25 Sunday Jul 2021
Posted in Uncategorized
For adding/removing CRM solution components the Legacy UI settings provided a convenient view of the all the different solution components viz., Entities, WebResources etc.
The “Try New Experience” provides a different UI experience although less user intuitive and takes a bit of navigation to get through the section to be able to add a new Web Resource to the solution.
29 Wednesday Jul 2020
Posted in Dynamics 365 CE Online, Dynamics CE 9, Uncategorized
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):
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:
The process flow designer window provides components to implement flow.
The components of the designer include Stage, Condition for orchestration and Data Step, Workflow providing input values for the flow.
Designing Stage(s)
Now define the mandatory data elements required for the Submission stage
Once the fields are entered in the Submission stage the next step will be Review Stage
Add a Condition component (If … Else) for Creating a Member Record (For Approved Application) / send notification for Rejected Application
2. Condition to check for sending notification for Rejected Applications
3. Validate and Activate the Business Process Flow
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.
Once Submission Stage is complete Next Stage will take to “Review”
29 Friday May 2020
Posted in Azure, Azure AD, Azure AD DS, Uncategorized
Tags
Windows AD DS:
Provides authentication and authorization to on-premise applications, resources. Access to various resources can be streamlined through Group Policy some examples of implementing GPO for user’s rights assignment are detailed in the article here.
Authentication Protocol: Kerberos and NTLM
AD Database access: Through LDAP query
Creation of Domain Trusts: Allowed
On-Premise Windows Server AD offers 5 core services:
Windows ADDS provides a hierarchical data storage for various objects in the network users, computers, groups, printers etc. The objects are placed within various Organizational Units (OUs). For example the following screen snap shot demonstrates a way of organizing On-Premises ADDS
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD):
While allowing to create users and groups Azure AD provides a flat structure without Organizational Units (OUs) or Group Policy Objects (GPOs).
Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS):
Cloud based PaaS offering providing managed domain services, group policy, Kerberos / NTLM authentication that is compatible with on-premises Windows AD DS. The following will additional features of Azure AD DS:
The following screen snap shots show how identity information is synchronized in cloud-only and hybrid models.
Cloud-Only:
Hybrid Model:
31 Tuesday Mar 2020
Posted in Uncategorized
In article we looked at configuring Swagger UI in ASP.NET Core application, this article looks at using postman and Swagger UI for testing debugging Web API. The sample source code can be found in Git and for demonstration purposes will be using SEIS.Registration.Api project.
Swagger UI:
From the sample source set SEIS.Registration.Api as start up project and the UI rendered in IIS Express will be as shown below:
We will debug two API methods viz., POST to Create a Record and GET to Read/Retrieve a Record
To validate the end points for both POST and GET methods are accessible ensure that there is a HTTP Status Code of 200
Testing POST (aka Create Record)
Run the API project in Visual Studio and attach the Swagger UI process via Debug > Attach to Process
Add the values in the Request under Post and click on Execute
The debugging step within Controller method and the Model passed in can be seen as below:
After creating record with POST method, debugging the GET method will display the record created.
In the next article we will look at using postman for debugging WebAPI.
29 Sunday Mar 2020
Posted in Uncategorized
In the article we looked at defining GPO for setting up Dynamics CRM platform. The various service account(s) required for the installation of CRM platform will map to the AD groups as per the table below:
| Service Account | AD Group Membership |
| svc-crm-app |  |
| svc-crm-async |  |
| svc-crm-deploy |  |
| svc-crm-install |  |
| svc-crm-monsrv |  |
| svc-crm-sbox |  |
| svc-crm-vss |  |
For SQL Instance the AD group membership(s) for SSRS, database is as per table below:
| svc-sql-agent |  |
| svc-sql-database |  |
| svc-sql-reporting |  |
13 Thursday Feb 2020
Posted in Dynamics 365 Portals, Power Platform, Uncategorized
In the article we looked at out-of-the-box roles available and how they can be associated to a user. Entity Permissions basically allow user to perform operations on the data depending on the scope.
In this article we will define custom web roles and entity permissions for a users listed in the Contact entity.
Requirements definition for highlighted users are as per table below:
Defining Custom Web Role for Administrator and User
Navigate to Web Roles and click on New
Once Roles are defined add Contact records as the requirements table.
Now that Web Role is associated to a contact next we proceed with creating Entity Permission. Navigate to Entity Permissions > New
Entities choosen Event and Event Registration having 1:N relationship
Create two entity permission(s) Entity User Role Permission and Administrator User Role Permission
Associate the newly created entity permission to Management User Role
Now associate the contact with the Web Role
06 Thursday Feb 2020
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:
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:
Registering Application
Logon on GoogleDeveloperConsole here and create a new project
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
You will be prompted to set a product name on consent screen
In the OAuth consent screen enter the application details
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
At this stage Client ID and Client Secret will be generated
The above two can always be retrieved from:
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.
The existing OAuth 2.0 providers will be listed as per below
For Google to be used as identity provider add the following OpenIdConnect settings more information can be found here
As a final step Restart the portal from PowerApps Portals admin center
Once restart is complete accessing the portal should display Google as the external identity provider
In the next article we will register a external user and login into portal using Google as identity provider.
26 Thursday Dec 2019
Posted in Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 CE Online, Dynamics CE 9, Uncategorized
Tags
Xrmtoolbox provides a plugin “Auto Number Manager” that can be used to configure autonumbering for any entity in the CRM solution. Refer here for list of available plugin’s. Once AutoManager plugin is installed it will be available in the start up page of Xrmtool box
Once connected to CRM organization (aka Instance) the list of solutions will be displayed as per below and selecting a solution will display the list of entities for that solution:
In the following example autonumber format is set for the Account Number field of Member entity
The Number Format set in above is as per below
{PreFix}-{6 digit sequence number}-{Random String}
Seed value indicates the starting number of sequence
Click on Update once the format is acceptable.
30 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in Docker, Uncategorized
#Install Docker Provider
Install-Module -Name DockerMsftProvider -Force
#Install Docker from Provider and reboot
Install-Package -Name docker -ProviderName DockerMsftProvider -Force
Restart-Computer -Force
18 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in CRM 2011, CRM2013, CRM2015, CRM2016, Dynamics 365, Dynamics CE 9, Uncategorized
After installing CRM platform and changing the web address from Deployment Manager console as per below
It will not be possible to browse the Organization created from Deployment Manager and the event viewer will record “Event 4625 Audit Failure NULL SID failed network logons..” this is because of LoopbackCheck feature of the Windows Server that prevents IIS sites being accessed using FQDN in the URL. Run the following PS command to disable the loopback check
New-ItemProperty HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa -Name “DisableLoopbackCheck” -value “1” -PropertyType dword
Also check that the CRM application pool account has the correct SPN set as an example for FQDN crm.idynamics.dev the SPN for app pool account will be
Information Dynamics 