by The CRM Chap | 14th July 2019 | Analytics, Databases, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server, Transact-SQL (T-SQL) | 0 Comments

When you are amid a pesky IT issue, it can be difficult determining whether the problem is down to a bug/system fault or human error. Like this recent example involving Azure Data Factory illustrates, it is generally best to assume the latter, to avoid any prolonged difficulty.

by The CRM Chap | 7th July 2019 | Windows Server | 0 Comments

Sometimes in IT, you can hit a brick wall when working with something outside of your comfort zone. When this occurs within a personal testing environment, then it also means that resolving errors, such as IP address assignment for the Windows Server Routing and Remote Access service, can be somewhat challenging…

by The CRM Chap | 30th June 2019 | Microsoft Azure, Power BI, Power Platform, Web | 0 Comments

The ability to consume Application Insights data from directly within Power BI is an excellent feature in what is already a pretty outstanding product. However, there will likely be some steps that you have to follow to ensure that your reporting solution is secured, using an appropriately privileged API key.

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 | Analytics, Common Data Service, Customer Engagement, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Azure, 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...