dataset using Microsoft Flow
• Introducing Monitor to debug apps and improve performance
• PCF Custom Control Builder – XrmToolBox Add-in
• Reduce timeouts for cascading transactions
• Fine tune your virtual agent bot
• Using Microsoft Azure Auto Machine Learning, Logic App and Dynamics 365 for AI Predictive Customer Service
• Introduction to Dataflows and Data integration by @CarinaMClaesson
• Add-on allocation for PowerApps, Microsoft Flow and AI Builder is now available
• New whitepaper on how to build enterprise-ready flows

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

• Why CDS (Youtube 00:18:44)?
• The End of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online
• Delivering five star experiences with a customer data platform (CDP)
• Dynamics 365 Remote Assist | 2019 release wave 2 overview (Youtube 00:04:11)
• PowerApps Portal Ramp up: Provisioning(Licensing)
• The PowerApps Pyramid: Performance, User Experience and Branding
• 4 steps to take control of Flow and PowerApps in your organization (Slideshare) by @timopertila
• Highlights from  Gartner Hype Cycle for Customer Service and Support Technologies, 2019
• Why the best innovators have a surfers mindset and what you can learn from that
• Celebrate the customer service week and the agents who make it all happen
• Actionable insight with Microsoft Business Applications

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:

• Create a Date Dimension in Power BI in 4 steps – Step1: Calendar columns
• Power BI Date Dimension: Default or Custom? Is it confusing?
• How to load data from a folder in Power BI
• Visual awesomeness unlocked – the word cloud
• Count the number of words in a text – Magic Mondays with Power Query and Power BI
• Multiple replacements or translations in Power BI and Power Query

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

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
• For more info check out Announcing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Product Insights – now in preview and the Dynamics 365 Product Insights (Preview) home page
• Dynamics 365 Commerce (Preview) available
• Dynamics 365 Connected Store Community blog  launched
• 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)

• Flow Everything: calling synchronous flows from CDS and Dynamics 365 by @Mikefactorial
• PowerApps optimization techniques
• All about the CDS and Dynamics update train! by @TeamIntergen
• Announcing the general availability of the new model-driven form designer
• The common Microsoft header is coming to PowerApps
• PowerApps checker now includes checker results for canvas apps in solutions
• Collaborative development for PowerApps Canvas Apps
• Announcing the timeline to move to unified interface
• Using adaptive cards in PCF by @dancingwithcrm
• Tip #1308: Secret support in SDK
• Important changes (deprecations) coming in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement – updated September 2019
• Embedded canvas app user settings utility
• Delaying emails to certain individuals based on their time zone
• Using PowerShell to export/import solutions, data and word templates for D365
• Recordings of Power Platform 24 Conference (August 2019)
• Using Application Insights to monitor your PowerApps Canvas Apps

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

• September 2019 update for Dynamics 365 for Marketing is now available
• PowerApps vs PowerApps by @stevemordue
• How leading companies use CRM to power personalization
• 4 ways sales teams can close deals faster with AI powered insights
• Microsoft HR uses the Power Platform to transform employee experience
• PowerApps licenses and a Dynamics 365 environment
• Employee experience starter kit  - set of PowerApps sample apps
• What is the Common Data Service?