D365 PSA: Delegated Resource gets error on making time entries for another Resource

Have you been added as a Delegate for a fellow colleague but not able to Read, Create or Submit Time Entries on their behalf?

Let’s see what you are missing.

Before that, if you want to learn about Delegations in D365 PSA, check this Delegating Time Entries in PSA

Scenario

William Contoso wants to make Veronica Quek as his Delegate and let her enter time on his behalf. So William created a Delegate record for Veronica.

Error for the Delegate Resource

Now, Veronica is attempting to do time entries for William by going to Time Entry Calendar view and switching the user to William.

And when Veronica wants to enter time as William, she’d switch to the User on the Time Entries Calendar View like this –
But, see this error and she don’t know what the issue might be. Even though she’s the Delegate!

Missing Security Role

Yes, this is the first thing you should check

Veronica Quek is missing a Delegate Security Role in PSA to be able to make time entries on behalf of other users.
Assign Delegate security role to the user to make them enter time on behalf of others.

Hoping this is quick fix for you. 🙂

Accessing multiple occurrences of a field in Business Process Flow using JS in D365 CRM

November 17, 2018 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 business process flow, dynamics 365 customization, dynamics 365 javascript, dynamics 365 v9

While working with BPF fields using JavaScript, there can be instances where you might want to keep the field locked in a certain stage but unlocked in another stage. And using Xrm.Page.getControl(controlName) or for v9 – getFormContext.getControl(controlName) should differentiate between the 2 fields?

Let’s see what we need to do here.

Scenario

Let’s say I want the users to enter Customer Need data in Develop Stage.
But, just view what data is present in Propose Stage shown below, not modify it. (I’ve just renamed the field to Summarize Customer Need instead)

JavaScript Usage to access the Control

Now, since the Summarize Customer Need field is the second time, using getFormContext.getControl(“header_process_customerneed”) will be fetched to disable the first field only i.e. Customer Need in Develop stage.
To access Summarize Customer Need, you need to append “_1” to the control name for the second occurrence. And _2 and so on for further occurrences.
Here’s the sample code which I used to access Summarize Customer Need to access the second occurrence of the field and use setDisabled(true) to lock it –
3. And that way, you’ll be able to access Summarize Customer Need control and do your desired operation (like even make it hidden or visible depending on your scenario) –

Hope this helps!

D365 Quick Tip – Why should you Reassign Records to another user?

November 15, 2018November 15, 2018 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 Dynamics 365, dynamics 365 administration, reassign records

An underrated feature of Dynamics 365 sitting since a long time is the Reassign Records. This is a particularly important feature that if a key person stayed with the organization for quite some time and worked deeper in Dynamics like written plugins or have workflows owned by them, it is imperative that the records they owned need to be reassigned to someone else when that employee leaves.

Given the scenario – An employee, Somesh, left the company but has several records under his ownership. Even some workflows (we’ll get to that a little further.) Sample Original Records owned by the user –

And when the user leaves the company, in general practice, we revoke the D365 license for reuse. In that case, the user is Disabled in the system –

Important: Before you proceed further, please make a list of all Active workflows which are owned by the Disabled user before Reassigning Records. You can use Advanced Find to find such workflows.

Why should you Reassign Records

Workflows

Since the user who left was owner of any workflows having Scope of Organization level, they’d fail and if them being background workflows, you wouldn’t know what happened in the background. On investigating, you’d see error like –

I noticed that workflows which are set to User scope will behave like they didn’t trigger.

Reassign Records

Use this feature to reassign records of the Disabled User to the new Administrator/User who should carry forward the smooth processing of day to day operations of Dynamics.

Go to the user by going to Settings > Security > Users. Find the user and open the record.
On clicking on Reassign Records as shown above, you’ll be asked whether you want to assign the records to yourself or some other user.
The loading will complete and once you check, all the records that were previously with Somesh will be assigned to Vishal. See below –
The workflows get assigned too. But, you have to do some activity before you say you’re done.

Reactive the Workflows

So, the records got swiftly got assigned to the new user. However, the workflow which Somesh owned were Deactivated, assigned to Vishal but were left Deactivated!

And with that, you’ve saved some hours trying to find out why certain things went wrong. Hope this helped!

D365 Quick Tip: Higher version of D365 For Outlook won’t work older D365 Online

November 13, 2018November 13, 2018 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 For Outlook Dynamics 365 For Outlook, dynamics 365 for outlook v9, dynamics 365 v9, outlook integration

Most clients are now upgrading their D365 Online from 8.2 version to the newer 9.0 / 9.1 versions. Now, I know D365 App For Outlook is the way to go. However, some clients want to stick their classic flow of Set Regarding from the Outlook client (even though D365 App For Outlook seamlessly provide all of this)

If you’re planning that you start upgrading users’ D365 For Outlook version to v9 so that you can set them up already even before D365 goes to v9, then this won’t work.

Here’s the link to download the version 9 of the Dynamics 365 For Outlook – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56972

But, if you update the existing version to the one above and expect it to connect to your 8.2 D365, it won’t work and give you the following error –

And you can the details which mentions that the current version is too high

Conclusion

Plan your upgrade for D365 to v9 such that you get ample time to upgrade the v9 version of your D365 For Outlook too.

Enable Dynamics 365 AI for Sales in v9.1.x

November 13, 2018September 26, 2020 priyeshwagh777 D365 Admin Center, Dynamics 365 dynamics 365 admin center, dynamics 365 administration, dynamics 365 ai, dynamics 365 ai for sales, dynamics 365 v9.1

One of the recent offerings by Microsoft is D365 AI For Sales. I saw this available on my D365 Trial instance which is 9.1.x.

I will quickly summarize on how you can enable D365 AI For Sales on your D365 environment having any of the Sales subscriptions.

It has features like –

Relationship Analytics
Predictive Lead Scoring
Predictive Opportunity Scoring
Connecting Insights

More about which, you can read from the Microsoft Documentation – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/ai/sales/help-hub

Before we begin

D365 AI For Sales is only available in the (NAM) North America region.
You’ll need a D365 AI For Sales license for the same.

Check if Sales AI is available

Quickly, you can check your Settings area if you already see the Sales AI appears or not.

Or you can simply go to the below link to setup a trial for yourself –

https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/sales/

Or even from the Applications screen in the Dynamics 365 Admin Center –

Setup

Let’s assume you’re on this page after you go to Settings > Sales AI. You can accept the terms to enable the Embedded Intelligence or even chose to do so later.
Moving further, I chose to directly enable the D365 AI for Sales by scrolling further and clicking on Get it now as shown below.
Then, I provided consent and Accepted.
Agree to terms and click on Continue.
While it’s installing, you’ll see this –
It took about a few hours until it was being setup in the background. Finally, once successfully done, D365 AI For Sales is now available for you to setup and you’ll see multiple tabs where you can configure each of the functionalities separately.
You can then choose to configure each of them separately. Hope this quick initial setup info helps!

D365 Admin Center: Instance Picker Link / Power Platform Admin Center | Dynamics 365 Environments

November 9, 2018February 8, 2021 priyeshwagh777 D365 Admin Center, Dynamics 365 D365 Admin Center, instance picker

Navigating to the D365 Instance Picker from the O365 or missing D365 Admin Center still a hassle?

Now, as of 2020 and later, the classic Instance Picker has been retired and replaced by the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC)

New Power Platform Admin Center

Now, you can access the new PPAC or Power Platform Admin Center using this link –
https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments

And it’ll take you to the Power Platform Admin Center

Old Instance Picker

Use the below link to directly navigate to the instance picker. Or maybe bookmark the link, perhaps.

https://port.crm.dynamics.com/G/Instances/InstancePicker.aspx?Redirect=True

Below was how the previous Instance Picker looked for classic Dynamics 365 CRM. But now, the same will be redirected to the new Power Platform Admin Center again. So, both links will take you to the same place.

Remember: You’ll need to have D365 Admin Role to be able to access this page.

Hope this was useful!

Here are some more Dynamics 365 Admin Center posts you might want to check –

Thank you!!

Customize Time Entry form on Calendar View for D365 PSA

November 5, 2018November 5, 2018 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 PSA customize time entry, dynamics psa, dynamics psa calendar view

Many times, users come back requesting that they need to be able to add types of time entries of their own. Sure, you can modify the Time Entry Type OptionSet that comes with D365 PSA by default. But that will only reflect on D365 Form Level and not where users go to Calendar View to enter time.

Microsoft has provided to be able to customize the Time Entry form on Calendar View too. This feature was released in the PSA release v1.2.1.51

Check here – https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/crm/2017/07/14/dynamics-365-for-field-service-and-project-services-automation-update-3/

Customization

I’ve added an option called as Comp-Off for the available types of Time Entries OptionSet.

But, this is only reflected on the Form level of Time Entry entity and not on the Calendar View. On the Calendar View, it continues to show as below –

Hence, you’ll need to make changes to the TimeEntryType.js file provided by Microsoft out-of-the-box.

Here’s the script that comes out-of-the-box which Microsoft says you can change to customize –

To make changes, look for this file – “msdyn_/Common/Models/OptionSets/TimeEntryType.js”
Modify this file. By default, it will have this script as shown below –
So, I added just this one line and mapped it to the OptionSet I created. The value should match the OptionSet value entered in the Time Entry Type OptionSet.
Save and Publish changes. Check if your new option appears as shown below –

Remember: The Calendar View to enter time entries has been deprecated in v3 of PSA. So this customization will not be needed in versions 3.x onward.

I hope this was helpful.

Also,

D365 Ribbon Button shortcut to open a Document in SharePoint Online

November 2, 2018 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 D365 Customization, D365 Ribbon Customization, Ribbon Workbench

I’ve come across a request where someone wanted quick access to a policy document which is commonly used by all CRM users. Documents like – a Policy Document, Terms Of Service, or absolutely a common User Guide!

Users find it tedious to remember and navigate to SharePoint to get hold of the same document frequently. So I thought, why not have a simple button to open the document in a new tab? Pretty easy. Here’s how we do it.

Ribbon Workbench

So, we use Ribbon Workbench to add a shortcut button to an entity’s form where if users feel they should look at the document while they’re working on the record, they can easily do so by just clicking it.

Create a button on, say, Account entity form.
Use URL Action in Command to enter the SharePoint link to the document.
Ensure what type of access you want for the document. Presumed that only people within the Organization should be able to use it.
Use Copy Link feature to get rid of the % from the direct link and use the link in the URL Action and publish changes
Copy the link.
And paste it in the URL Action property of the button
Make sure you select the Command you created and add it to the button as shown below, and maybe also a nice icon too!
Finally, Publish changes.

Accessing the Document

Now, since you have published the button, we are ready to test.

Go to Account for and click the button.
It will take you to the document whose link you put it in the new tab (or whatever preference you had set for opening the link).

Pretty simple use case. 😊

D365 PSA v3 – Resource Assignment and Booking

October 30, 2018 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 PSA Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 PSA, Dynamics 365 psa v3

Now, since PSA v3 is a major shift from it’s previous version, ways to do certain things have changed. Let’s quickly look at one of the many ways to book a resource by Assigning them and then Booking them in PSA v3.

Project

I have a sample Project called Grand Chocolatiers Inc. whose Schedule looks like this (the WBS is now Schedule in PSA v3) –
project

I will now Assign and Book a Resource to show you how this is done in PSA v3.

Assigning Resources

1. Now, you don’t have any resources Assigned to the Project you just created, so let’s go to the Schedule in the Project and add a new Resource, say, Alicia Baker
addAlicia

aliciaAdded

I’ve added Alicia Baker without booking her.

2. Coming to the Team and refreshing the grid, I’ll see Alicia being Assigned the 12 Hours.

aliciaAssigned

Booking Resource

Now, I’ll come to the Resource Reconciliation section and see how I can book Alicia on the task. I’ll select the Previous Difference in order for me to see the distribution I want to book Alicia on.
After I double click on the Hours denoted (1), I’ll see and expanded view (2)
Now, if I only select the below highlighted days, I’ll be booking Alicia for those hours on the 3 selected days only
Then, I’ll click on Extend Booking
Once I confirm the 3 days that I see, the resource will be booked for that time
And I’ll see the updated Reconciliation View after I book the resource
Now, if you check the Team or the Schedule Board, you’ll be able to see that Alicia is now Booked for the selected duration