Nishant Rana

SLA Changes in Dynamics 365/Power Apps

Microsoft has made some changes in SLA design; here I am going to share about the differences

SLA Type option standard has been removed, earlier user has option to choose (as shown in below image)
Earlier there were 2 entities now there are 3 entities to configure a new SLA
1. Earlier
  1. SLA
  2. SLA Item
2. Now
  1. SLA
  2. SLA Item
  3. SLAKPI
Earlier only one SLA can be applied now you can use multiple SLAs. This is a much-needed feature, in our recent implementation we need to have 5 SLAs on Work Order entity and to chieve that we need to implement a child entity on work order and create 5 records in that to track 5 different SLAs.
To manage SLA settings, you can navigate to “Customer Service Hub” application and then navigate to “Service Configuration Setting”, there you can find below settings
1. You can disable SLA on an entity which is…

Notes on Adobe Campaign v6 – Extend and Customize

Continuing our previous posts, where we looked at Campaign planning, segmentation, deliveries, and running a campaign. Here we will look at some of the ways we can extend and customize Adobe Campaign V6.

We can use the Explorer option within the client console to view all the content within the Adobe Campaign instance.

Explorer renders the content in a tree structure as different folders as shown below.

The Operator within Access Management here specifies a user within the Adobe Campaign. Similarly, Operator Groups specifies the user groups.

We can specify access rights for an operator.

Navigate to the Access rights section for an operator and add appropriate rights.

The below screen shows all the different Access rights assigned to the operator named Test Account.

For each folder, we can specify operators or groups and the rights they can have on it.

There are 3 different types of workflows.

When it comes to adding Recipients it can be done manually as shown below by using the Create option, from the Recipients inside Profile and targets tab.

We can also import the data, that uses the import
template using the Import wizard. The import option also allows for how to treat duplicate data.

Similar to recipients, we can create our custom XML based data schema.

Below are the different options available while creating a new data schema.

We can also create custom forms in Adobe Campaign.

Below are 2 different types of (SOAP) APIs that we have in Adobe Campaign.

Check out the below Pluralsight training to learn in-depth

Extend and Customize Adobe Campaign v6

Hope it helps..

The Nigel Frank International Salary Survey 2020/21 for Microsoft Dynamics 365

The latest edition of Nigel Frank International’s Microsoft Dynamics salary survey is now live!

This will be their 12^th annual report published, and has proven to be an invaluable resource to myself and my peers over the years.

I had the pleasure of contributing a foreword to the report, which set the scene in terms of where the Dynamics 365 ecosystem is now, what the future holds, and my own career journey. I can say with certainty that the ecosystem has been, and will continue to be, altered dramatically due to the Covid-19 crisis, as is the same with the technology sector as a whole.

The report uncovers a wealth of changing sentiments, along with work benefits, diversity statistics, the importance of certifications, and of course average salaries to name just a few topics covered. After reading through the results, here are my 5 main takeaways:

Certifications are growing in importance

The crisis has resulted in a huge increase of professionals upskilling; this is due to a combination of increased free time and job losses. Certifications are the best way to beat the competition in this increasingly difficult environment according to 61% of professionals surveyed, who believe certifications give you the edge in the job market. This along with the fact that getting certified can increase your salary by up to a reported 22% makes the decision whether to get certified or not an easy one. This was echoed by 80% of respondents who agreed Dynamics certifications were important towards increasing earning potential. Now is the time to upskill and safeguard your career!

The rise of working from home

The most obvious impact of Covid-19 on our working lives has been the shift from office to remote. The increase in related benefits offered such as a company laptop (73%) has followed, with 60% of respondents being offered homeworking. It will be interesting to see if this continues as restrictions across the world are beginning to ease, but it certainly seems the pandemic has changed our way of working forever. A company laptop and flexible/ remote working options have continuously been the most desired benefits when looking at past editions of the survey, so if this continues, job satisfaction will surely be boosted within the Dynamics workforce.

Equal rights are being championed

69% of respondents see their employers as being equal rights champions, which is hugely positive. Obviously, there is some way to go to reach the remaining 31%, however this signals change for the better across the industry. This along with 61% of employers promoting racial and ethnic diversity, and 56% hiring and retaining mature employees, is a resounding success. I hope this will continue and grow across the tech sector as a whole.

Increasing workload for partners

51% of employees working for Dynamics partners have seen their workload increase over the last year, and this was prior to the effects of the Coronavirus. This is a keen reflection of the digital skills gap, which will only be widening with the increased demand on cloud and digital in terms of keeping businesses and economies functioning. It is crucial that more people are encouraged into the tech sector in order to relieve the burden from these existing Dynamics professionals. This will be sure to further boost diversity within the ecosystem also.

Increased adoption of Dynamics 365

Since its release in November 2019, there has been an increase in take up from both new customers and existing users. 41% of end users, an 5% increase on last year’s result, are using Dynamics 365, with a further 19% expecting to use it in the future. The move to the cloud has been instrumental to this increase, and Dynamics 365 only looks to keep building momentum and customer base.

If you’d like to read the full report, and find out the average salary for your role and location, please do take a look here: https://www.nigelfrank.com/microsoft-dynamics-salary-survey/

Hope it helps..

Fixed – ID3242: The security token could not be authenticated or authorized in Dynamics 365

We recently got this error in our web application while trying to fetch some records from one for CRM On-premise organization.

This error was because we had recently configured IFD for that CRM Server.

We had around 6 organizations in that particular deployment and because of security reasons, we didn’t use the wildcard SSL certificate and had a single certificate with multiple subject alternative names (SAN Certificate), and this organization was not part in it.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the case in our production environment and we had this organization part of the SAN Certificate used for IFD configuration there.

So as a quick and temporary fix, as we just wanted to test a couple of methods, we disabled the Claims Based Authentication / IFD from the deployment manager for that short period.

Hope it helps..

Notes on Adobe Campaign v6 – Running a campaign

Continuing our previous posts, where we looked at Campaign planning, segmentation, deliveries.

In this post, we’d look at Flow Control tab and various steps in it, for running the campaign.

We can use the Start step inside the Flow Control tab, to specify the starting point within the workflow.

We can use the End step which cleans up the temporary data and free up resources.

We can use the Fork step to have the same result of the query flowing to a different path

We can use the scheduler step for specifying the schedule on which the campaign should run. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Once or several times a day.

We can also define a recurring schedule along with any specific future date for the campaign to run on.

We can use the Test step to evaluate a condition and define the flow accordingly based on the result either true or false.

We can use the Wait step for specifying wait duration (seconds, minutes, hours, days)

We can use the Time constraint step, through which we can specify start and end time.

We can use the Sub-workflow step to start a child workflow.

We can use Jump (start point) and Jump (end point) step, to make it easy to view and design the workflow that could have many steps and complex flows in it.

We can use the External signal step, as a trigger for an event outside Adobe Campaign.

We can use the Approval
step for defining the approval step, before moving to the next action.

We can use the Alert step for sending the message to adobe campaign users.

We can use the Task status step, for assigning the task to the users, as part of the workflow.

We can use the start button to run the campaign, similarly, we can use pause, stop, restart options in the menu bar for controlling the execution of the workflow