Configure Office 365 Groups in CRM 2016 Online Update 1

Go to CRM Admin Center à Solutions à Install the Office 365 Groups Solution

Once installed, go to Settings – Office 365 Groups to configure Entities.

We have enabled it for Account (select entity and Publish All)

Open the Account Record and navigate to Office 365 Groups.

It will auto create a Group or we can specify an existing one.

Once configured we can see the Calendar, Conversation, Notebook etc.

Hope it helps..

Configuring Company News Timeline in CRM 2016 Update 1

It is new feature introduced in CRM 2016 Update 1 for CRM Phone and Tablets that delivers news from Bing about the customers and categorize them.

Go to CRM Admin Center à Solutions to install the solution.

Once installed, open your mobile or tablet CRM App and open any of the existing Lead, Contact, Account or Opportunity record.

We could see all the news in Activity News.

In CRM App for Windows Phone à

Different categories available

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/dynamics/crm-customer-center/get-the-company-news-timeline-for-crm-for-phones-and-tablets.aspx

Hope it helps.

Quick Walkthrough – New Form Type – Main Interactive experience and Card in CRM 2016.

These are the new form types introduced in CRM 2016 as a part of new Interactive Service Hub.

While creating a custom entity we need to check “Enable for Interactive experience” and select “Service” as ‘Area that display this entity’ to make this entity available in Interactive Service Hub.

“Enable for interactive experience” option will auto create 2 new forms of type Card and Main – interactive experience.

Let us use these forms as it is without any change.

Publish the customizations and open the Interactive Service Hub

It will download the changes first.

Our Custom Entity in Site Map under Extensions area

Main Interactive Experience Form

For Card,

we need to create a custom interactive dashboard and add the stream (view) in it. (add a chart as well)

Publish the changes.

Our custom dashboard for our custom entity with Card form on left and the chart on right.

Hope it helps.

Creating Patches – Solution Management in CRM 2016

Hi,

Just sharing a simple scenario to understanding the working of Patches with Managed solution,

Create a solution named Test Solution with Contact entity in it. (with Add All Assets option)

  • Imported it in another Target Org as Managed.
  • Now I want to change the width of the section so that label is clearly visible for Preferred Method of Contact field.
  • And we also add a new custom field named Middle Name in the form.

  • Instead of deploying the complete solution again, we can create a Patch which includes these changes.
  • In our Dev let us do the changes

  • Now click Clone a Patch button for the Test Solution.

  • In the solution add only the 2 components Main Form and the newly created Middle Name field in the patch solution.

  • Export this Patch Solution as Managed and import it in the target org.

  • In target Org after import of Patch we can see our changes.

  • Now suppose we make few other changes like removing the Fax field from the form (below mobile phone field) and want to deploy the entire solution and don’t need the patch anymore.
  • For this select Clone Solution button

  • This will make all the patches rolled up to the newer version of the solution.

  • This will auto-remove the patch solution created.

  • Now let us import this to our Target org. Target org. will auto detect the upgrade to the solution.

  • After import, select Apply Solution Upgrade

  • This will auto remove the TestSolution_Upgrade and TestSolution_Patch and merge all the changes into one newer version of TestSoluiton.

  • And as expected Fax field removed.

Hope it helps.