Introduction

Power App helps you to create a quick mobile app to show details of your CRM organization. In today’s blog, we will explore more on how to set Date and Time field of Dynamics365 in Power App.

Following are the steps to set Date and Time fields of Dynamics 365 in Power Apps:

1. Create a default Canvas app for appointment entity by using Dynamics 365. You can refer our previous blog here.

2. As you know appointment entity contains two date and time fields i.e. “Start Time” and “End Time” as shown in below screenshot:

Let’s set the value of “Start Time” and “End Time” through Power App.

3. Now in “Edit screen” in power app you can see the “Start Time” and “End time” fields with “date and time” data type as shown in below screenshot:

4. Now on “onSelect” property of “IconAccept”  add patch formula as given below:

Patch(

Appointments,

First(

Filter(

Appointments,

activityid = BrowseGallery1.Selected.activityid

)

),

{

scheduledstart:  If(

IsBlank(DateValue1.SelectedDate),

Blank(),

DateValue1.SelectedDate + Time(

Value(HourValue1.Selected.Value),

Value(MinuteValue1.Selected.Value),

0

)

) ,

scheduledend:  If(

IsBlank(DateValue2.SelectedDate),

Blank(),

DateValue2.SelectedDate + Time(

Value(HourValue2.Selected.Value),

Value(MinuteValue2.Selected.Value),

0

)

)

}

)

5. Let’s run the app and set “Start Time” and “End Time” for a record in CRM through Power App by selecting

in power App.

Now as shown below the “Start Time” and “End Time” values are updated in CRM:

Conclusion

By using the simple steps we can set date and time fields of Dynamics365 in Power App.

To help evaluate your business needs and design a custom app for your specific requests reach out to us at crm@inogic.com | Read our blog series on Microsoft PowerApps

Hi I have recently set up SharePoint and Dynamics. However I would like to push all the attachments from emails to SharePoint as the that table is filling up our storage very quickly. 

business process is going to be deprecated pretty soon so need an alternative way. We have a need to clone opportunity records in CRM 365.

As you must have noticed, managing documents in Dynamics 365 CRM on Cloud Storages is yet to evolve. SharePoint is the only Connector with native integration in Dynamics 365 CRM however, there are not many functionalities that are inherently supported in this integration. Besides, wouldn’t it be an optimum solution if multiple Connectors could be supported with Dynamics 365 CRM and save Dynamics 365 CRM space? With our new app Attach2Dynamics, this requirement is realized!

Yes! Attach2Dynamics, our power tool, for management of Dynamics 365 CRM documents on SharePoint and Dropbox has been launched! A token of gratitude goes out to our Partners, Peers, Microsoft experts and Customers who have been our constant companion all along the journey. Inspired to bring another revolutionary tool, we have developed this solution exclusively for our Dynamics 365 CRM users.

Since our inception, we have always endeavored to optimize your Dynamics 365 CRM experience and this tool just amplifies the same you. This extensive productivity tool, embedded in Dynamics 365 CRM, enhances its functionality in multifold. Get acquainted to this exceptional tool by attending this live webinar. Our team of Solution Experts will guide you step by step through its functionality.

Save your Seat!

Wed, 27^th Feb 2019 |10 AM GMT | 12:00 PM EST

We are also under development phase to support Azure Blob Storage, One Drive, Box and Google Drive storages in future.

In this webinar we will walk you through these features of Attach2Dynamics, how your wish to easily maintain documents The Windows Explorer way in Dynamics 365 CRM has now come true:

• ‘Drag & Drop’ multiple files and folders to cloud storage of your choice.
• ‘Upload’ multiple files and folders to SharePoint and Dropbox.
• ‘Download’ Multiple Dynamics 365 CRM files/folders from cloud storage of choice.
• ‘Move Notes’ to one of the Cloud Storages for Configured Connectors.
• ‘Email’ Dynamics 365 CRM files as attachment or file’s link.
• ‘Copy Link’ of the document location to be sent outside Dynamics 365 CRM environment.
• ‘Rename’ files and folders based on your business requirement.
• ‘Deep Search’ the documents till the last file/folder in a path.

This is not it! We have many other features which we will cover in this webinar. Isn’t this thrilling? Rest assured, we are confident you are going to have a great experience!

Cannot attend live? You can still register, as we will be sending out the recording to all the registrants!

The clock is ticking!

As you know using PowerApps, we can create or Update the records in the Dynamics 365 CE. Here, in Dynamics 365 CE we have various types of fields in an Entity. So, while working with Lookup type field, we faced an issue where we were unable to create/update the record.

But issue occurred only for Lookup field which was a type of Multi Entity lookup field. We know there are fields with Multi Entity like Customers and Regarding fields.

In this blog, we are going to explain the scenario where we were trying to create “Task” record against a specific Account record. As you know, in the Task entity, there is a Regarding field (multi lookup type) where we can set the specific account.

For this, we used PATCH function to create/update the record where we were setting the value of the Regarding field, but it was unable to set the entity type of the lookup field and showed an error “The type of this argument ‘_reagrdingobjectidid_type’ does not match the Expected type ‘Guid’.Found type ‘Text’.”

You can see error in the below screenshot of the PATCH function which is written on the click of the button to submit the data.

So, we checked why it was unable to set the name of the entity in String format but could not find much on the topic. However, after digging deep in PowerApps, we found that there was a setting in the that allows GUID types data in String format.

To fix this issue, we modified settings of the PowerApps as shown below and were able to set the entity name in the ‘_reagrdingobjectidid_type’ field.

You can see below steps to modify the App settings:

1. Select the App in PowerApps in which you are working and select Edit

2. Once you enter the App, you can see File option at the top and click on it.

3.  After clicking you will see the “App Settings,” click on it and select the Advanced settings:

4. After selecting the “Advanced settings,” you will see an option “Use GUID data types instead of strings.” Toggle to Turn Off as shown below:

5. Now SAVE the App and restart. You are all set to start Editing App and will be able to set the Regarding field without any errors.

Hope this helps!

To help evaluate your business needs and design a custom app for your specific requests reach out to us at crm@inogic.com | Read our blog series on Microsoft PowerApps

Hi I have recently set up SharePoint and Dynamics. However I would like to push all the attachments from emails to SharePoint as the that table is filling up our storage very quickly. 

Introduction

Common Data Service (CDS) for Apps lets you securely store and manage data that is used by business applications. Data within CDS for Apps is stored within a set of entities. Whether your data is stored in spreadsheets, databases, or other systems, you’ll probably want an easy way to transfer large data in your environment. Using import data feature in CDS, you can easily add data in CDS.

You can use two ways to import data in CDS.

1. Get data

2. Get Data from Excel

This blog gives you information about how using Get data option, you can import data in CDS.

1. Get data:

Click on Get data and below window will open. It contains different type of data sources like Excel, CSV, XML, etc.

2. Below is the example of importing data using Text/CSV data source. After selecting the Text/CSV below window gets opened:

3. Navigate through Browse > Upload > File > Select the file that you wish to upload.

4. All uploaded files get listed as shown above. Select the file and click on Open.

5. Select the organizational account in Authentication kind. Click on Next.

Edit Queries window will open where you can Add, Edit and Delete data from Excel sheet, as shown below.

Double click on column name to edit the column name that helps you further. At a time you can import multiple Text/CSV, for that click on “Get data” and follow same process from the start and click on Next.

6. Map Entities page gets opened where you can select Load to existing entity option and select an entity, like here account entity is selected.

Then in Field Mapping section select the column of sheet by the name that you gave in excel sheet. Do the same for all fields and click on next.

7. Select any Refresh settings and click on Create.

8. Below window gets opened where LOAD STATUS will be shown. When LOAD STATUS gets completed then click on Done.

Conclusion

Thus this blog shows how using Get data option, you can import data in CDS.

Hi Experts, 

I am trying to retrieve user roles via web api and getting 401 unauthorized error. 

Any ideas on what could be causing this?

Thanks,

Parth Bhaidani

Innovators have an innate quality, they break down complex structures into basic elements and then, combine permutation and combinations of those elements to form another module. This leads to groundbreaking inventions, thereby ushering a wave of innovative solutions. It is an indigenous cycle that is adopted by developers and Technical Architects in order to revolutionize the industry.

Solution experts at Microsoft have also embraced this strategy and thus keep emerging with various services that realize the user’s requirements. One such service from their suite of services is MicrosoftFlow. It is an extraordinary cloud based amenity to empower Power Users and citizen developers to automate business processes with little or no knowledge of development technologies enabling apps and services to talk to each other. It is a part of Business Application Platform called the Power Platform that comprises of Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. Using Microsoft Flow enables the users to act swifter, smarter and be more efficient by adopting automated workflows in Dynamics 365 CRM.

Microsoft Flow allows easy integration between multiple apps using connectors made available for those apps. Currently there are more than 200+ connectors available for various applications that have been made available by their respective vendors to ease communicating with their applications. It has two components, Triggers, and Actions. Triggers are driving factors in one of the connectors using which an action is called. For e.g., assume there is a scenario where when someone tweets about your company, a trigger is “fired off.” The next one is the Action to be performed when the trigger is fired. You could configure the flow to send you an email notification or create a record in your favorite business application to ensure a follow-up action on the tweet. Here Twitter, Common Data Service are Connectors using which the trigger is invoked and the Actions are performed. Using Microsoft Flow we can sync data between Dynamics 365 Online and Azure SQL to maintain synced copies of the data.

It is a synonym of “Low-Code/No-Code” development platform. LCNC platform is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that allows Business Users or Business Analysts to drag-and-drop application units and connect them to build a system. Like Power BI, Microsoft Flow is also an extremely powerful service by Microsoft that provides abilities surpassing the routine way of creating workflows.

Let’s delve deep and have a look at the benefits of functionality of Microsoft Flow:

Ease of implementation

All you need is to sign up for the services on Microsoft Flow website. Post signing up you can choose from the range of templates created for commonly integrated applications or start fresh with a blank template and create your own flow diagram connecting the applications of your choice.

Minimal learning curve

Integrating applications has usually involved custom development due to the diverse applications available in the market with each one having their own standards for communicating with their applications. Flow helps standardize this and makes it agnostic such that the user need not have any technical knowledge of these applications to design integration flow for them.

Improved performance

Traditionally developed applications have always had the overhead of maintenance as well as has been challenging to design easily scalable integrations between applications. Using the power of Microsoft Flow which is built on the Azure stack, these solutions are highly performant and easily scalable to volume.

Schedule jobs

One of the limitations of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement has been the ability to schedule recurring jobs/actions. There are hacks available to get that done, however the Dynamics 365 platform does not provide this service. Flow fills this gap with the ability to schedule actions to be performed. The actions could be scheduled to execute at specific time intervals that includes executing it multiple times in a day or selected days of week or month.

Accept user input through dialogs

While flows have mostly been known for automation to trigger automatically on messages like Create, Update or Delete, we could also configure the flows to be invoked manually. For flows designed to be executed through ribbon button, it is possible to accept user input. The user input is then available for processing in the rest of the flow design. This option is helpful to fulfill the feature provided by the traditional Dialogs in Dynamics 365. Do note Dialogs are not supported in the new Unified Interface of Dynamics 365.

These were a fistful of benefits of Microsoft Flow from the bulk of advantages it has. Some of the use cases that we have utilized the power of Flow to deliver robust solutions for our clients with an astounding feedback.

Customize OOB Qualify Lead Process

We often get clients asking to customize the behavior of OOB Qualify Lead process. Say for example, extend the dialog box presented for Qualify button to request creation of opportunity or other custom entities when a lead is qualified. In the past, this had mostly involved designing of a custom web resource and override the default Qualify ribbon button and perform the requested actions. But now with Flow we can achieve same thing by designing a Microsoft Flow that can be invoked through a ribbon button and request for user input based on which the actions could be performed. Similarly, we can add custom business logic on OOB as well as custom Entities and processes.

SharePoint folder permission

Recently we had a requirement where the client wanted to moderate the access level of users for folders in SharePoint. We created a Flow for it which specified that whenever a record for Employee Entity in Dynamics 365 CRM was created, few folders were auto-created in SharePoint against the employee. The employee to be provided only read access to the folders and the moderator or administrator could read, write and delete all the folders on SharePoint using accessibility options. This requirement was met by designing a Flow using the connectors available for SharePoint and Dynamics 365 CRM/Common Data Service.

On Demand Microsoft Flows

Sometimes we want to give the user an option to manually call the flow similar to the on-demand workflow we have in Dynamics 365 CRM. Flows designed to trigger on the “when record is selected” trigger of the Common Data Service connector will show up in Dynamics 365 CRM under the Flow ribbon button now available throughout the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement application.

Outlook Integration

Triggers on each mail received and parse the content and use it to perform further actions. Using the Outlook connector, we can very easily send out emails without having to write any code to connect to Outlook or compose the email.

As a Microsoft Partner offering development and outsourcing services for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform that includes Power Apps, Flow and Power BI, feel free to reach out to us for any assistance with designing custom apps or automation needs using any of these technologies.

You can read more about our services and blogs on Microsoft Flow.

So what are you waiting for, write to us at crm@inogic.com for all your Microsoft Flow needs.

Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a treasure box which includes Sales, Service, Settings and so on. In this blog, we are going to explorer one of the valuable piece in this treasure box which named as Product.

So this is something about the OOB “CLONE” button on Product entity, which ease our job by making clone of same product and saving our time to re-filling same details for newly created product record. Just click on “CLONE” and we have mirror product with additional suffix in “Name (name)” of product and auto generated “Product ID (product number)”.

Recently had one business requirement, to send email when product record is cloned, and keep Created by of Cloned product in “TO”. So to set up this we created on Real Time workflow which sends email on create of Product entity record.

Whenever we are cloning Product the workflow is triggering but emails were not generating and failing due to error “Object address not found on party or party is marked as non-emailable”and after further investigation we came across further questions and got the resolution.

1. What happens with Created By and Modified By when we create Product?

Answer is, of course the user who created product record should set as Created By and Modified By.

2. Now the question is, what happens when you CLONE the product and what values set as Created by and Modified by?

Answer is, Created by set as System and Modified by set as System.

3. So where is the current logged in user, who CLONED the product record?

And here is the answer, Created by (Delegate) and Modified by (Delegate) set as user who cloned the product record.

We tweak workflow by checking if the Created By (Delegate) contains data it means it is Cloned and set same in To property of Email step, otherwise set only Created By in To  (i.e. Product is created and cloned) and It resolved the issue.

The reason was System user doesn’t have email address and we cannot update the record.

Conclusion

Created by (Delegate) and Modified by (Delegate) set as user who has been cloned the product record.

Introduction

Many times manager or higher management wants to receive SMS notification in their smart phone whenever any record is created in Dynamics CRM.

Lets see how this is possible using Nexmo.

Consider a senario where Sales manager wants SMS in their smart phone whenever Account record is created in their Environment.

To make this possible in Dynamics CRM we have to create a Microsoft Flow.

Open Microsoft Flow and search “when new opportunity created in dynamics 365 text me.”

Select the resultant record as shown below:

On selecting the record the following window gets opened.

To get API key and Secret follow the steps:

1. Click on the below link to sign up and fill the details in sign up form.

https://dashboard.nexmo.com/sign-up

After sign up select the role for which you want to provide permission and then select Nexmo product that you are interested in. Here we have selected Operations as role and SMS as product. After selecting click on DONE as shown below.

2. Nexmo page will open in which you will get the below details

• There is API key and secret which we will use later.
• To test if your mobile number works with Nexmo click on send message. If you receive SMS, then you can create Microsoft Flow to receive message form Nexmo.

Note: At start Nexmo provides you free recharge of Euro 2 for testing purpose. You can use Nexmo account for more information about your account balance and other details.

3. Follow the below steps to create Microsoft Flow:

After creating account, Nexmo tab with Create button will be available in Microsoft Flow. Click on create button.

4. Enter connection name and Use API key and secret given by Nexmo. Click on create button.

Continue to create Microsoft flow using that SMS will be sent.

• Select the Organization Name
• Select the Entity Name for which you want to receive SMS when record is created in Dynamics CRM.
• Select the Sender Id
• To Phone number that you are using for creating account in Nexmo.
• In Text field write the message that you want the manager to see that may contain account field.

There are many other fields present in Flow like life Span of Message, Callback URL, Highlevel Protocol and many more. You can get details of these fields in your Nexmo account.

After creating Microsoft flow when any Account created in Dynamics CRM, the manager will receive an SMS as shown below:

Conclusion

Using a Microsoft Flow with Service Provider Nexmo the manager or authorized person will get an SMS notification in his smart phone.

Hi,

Introduction

Many times the customer wants to see the history of managed and unmanaged solutions so in this blog we will see how this can be implemented using “Solution History.”

A solution is a container that encompasses Dynamics 365 CRM components.

It is available in two flavors Managed and Unmanaged.

Managed solutions are usually used by ISVs to deliver the products developed by them, whereas unmanaged solutions can be used just for taking backup of entities or for any other purpose.

The components of a Managed solution are deleted if the solution is deleted whereas the components of the Unmanaged solution are not deleted on the removal of the Unmanaged solution.

Well, none of what is mentioned above is alien to a CRM developer or a CRM consultant.

However, the fascinating thing that has happened in recent times is the introduction of “Solutions History” piece in Dynamics 365 CRM.

With the help of Solution History component, you can keep track of all the solutions that are exported or imported. This is something that was made achievable with the help of XRMToolBox, but, to have the same level of information from within Dynamics 365 CRM is incredible.

To access Solutions History, you need to, Go to Settings -> Under the Customizations Sub Area -> Solutions History.

Just to go through how the solution history records are created, will follow below steps:

1. Navigate to Settings -> Solutions.

2. Create a new custom solution and export the solution.

3. Navigate to Settings and under the Customization group, you will find the Solution History sub area. Refer below screenshot.

4. Now you can see the record created in solution history.

5. You can see the below information on the solution history record.

Solution name: This contains the name of the solution.

Solution version: The version of solution that was exported.

Publisher name: This contains the publisher name of the solution.

Sub operation: This includes whether it’s a new solution imported or updated the solution or deleting the solution.

Operation: It contains whether its import, export, uninstall etc.

Managed: It contains whether the import/export is managed solution or unmanaged. In the above example, I exported the unmanaged solution and hence the Managed field is set as “No.”

Start Time: It contains the time when process started.

End Time: It contains the time when process ended.

Total Time (seconds): Total time to complete the process. It’s shown in seconds form.

Result: It contains whether the process was failed or succeeded.

6. Now will import the new solution and let’s see the solution history record created.

When you import a custom solution, then the solution history record is created with above details.

This record will also contains the field such as “Overwrite Customization” and “Patch”.

These both fields are set as “No” since the solution import was neither in patch nor overwritten the customizations.

You can also see the “Suboperation” field as new, since the solution which was imported was new and it wasn’t any update to the existing solution.

7. Now let us see one example of failure too. I had already tried to delete one existing solution which failed and let’s see the solution history record created for the same.

Now in the above screenshot, you will be able to see the Result as “Failure.”

As I had tried uninstalling the solution which failed for some reason, hence “Suboperation” is set as “Delete” and “Operation” set as “Uninstall.”

It also contains the reason of failure i.e. Exception Message is displayed and also the “Error Code” of it.

This is how the Dynamics 365 has given us the feature to view the history of solutions and the actions taken on them.

• Now let’s move to the security roles –

The records created in the Solution History are “Read only”. The solutions history cannot be cleared by any user in CRM including System Administrator.

Only those users would be able to view the “Solutions History” record if the assigned security role has “Read” privilege to the Solutions History entity.

Even if you go to any security roles, you will not be able to give permission to the users to delete/create/write Solution History as there are no such options.

• You can also do the Advanced Find of Solutions history.

Select “Solution History” in the “Look for:” field and click on “Results.”

You will be able to see all the records of solution history.

If you want to review data in excel sheet, then you can also Export the data to excel sheet.

Conclusion

Solution history is the great piece added in Dynamics 365 CRM. This helps us to track the history of all solutions that were imported/exported/uninstalled without use of any third party tool.

Earlier organizations invested in different methodologies to retain customers without any cohesion. What did it cost – resources and financial burdens. Over the past few decades, CRM systems have cropped up at an unmatchable pace and adapted to the super-modern slick technology. Microsoft has been one of the earliest adopters of innovation and have maneuvered their way to the top by intelligently strategizing. As a result, there is a more pragmatic approach that has cut down the overhead of Dynamics 365 CRM.

Associating with Dynamics 365 CRM as an esteemed ISV Partner has been an exciting journey for us. We have learned immensely, and contributed our bit to the community over the span of years. Our solutions embedded in Dynamics 365 CRM have been supplemented its functionality considerably. One such solution from our suite of productivity tools is Click2Clone. It is an extremely powerful add-on that reduces the manual effort while creating duplicate records.

We keep appending its functionality in order to reduce complexity, and enhance its performance. In our last blog we covered the business aspects of Click2Clone, while this blog focuses on a specific functionality of the tool. Until our last release, only self-cloning was enabled i.e., cloning in the same Entity records, which we have taken further in this release. Yes, now it’s possible to clone existing records along with relationship details from one Entity to another Entity.

As Sales module follows an entire process, every Entity is connected to the other Entity. Thus we can clone Dynamics 365 CRM records of one Entity to another Entity in order to transfer relevant data and perform effectively.

Let’s take the example of cloning record of a custom Entity Donations to another custom Entity Floods. For instance, say there is a Donation record where we pursued a prospect John, to donate $200 for Floods. The first step is to create a Donation record for it. After we have created the record, we follow up with an email or phone call to assure if John still wants to donate. Luckily, he is still interested and wants us to send him an invoice for tax saving. We clone the Donation Entity record against John to create a new record in Invoice Entity.

After the invoice is sent to him we need to create a record in Flood Entity to keep track of the people who have contributed for Flood Relief. Now, we have to create a record of it in our Dynamics 365 CRM. If we enter the data manually it would take a lot of time. This is where Click2Clone’s new feature kicks in. Using Click2Clone, we can clone the records of Donations Entity to Flood Entity with the click of a button and a new Flood record with the details will be created.

For this we can create Donations to Flood Template. Once the template is created we map the attribute of Donations to Flood. After cloning the Donations record a new Flood record is created with the attributes mapped. Thus now we have an automated record created with the Flood details.

Assume this is not all, you also want to clone the relationships between both the Entities. This is needed so that you can clone child records of one Entity to another Entity. Say you want to copy all emails that are sent to John and keep a record of it in Flood Entity record. This is a task that cannot be performed otherwise in Dynamics 365 CRM. Using Click2Clone, by creating a child template Donation Email to Flood Email, you can perform this task. After creating this child template when you clone the Donation record against John using Donation to Flood Template a new Flood record with cloned ‘Emails’ will be created. Isn’t it magical!

Thus you have a new Flood Entity record against John along with all the Email communication. This is an example of nonprofit where records of Donation Entity are cloned to Flood Entity. There are innumerable instances where you can simplify the task of creating an Entity record by cloning records of One Entity to another Entity. Let’s delve deep and explore the advantages of this feature:

Maintains data consistency

There is a huge possibility for erroneous entry if you create new records manually. With Click2Clone you can copy the records by cloning one Entity record to another Entity without any manual intervention. Thus there will also be cloning of child records from one Entity relationship to other with data integrity. There is a new cloned record created for another Entity for the existing records using this feature. All the attributes you want to be cloned in your Target Entity records have to be mapped.

Boosts Sales process

Given you don’t have to iteratively enter the same data it expedites you entire Sales process. You can perform faster, accurately and with more cohesion between your Entities and even visualize them directly. You can see how quick creation of record in another Entity by cloning/copying saves a lot of time thereby boosting the speed of execution.

Reduces effort and time

Cloning one Entity record to another Entity saves unnecessary effort and costs and becomes a strategic enabler of your business process. Using this feature you can clone Entities like Invoice, Quote, Order, Opportunity, Lead, Account, Contact and other OOB and custom entities. This depreciates the otherwise required extra effort and leads to utilization of time in other endeavors.

Ease of accessibility

This feature is easy to implement as it avoids complexity, and can be deciphered even by a normal user. Its feasibility leads to cloning of existing records with much ease within Dynamics 365 CRM. You can experiment between Entities and create child templates based on your requirement.

As mentioned above, we have seen with the help of an example how this feature helps in augmenting your business process. Cloning one Entity to another Entity makes the functionality of Dynamics 365 CRM even stronger.

If you want to explore this feature download our solution from here!

For any query, suggestion or demo mail at crm@inogic.com

Happy Cloning!

Introduction

In Dynamics 365 Microsoft included various updates and improvement to Business Process Flow (BPF).

Previously when a BPF was started, all the information regarding the BPF was stored within the record itself. There were fields as ProcessId (ID of BPF), StageId (ID of the active BPF).  These fields are getting deprecated, so below is the way to retrieve the active stage of business process flow that need to be displayed in the view.

Now, Business process flows are created as an entity and consist fields as Active Stage Id, Active Stage Started On, State&Status and Process.

Consider an example, let’s say a user wants the current process stage in view, then below are the steps to configure the view for displaying current active process stage.

1. Create a Business process flow configured with desired process stages.

2. We can see the entity Test Business Process Flow with the fields such as ActiveStageId, bpf_name, etc.

3. Now we can configure a view in order to show the current active stage of the business process flow. Navigate to the Test Business Process Flow entity, create a view and add columns as per the requirement.

Conclusion

Thus we have seen if we have to find out the current business process stage then this blog is helpful.

Introduction

Field Service delivers end to end customer centric experience that helps to organize and manage service agreement, keeping track of assets, inventory management, identifying resources and allocation of work orders to resources.

Managing Service Agreements is also a crucial part in Field Service. One good feature provided in Field Service is “Copy Agreement” button on Agreement. Once you know that the Agreement is expired, you can click on “Copy Agreement” and select the options you want the details to be copied on the new copied agreement. This would help reduce the time consumption.

So let’s see the process of Copying Agreement.

1. Navigate to Agreement.

2. Consider the Expired Agreement as shown in below screenshot.

3. Now go on Agreement and you can see the “Copy Agreement” button.

4. Click on “Copy Agreement” button and a popup appears.

As you can see in the above popup, Start Date is the day after the End Date of previous agreement.

You can change the Service Account and Billing Account. By default the Start Date is set as the End date of previous agreement. The Duration between Start Date and End Date is same as that of the previous agreement.

You can change the start Date and End date.

You can set the previous agreement as the “Originating Agreement” on the copied agreement, this would help to keep a track of the details of the previous agreement.

You can also copy the “Booking Setups”, “Booking Incidents”, “Booking Service Tasks”, “Booking Products/Services”, “Invoice Setups” and “Invoice Products.”

So in our example, let’s keep every options as “Yes” on the popup appeared on click of “Copy Agreements” button on Agreement.

Once you click on Ok, the message appears as “Copy completed. Would you like to see the agreement?” with “Yes” and “No” button.

Once click on “Yes”, open the new copied agreement and you can see the “Originating Agreement” populated.

Refer the below screenshots regarding the new copied agreement.

Originating Agreement is populated on the copied new agreement.

Conclusion

You can use the “Copy Agreement” button when the agreement needs to be renewed once the agreement is expired. On click of “Copy Agreement” button, no need to fill in the details again, just click yes for the data that needs to be copied from original expired agreement to a new copied agreement. This would also help to keep track of the original agreement on the copied agreement.

Hi All, I have created a dialog process, I call it when a button on the ribbon is clicked.
I wanna when dialog has finished its job( the dialog window closed and finished) the record entity save and reload.

Here is the code that run the dialog :

(function() {
Develop1_RibbonCommands_runDialogGrid = function(ids, objectTypeCode, dialogId) {
    if ((ids == null) || (!ids.length)) {
        alert(window.LOCID_ACTION_NOITEMSELECTED);
        return;
    }
    if (ids.length > 1) {
        alert(window.LOCID_GRID_TOO_MANY_RECORDS_IWF);
        return;
    }
    var rundialog = Mscrm.CrmUri.create('/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx');
    rundialog.get_query()['DialogId'] = dialogId;
    rundialog.get_query()['ObjectId'] = ids[0];
    rundialog.get_query()['EntityName'] = objectTypeCode;
    openStdWin(rundialog,buildWinName(null),615,480,null);
}
Develop1_RibbonCommands_runDialogForm = function(objectTypeCode, dialogId) {
    var primaryEntityId = Xrm.Page.data.entity.getId();
    var rundialog = Mscrm.CrmUri.create('/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx');
    rundialog.get_query()['DialogId'] = dialogId;
    rundialog.get_query()['ObjectId'] = primaryEntityId;
    rundialog.get_query()['EntityName'] = objectTypeCode;
    var hostWindow = window;
        if (typeof(openStdWin) == 'undefined') {
            hostWindow = window.parent; // Support for Turbo-forms in CRM2015 Update 1
        }
        if (typeof(hostWindow.openStdWin) != 'undefined') {
            hostWindow.openStdWin(rundialog, hostWindow.buildWinName(null), 615, 480, null);
            // window.location.reload(true);
        } 

}
})();

Depending on this source code, how can it be possible?

With the release of our new product Attach2Dynamics we have completely redefined management of Dynamics 365 CRM documents on SharePoint and Dropbox. Although Dynamics 365 CRM is an extremely powerful tool that has native integration with SharePoint, not many features are supported in this integration. For instance, Dynamics 365 CRM allows Uploading single file at a time to SharePoint but folders are not supported. Also, you don’t have the option to download files and folders from Dynamics 365 CRM against a record.

We recently held a webinar to explain the features of Attach2Dynamics, you can view it from here.

To enable these features and many more, we recently launched our new product Attach2Dynamics. It is a magic wand tool that augments the functionality of Dynamics 365 CRM in multifold by enabling multitude of features. Using Attach2Dynamics you can perform actions on your files and folders like Drag & Drop, Upload/Download, Rename, Copy Anonymous Link and others from within Dynamics 365 CRM. Until our last release we did not support actions on email attachments that were received against a record in Dynamics 365 CRM.

In this blog we are going to delve deep and explore how we can manage Dynamics 365 CRM email attachments on SharePoint and Dropbox. Earlier we could perform two actions on Notes Attachment viz. Copy or Move to SharePoint or Dropbox. With our current release we have enabled these actions for email attachments too. In order to enable actions on email attachments in Dynamics 365 CRM we first need to configure Entity Configuration for email Entity.

After creating Entity Configuration record for email Entity you are all set to Copy or Move the Dynamics 365 CRM attachments to SharePoint or Dropbox.

Move email attachments

If while enabling Entity Configuration for email Entity you selected Move as Attachment Action then as soon as you send/receive an email with attachments these attachments will be auto-moved to the cloud storage for which you have configured the email Entity Configuration. While moving it a leaves back a link of its cloud storage location in Dynamics 365 CRM. All the email attachments are moved to a common folder for the respective cloud storages SharePoint or Dropbox unlike Note Attachments which were uploaded against records folder in cloud storages.

Copy email attachments

In case you selected Copy as Attachment Action while configuring email Entity Configuration then upon sending/receiving an email with attachments these attachments will be copied to the common folder in SharePoint or Dropbox in the cloud storages folder. Each cloud storage has a common folder for the emails just like in Move email attachments. After copying the attachment in cloud storage a link of the document location of cloud storage is also copied in Dynamics 365 CRM. The only difference between Copy and Move email attachments is, in Move email attachments the file is removed from Dynamics 365 CRM and moved to cloud storage while in Copy, the file is copied to cloud storage and an instance of the file stays within Dynamics 365 CRM itself. In Copy email attachments the file is available in both Dynamics 365 CRM and cloud storages.

Move/Copy Email Attachments is an extremely powerful feature which enables the Dynamics CRM users to maintain database of their Dynamics CRM email attachments on cloud storages by keeping a link in the Attach2Dynamics instance.

You can read more about the features of Attach2Dynamics here.

To explore its features download Attach2Dynamics from website or Microsoft AppSource!

Happy Document Management!

Introduction

As we know, the Business Process Flow feature plays very crucial role in Dynamics 365, which guides the users to execute their work sequentially with defined stages.

With the release of Dynamics 365 9.x, Microsoft has added new feature .i.e. execute workflow/action from Business Process Flow stage as on demand.

Means, when the user is working in a particular stage and want to execute workflow/action on demand then he can simply do that as like a normal step.  Let’s take a business case scenario if user move to Approval stage and get the approval and then want to send an email to the responsible person on demand. For that, we can create a workflow which will be used to send emails and this workflow can be called from the stage by just clicking that workflow as a step.

In the below screenshot you can see we can configure the business Process flow to leverage the triggering workflow/action on demand.

You can see the component that allows us to trigger workflow/action in the stage, which is named as “Add Action Step”.

We need to add this “Add Action Step” component in our stage and there we will get an option to select the workflow/action. You can see below screen after adding the step.

You can do lookup more on the “Execute Process” property where we can see the list of workflows and Actions which can be called/executed.

So on the CRM record, the Business Process Flow will show the above-selected workflow or action and the user can simply execute that workflow/action by simply clicking on it.

After executing workflow/action it would show as completed.

Conclusion

We can execute workflow/action from business process flow stage on demand.

Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365 introduced features for mobile and tablet to increase user interaction, user convenience and for user friendliness. This control is available for Mobile, Tablet application and on the v9 version of D365 (UCI).

Linear Slider Control

This control is used to represent field values in linear manner. To add value in this field user can slide towards left or right, right to increase the field value and slide toward left to decrease the value. To configure this control we need to provide Maximum, Minimum and Step value. We can add this control on the fields with type Whole number, Floating Point Number, Currency and Decimal Number.

Maximum Value

Maximum value to display on control.

Minimum Value

Minimum value to display on control.

Step Value

Step value is a constant interval value, which is used to specify interval between the linear slider control values.

For Example: If Step value is “7”, and we scroll linear control then the incremented or decremented difference between the values will be “7”, i.e. if we scroll towards right side then value will increases as 7, 14, 21, 28…..

We can found this control on Field inside the form customizations as shown in below screen clip, here we are adding the control on “Number of Employees” field of “Account” entity.

To add this control on Field, Select the field which we want to add this control i.e. here click on “Number of Employees” field, click on “Change Properties” and then go to “Control” tab, the following window will gets open and then click on “Add Control” button.

After clicking “Add Control” it will shows list of controls which are introduced by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365, then select “Linear Slider” control and click on “Add” button as shown in below screen clip.

After clicking “Add” button the following window will get display, then select Phone and Tablet radio buttons to set this control as a current control on the field.

Then click on “Configure Property” button as shown below to set minimum value, maximum value and step value.

After clicking “Configure Property” button the following window will get open.

There are two options to set values in configuration,

Bind to a static value– Set maximum value statically.

Bind to a value on a field– To set maximum value use another field value.

We can set Maximum, Minimum or Step values using any one the option.

To set Maximum, Minimum or Step values as static value we need to select “Bind to static value” radio button and then select the type of value and add value in textbox as minimum, maximum or step value

Also, to set Maximum, Minimum or Step values as another field value for that we need to select “Bind to value on a field” radio button and then select the name of field which value we want to use as minimum, maximum or step value and then click on “OK” button.

After setting Minimum, Maximum and step value Click on “OK” button.

For Example: Here we are adding this control on “Number of Employees” field of “Account” entity and setting values using “Bind to static value” option.

So, for this Minimum Value will be “2”, Maximum value will be “10000” and Step value will be “6”.

So, that the value of control will starts from 2 and ends on 10000 and get increases or decreases by interval of 6.

Now the “Slider Control” will look like below on “Number of Employee” field.

Conclusion

In this way we can Linear Slider control which allow you to enter data in linear manner and it is a user friendly.