Dynamics Pickwick Papers

We were at the CRMUG Summit Nashville last week as a proud Gold Sponsor, and it was an amazing experience!

This year’s Summit was even bigger and better than before;

• This year’s Expo Hall was the largest in Summit history!
• With over 1,000 Pre-Conference Academy registrations and 100+ Pre-Conference Academy Training Classes, it was a fantastic learning experience.
• This year training was expanded to include all leaders in the community with Community Leader Development Training.
• Nearly 1,000 Microsoft Dynamics Partners gathered for the Summit Partner Exchange making it the largest ever Partner focused event at Summit.
• Summit offered its first ever Executive Program in the U.S with 100+ executives and 20+ sessions focused on best practices and innovative ideas for leading your company in the age of digital transformation.
• D365UG/CRMUG Opening Session + Microsoft Roadmap with Param Kahlon.
• Summit attendees also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the conference and their most prominent contributors in the community. Congratulations to the 2017 All-Star Award recipients.
• The 3rd annual Member Marketplace, located in the Expo Hall, proudly featured the diverse industries, products, and ideas represented among user group members.
• With the goal to together as a community, raise $5,000 and package 50,000 meals over three days during the conference, Rise Against Hunger was an amazing way to practice servanthood and leave a positive impact in Nashville!

We would like to thank everyone who visited and interacted with us at our booth and special thanks to the CRMUG Summit team for delivering an exceptional experience. Our teamwork paid off and was reflected through the visitors’ interest in our innovative apps and globally acclaimed services for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.

We also presented a Partner Solutions Showcase on how integrating Maps with Dynamics CRM can enable organizations to enrich their business data and unveil hidden location insights for powerful Map Visualizations, Geo-analytics, Routing, Appointment Planning, Territory Management and more. Our Partner, StratusLive joined us in the session and explained the use cases and impact of Maplytics for Non-Profits.

Learn more about Maplytics Partners or drop us a mail on crm@inogic.com to become a Maplytics Partner

The response we received for the session was phenomenal and is a motivation for us to keep innovating and improving Maplytics!

Not just Maplytics, our array of innovative solutions for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement including InoLink: QuickBooks, User Adoption Monitor, Click2Clone, and Click2Export was also very well received and allowed visitors to understand how innovation and automation can not only save time but also help them to achieve the ROI they want!

In a nutshell, CRMUG Summit Nashville was an incredible experience for us, and we would highly recommend everyone to attend the future Summits!

We are looking forward to our next adventure in D365UG/CRMUG Summit 2018 Phoenix, AZ

Meanwhile, you can reach us on crm@inogic.com to discuss and understand how our solutions and services can help you to get the most out of your Dynamics 365 implementation!

Download and try our Apps for Dynamics 365 from the Website or Microsoft AppSource!

from Microsoft Dynamics 365(CRM) Tips and Tricks http://bit.ly/2yrzC91
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Introduction:

We can easily configure CRM entity form in Dynamics 365 Portal by creating an Entity Form. However, by using Entity Forms, we can only edit or create the fields on the Portal, we cannot add/edit records in the Sub Grid.

To add/edit both the fields and the Sub Grids that are present on the CRM forms, we need to perform some additional configuration, i.e., Sub Grid Metadata Configuration.

Steps to configure Sub Grid from Dynamics CRM forms in Dynamics 365 Portal:

Recently, we had a business requirement where we wanted to show Opportunity form that includes customer Contacts sub grid from the Opportunity entity and we wanted to create new customer records or update the existing records in the Sub Grid.

1. To achieve this, first we have to create the Entity form for the Opportunity entity record as seen in the screenshot below;

2. Then we need to add the Entity Form Metadata to allow the sub grid to create or edit the records as shown in the screenshot below;

3. While creating the entity form metadata, first we have to select the metadata Type (Attribute, Notes, Section, Subgrid, Tab or Timeline).

Here we are required to create the Sub Grid Metadata, so we need to select the View Actions as Create to add the option for creating records in Sub Grid or for updating the records in Sub Grid.

Then we have to select the Target Type as Entity Form, Webpage or URL as per our requirement. Then we need to select the Entity Form that we want to show when we click on the Create/Edit button of the Sub Grid.

We can also set the Button Label as shown in the screenshot below;

4. Once we follow the above steps, we can see the Sub Grid with the Create and Update options as shown in the screenshot below;

Hope this helps!

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Introduction:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows the user to customize the formatting of Number, Currency, Date and Time datatype fields that are used on Entity Forms (For example, Annual Revenue field on the Account entity form).

Formatting the Number and Currency datatype fields:

The user can format the datatype fields by simply navigating to Settings > Options > Formats > Customize and set the required values for the datatypes.

After this, all the fields will be formatted based on the values selected in the ‘Format’ tab for Number, Currency fields on the entity form.

So based on the values selected in the above screenshot, the Annual Revenue (Currency) & No. of Employees (Number) fields on the Account entity form would look like the screenshot below;

The formatting will be reflected on all the fields of the entities in Dynamics CRM.

Reading ‘Set Personal Options’ user settings and applying it on Number and Currency Datatype Fields:

Recently, we had a business requirement to show a ‘Sum’ button that on clicking would pop an ‘HTML Card’ with sum of the ‘Annual Revenue’ for all the records fulfilling certain criteria.

However, as seen from the above screenshot, the formatting we applied (Decimal Symbol & Digit Grouping Symbol) for ‘Annual Revenue’ and ‘No. of Employees’ was not reflected on the card.

So, we found a workaround, where we read the user’s ‘Set Personal Options’ setting and dynamically apply it on our HTML Card.

Now, when the user changes the ‘Set Personal Options’ setting, the formatting pattern would be reflected on the fields just like it would reflect on the fields (Annual Revenue & No. of Employees) available on the entity form.

To achieve this we need to follow the steps mentioned below:

We need to include all the attributes that we want to retrieve from ‘User Settings’ entity in our FetchXML.

In our case, we included the following attributes;

• currencysymbol
• numberseparator
• decimalsymbol

function readUserDateFormat ()
 {
    var functionName = "readUserDateFormat ";
    var fetchxml = "";
    var results = null;
    var currentUser = Xrm.Page.context.getUserId();
    var userID = currentUser.replace("{", "").replace("}", "");
   

        //generate the fetchxml
        fetchxml = "<fetch version='1.0' output-format='xml-platform' mapping='logical' 		distinct='false'>";
        fetchxml += "<entity name='usersettings'>";
        fetchxml += "<attribute name='dateformatstring' />";
        fetchxml += "<attribute name='dateseparator' />";
        fetchxml += "<attribute name='uilanguageid' />";
        fetchxml += "<attribute name='decimalsymbol' />";
        fetchxml += "<attribute name='numberseparator' />";
        fetchxml += "<attribute name='currencysymbol' />";
        fetchxml += "<filter>";
        fetchxml += "<condition attribute='systemuserid' operator='eq' value='" + userID + "' />";
        fetchxml += "</filter>";
        fetchxml += "</entity></fetch>";
        
}

Once we execute the above FetchXML using Web API, we get the following result;

In the above result response, we can see that by querying ‘User Settings’ entity with the attributes (currencysymbol, numberseparator, decimalsymbol), we get the values set for those attributes using ‘Set Personal Options’ by that particular user.

Once we retrieve the user settings, we can modify our code to use these values and format the Number & Currency fields.

Now our HTML Card would look like the screenshot below;

Conclusion:

We can use the ‘User Settings’ entity along with the attribute names to retrieve the personalization settings configured by the user and display consistent formatting throughout Dynamics CRM.

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Introduction:

Pre-filtering is one of the most important and useful features of reports in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Pre-filtering allows filtering of the report data using the Advance Find functionality and enables users to create context-sensitive reports and return more relevant data.

Pre-filtering passes the set of selected record or a specific record (such as Quote) for which the report is being run in such a way that the report is executed and the data is pulled from the context of the current (or selected) record.

Working of Report Pre-Filtering for related entities using Fetch XML:

Pre-filtering can also be applied to related entities.

In the below screenshot, we are retrieving Opportunity and have applied pre-filtering for both Opportunity and Account.

For example, we have created two Opportunities for respective Accounts, and when we execute the report (using the above Fetch XML) for records from both the entities, we get the same result as shown in the screenshot below;

We also created an additional Opportunity and Account that are not related and hence they were not displayed in the report result.

Note: Pre-filtering does not work for outer join, and the result will be displayed differently for the same report discussed above.

Now after adding an outer join to the Account with Opportunity, the pre-filtering won’t work for Account.

When the report is executed for selected accounts, it will display all opportunities (and would not consider the selected Accounts) as seen in the screenshot below;

When the report is executed for selected opportunities, it will display all the selected opportunities as shown in the screenshot below;

Hope this helps!

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Introduction:

Organizations use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Portals as a hub for making relevant information available to the users at the right time. Many organizations need their portal users to attach documents that get stored in CRM but can be easily accessed from the portal for effortless information flow.

Steps to attach documents from Microsoft Portal:

1. To view the notes area on the portal, we need to have the notes area present in the Dynamics 365 form that is used in the portal’s Entity form.As seen in the above screenshot, we have a custom CRM form ‘Portal Web Form’  where the notes area is present in the ‘tab_Docs’ tab to attach notes for the logged in portal user contact.

While configuring the CRM form and adding notes in the section, select Notes in the Default Tab section as shown in the screenshot below;

Note: By default, the Tab is set to Activities.

This will just show the notes section on the portal. To be able to attach Notes from the portal, further customization of Entity Form is needed.

If you scroll down on the ‘NotesAttachment’ Entity Form (shown in the first screenshot) you will find a section named ‘Add Attach File’ as shown in the screenshot below;

The options available are as follows:

a. Attach File: This allows the user to attach documents from the portal as shown below;

b. Attach File Save Option: Choosing this as ‘Notes’ allows the user to attach the documents as an attachment to the Notes.

c. Allow Multiple Files: This allows the user to attach multiple documents at one go.

d. Attach File Storage Location: This allows the user to define the storage location of the attachments.

2. To view the attached documents on the portal, we need to add Entity Permission for the Notes Entity. The Web Role associated to the Portal Contact should also be associated with this Entity Permission as shown in the screenshot below;

The attached documents can be seen from the portal as shown in the screenshot below;

3. The notes are saved in CRM with the description as *WEB*. So, if we create a note in CRM with the description containing *WEB*, that note can be viewed in the portal.

Additional Customization:

Usually, on successful completion of attaching a document, we get a success message as seen in the screenshot below;

To redirect the page on successful attachment of a document, we need to change the ‘On Success Settings’ from ‘Display Success Message’ to ‘Redirect’ as shown in the screenshot below;

Set the Web Page same as the one used to show the Notes, so that on the successful attachment of the documents, the page is redirected.

Conclusion:

By following the steps mentioned above, we can easily attach documents from the Portal for later use. This functionality can be utilized by users to share documents effortlessly using Portals.

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We are ready for one of the biggest gatherings of Dynamics 365 peers, CRMUG Summit Nashville. Summit brings the Dynamics CRM community together from all over the world to interact, network, and get inspired.

As a Gold Sponsor, we will be exhibiting our flagship product, Maplytics™, which is a native Map Visualization, Routing & Geo-analytics app for Dynamics 365. We will also showcase our other innovations including InoLink (QuickBooks + CRM), Click2Export, Click2Clone and User Adoption Monitor throughout the conference at Booth # 724.

We invite you to stop by our booth or schedule a meeting with our team for a walkthrough of our solutions and to learn how our experience as a leading Outsourcing and Off-shore Development Partner with unrivaled practical knowledge and expertise in development, integration, and implementation of Dynamics 365 can help you to kick your business into high gear and achieve the ROI you want.

DON’T MISS OUR PARTNER SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE

This year at Summit, our CEO Roohi Shaikh and Business Manager, Surya Ostwal will be presenting a Partner Solutions Showcase on how businesses can benefit from the power of map visualization, routing and geo-analytics within Microsoft Dynamics 365!

Maps for CRM: Geo-Analytics, Routes, Locational Marketing & Territory Management – Powered by Maplytics™

October 11 | 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Room: Cheekwood GH

Join the session to get an in-depth demonstration of utilizing the mapping capabilities of Bing Maps within Dynamics CRM. To add this insightful session to your calendar, login & mark our session as a favorite now!

Write to us on crm@inogic.com to schedule a meeting!

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Introduction:

Field Service capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps service organizations in managing resources, work orders, inventory, customer assets, and more to improve overall resource productivity for on-site installation & maintenance services.

In this blog, we will discuss how the work order generation process can be automated out-of-the-box.

Generating Work Order in advance from Agreements:

1. To generate the work order in advance, navigate to Field Service > Administration > Field Service Setting.

Then we have the option to configure how many days in advance we need the work order to be generated by setting the value for the ‘Generate Agreement Work Order X Days in Advance’ field.

In this example, we have set the value to ‘10’  which will allow us to generate the work order ten days in advance.

2. The next step is to create a new ‘Agreement’ & ‘Agreement Booking Setup’.

On the ‘Agreement Booking Setup’, we can see that when the ‘Auto Generate Work Order’ is set as ‘Yes’ then the ‘Generate Work Order in Advance’ field is populated with the value we set in the ‘Generate Agreement Work Order X Days in Advance’ field. Now the booking dates which are ten days ahead would be processed, and work order for those booking dates would be generated.

3. In this example, we kept the recurrence pattern of the ‘Agreement Booking Setup’ as daily, and the booking dates were generated based on the start date & end date of the agreement.

So, now the booking dates are generated as per the recurrence pattern and the booking dates for the upcoming ten days are processed and ten work orders are generated, as seen in the screenshot below;

4. By following the above steps, we can easily automate the generation of work order from agreement booking setup. We also have the option to manually change the number of days for a particular account on the agreement booking setup.

Note: On the ‘Agreement Booking Setup’, if the ‘Auto Generate Work Order’ field is set as ‘No’, then the ‘Generate Work Order in Advance’ field is not visible.

So, to generate the work order manually, we need to open the booking date that needs to be processed and click on the Generate Work Order ribbon button.

Hope this helps!

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