rojythomas

Dynamics 365 - Prospect to Cash Integration

RojyThomas — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 06:15:01 GMT

Introduction Disconnected Sales (front office) and Operations (back office) systems is a problem that existed ever since business applications existed. Organizations often acquire these solutions from different software vendors and tries to stitch them together with an integration project. As time goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. In this blog I will discuss how Microsoft is providing an integrated experience with Dynamics 365, connecting the Customer Engagement Platform (CRM / front office) to the Finance & Operations (ERP / back office) systems. Prospect to Cash Pre-Requisites The following are required for you to run through the rest of the blog.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (F&O), Enterprise edition July 2017 update with Platform update 8.
Dynamics 365 Sales (CE), Enterprise Edition, version 8.2 or above.
Prospect to Cash Solution installed in CE, you can install the solution from AppSource from here
Refresh the entity list on F&O by navigating to Data Management --> Framework Parameters --> Entity Settings and by hitting "Refresh Entity List: button as below.

Setting up your connections Before we can synchronize data between CE and F&O databases, we need to setup connections that maps between these two environments. Navigate to the Business Platform Admin Center . Click on the Data Integration tab and then Connection Sets as below and create a New Connection Set. Select One Connection For CE and another for F&O as below. It is also important to map the Organizations section, for Dynamics 365 for Operations (FO) this is the Legal Entity where you would like to have the synchronization and Dynamics 365 for Sales (CE) this is the Business Unit mapping.

Business Unit in CE: Settings --> Security --> Business Units.
Legal Entity in F&O: Organization Administration --> Organizations --> Legal entities

Setting up your Projects Now that we have the connections made between CE and F&O, it is now time for us to setup synchronizations between them. Before we create the projects, review the integrations that are supported out of the box. Accounts (CE) to Customer (F&O) Create a New Project in the Business Platform Admin Center . Click on the Projects tab and continue creating a new project. Select Account (Sales to Fin and Ops) - Direct template. In the next steps, select the Connection Set and Organizations connections we created in the earlier step Click Next to create the project. Once the project is created, before we run the project a few things needs to be checked.

Click on the "Refresh Entities" icon to make sure the mapping between CE and FO tasks are correct.
The Accounts synchronization templates expects the customer group that is in the mapping exists in F&O. By default a value of 10 is being sent, so either change the value (On the Tasks mapping) to a value that you are expecting or make sure the value exists in F&O (Accounts Receivables --> Setup --> Customer groups)

Now that the project is created and mapping is done, let's run the Accounts Synchronization Project by clicking on the "Run Project" Icon. The execution history shows the status of the execution and any errors. As you can see there were 4 upserts and 6 Errors. You may review the errors by clicking on the row, in my case it was duplicate accounts that caused the 6 errors to occur. Now let's take a look at how a successful synced account look in both systems. Contacts (CE) to Contact (F&O) Now that we have Accounts synchronized, let's synchronize Contacts. Note: You may also synchronize Contacts from CE as Customers in FO through the template "Contacts to Customer (Sales to Fin and Ops) - Direct". In this example let's synchronize using "Contacts (Sales to Fin and Ops) - Direct. Run the project and review errors if any. Otherwise let's take a look at a Synchronized Contact. Products (F&O) to Products & Pricelists (CE) Before you synchronize any sales documents, synchronize the products & pricelists from F&O to CE. There are quite a few variables in play before the synchronization can run. Let's review them.

Only Released Products from F&O are synchronized.
A one time job of Product Distinct Table needs to be populated . (Product Information Management --> Periodic Tasks --> Populate distinct product table).
If you like to have the products that are integrated from F&O to be automatically published in CE check the Settings --> Administration --> System Settings --> Sales tab and make sure "Created products in active state" is marked as Yes.
Unit of Measure is crucial in the product synchronization. These values has to match or the products that references to that unit will fail. An example below
- F&O : Organization administration --> Setup --> Unit
- CE : Settings --> Product Catalog --> Unit Group --> Click on the unit group --> Units

Run the project and review errors if any. If the products are not set to publish automatically, then go into products and Publish them so they can be used in Sales Documents such as Opportunity , Orders etc. Quotes (CE) to Quotations (F&O) Before we can synchronize Quotes to F&O, check these following settings.

Go to Settings > Administration > System settings > Sales, and make sure that the following settings are used:
- The Use system prizing calculation system option is set to Yes.
- The Discount calculation method field is set to Line item
Only Active Quotes are used for synchronization.

Run the project and review errors if any. Let's review a synchronized Quote. Orders (CE) to Sales Orders (F&O)

Before we can synchronize Orders to F&O, the settings mentioned in the Quotes section above is applicable for Orders as well.
Only Active Orders are used for synchronization.

Run the project and review errors if any. Let's review a synchronized Order. Notice that the Processing Status on the Order in CE is Active Sales Orders (F&O) to Orders (CE)

Once the Sales Order is processed in F&O, the details of the Sales Order is sent back to CE. In this example we will create an Invoice for this Sales Order in F&O. This sets the status of the Sales Order from Open Order to Invoiced in F&O. Running this job will update the status of the Order to be Invoiced in CE.
Go to Sales and marketing > Periodic tasks > Calculate sales totals, and set the job to run as a batch job. Set the Calculate totals for sales orders option to Yes. This step is important, because only sales orders where sales totals are calculated will be synchronized to Sales. The frequency of the batch job should be aligned with the frequency of sales order synchronization.
Go to Settings > Security > Teams, select the relevant team, select Manage Roles, and select a role that has the desired permissions, such as System Administrator

Run the project and review errors if any. Let's review the synchronized Order Status from F&O in CE. Notice the Processing Status on the order in CE is Invoiced Invoice (F&O) to Invoices (CE) The pre-reqs for Invoices to sync to CE is taken care of the Quotes and Orders section, then you should be able to run the project without any pre-reqs. Run the project and review errors if any. Let's review the synchronized invoice in CE. Scheduling, Templates & Monitoring Jobs Now that we have gone through the solution templates / projects manually, let's look at scheduling, saving templates and monitoring the jobs. Scheduling Navigate to the Business Platform Admin Center .Click on the Data Integration tab and then click on a Project that we setup and then the Scheduling tab. You can run as frequent as every 1 minute and be alerted if there are errors or warnings. Example of the alert email below. Templates If you would like to save your settings on an existing project, you can save the projects tasks mapping, connection sets etc into a template. See below. The save templates can be viewed on the Templates tab. Monitoring Jobs Even though the admin center provides status to the jobs, there will be times you need to know more of what is happening. Here are the areas that you need to check to see what is happening with your import/export job. CE: Settings --> System Jobs F&O: System Administration --> Workspaces --> Data Management. Click on the specific job you are interested in and look for the Execution Details and the "View Execution Logs" for more details. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog on Dynamics 365 - Prospect to Cash Integration.

Practical Guide on understanding Common Data Service and PowerApps

RojyThomas — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:10:56 GMT

Over the last few months a lot was mentioned about PowerApps and Common Data Service (CDS). As I started to review the changes I felt two things. 1) There were quite a bit of architecture changes compared to previous versions of CDS / PowerApps strategy 2) Understanding these are crucial when you plan on using the apps & services going forward. Hope this blog helps you understand the latest changes in CDS and how you can leverage them within you organization. Overview : Common Data Service - Apps As you look at the following architecture slide you will notice that CDS has evolved into 2 different aspects: CDS for Apps and CDS for Analytics. In this blog we will concentrate our time on CDS for Apps as this is the solution that powers most of Powerapps ecosystem. CDS for Analytics will be used a common data store for interaction based data that can be used for marketing and other areas. In the previous version of CDS, when you create a new environment a Common Data Model (CDM) database was created. This database contained commonly used entities for a business applications. Although some basic relationship between entities were created, no rules were built in and it was difficult to scale this database model to a large enterprise which required complex business rules and security contexts. That brings us to the birth of the new version of CDS. In the new version of CDS, when you create a new environment, a new Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement instance is been provisioned behind the scenes to support your CDS environment. It is also important to note that when you create a Dynamics 365 Instance (v 9.0) through the D365 Admin Center a corresponding CDS Environment is created. Now let's take a moment on how this is being done. Creating a CDS-Apps Environment and Database

Navigate to admin.powerapps.com and create a New Environment as below.
- Trial environments: lasts for 30 days and has the option for installing sample Apps & data.
- Production environments: Created as a Production instance type without sample apps & data.

Once an environment is created an option to create a new database is presented.

Select the currency and language settings. Since I selected a trial instance, I have the option to install sample apps and data.

Review the new environment in powerapps admin center as below .

Also see a corresponding Dynamics 365 instance is created with the following settings.

If you open the Dynamics instance you will see a minimal sitemap is created for administering security, and customizations as well as the Sample apps (part of the trial instance) are created.

Now that we have created a CDS environment and database, let's take a closer look at PowerApps in the context of the new CDS. Overview: Powerapps in the new CDS Environment Previous version of CDS only supported one type of Design Mode, Canvas. Canvas Apps provided WYSIWYG type of creating apps that could connect to variety of Microsoft Assets as well as other cloud and on-premise solutions. In the new version of CDS, users have the option to design apps in 2 modes. The Canvas Apps as well as the Model Driven Apps designer modes. Model Driven Apps are Apps that exist in the Dynamics 365 instance. These apps adhere to the security, business rules that are set in the Dynamics 365 environment. Let's take a few minutes creating a Model Driven App. Creating a Model Driven App

In PowerApps switch the design model to Model-Driven as below.

Create a New App by filling in the details including the name and App URL that you want to use. Keep in mind, you can start the App with a solution that you have in the D365 instance or start from scratch. In this example I will use the Fund Raiser solution that was installed as part of the sample as a starting point.

Select the Fundraiser Solution and Sitemap

App Designer appears for additional options. If everything looks good, click on Validate and then Publish.

We have now created a PowerApp using the new CDS framework that leverages D365 as the CDM. It is also important to note that only the Canvas Apps shows up on the PowerApps Mobile Application You do need to use the web browser to access the Model Driven Apps. Let's take a look at how the App looks like on an iPad. I hope you enjoyed this blog as I discussed PowerApps and Common Data Service - Apps.

Role of PowerApps, Flow and Common Data Model in Dynamics 365

RojyThomas — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 18:50:44 GMT

October 11,2016 was a significant day for Microsoft CRM and ERP customers as Microsoft unveiled to the world the new Dynamics 365 platform. We are delivering on our promise to "Empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more". You can watch the launch video here . During the launch Microsoft Flow, Microsoft PowerApps and Common Data Model were discussed. This blog concentrates on leveraging these components in the context of Business Applications including CRM and ERP. Microsoft Flow Automating tasks is at the core of any CRM or ERP platform, but when the automation needs to happen between these applications usually technologists turns to built-in connectors / adapters, custom development. All of these solutions takes time, effort and most importantly significant investment. This is where Flow comes to the rescue. Let's take a scenario where we need to send Sales Orders from CRM to AX. (Note: This is not a representation of how Dynamics 365 will be deployed, rather it is a demonstration of Flow functionality )

Login to flow.microsoft.com (Sign up using your Office 365 account).
Create a new flow by clicking on the "Create from blank" button
Create the source flow, in this case our source is CRM. and the flow step below

Create a target flow, in this case our target in AX. The most important thing here is to understand all of the data elements from CRM (the step above) are now available to be passed to AX Sales Orders. Let's take a closer look at that. The Invoice Customer field is being passed from CRM Order to AX Sales Order Header.

Lets create a Sales Order in CRM as below

As you save the order information within CRM within few minutes you can see it process your Flow from CRM to AX, drill down on the information button to see the flow of data.

Let's review this information now in Dynamics AX. As you can see all of the information is passed through the flow to Dynamics AX from CRM .

Now let's take one step further and pass this information to the Common Data Model.

Common Data Model (CDM) CDM provides standard business entities where customers can build application on top of these entities. The standard entities expect your data model to be somewhat closer to the out of the box CRM data model. In the example we will create a new Entity called "ERP Sales Orders"

Login to https://web.powerapps.com (Sign up using your Office 365 accounts)
Click on Connections click on "New Connections" and create a "Common Data Model" connection.
Once the connections are set, you should see the Entities panel on the left navigation panel as below.

Click on the "New Entity" button and create the entity fields as follows.

Once the new entity is created, now its time for us to update the Flow that we built from CRM to AX to include CDM also. Add an additional Step to the flow to write the record to CDM.

The overall Flow should look like below and an Order being created in CRM will be passed to AX and CDM.

Now we are ready to create apps that leverage data directly from any of these three data stores. In the example below let's build a simple app that picks up the data from both CRM and CDM.

PowerApps

Download the PowerApps App from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/powerapps/9nblggh5z8f3
Login using your Office 365 credentials.
If necessary create your Connections by clicking on the left navigation to create connections to both CDM and CRM Online.
I created 3 Screens for my app, the first one to show an overview the second one to display CRM Opportunity data directly from CRM Online and third screen from the CDM from the ERP Sales Orders entity we created earlier.

[caption id="attachment_525" align="alignnone" width="211"] Landing Page[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_535" align="alignnone" width="204"] Screen 2[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_545" align="alignnone" width="226"] Screen 3[/caption]

Landing Page Properties
- They are Textboxes that have these controls. For example the Count of Open Opportunities are coming from the syntax
  - Property Text: Text(CountIf(Filter(Opportunities, !IsBlank(name)), new_flowstatus="Open"))
  - Property OnSelect: Navigate(Screen1,ScreenTransition.Fade)

Screen 1 Properties
- Its a Vertical Gallery with data elements coming from the CRM Opportuntiy data connection.

Screen 2 Properties
- Its a Vertical Gallery with data elements coming from the CDM ERP Sales Order entity data connection.

Save the App to the Cloud.
If you login to your PowerApp from any of the major application marketplaces you will see the application you published.

Project Service Automation - Overview

RojyThomas — Wed, 25 May 2016 20:57:10 GMT

In this blog we will focus on the Project Service Automation released as part of the 2016 CRM Online Spring release. We will concentrate on the user experience. I will write a separate blog on how to setup the Project Service at a later time. Even though the Project Service can be worked as an independent module within CRM it makes sense to work with Project as a related item of a Sale. A Sale would be considered working with CRM entities such as Opportunities or Quotes or Orders (Contracts). It is highly unlikely that all parts of the Project Services are worked by one individual. See below personas who might be working on a project and we will look at the different views that they are most likely to use. Account Manager An account manager can add line items into the Opportunity that are project based. When a quote is created off these Opportunities then you can see them being transferred them to the Quote Line Items. Notice that at this point the Quote Line Items have an option to be tied to a Project that already exists or you can create a new Project. I will leverage a Project that is already been setup in the system (Creating Projects covered under the Project Manager section below) As an account manager rather than creating manual Quote Line Details, you can import estimates from the projects. Click on the button "Import from project estimates" Once the quote line details are populated in the Quote line, you can also adjust the rates before going for contract. Switch over to the Chargeability view and you can do inline editing by clicking on Edit Sales Prices. At this point the Account Manager can create the Contracts and Invoice them through as they would do normally. Project Manager / Resource Manager You can start on a project from scratch or you can use an existing Project Template as a baseline to create a Project. Navigate to Project Service --> Project Templates. Notice that you create Projects from a Project Template that are already created and saved. This will transfer over the Tasks and Effort from the template. Here is a sub menu of all the items on a Project. Work Breakdown Structure - Allows you to see tasks, adjust tasks, set predecessors etc. Very similar to Microsoft Project. Project Team Members - Allows you to assign resources to teams. Select a Generic Resource and hit the Hard Book button. Hard book is one of the way's book a resource to a task. It takes into consideration a resources availability, skill sets (related to tasks). cost rates (what we incur) and sales rates (what we charge) Project Estimates - We can look at this in different perspectives Effort, Cost (price incurred) and Sales (price charged). Screenshot of the Sales view listed. Project Tracking - As you can see as resources submits their time (time entries) the project tracking is being reflected. As you can see with the green bar on the task lists. Office 365 Groups / Documents - Provides an interface to upload documents, shared group calendar, team member collaboration. Team Member The basic task a team member would want to do in the Project service would be to enter time towards a task in a project. As a team member you can navigate to Project Service --> Time Entries. You may enter the time on a calendar or a grid view. Grid View shown below. Once these times are submitted, the person who can approve time sheets can do so on the Project Service --> Project Approvals. Leadership Team (COO / Practice Director) Leadership is obviously interested in individual project performance as well as how we are performing over multiple projects. A few dashboards are given out of the box. The indivudal project performance and a Practice Manager Dashboard is shown below.

Integrating Surveys with Dynamics CRM Online

RojyThomas — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 10:16:00 GMT

Quality feedback process is important for any company. Knowing what your customers think of you is essential part of the feedback loop and allows companies to improve in every aspect of their business. In this blog I will be going over setting up the survey module within Dynamics CRM Online.

Installing the CRM Solution for Voice of the Customer

Navigate to the CRM Online Administration Center and Click on the Solutions. Highlight the Voice of the Customer solution as below and click Install.

Once the solution is installed, navigate to CRM. Settings -- Solutions and then open up the VoiceoftheCustomer solution as below.

Agree to Terms and Conditions and click on "Enable Voice of the Customer button"

You will be presented with a screen as below.

Images and Themes for the Survey

Before we start on a Survey its good to make sure the survey has the necessary images and themes. At this point you will see a new sitemap addition for the Voice of the Customer as below from the Voice of the Customer screen.

Click on Images, and create / upload a new image. First you need to save with a name and under Custom Icon you upload the actual image and submit and you should see as below

Now we are ready to create a theme. Navigate to Voice of the Customer -- Themes. Create a new theme as below. You can click on the particular sections to change out the color.

There are also additional CSS rendering options available in this screen.

New Survey Creation

Now that we have the logos and themes ready to go. We are now ready to create a survey. Navigate to Voice of the Customer -- Surveys and create a new survey.

On the main Survey form, there are a few items you can consider placing such as the Redirect URL's, Privacy URL's, Support Email etc. See screenshot below.

You can also see that I have leveraged the Theme and Logo we setup in the previous steps.

Now we are really ready to design the Survey. Switch your survey's form to the Survey Designer form.

For editing the section and questions, you have an option for editing in simple or advanced button.

The green highlighted button indicates the Simple mode and the red button highlighted for advanced.

On the advanced mode, you can also see you can pipe data in from CRM. You will see how to pipe this data in when we use the workflow section later in the blog.

Now let's create the survey questions. For the most part the Survey is drag and drop with the respective type of question from the right pane.

Although this is optional it is important to talk about some intelligence into these Survey questions. For example the last question in the above survey is only applicable when the customer is not willing to recommend this to a friend. Let's Show/Hide this question based on a condition.

Navigate to the Survey -- Response Routing tab

Let's create a response routing and create a condition as below.

Essentially we are checking the condition that the operator value is greater than 6 for the question "How likely is that you would recommend to a friend or colleague?"

Once this is been created, create an action (client) also as below.

Also create a response routing, condition and action for it to show when the value is less than 7. Once both show/hide conditions are set for the Response routing, condition and action are setup you are now ready to publish the Survey.

Preview and Publish the Survey

You can hit preview of the Survey and make sure everything is of your liking and then Publish the survey and the Status Reason will turn to Published.

Once the survey is published you can see the following under the Invitations and Actions section. I typed in the Invitation Text Link.

We will use these snippets for sending this to the customer in a workflow in the following step.

Using the Survey with Dynamics CRM Online

Now that we have setup the survey, its time to send them from CRM. Let's use a CRM workflow to send these survey's out when we resolve a case.

In this section we will concentrate on incorporating the Survey element as part of the email that gets sent out to the customer.

For the survey to appear in the email, copy the text from Email Snippet on the Survey module. Also you can see I added a dynamics element other1 with a case number (highlighted below) from CRM.

Once a case gets resolved, I get an email as below.

Fill them out, be nice :)

If I select a recommend value of 4 as you can see the reason field no shows.

Gone if I select 7 or above.

Survey Responses

Now that I have filled out a response you can see the results at multiple places in CRM.

The Survey Dashboard

Voice of the Customer -- Survey Responses

Contact -- Survey Responses

Additional Resources

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2016/01/12/preview-feature-voice-of-the-customer-surveys.aspx

Fun way of tracking progress: Integrating Fantasy Sales Team with Dynamics CRM Online

RojyThomas — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 08:53:00 GMT

A few years back, I was cruising down the isle of my Sales Director’s office and noticed a football field board outside his office where the sales team members were listed as players on the field. It was his way of tracking progress of his sales team and I felt it was a very creative, fun and effective way of tracking progress against goals. But there was one challenge to it; the process was quite manual. When someone closes a deal, he moves the players few yards in the field based on how big of a deal they closed. To address this challenge faced by a sales leadership team, Microsoft acquired Fantasy Sales Team (FST), a platform that is fully integrated to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online platform. My director no longer has to move the players in the field manually; the players are automatically scored and the leader board is updated with the results of sales metrics from CRM Online.

In this blog I will go over setting up FST for CRM Online as well as setting up a game, setting up a sales metrics and ultimately track progress against the games you setup.

Installing the FST Solution on Dynamics CRM Online

Login to the Office 365 Portal and then navigate to Admin >> CRM and select the CRM instance where you would like to install the solution file for FST under the Updates tab.

Click on the Install button and let the installation complete.

Registering FST with CRM Online

Navigate to Setttings >>> Solution tab and open the FantasySalesTeam solution

Register the company info as below.
If you do not have a Registration Code you can click on the "Request a code" hyperlink and it will take you to page where you can request it and you will receive an email with the registration code (there is a delay in receiving the registration code)

You will receive a registration successful screen, take the Service Account Identifier and Security Token and place them on the boxes below and click on Setup.

Logging into FST and synchronize CRM users

Navigate to https://login.fantasysalesteam.com/
Use the login and password you created while registering for FST in previous step.
You will get a notification stating there are CRM users available for import, if not navigate to the Commissioner >>>>DYNAMICS CRM USERS tab to import individual users.

Click on the Import button and you will be notified that it will take a few minutes.

Navigate to the Players tab to see if they all made it to FST.

Note: CRM users need to have an assigned security role for them to be assigned as real players, otherwise they can only play as "Fans".

Game Types

Before we setup a new game, its probably good to know there are different types of games that can be setup, description of each of the types of games are given below.

Setting up a New Game in FST

Step 1: Navigate to Games >>> GAME SETUP tab . In the example below we are setting up a "No Teams" game.

Step 2: Name the Metric you want to measure as well as how points are allocated. For example if a Sales Rep closed new business for 32000 dollars based on 1 point for every 10000 dollars he/she would get 3.2 points.

Step 3: Add the players from the players list to this new game.

Step 4: List out your prizes for the game.

Click on the Setup Game and the game will be created in FST and integrated with Dynamics CRM.

Setting up the Sales Metrics in Dynamics CRM

Even though we setup the Sales Metrics in FST, we really want to set the Sales Metrics in CRM so we can leverage the CRM fields and views for filtering.
Navigate to Fantasy Sales Teams >>> Games in Dynamics CRM.

Drill down on the Game and then check the Sales Metrics Parameters

Type: The entity we are leveraging in the game.

Amount: Denotes the field in CRM we are using to find the sum of amount from opportunity entity.

Date: The date parameter we are considering to make sure we are selecting only the opportunity that closes within the dates specified in the FST game.

Assign Points to: Who are we assigning the point to

Saved View: We can also filter the records by selecting a view . The example above only picks up opportunities that are over 10K.

Activate the Game in FST

In FST navigate to the Games and Active Games and activate the game using the Power button as below.

At this point the Game is active and is ready to be scored based on the Sales Metrics we setup. Players and Fans now have a platform to do cheer as well as do some smack talk, in this blog I am not focusing on this particular aspect as it is self explanatory.

Results of the FST Games

You can track the progress of FST through the Leader board Dashboard as below or run two of the SSRS reports within CRM Online.

SSRS CRM Online Reports

Effectively Managing CRM Online Environments

RojyThomas — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 08:50:00 GMT

CRM Online provides two types of instances the Production instance and the Sandbox instance. The production instances are used for production as well as production like environments (i.e.: Acceptance & Performance testing environments) and Sandbox environments are used for Development, Training etc. If you look at the administration part of these instance from the CRM Online Administration Center, right away you see there are some differences in options an administrator gets in administering these instances. This blog focuses on administering the CRM Online production environments for Copy / Reset and Delete functionality.


Production Instance

Sandbox Instances

As you can see the Reset, Delete and Admin functionality only seems to be available for the CRM Online Sandbox Instance. You might be think of this as a limitation but this is created as a precautionary measure not to accidently reset/delete production environments. Let's take a look now how to provide the Reset functionality even for production environment.

Resetting a Production Instance

Reset allows an instance to go back to an out of the box or an earlier version of CRM Online. The first step we will have to follow is making the Production Instance a Sandbox Instance (aka: Switch Instance Type). Open the CRM Online production instance, click Edit and change the Type to "Sandbox"

Once the instance is set to Sandbox, click Next confirm the changes and click Save.

Now you have a CRM Online Production Instance in a Sandbox Mode.

Click on the Reset button and select the version of CRM that you would like to restore it to and Click Next.

Select the Language, Currency settings and click reset.

You get the final warning message to ensure that you are ok with loosing your customizations, users etc in this instance.

The instance goes through a preparing instance mode and it takes a 5-10 minutes so be patient and you will see the State back to Ready.

Now we are ready to change the Instance back from Sandbox to Production. Click on the Edit button after selecting the instance and change it to "Production Instance" and click Next. Review the settings and then click Save.

There you are, you reset your production instance to its out of the box state.

Copy to a CRM Online Production Instance

One thing you notice trying to leverage the Copy functionality is that the "Target" environment has to be in a sandboxed mode. In order to use a production instance to be a target in a copy operation, make the Production Instance to be a sandbox mode (by following steps above) and then it can then be used a target for a copy operation.

Deleting a CRM Online Production Instance

Once the instance is set to a Sandbox mode(by following steps above) the Delete operation is available and 1 Production Instance license becomes available as part of this operation.

References

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn659834.aspx

Intelligent Cloud - CRM Online & Power BI

RojyThomas — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 08:42:00 GMT

Early in my career as a CRM Technologist I spent a lot of time writing SQL queries, creating dashboards and delivering them to the business. As a technologist, I provided estimates for those reports, then those reporting requirements got into the backlog of reports and at some point it was delivered to the requester. Long story short it was not very productive for either IT or business. Microsoft provides the best in class productivity experience, in this blog one such experience is with CRM Online and Power BI leveraging intelligent cloud.

Connecting CRM Online to Power BI

From your Office 365 Portal, click on the Power BI Icon

and then follow the instructions on https://support.powerbi.com/knowledgebase/articles/462791-microsoft-dynamics-crm-content-pack-for-power-bi

Now that you have connected Power BI to CRM Online

After you have connected CRM Online and Power BI, you see nice looking Dashboards, Reports and Datasets tab and you wonder what is going on, how do I make tweaks to this. So first thing you have to know is that when you connect CRM Online to Power BI by default you get a Content Pack that contains the following. This content pack contains the typical Sales dashboards such as Opportunities, Leads, Competitors etc. In this blog we will look to see how we can bring in more Datasets specific to what you are looking for, adding more reports and then Dashboards.

Dashboards relies on Reports

Reports relies on Datasets

Creating a new Dataset using Power BI Desktop

You can click on the + button next to Datasets, but the issue is you will be prompted to Services and then end up with a Dataset just like the default one you have. To create a Dataset of your own the first step is to download and install the Power BI Desktop https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45331

Click on Get Data --> More --> Other and Dynamics CRM Online as below.

For the connection string provide the Odata URL (Get this from CRM: Settings --> Customizations --> Developer Resources

For authentication you want to use the Organizational tab and provide your office 365 credentials

In the Navigator as you can you can select the data set you are interested in then load them directly on further edit before you load to the dataset.

So let's edit the OpportunitySet to bring in Owner details. Click on Edit button.

As you would expect all details on an Opportunity obviously is not going to be presenting in the OptySet and you have further bring in Owner Details etc. And on the steps you can see the details what manipulation I have made on the OpportunitySet

Click on Close&Apply and have the model loaded to the Power BI Desktop. Click on the Publish Button.

Go back to your Power BI site and see the new Dataset and a blank report appears. Note: We could have created a report in the Power BI Desktop and it would have rendered here as well.

Creating a New Report

On the Report you want to edit, click on Edit Report and make changes to it as below or just click on Edit Report and save as a new Report.

and see the visualizations sections to see how we are bringing in data.

Creating a New Dashboard

Click on the + button next to the Dashboard and type in the name of the dashboard.

To bring in section to the dashboard, go to the report you are interested in and click on the section that you want to be pinned to the dashboard as below.

and here it is. You can also leverage the Natural Language Query by typing in a question on the section that states "Ask a question about the data on this dashboard". Try it you will be amazed the amount of insights you can get by simply asking a question.

Refreshing Power BI Data

One more feature I would like to show is the scheduled refreshes for CRM Online data, you can schedule your data refresh to Power BI as below or by click on the Refresh Now button. You can do this multiple times a day by click on the Add another time.

Hope this was helpful as you look forward to using CRM Online and Power BI together.

Introducing the NO Install client - CRM App for Outlook Web Access (OWA)

RojyThomas — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 14:24:00 GMT

At Microsoft we believe in power of choice. Introducing the CRM Application for Outlook Web Access.

Pre-requisites

CRM Online with Spring 2015 Release.
Office 365 Email.
Mailbox configured to use Server Side Sync (Make sure the user is also using Server Side Sync rather than Outlook for his/her email processing)

Enables

Accessing CRM Records through OWA, no need to have CRM or Outlook Installed client access.
Track Emails through a browser based client.
Enables tracking even if you are not using a Windows based computer.

Steps

Enable the CRM App in CRM (Settings --- Administration -- System Settings -- Previews tab

Enable the CRM App in Exchange (O365 Portal -- Admin -- Exchange -- Organization Tab --Apps Tab)
Add from the Office Store
Search For Dynamics CRM

Click Add

Confirm by clicking yes

Note: By default the apps are disabled for user, so enable by clicking on Edit icon.

Results.

Visibility into CRM records

Also track emails to CRM Account and Contacts etc.

Enjoy!

Integrating LinkedIn and Dynamics CRM

RojyThomas — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:18:00 GMT

As a sales technologist I work with customers and prospects across a variety of industries. There are four tools that I primarily use to do my job, and they are Microsoft Outlook, Skype for Business, Microsoft CRM Online and LinkedIn. Until now Outlook, Skype and CRM were tightly integrated and now LinkedIn is joining the party. Introducing the LinkedIn integration with Dynamics CRM, more details on how to get this setup is detailed out on the documentation at https://help.linkedin.com/app/sales-navigator/answers/detail/a_id/56320

Thought I share a few screenshots here...

LinkedIn Member Profile in CRM

LinkedIn Company Profile

Few details you should know

This works seamlessly on the CRM 2015 release, however if you have the CRM Online Spring Release (Carina), then the turbo forms settings needs to be turned off otherwise you may get a JS error that it is not being loaded.

If you run into this issue, turn this option on Settings - Administration - System Settings and the general tab, select the following option to "Yes"