by The CRM Chap | 23rd June 2019 | Databases, DevOps, Identity, Microsoft Azure | 0 Comments

We saw a few weeks ago how to utilise Azure Active Directory (AAD) Security Groups to manage Azure SQL database access at scale. When using this feature, you must ensure database changes are deployed out using an AAD administrator account or similar, a task which may be difficult to achieve in an Azure DevOps Pipeline.

by The CRM Chap | 16th June 2019 | Common Data Service, Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365, Dynamics CRM, Enterprise, Power Platform, Sales, Service | 0 Comments

Having the ability to straightforwardly obtain a records Globally Unique Identifier after programmatically creating it within Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement can help significantly with data integration requirements. This is a relatively easy task when working with the Web API using JScript but less so if C# is your language of choice...

by The CRM Chap | 9th June 2019 | Databases, Identity, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server, Transact-SQL (T-SQL) | 0 Comments

Azure SQL Server has long supported the ability to use Azure Active Directory user accounts to access and work with databases. What you may not know is that it is also possible to add users via membership of a security group, a feature which, I believe, is incredibly useful for managing large-scale deployments.

by The CRM Chap | 2nd June 2019 | Common Data Service, Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Flow, Power Platform | 0 Comments

The Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement/Common Data Service connector for Azure Data Factory can, in most cases, fit into your data integration needs. However, it is worth highlighting the two field types which are, specifically, not supported; namely, the Customer and Owner field types.

by The CRM Chap | 26th May 2019 | Analytics, Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Azure, Sales, Service | 0 Comments

By default, the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement connector for Azure Data Factory V2 exposes a predefined list of fields, that must have data mapped to them for any Copy Data task to complete successfully. This behaviour can be impractical depending on your particular scenario; fortunately, there is a way in which you can override this.

by The CRM Chap | 19th May 2019 | Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365, Dynamics CRM, Sales, Service | 0 Comments

Feature deprecations can often cause some degree of disruption, especially if they involve custom code. Microsoft has recently deprecated the Xrm.Page object for JScript form functions in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. Find out more about this change and what you will need to do to fix this as part of this week's blog post.

by The CRM Chap | 12th May 2019 | 2015, 2016, Analytics, Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365, Dynamics CRM, Enterprise, Microsoft Azure, Sales, Service | 0 Comments

Azure Data Factory V2 not just has 1, but three separate connectors that all claim to hook up to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement/Dynamics CRM! So which connector is the "right" one to use and what differences do they have? With a little help from Alan Partridge, we can clear up any confusion...

by The CRM Chap | 5th May 2019 | DevOps, Microsoft Azure, Visual Studio | 0 Comments

Validating your Azure templates manually can be a challenging task to complete at scale. Fortunately, with the functionality available within Azure Pipelines, this entire process can be fully automated. This post will show you just how easy it is to implement automatic validation an deployment of your Azure templates within a CI process.

by The CRM Chap | 28th April 2019 | Analytics, Microsoft Azure | 0 Comments

When working with Azure templates for the first time, there's always a risk of misconfiguring a setting. All fine when testing, until you realise you have been charged an unexpected amount on your credit card. In this post, I provide an example of this in practice when working with Stream Analytic Job resources.

by The CRM Chap | 21st April 2019 | DevOps, Microsoft Azure | 0 Comments

Working with variables within your Azure DevOps Pipeline can give you a high degree of latitude when planning your software deployments. When utilised as release variables, additional functionality is exposed, allowing you to alter the conditional flow within your pipeline dramatically. In this week's post, we'll find out how to use them in practice.