Category Archives: Dynamics 365 CE Online

Business Process Flows

29 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365 CE Online, Dynamics CE 9, Uncategorized

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In this article we look at ways of automating certain business processes while developing an xRM application on Dynamics CE platform. There are actions, workflows, business process flows and dialogues that can be used for the purpose of automating business processes. For Dynamics CE Online Microsoft Flow is gaining more traction for achieving business process automation and this will be covered in a separate article at a later stage.

Business Process Flows (BPF):

  • Key focus is to ensure that the users consistently enter data and follow a set process to complete the transaction.
  • Contained in a custom entity and a record will be created within this entity for each user initiated process. Business Process Flows can span more than one entity as long as there is 1:M relationship between the two entities.

Steps for Creating Business Process Flow:

In the illustrative sample we look at implementing process flow for the following scenario against “Lead” Entity. Every step of the process flow will be a Stage.

Stages Identified to implement Business Process Flow:

  • A new application details are entered – Stage > Submission
  • The details are reviewed – Stage > Review
  • Application Decision (Approve/Reject) – Stage > Decision

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The process flow designer window provides components to implement flow.

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The components of the designer include Stage, Condition for orchestration and Data Step, Workflow providing input values for the flow.

Designing Stage(s)

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Now define the mandatory data elements required for the Submission stage

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Once the fields are entered in the Submission stage the next step will be Review Stage

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Add a Condition component (If … Else)  for Creating a Member Record (For Approved Application) / send notification for Rejected Application

  1. Condition to check for Creating a Member Record

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2. Condition to check for sending notification for Rejected Applications

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3. Validate and Activate the Business Process Flow

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How does the above designed Business Process Flow work?

Create a new Prospect Record the UI will display a flow interface with the “Submission” stage marked Active.

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Once Submission Stage is complete Next Stage will take to “Review”

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Generating EarlyBound CRM Entities using Spkl Task Runner

16 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 CE Online, Dynamics CE 9

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In article we looked at how connection to CRM On-Premise can be established using Spkl  Task Runner. For developing Plugins, Workflows it is a common  to have early bound classes. CrmSvcUtil.exe facilitates generating early bound classes the same can be achieved using Spkl Task Runner.

The batch file earlybound.bat will create the *.cs files as per settings defined in spkl.json file

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As per the settings defined the following will be expected output when earlybound.bat is run:

  • A single file name SbmaEarlyBoundTypes.cs containing definitions for entities specified
  • Namespace for the various classes will be SBMA.Crm.Entities
  • One *.cs file will be generated for every entity because of the setting “oneTypePerFile : true”, this can be set to false if the preference is work with only one *.cs file for all the entity type definitions

Right Click on the spkl folder and bring up the command prompt (if using VS 2019  install the extension Web Essentials 2019 so the command prompt can be launched from Visual Studio IDE)

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Now run earlybound.bat

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The created types is as highlighted below:

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Solution Management

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 CE Online, Dynamics CE 9

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A xRM application built on Dynamics CRM platform consists of several components viz.,

  • Schema: Entities,Relationships between Entities, Option Sets
  • User Interface: SiteMap, Web Resources, Application & Entity Ribbons
  • Anlaytics: Reports, Dashboards
  • Code: Workflows, Plug-ins
  • Security: Roles (built-in and custom), Field Security profile
  • Templates: E-mail, Articles

The above can be packaged up as Unmanaged or Managed solutions so it can be deployed in the target environment.

Managed Solution: A self contained packaged  that can be installed/uninstalled in target environment. No ability to add/remove solution components, changes can made to solution components if already set through managed properties.

Unmanaged Solution: An unmanaged solution provides the ability to add/remove components, delete components (custom entities etc). All the components in unmanaged solution will be references to customizable components in the CRM organization.

When both unmanaged and managed solutions are imported into an organization, conflict resolution is done through Merge and Top Wins stragety

Merge: Applies to user interface components and unmanaged customizations will be last to be applied.

Top Wins: Applies Entities,Views, Security Roles. In case of managed solution the last managed solution imported will have the changes applied and on of this when an unmanaged solution is imported then previous changes are overwritten.

Example:

Consider a solution having “account” entity

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Create two versions using “Clone a Patch” option to change the label on the Account form.

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Change the Phone number label text for the above solution

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Publish the changes and the Account form view will be:

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Now create another Clone to Patch version 2:

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The view of Account form after publishing the changes note this is the last Unmanaged Solution to be published.

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Legacy Settings Power platform Admin

09 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365 CE Online, Power Platform

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I was hoping to import a solution into Dynamics 365 CE online instance by easily navigating to Settings > Solutions > Import Solution, very easily done in On-premise. Turns out with all things being centralized in Power Platform Admin portal it look a while to figure out where to find the UI to do the solution import/export and the screen snap shots I present here is a guide and will change as Dynamics 365 CE Online platform keeps evolving.

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  • Click on Dynamics 365 as highlighted and should bring up the following home page

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  • Click on Dynamics 365 -custom and it should take you to the Organization/Instance home page. Settings > Advanced Settings menu option now takes us to the Power Platform admin center home page

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Resources > All legacy settings will bring up the UI that we are traditionally used to in performing tasks on CRM solutions.

 

 

 

Portal Authentication using External Identity Provider

06 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365 CE Online, Dynamics 365 Portals, Power Platform, PowerApps, Uncategorized

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In the article we looked at aspects of Portal Authentication in the following section explains use of third-party identity providers for Portal Authentication.

External authentication using third-party identity providers use OAuth 2.0 protocol to grant access. First we briefly look at underlying concepts of OAuth 2.0.

OAuth 2.0 is a protocol that provides a user with limited access to resources on site. Access Tokens in string format hold the permissions granted to a user to access the resource.  The access tokens are generated in JSON Web Token (JWT) format the three parts of JWT include:

  • Header: Containing metadata about token and cryptographic algorithm
  • Payload: Set of claims, expiration time
  • Signature: Used for token validation

More information about OAuth 2.0 can be obtained from  here. In the context of Dynamics 365 CE portals (power apps portals) the supported Identity Providers (IDP’s) that use OAuth 2.0 are listed here

For demonstration the portal url that will be used is https://spaceflight.powerappsportals.com this is portal provisioned on Dynamics 365 CE Instance.

Consider we want to use Google as third-party identity provider the high level the steps are:

  • Register application
  • Obtain “Client ID” and “Client Secret” pair after registration
  • Configure Client ID and Client Secret in portal site settings to establish secure connection

Registering Application

Logon on GoogleDeveloperConsole here and create a new project

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Once the project is successfully created click on “Create Credentials” and choose OAuth client ID as we require “Client ID” & “Client Secret” that are to be used in portal settings

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You will be prompted to set a product name on consent screen

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In the OAuth consent screen enter the application details

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After OAuth consent details are set (this step is kind of similar to what one would do while setting up ADFS Relying Party Trust) select Application Type > Web application

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At this stage Client ID and Client Secret will be generated

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The above two can always be retrieved from:

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There is an option to download the settings as a JSON file.

After the preceding steps above we have essentially set up our portal as a Relying Party and got a reference to Client ID and Client Secret that OAuth 2.0 generates and these now need to be referenced in Portal settings.

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The existing OAuth 2.0 providers will be listed as per below

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For Google to be used as identity provider add the following OpenIdConnect settings more information can be found here

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As a final step Restart the portal from PowerApps Portals admin center

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Once restart is complete accessing the portal should display Google as the external identity provider

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In the next article we will register a external user and login into portal using Google as identity provider.

Azure AD Built-in Administrator Roles

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Azure AD, Dynamics 365 CE Online

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A tenant/ user account used during the sign-up of Azure subscription has a default role of Global Administrator assigned. The Global Administrator role can modify everything in the Azure AD organization.  The link here provides detail of all the available roles.  The following two roles gives most of what is required for Dynamics CE and Power Apps Portal.

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Scenario Example:

In the example below we will create a new user with the following credentials and assign the Power Platform administrator role to see the end result

User Name: jsmith@idyconsulting.onmicrosoft.com

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  • Assign the user “jsmith” a role of built-in Azure AD Power platform administrator role and access to Dynamics 365 CE will be available only after assigning product license

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Product licenses can be managed from Microsoft 365 admin center

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Instance administration via Dynamics 365 Admin portal

25 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365 CE Online

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Launch Dynamics 365 Admin portal from Microsoft 365 admin center

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The list of available instances for the tenant will be displayed as per below:

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Sandbox Instance has a special feature that allows “Administration Mode” providing access to Dynamics 365 CE apps in Sandbox instance only to users with System Administrator or System Customizer security roles and this mode can be used during deployment.

 

Non-interactive User Account

25 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365 CE Online, WebAPI

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Dynamics 365 CE apps can be integrated with other solutions to provide 360-degree view of the customer and the integration requires exchange of data to and from various other applications. To facilitate data exchange a non-interactive user can be created in Dynamics 365 CE instance and upto a maximum of 5 non-interactive users can be created

Process of creating a non-interactive user starts by:

  • Creating a user in Office 365 admin center and assigning a licence then in CRM assign CAL

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  • Assign Non-interactive user role in CRM organization

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  • Deallocate the licence by unchecking Licencses in Microsoft 365 admin center

Administering Dynamics 365 CE Subscription

25 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by in Azure AD, Dynamics 365 CE Online, Power Platform

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Microsoft 365 Admin Center will provide the ability to create users requiring access to Dynamics 365 CE.

In the screen snap shot below there are two users one without a Dynamics 365 CE licence

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Of the two users listed above user “John Smith” has no license assigned and hence cannot access Dynamics 365 CE apps. Logging on to https://portal.office.com using jsmith@idyconsulting.onmicrosoft.com will display the following landing page.

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Product licenses can be allocated/managed from Microsoft 365 admin center

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Azure AD view for the above two user(s):

Within Azure AD admin portal the users will have the following roles assigned

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From the above we can look up Assigned roles, Groups etc. The Global Administrator role provides capability to manage all aspects of Azure AD, Services that use Azure AD identities. Within Dynamics 365 CE a Azure AD user with Global Administrator role will have the following roles assigned to the instance.

  • Common Data Service User
  • System Administrator

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For solution management and other aspects of customization assign “System Customizer” role.

Office 365 admin roles related to Microsoft Dynamics 365

  • Global Admin: Provides administrative features to Office 365 suite of services. By default initial signing account will be global admin and additional administrators can be added.
  • Billing Administrator: To manage all aspects of subscription
  • User Management Administration: For password resets, service health monitoring, user account provisioning.
  • Dynamics 365 Administrator: To manage Dynamics 365 at the tenant level without the need of having a Global Admin role assigned to user.

 

Portals using PowerApps

23 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Dynamics 365 CE Online, PowerApps

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Portals provide a UI for end users to interact with Dynamics 365 data. Previously Dynamics 365 portal was an add-on in an instance that was needed to be installed and configured under Applications

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Now portals are available within Power Apps here

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The Environments map to the instances and a portal can be created from the template available “Portal from blank” enter the name, address, and click on Create. Once provisioned it will be listed in the Apps grid

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The portal can be edited from the context menu

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What this will translate to in Dynamics 365 is an installation of series of Managed solutions in the Instance

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