Dynamics 365

Create your own Insight Cards with Power Automate in Sales Insights

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Sales Insight’s cards are not just restricted by what is provided by Sales Insights for your Org, you can make your own using Power Automate too. Here’s how –

Requirements

These features aren’t free under Free Features of Sales Insights. Sales Insights license is for $50/user/month. More info on licensing here – Sales Insights Licensing

For free features, only pre-defined Insight Cards show up. You don’t get to create your Cards. To try this feature, you can create a 30-day Sales Insight trial.

Scenario

Let’s say you have a custom field on the Account called as Renewal Date which holds a Date of renewal for an account. And you want to create an Insights card to show up whenever this date is within 5 days –
fieldOnForm

Create a new Insights Card using Power Automate

Let’s say you have Sales Insights already setup in your Org and you have moderate knowledge of Power Automate (formerly known as Flows)

  1. Navigate to Sales Insights settings in Sales Hub > Global Settings > under Assistant Studio, look for Home and you’ll see a button to Create a new Insight card.
    navigateToCards.png
  2. Since our requirement is a pretty common one and Power Automate has a template for it already, you can select one or even start from scratch.
    template
  3. Make sure all the permissions are correct and you’re set to modify a Power Automate Template (or create from scratch)
    permissions.png
  4. Let’s say you are making this run on a daily business during your non-business hours.

Little Tweak to store a Reminder Date in D365

I wanted to have a custom reference of the Reminder Date in my own way in D365 instead of making the Power Automate query more complex.
I’ve created a Calculated Date field for RenewalReminder to store date of 5 days before the Renewal Date and this will be maintained for all records.
renewalDateField
So that the field stores 5 days prior to the Renewal Date
fieldValue.png
(I’ve hidden it away in actual implementation later on)

In the past, I’ve implemented a similar scenario to store current date used for views in D365, reference Blog: Store ‘Today’s Date’ in a field to use in workflow conditions in D365 CE

Design Power Automate

Since we’ve chosen a template to get a reference from, feel free to remove/modify whatever you need to –

  1. Now, I want to Flow to be triggered every day at UTC midnight
    flowPart1
    Details: Every midnight, fetch me Accounts where I RenewalDate has passed so that selective Accounts will be queried, and then I want to create cards for those accounts in the next step.
    And I’m only comparing the RenewalReminder field value to the current date since it will run everyday
    dateConfig.png
  2. In the final step, for Each account, I’ll create a Card with the Account’s details which the user needs to see.
    createCard.png
    I’ve set some properties which are quite self-explanatory. I’ve made the Open button on the card to open the record itself.
    And I’ve also made the card to show up only until the Renewal Date. (Maybe setup a separate process for Accounts past renewal date)

    And that’s that! Your Power Automate is ready to create Insight Cards which remind you of an upcoming renewal

Seeing it Run

Now, every day when the Power Automate runs, it will create Insight cards for you and they’ll appear as you’ve configured them. In this case, For Alpine Ski House account, the Renewal Date is 20th Nov, so the card has started showing up since 5 days before the Renewal Date (Date stored in RenewalReminder for referencing, you can choose your own way to do so in Flows)
cardShowUp

Even in your Dashboards, since you’re the owner of the record and it’s set to show only to the owner, you’ll see it and clicking on the Open button will open the Account record itself
clickOpen.png

Hope this helps!!

Enable Flow button on D365 Ribbon

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This is a pretty simple tweak to either show or hide the Flow button on the entity Forms’ Ribbon.

flowButtonVisible

Flow Button Not Visible

nowFlow

System Settings

Navigate to Settings > Administration. Go to System Settings
systemSettings

In System Settings, under Customization tab, look for Enable Microsoft Flow option.
customizationTab

You’ll be asked for permission
permission.png

Now, this is turned on
turnedOn.png

Flow Button Visible

Now, once you have enabled this setting, you’ll be able to see the Flow button on the View and Form ribbons across Dynamics 365 CE
flowButtonVisible

That was quick!!

Solving ‘The record could not be deleted because of an association’ error in D365 CE

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Restricting Delete for child records is something customizers should start paying special attention towards defining 1:N relationships for entity records.

System Customizers often design this on purpose so that you are aware that the record you are deleting has child records associated with it and cannot be deleted.

Let’s consider this scenario  – Account is a parent of Subscription (which is a custom entity)

relationship

 

Error

Assume, Subscription 1 record has Account lookup to record A. Datum Corporation. When you attempt to Delete the Account, you get this error message.

actualError

And when you download the Log File from the button on the error message, you can see at the very bottom on the Log that Cascade Delete failed due to the restriction.

It also mentions what child entity is causing it
highlightError

Reason

The reason being 1:N relationship on the Account entity to Subscription entity.

deleteRestrictionInRelationship

Workaround

Now, since this is a Restriction on Delete, you can either change it if you are allowed to modify the behavior and it should be fine
changeableBehavior
However, some system relationships can’t be changed. Example – Opportunity to Quote relationships
systemRestricted.png

To overcome this, you can remove the Opportunity Lookup value on the Quote entity and save the record.

Then, the parent Opportunity can be deleted.

Hope this helps!

D365 Quick Tip: Getting layoutXml from DevTools

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Most times when you want to use AddCustomView() method to a Dynamics 365 control, you need to pass layoutXml to the method that will show the view you define.
fromCOde

There’s an easier trick than writing this up.

Select your View

Assuming, you have an Advanced Find view open in the window which you want as a layoutXml of, on the same, press F12 to open Dev Tools. Select the selector.
selector

And on the Advanced Find window, select Body section
andSelectBody
Click on it, and the par will be selected in the Console of the Dev Tools.

Once this is available, search for layoutXml and cycle through the results to go to the last result.
selectFromConsole

select the “value” part. That is your layoutXml. Hope this helps.

Making common developer/customizer tasks simpler by using “Level up for Dynamics CRM/365”

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I know how it’s like to be a developer/customizer for D365 and having to fumble between windows to reach ‘name’ of fields, look behind the scenes trying to get a schema name, etc.

But all of that is simplified with this Chrome extension called as Level up for Dynamics CRM/365 offered by Natraj Yegnaraman

Link: Level up for Dynamics CRM/365

Using the Chrome Extension

Add the extension to Chrome as below –
addToChrome

Once you see Level up icon on Chrome like below, you can use it so do common tasks and much ease –

extensionAdded

And when you click it while in D365, you’ll get tools that you could use to work your way in Dynamics 365

controlCenter

One of my favorite among these, as a customizer/developer is – “Logical names”. I shows the logical names of the fields/Tabs and saves me time from going in to Solutions or opening the Form Editor
logicalNames

Loved this and the way it works!

 

Use Read-Only grid among Editable Grid enabled entities in D365

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When you enable Editable Grid for an entity, all the public views become Editable Grids, correct?

And if you wonder if you can keep certain grids as Read-Only and the rest as Editable, your assumption is correct. Here’s what this blog is about.

You can still go back and select a particular grid which you want to keep as a classic Read-Only grid

  1. Let’s say you have added the Editable Grid under Controls. This will apply Editable Grids for all the Views on that entity.
    enabledEditable
  2. And you want Vendors view, for example, to show the classic Read-Only grid, open it up.
    vendorView
  3. Select Custom Controls.
    customControls
  4. And force-add another Read only grid even if it says the Default one is already selected.
    forceAddRead-Only
  5. Save and Publish you changed and check
    classicGrid
  6. And the rest of the grids will continue to be Editable Grids
    editableOthers

Note: I tried this on the Unified Interface and this works. Somehow, it didn’t work on the Classic Web UI.

 

Hope this helps!

D365 Quick Tip: Simple & Detailed Mode in Advanced Find

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If you ever wanted to refine your Personal Settings and ever came across this setting that asks your to set the default mode in Advanced Find
setting

But didn’t observe the Advanced Find well? Here’s what it does

Simple Mode

As per Advanced Find behavior, the view which you are on is pre-selected in the Advanced Find.

And observe that the query is locked and you actually need to click on Details to expand it or make it editable
simpleMode

And then it expands like this
expanded

Detailed Mode

In Detailed mode, if you click on Advanced Find button, the query will already be in detailed view ready for you to be edited directly without you needed to click on Details as in Simple mode
advancedMode

 

Hope this quick tip saves you that extra bit of second. 🙂

Get SharePoint Document Location link on field on create in D365

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I’ve been working on getting the SharePoint Document’s link to get back into D365 but looks like it can’t come back and get tagged to the record it was created from.

I tried to fire off a plugin on SharePoint Document record create, but in vain. Flow didn’t do justice since SharePoint Document entity doesn’t support Change Tracking.

So, I retrieved the Absolute URL of the “SharePoint Document Location” entity on it’s create itself so that I have the link once the record is created. And click that link to open the folder in SharePoint.

Workflow to wait and then fetch

So if you immediately make a call to retrieve the Absolute URL in the plugin code you’ve written on Create won’t work because Absolute URL gets created moments after the actual Location record is created unlike being passed in the execution context.

My approach is to fire the workflow on the create of the SharePoint Document Location record and Wait for 1 minute.

wfBody

After 1 minute, set off the flag to call the plugin and fetch the Absolute URL as shown below –

updateFlag

Retrieve Absolute URL in Plugin

You can use RetrieveAbsoluteAndSiteCollectionUrlRequest message to retrieve the SiteCollection URL and the Absolute URL of the document folder of the record

retrieveAbsolute

 

Working

  1. When you open the Document sub-grid on the record for the first time, a Document Location record is created –
    openForFirst
  2. The workflow designed above will run and fire off the plugin after 1 minute. The plugin will then make the message request go through to get you the Absolute URL as below –
    link2
  3. And probably you can use that link to open up the folder by clicking on the field that has this URL or send it across in email to internal users (whatever suits your requirements)
    linkInField
  4. It will open up the SP folder for that record and will have all the documents you attach in the Document sub-grid on the record.
    spFolder

Hope this helps!

D365 Quick Tip: Shortcut to Settings from the Unified Interface

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If you’re spending time looking and wondering that you always need to go to the app switcher to go the Settings from the Unified Interface, you need to do the following –

Once you are in the Unified Interface, click on the Gear icon next to the help icon on top-right corner as shown below and click Advanced Settings –

advancedsettings

 

Right on the next tab, Settings with the classic UI is shown –
fullsettings

And there’s nothing else on that SiteMap.

 

And that’s it! 🙂

 

D365 Quick Tip: Why BPF wouldn’t appear in D365 Unified Interface?

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Got stuck trying to figure out why the Business Process Flow you created/modified couldn’t be seen in the Unified Interface?

Like I have this BPF called ‘Onboarding Process’

actualprocess

But when I look at the form on the Sales Hub, it won’t show up
blankrec

 

And when I Switch Process and try to apply, it won’t apply either
applying

Where could we check to make sure it appears –

  1. Whether it was Activated.
  2. Whether it was corrected ordered in the Order Process Flow
  3. Logged in user had correct privileges to access it.
  4. Even trying to switch to the process won’t make it appear!

and so on.

But there’s one thing that needs attention when

App Designer is the answer

The reason is the App Designer for the Unified Interface app you are in.

  1. In this case, the Sales Hub app.
    Open the Sales Hub app and look for Business Process Flows section and expand it.
    missingprocess
  2. On the right hand pane, find your BPF and add it in the App Designer
    foundprocess
  3. Once you added, it should appear in the included BPFs. Save and Publish once confirmed
    added

BPF is now applied

Now, your BPF is finally added and you can work on it.
appeared

Hope this helped! 🙂