D365UG/CRMUG Manchester (NW UK) Chapter Meeting – 20th June 2018

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I was very honoured and excited to be involved with the very first D365UG/CRMUG North West Chapter Meeting earlier this week, hosted at the Grindsmith just off Deansgate in Manchester. This is the first time that a D365UG/CRMUG event has taken place in the North West, and we were absolutely stunned by the level of interest this event generated – all in all, 37 people attended, representing a broad spectrum of Microsoft partners and organisations of varying sizes.

I very much got the impression that the amount of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (D365CE) users in the North West far exceed any number you could assume, and I am really looking forward to seeing how future events develop as we (hopefully!) get more people involved. Despite a few technical glitches with the AV facilities, the feedback we have received to both presentations has been overwhelmingly positive, so a huge thanks to everyone who turned up and to our presenters for the evening

In this post, I wanted to share my thoughts on both sets of presentations, provide an answer to some of the questions that we didn’t get around to due to time constraints and, finally, provide a link to the slide deck from the evening.

Transform Group – The Patient Journey

The first talk of the evening was provided courtesy of Bill Egan at Edgewater Fullscope, who took us through Transform Group’s adoption of D365CE. Bill provided some really useful insights – from both an organisation and a Microsoft partner’s perspective – of the challenges that any business can face when moving across to a system like D365CE. As with any IT project, there were some major hurdles along the way, but Bill very much demonstrated how the business was able to roll with the punches and the very optimistic 16 weeks planned deployment presents an, arguably, essential blueprint in how IT projects need to be executed; namely, targeted towards delivering as much business benefit in a near immediate timeframe.

The key takeaways from me out of all this was in emphasising the importance of adapting projects quickly to changing business priorities and to recognise the continued effort required to ensure that business systems are regularly reviewed and updated to suit the requirements of not just the users, but the wider business.

Power Up Your Power Apps

The second presentation was literally a “head to head” challenge with Craig Bird from Microsoft and Chris “The Tattooed CRM Guy” Huntingford from Hitachi Solutions, seeing who could build the best PowerApps. In the end, the voting was pretty unanimous and Craig was the proud recipient of a prize worthy of a champion. I hope Craig will be wearing his belt proudly at future events 🙂

I found the presentation particularly useful in clearing up a number of worries I had around the Common Data Service and the future of D365CE. The changes that I saw are very much emphasised towards providing a needed facelift to the current customisation and configuration experience within D365CE, with little requirement to factor in migration and extensive learning of new tools to ensure that your D365CE entities are available within the Common Data Service. Everything “just works” and syncs across flawlessly.

https://twitter.com/joejgriffin/status/1009531079492079622

In terms of who had the best app, I think Craig literally knocked the socks off everyone with his translator application. Although I include myself in this category, I was still surprised to see that PowerApps supports Power BI embedded content, courtesy of Chris – a really nice thing to take away for any aspirational PowerApp developer.

Questions & Answers

We managed to get around to most questions for the first presentation but not for the second one. Here’s a list of all the questions that I am able to provide an answer to. I’m still in the process of collating together responses to the other questions received, so please keep checking back if you’re burning question is not answered below:

Presentation

For those who missed the event or are wanting to view the slides without a purple tinge, they will be downloadable for the next 30 days from the following location:

https://jamesgriffin-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/joe_griffin_gb_net/EbRAws0urypMkrGyqCzoTdMB4ggjUQI4_npQlEZAYhea4w?e=U3lvf5

Looking Ahead

The next chapter meeting is scheduled to take place on the 2nd of October (venue TBC). If you are interested in getting involved, either through giving a presentation or in helping to organise the event, then please let us know by dropping us a message:

  • Email: crmuguknw@gmail.com
  • Twitter: @CRMUG_UK_NW

Dynamically Changing Names: Understanding Dynamics 365 Terminology

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Back only a few years ago, when events such as a reality TV star becoming President of the USA were the stuff of fantasy fiction, Microsoft had a somewhat niche Customer Relationship Management system called Dynamics CRM. Indeed, the very name of this blog still attests to this fact. The “CRM” acronym provides a succinct mechanism for describing the purposes of the system without necessarily confusing people straight out of the gate. For the majority of its lifespan, “CRM” very accurately summarised what the core system was about – namely, a sales and case management system to help manage customer relations.

Along the way, Microsoft acquired a number of organisations and products that offered functionality that, when bolted onto Dynamics CRM, greatly enhanced the application as a whole. I have discussed a number of these previously on the blog, so I don’t propose to retread old ground. However, some notable exceptions from this original list include:

Suffice to say, by the start of 2016, the range of functionality available within Dynamics CRM was growing each month and – perhaps more crucially – there was no clear mechanism in place from a billing perspective for each new solution offered. Instead, if you had a Dynamics CRM Professional license, guess what? All of the above and more was available to you at no additional cost.

Taking this and other factors into account, the announcement in mid-2016 of the transition towards Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be seen as a welcome recognition of the new state of play and the ushering in of Dynamics CRM out of the cold to stand proud amongst the other, major Microsoft product offerings. Here’s a link to the original announcement:

Insights from the Engineering Leaders behind Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource

The thinking behind the move was completely understandable. Dynamics CRM could no longer be accurately termed as such, as the core application was almost unrecognisable from its 2011 version. Since then, there has been a plethora of additional announcements and changes to how Dynamics 365 in the context of CRM is referred to in the wider offering. The road has been…rocky, to the say the least. Whilst this can be reasonably expected with such a seismic shift, it nevertheless does present some challenges when talking about the application to end users and customers. To emphasise this fact, let’s take a look at some of the “bumps” in the road and my thoughts on why this is still an ongoing concern.

Dynamics 365 for Enterprise and Business

The above announcement did not go into greater detail about how the specific Dynamics 365 offerings would be tailored. One of the advantages of the other offerings within the Office 365 range of products is the separation of business and enterprise plans. These typically allow for a reduced total cost of ownership for organisations under a particular size within an Office 365 plan, typically with an Enterprise version of the same plan available with (almost) complete feature parity, but with no seat limits. With this in mind, it makes sense that the initial detail in late 2016 confirmed the introduction of business and enterprise Dynamics 365 plans. As part of this, the CRM aspect of the offering would have sat firmly within the Enterprise plan, with – you guessed it – Enterprise pricing to match. The following article from encore at the time provides a nice breakdown of each offering and the envisioned target audience for each. Thus, we saw the introduction of Dynamics 365 for Enterprise as a replacement term for Dynamics CRM.

Perhaps understandably, when many businesses – typically used to paying £40-£50 per seat for their equivalent Dynamics CRM licenses – discovered that they would have to move to Enterprise plans and pricing significantly in excess of what they were paying, there were some heads turned. Microsoft Partners also raised a number of concerns with the strategy, which is why it was announced that the Business edition and Enterprise edition labels were being dropped. Microsoft stated that they would:

…focus on enabling any organization to choose from different price points for each line of business application, based on the level of capabilities and capacity they need to meet their specific needs. For example, in Spring 2018, Dynamics 365 for Sales will offer additional price point(s) with different level(s) of functionality.

The expressed desire to enable organisations to “choose” what they want goes back to what I mentioned at the start of this post – providing a billing/pricing mechanism that would support the modular nature of the late Dynamics CRM product. Its introduction as a concept at this stage comes a little late in the whole conversation regarding Dynamics 365 and represents an important turning point in defining the vision for the product. Whether this took feedback from partners/customers or an internal realisation to bring this about, I’m not sure. But it’s arrival represents the maturity in thinking concerning the wider Dynamics 365 offering.

Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement

Following the retirement of the Business/Enterprise monikers and, in a clear attempt to simplify and highlight the CRM aspect of Dynamics 365, the term Customer Engagement started to pop-up across various online support and informational posts. I cannot seem to locate a specific announcement concerning the introduction of this wording, but its genesis appears to be early or mid-2017. The problem is that I don’t think there is 100% certainty yet on how the exact phrasing of this terminology should be used.

The best way to emphasise the inconsistency is to look to some examples. The first is derived from the name of several courses currently available on the Dynamics Learning Portal, published this year:

Now, take a look at the title and for the following Microsoft Docs article on impending changes to the application:

Notice it yet? There seems to be some confusion about whether for should be used when referring to the Customer Engagement product. Whilst the majority of articles I have found online seem to suggest that Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is the correct option, again, I cannot point to a definitive source that states without question the correct phraseology that should be used. Regardless, we can see here the birth of the Customer Engagement naming convention, which I would argue is a positive step forward.

The Present Day: Customer Engagement and it’s 1:N Relationships

Rather handily, Customer Engagement takes us straight through to the present. Today, when you go to the pricing website for Dynamics 365, the following handy chart is presented that helps to simplify all of the various options available across the Dynamics 365 range:

This also indirectly confirms a few things for us:

  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and not Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement looks to be the approved terminology when referring to what was previously Dynamics CRM.
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the overarching name for all modules that form a part of the overall offering. It has, by the looks of things, replaced the original Dynamics 365 for Enterprise designation.
  • The business offering – now known as Dynamics 365 Business Central – is in effect a completely separate offering from Microsoft Dynamics 365.

When rolled together, all of this goes a long way towards providing the guidance needed to correctly refer to the whole, or constituent parts, of the entire Dynamics 365 offering.

With that being said, can it be reliably said that the naming “crisis” has ended?

My key concern through all of this is a confusing and conflicting message being communicated to customers interested in adopting the system, to the potential end result of driving them away to competitor systems. This appears to have been the case for about 1-2 years since the original Dynamics 365 announcement, and a large part of this can perhaps be explained by the insane acquisition drive in 2015/6. Now, with everything appearing to slot together nicely and the pricing platform in place to support each Dynamics 365 “module” and the overall offering, I would hope that any further change in this area is minimal. As highlighted above though, there is still some confusion about the correct replacement terminology for Dynamics CRM – is it Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement or Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement? Answers on a postcode, please!

Another factor to consider amongst all of this is that naming will constantly be an issue should Microsoft go through another cycle of acquisitions focused towards enhancing the Dynamics 365 offering. Microsoft’s recent acquisition plays appear to be more focused towards providing cost optimization services for Azure and other cloud-based tools, so it can be argued that a period of calm can be expected when it comes to incorporating acquired ISV solutions into the Dynamics 365 product range.

I’d be interested to hear from others on this subject, so please leave a comment below if you have your own thoughts on the interesting journey from Dynamics CRM to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

Importing/Exporting Subject Records between Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Environments

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After going through a few separate development cycles involving Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (D365CE), you begin to get a good grasp of the type of tasks that need to be followed through each time. Most of these are what you may expect – such as importing an unmanaged/managed solution into a production environment – but others can differ depending on the type of deployment. What ultimately emerges as part of this is the understanding that there are certain configuration settings and records that are not included as part of a Solution file and which must be migrated across to different environments in an alternate manner.

The application has many record types that fit under this category, such as Product or Product Price List. When it comes to migrating these record types into a Production environment, those out there who are strictly familiar with working inside the application only may choose to utilise the Advanced Find facility in the following manner:

  • Generate a query to return all of the records that require migration, ensuring all required fields are returned.
  • Export out the records into an Excel Spreadsheet
  • Import the above spreadsheet into your target environment via the Data Import wizard.

And there would be nothing wrong with doing things this way, particularly if your skillset sits more within a functional, as opposed to technical, standpoint. Where you may come unstuck with this approach is if you have a requirement to migrate Subject record types across environments. Whilst a sensible (albeit time-consuming) approach to this requirement could be to simply create them from scratch in your target environment, you may fall foul of this method if you are utilising Workflows or Business Rules that reference Subject values. When this occurs, the application looks for the underlying Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) of the Subject record, as opposed to the Display Name. If a record with this exact GUID value does not exist within your target environment, then your processes will error and fail to activate. Taking this into account, should you then choose to follow the sequence of tasks above involving Advanced Find, your immediate stumbling block will become apparent, as highlighted below:

As you can see, there is no option to select the Subject entity for querying, compounding any attempts to get them exported out of the application. Fortunately, there is a way to get overcome this via the Configuration Migration tool. This has traditionally been bundled together as part of the applications Solution Developer Kit (SDK). The latest version of the SDK for 8.2 of the application can be downloaded from Microsoft directly, but newer versions – to your delight or chagrin – are only available via NuGet. For those who are unfamiliar with using this, you can download version 9.0.2.3 of the Configuration Migration tool alone using the link below:

Microsoft.CrmSdk.XrmTooling.ConfigurationMigration.Wpf.9.0.2.3

With everything downloaded and ready to go, the steps involved in migrating Subject records between different D365CE environments are as follows:

  1. The first step before any export can take place is to define a Schema – basically, a description of the record types and fields you wish to export. Once defined, schemas can be re-used for future export/import jobs, so it is definitely worth spending some time defining all of the record types that will require migration between environments. Select Create schema on the CRM Configuration Migration screen and press Continue.

  1. Login to D365CE using the credentials and details for your specific environment.

  1. After logging in and reading your environment metadata, you then have the option of selecting the Solution and Entities to export. A useful aspect to all of this is that you have the ability to define which entity fields you want to utilise with the schema and you can accommodate multiple Entities within the profile. For this example, we only want to export out the Subject entity, so select the Default Solution, the entity in question and hit the Add Entity > button. Your window should resemble the below if done correctly:

  1. With the schema fully defined, you can now save the configuration onto your local PC. After successfully exporting the profile, you will be asked whether you wish to export the data from the instance you are connected to. Hit Yes to proceed.

  1. At this point, all you need to do is define the Save to data file location, which is where a .zip file containing all exported record data will be saved. Once decided, press the Export Data button. This can take some time depending on the number of records being processed. The window should update to resemble the below once the export has successfully completed. Select the Exit button when you are finished to return to the home screen.

  1. You have two options at this stage – either you can either exit the application entirely or, if you have your target import environment ready, select the Import data and Continue buttons, signing in as required.

  1. All that remains is to select the .zip file created in step 5), press the Import Data button, sit back and confirm that all record data imports successfully.

It’s worth noting that this import process works similarly to how the in-application Import Wizard operates with regards to record conflicts; namely, if a record with the same GUID value exists in the target instance, then the above import will overwrite the record data accordingly. This can be helpful, as it means that changes to records such as the Subject entity can be completed safely within a development context and promoted accordingly to new environments.

The Configuration Migration tool is incredibly handy to have available but is perhaps not one that it is shouted from the rooftops that often. It’s usefulness not just extends to the Subject entity, but also when working with the other entity types discussed at the start of this post. Granted, if you do not find yourself working much with Processes that reference these so-called “configuration” records, then introducing the above step as part of any release management process could prove to be an unnecessary administrative burden. Regardless, there is at least some merit to factor in the above tool as part of an initial release of a D365CE solution to ensure that all development-side configuration is quickly and easily moved across to your production environment.

Override the Modified On Field Value When Reassigning Resolved Cases (Dynamics 365 for Customer Service)

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Typically, when working with Dynamics 365 for Customer Service entities, you expect a certain type of behaviour. A good example of this in practice is entity record activation and the differences between Active and Inactive record types. In simple terms, you are generally restricted in the actions that can be performed against an Inactive record, most commonly being the modification of a field value. You can, however, perform actions such as deleting and reassigning records to other users in the application. The latter of these can be particularly useful if, for example, an individual leaves a business and you need to ensure that another employee requires access to old, inactive records.

When it comes to reporting on time intervals for when a record was last changed, I often – rightly or wrongly – see the Modified On field used for this purpose. This, essentially, stores the date and time of when the record was…well…last modified in the system! Since only more recent changes to the application have facilitated an alternative approach in reporting a record’s age and its current stage within a process, it is perhaps understandable why this field is often chosen when attempting to report, for example, the date on which a record was moved to Inactive status. Where you may encounter issues with this is if you a working in a similar situation highlighted above – namely, an individual leaving a business – and you need to reassign all of the inactive records owned by them. Doing either of these steps will immediately update the Modified On value to the current date and time, skewering any dependent reporting.

Fortunately, there is a way of getting around this, if you don’t have any qualms about opening up Visual Studio and putting together a plug-in in C#. Via this route, you can prevent the Modified On value of a record from being updated by capturing the original value and forcing the platform to commit this value to the database during the Pre-Operation stage of the transaction, as opposed to the date and time of when the record is reassigned. In fact, using this method, you can set the Modified On value to be whatever you want. Here’s the code that illustrates how to achieve both scenarios:

using System;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;

namespace Sample.OverrideCaseModifiedDate
{
    public class PreOpCaseAssignOverrideModifiedDate : IPlugin
    {
        public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
        {
            //Obtain the execution context from the service provider.

            IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));

            //Extract the tracing service for use in debugging sandboxed plug-ins

            ITracingService tracingService = (ITracingService)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(ITracingService));

            tracingService.Trace("Tracing implemented successfully!");

            if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") && context.InputParameters["Target"] is Entity)

            {
                Entity incident = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];
                Entity preIncident = context.PreEntityImages["preincident"];

                //At this stage, you can either get the previous Modified On date value via the Pre Entity Image and set the value accordingly...

                incident["modifiedon"] = preIncident.GetAttributeValue<DateTime>("modifiedon");

                //Or alternatively, set it to whatever you want - in this example, we get the Pre Entity Image createdon value, add on an hour and then set the value

                DateTime createdOn = preIncident.GetAttributeValue<DateTime>("createdon");
                TimeSpan time = new TimeSpan(1, 0, 0);
                DateTime newModifiedOn = createdOn.Add(time);
                incident["modifiedon"] = newModifiedOn;

            }
        }
    }
}

When deploying out your plug-in code to the application (something that I hope regular readers of the blog will be familiar with), make sure that the settings you configure for your Step and the all-important Entity image resemble the images below:

Now, the more eagle-eyed readers may notice that the step is configured on the Update as opposed to the Assign message, which is what you (and, indeed, I when I first started out with this) may expect. Unfortunately, because the Input Parameters of the Assign message only returns two Entity Reference objects – the incident (Case) and systemuser (User) entities, respectively – as opposed to an Entity object for the incident entity, we have no means of interfering with the underlying database transaction to override the required field values. The Update message does not suffer from this issue and, by scoping the plug-in’s execution to the ownerid field only, we can ensure that it will only ever trigger when a record is reassigned.

With the above plug-in configured, you have the flexibility of re-assigning your Case records without updating the Modified On field value in the process or expanding this further to suit whatever business requirement is needed. In theory, as well, the approach used in this example could also be applied to other what we may term “system defined fields”, such as the Created On field. Hopefully, this post may prove some assistance if you find yourself having to tinker around with inactive Case records in the future.

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Deep Dive: Creating a Basic Custom Workflow Assembly

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This is an accompanying blog post to my YouTube video Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Deep Dive: Creating a Basic Custom Workflow Assembly. The video is part of my tutorial series on how to accomplish developer focused tasks within Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. You can watch the video in full below:

Below you will find links to access some of the resources discussed as part of the video and to further reading topics:

PowerPoint Presentation (click here to download)

Full Code Sample

using System;
using System.Activities;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query;

namespace D365.SampleCWA
{
    public class CWA_CopyQuote : CodeActivity
    {
        protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
        {
            IWorkflowContext c = context.GetExtension<IWorkflowContext>();

            IOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory = context.GetExtension<IOrganizationServiceFactory>();
            IOrganizationService service = serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(c.UserId);

            ITracingService tracing = context.GetExtension<ITracingService>();

            tracing.Trace("Tracing implemented successfully!", new Object());

            Guid quoteID = c.PrimaryEntityId;

            Entity quote = service.Retrieve("quote", quoteID, new ColumnSet("freightamount", "discountamount", "discountpercentage", "name", "pricelevelid", "customerid", "description"));

            quote.Id = Guid.Empty;
            quote.Attributes.Remove("quoteid");

            quote.Attributes["name"] = "Copy of " + quote.GetAttributeValue<string>("name");
            Guid newQuoteID = service.Create(quote);

            EntityCollection quoteProducts = RetrieveRelatedQuoteProducts(service, quoteID);
            EntityCollection notes = RetrieveRelatedNotes(service, quoteID);

            tracing.Trace(quoteProducts.TotalRecordCount.ToString() + " Quote Product records returned.", new Object());

            foreach (Entity product in quoteProducts.Entities)
            {
                product.Id = Guid.Empty;
                product.Attributes.Remove("quotedetailid");
                product.Attributes["quoteid"] = new EntityReference("quote", newQuoteID);
                service.Create(product);
            }
            foreach (Entity note in notes.Entities)
            {
                note.Id = Guid.Empty;
                note.Attributes.Remove("annotationid");
                note.Attributes["objectid"] = new EntityReference("quote", newQuoteID);
                service.Create(note);
            }
        }

        [Input("Quote Record to Copy")]
        [ReferenceTarget("quote")]

        public InArgument<EntityReference> QuoteReference { get; set; }
        private static EntityCollection RetrieveRelatedQuoteProducts(IOrganizationService service, Guid quoteID)
        {
            QueryExpression query = new QueryExpression("quotedetail");
            query.ColumnSet.AllColumns = true;
            query.Criteria.AddCondition("quoteid", ConditionOperator.Equal, quoteID);
            query.PageInfo.ReturnTotalRecordCount = true;

            return service.RetrieveMultiple(query);
        }
        private static EntityCollection RetrieveRelatedNotes(IOrganizationService service, Guid objectID)
        {
            QueryExpression query = new QueryExpression("annotation");
            query.ColumnSet.AllColumns = true;
            query.Criteria.AddCondition("objectid", ConditionOperator.Equal, objectID);
            query.PageInfo.ReturnTotalRecordCount = true;

            return service.RetrieveMultiple(query);
        }
    }
}

Download/Resource Links

Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition

Setup a free 30 day trial of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

C# Guide (Microsoft Docs)

Source Code Management Solutions

Further Reading

Microsoft Docs – Create a custom workflow activity

MSDN – Register and use a custom workflow activity assembly

MSDN – Update a custom workflow activity using assembly versioning (This topic wasn’t covered as part of the video, but I would recommend reading this article if you are developing an ISV solution involving custom workflow assemblies)

MSDN – Sample: Create a custom workflow activity

You can also check out some of my previous blog posts relating to Workflows:

  • Implementing Tracing in your CRM Plug-ins – We saw as part of the video how to utilise tracing, but this post goes into more detail about the subject, as well as providing instructions on how to enable the feature within the application (in case you are wondering why nothing is being written to the trace log 🙂 ). All code examples are for Plug-ins, but they can easily be repurposed to work with a custom workflow assembly instead.
  • Obtaining the User who executed a Workflow in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement (C# Workflow Activity) – You may have a requirement to trigger certain actions within the application, based on the user who executed a Workflow. This post walks through how to achieve this utilising a custom workflow assembly.

If you have found the above video useful and are itching to learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement development, then be sure to take a look at my previous videos/blog posts using the links below:

Have a question or an issue when working through the code samples? Be sure to leave a comment below or contact me directly, and I will do my best to help. Thanks for reading and watching!