Dynamics Pickwick Papers

Applies to: Dynamics 365 for Field Service

Connected Field Service, introduced in the Fall 2016 release of Dynamics 365, combines monitoring with the Internet of Things to replace your costly break-fix service model with a more proactive “never fail” model.

With monitoring in Connected Field Service, you always know your customers’ equipment is running smoothly—and when it isn’t. If equipment fails, you’re notified right away, so you can troubleshoot the problem remotely, or send a technician to fix it, often before the customer even knows there is a problem.

Connected Field Service is designed with time-saving features that boost productivity. You can register customer assets with the Azure IoT hub, right from the Field Service app or from the mobile app. You can also manage devices by categorizing them—for example by device type, supported commands, or breakdown frequency. You can also view the live heartbeat of registered devices using Power BI.

There is also a IoT dashboard that shows alerts by customer, device, asset, and what action what taken in response to an alert.

To learn how to install and get started with Connected Field Service, see: Use Connected Field Service to remotely monitor and service customer equipment (field service).

Visit the Dynamics 365 for Field Service – User’s Guide page for more information on Field Service.

Get the latest info and links for eBooks, videos, onboarding information, how to contact support, and much more on the Help and Training site.

Developers can find information in the MSDN: Connected Field Service Developer Guide.

Manjinder Kaur
Technical Writer
Dynamics 365 team

from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Team blog http://bit.ly/2h3xXxb

Applies to: December 2016 Update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online)

Dynamics 365 (online) users have a great new way to find what they are looking for. Relevance Search brings a more Bing-like, global search experience to your mission critical business applications powered by Azure Search! You’ll get comprehensive search results quickly in a single list, sorted by relevance. System Customizers and Administrators have full control over the data that is searchable and syncing to the search index. For more information, see Configure Relevance Search for the organization.

How does it work?

When a System Administrator enables Relevance Search, data in enabled entities is fully synced to the search index and data changes begin to sync continuously. When you search for something, such as “nancy is opening a new Contoso retail store”, the search is executed against the Azure Search index. Results are returned with a match to any word in the search term, including inflectional forms of words, like “stream,” “streaming,” or “streamed”, in the base language of your Dynamics 365 application. No wildcards are required to search anywhere in the text.

There are some indirect benefits of Relevance Search as well. You’ll notice improved responsiveness over traditional Quick Find, particularly to when a wildcard was previously used. Since Azure Search is providing the results, Relevance Search can significantly reduce the overall load on your Dynamics 365 application, potentially improving the experience of your users.

What’s new?

You may be familiar with Relevance Search from the public preview in a previous update. In addition to going from preview to generally available, we are also introducing some significant new capabilities in this latest release.

• Relevance Search is available in mobile clients: During the preview, Relevance Search was only available in the web browser client. You can now use Relevance Search in the Dynamics 365 (online) client of your choice, including:
• Explore your results using Facets and Filters: It’s easier to find what you are looking for when you can narrow your search results, particularly when a simple search term may result in millions of matches depending on the size of your organization.
  • Global Facets: When you first execute a search, you can refine your results be Record type, ie entity, Owner, Created On, or Modified On:
    
  • Entity Specific Facets: When you click on a particular Record type, such as Account, you’ll see four additional facets specific to fields of that entity. In this case, Primary Contact and Industry:
    
  • End user configuration: Entity level facets are highly customizable. System Customizers can configure which fields are available for faceting using the entity’s Quick Find view. End users can also configure the facet fields that they’d like to see for every searchable entity in their Personal Options:
    

• Search within Documents in Dynamics 365: One of the best new capabilities of Relevance Search is that you can now search for text in a document stored in Dynamics 365! These include documents in a Note and Attachments on an Email or Appointment. We support several document formats, including Microsoft Office (Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, etc), PDFs, EML, HTML/XML, ZIP, and rich text format (RTF). Results of a search for “Contoso” in documents stored in Dynamics 365:
  

• Search records that have been shared to you
• Sharing records is a core concept of the Dynamics 365 security model. One key improvement from the public preview is the ability to search for records that were shared to you. We previously only supported search for records you owned directly or through your business unit or team.

• Search in Option Sets and Lookups: You can now search for text in an Option Set or Lookup field on an entity!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What about the public preview?

A: The public preview for customers on the spring 2016 online update is still ongoing. You can continue to use Relevance Search preview, but you will not see any of the new capabilities introduced in the December 2016 update until you upgrade.

Q: How do I turn this thing on?

A: Relevance Search is disabled by default.  You can enable it on in the General tab of the System Settings page:

Q: How does it work?

A: Once enabled, we perform a full sync of enabled data. System Customizer control what entities and specific fields are enabled for search. When you perform a search, we make a call to Azure Search to provide the actual results.  No costly SQL queries required!

Q: Where is it available?

A: Relevance Search is generally available worldwide to customers on the Dynamics 365 (online) release. Feel free to try it out in an online Trial Instance today! Relevance Search is NOT available to customers in our sovereign or government clouds in North America or Germany.

Please Note: Relevance Search is not available for on premise customers.  It is online only.

Q: How much is this going to cost me?

A: Relevance Search is included in all current Dynamics 365 licenses!

Q: Really? What about storage for the index? Will it impact my Dynamics 365 database?

A: Enabling Relevance Search has no impact the storage consumption, and corresponding cost, of your Dynamics 365 database.

from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Team blog http://bit.ly/2gV8wxr

The Fall 2016 release of Dynamics 365 App for Outlook includes many significant changes. This blog post describes supported clients for different app features in the context of Office Add-ins.

The first major improvement is hybrid support. Starting with the December 2016 update of Dynamics 365, you will be able to use the app if you connect Dynamics 365 (on premises) with Exchange Online, or Dynamics 365 (online) with Exchange server (on-premises). Please note that if you use Dynamics 365 (on-premises), you need to authenticate with IFD authentication.

We can’t talk about Dynamics 365 App for Outlook without mentioning Office Add-ins. Office provides the ability to extend Office clients such as Word, Excel, and Outlook using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Outlook Add-ins can display contextual information next to the Outlook item you’re viewing or composing. The server requirements for using Office Add-ins are Exchange 2013, Exchange 2016, or Exchange Online.

To take advantage of Office Add-ins on Windows desktops, you must have Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016, and Internet Explorer 11 or later must be installed (but doesn’t have to be the default browser). One of the following must be set as the default browser: Internet Explorer 11 or later, the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. If you use a Mac, you need to have Outlook for Mac and the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 11, or Microsoft Edge.

Dynamics 365 App for Outlook

You can also use Dynamics 365 App for Outlook by browsing to the mobile version of Outlook on the web. This means you can browse by using the native browser on your mobile device. The supported operating systems are iOS 8 or later, Android 4.4 KitKat or later, and Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. Note that the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook support matrix is a subset of Office support. Also, due to authentication limitations on mobile devices, we only support Dynamics 365 (online) when connected to Exchange Online.

Dynamics 365 App for Outlook running on Outlook on the web (Android device native browser)

What about composing email and creating meetings? The Office Add-in support matrix is different, based on your client, and whether you use the add-in for received email, composing email, or creating meetings. For composing email, if you want to track email before sending it, you need to have at least Exchange Server 2013 CU14. This is also true If you want to track appointments or meetings.

Mobile Outlook on the web supports composing email, but you can only track email (you can’t add templates, for example) since the mobile editor does not support HTML.

Finally, Dynamics 365 App for Outlook supports contact tracking and syncing by using the Outlook module add-in, which is supported by Exchange Server 2016 CU3 or Exchange Online and Outlook 2016 CR2.

The table below summarizes the support described in this blog. In my next blog, I’ll discuss contact tracking in Dynamics 365 App for Outlook. Stay tuned!

Ben Elad

Senior Program Manager

Microsoft Dynamics 365 team

Dynamics 365 App for Outlook support matrix

1. Outlook on the web supports IE 10, IE 11, Edge, Safari 9, Safari 10, Firefox, and Chrome.
2. Mobile Outlook on the web supports Windows 8.1, Windows 10, iOS 8, iOS 9, iOS 10, Android KitKat (4.4), Android Lollipop, Android Marshmallow, and Android Nougat.
3. Tracking email in compose mode and tracking appointments requires Exchange Server 2013 CU14 or Exchange 2016.
4. Tracking contacts is supported only on Exchange Server 2016 CU3 and Outlook 2016 16.0.6741.1000 and up
5. Adding email templates, Knowledge Management articles, and sales literature is not supported in Mobile Outlook on the web.
6. Supported only on Outlook 2016 16.0.7426.1049 and up
7. Supported only on 16.0.6741.1000 and up
8. More information:
9. Tablets are not supported at this time (coming CY2017).

• Deploy Dynamics 365 App for Outlook
• Train your users with the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook User’s Guide

from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Team blog http://bit.ly/2ho3cX2