Category: Dynamics 365

Installation order for Solutions (Patches) in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement


Let us take see a simple example of how the installation order of solution and patch works in case of Dynamics 365 CE.

Suppose we have a Solution A with only Account Number field with display name renamed to Account Number from Solution A.

Now this solution is exported as managed and imported into the target environment

Now let us create a new solution which renames this field as “Account Number from Solution B” and then import this as managed in the target environment.

So as expected we’d see the display name renamed to Account Number from B as this solution was installed after the solution A.

Now let us create Patch for the first solution, Solution A and rename the field to Account Number from Solution A Patch and import this patch to Target Environment.

After importing the patch solution in Target Environment

We can open the account record and check for the label of the account number field. Interestingly we will see the value to be “Account Number from Solution B”, which was set by the solution B. So installing our patch for solution A didn’t change it.

It is because the platform still gives precedence to the installation order of the solution and not patch. Although we had the patch installed for Solution A after import of Solution B, putting a patch didn’t change the label for the account number as it is belonged to the solution that was imported before Solution B.

Hope it helps..

SiteMapName in the AppModuleSiteMap is null or empty error while importing V9 Solution in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement


We recently upgraded our Dev and Test environment to V 9.0.

Dev

Test

While importing a solution from Dev to Test which had SiteMap we got the below issue.

“The SiteMapName in the AppModuleSiteMap is null or empty”

It turns out that the following tags were required and were missing in the Customization.xml

We added that tag and were able to import the solution successfully.

Interestingly if we export the same solution from Test and search for this tag, it is again missing, however, we can see the following XML section added there

This section was not there in dev’s sitemap.

Hope it helps..

Power BI with Dynamics 365 CE – Showing Power BI Dashboard / Tile inside Dynamics 365 CE


In the previous post, we created a simple report and published it to the web and used IFrame to display them in Dynamics 365 CE.

https://nishantrana.me/2018/08/20/power-bi-with-dynamics-365-ce-publishing-power-bi-report-to-the-web/

Now let us create a Power BI
Dashboard using that report, which we will then display inside Dynamics 365 CE as a proper native Dynamics 365 CE’s Power BI Dashboard.

Let us take the fastest route to create them, back in Power BI Service, hover over the chart in the report and select the option “Pin Visual”

We will be presented with the option of creating a new dashboard or add to an existing one.

Here we have created a dashboard named “My Dynamics 365 Dashboard”

Similarly, we can pin or add the other chart in our Report to this Dashboard.

Apart from pinning the chart from the report into the Dashboard we also have the option to configure the Phone View for the Dashboard by clicking on Create phone view.

Phone view lets us specify how the report should look within the mobile device by dragging the reports in the designer surface.

This is how our Dashboard looks now inside Power BI service.

Now suppose we want to share this Dashboard with other users and also want to display this Dashboard inside Dynamics 365 CE, for this, we need to Share them.

However, as soon as we click on Share button we would get the below message.

To share and collaborate we need to have Power BI Pro license.

With Power BI Pro license, we can share it the with other users in the organization having the Power BI Pro License and also use the Reports \ Dashboard within Dynamics 365 CE.

Click on Try Pro for free and Start Trial which assigns the user 60-day free trial

After successfully assigning the license click on Share and select the user to grant access to.

Here we have selected user2 here.

If you remember from the previous posts, the Dashboards and Reports reside inside My Workspace.

Alternatively, we create a workspace and add the members (user 2 in our case) to it with edit access.

Note: We can publish the report that we created earlier from Power BI Desktop to this new app workspace.

While creating the new workspace we can also define the Access to it for the other users.

Here we have already assigned Dynamics 365 CE Enterprise Edition Plan and Power BI free license to User 2.

User 2 can see the report in Shared with me section inside Power BI service.

As we had mentioned earlier, when the user2 tries to open the report he is prompted with the message that Power BI Pro license is required to see the reports shared,

Click on Try Pro for free to start the trial for the User 2.

After successful activation user will be able to see the report inside Power BI Service. Here we are done with Sharing and assigning license part, now let us display it within our Dynamics 365.

Before we can do so we need to enable Power BI Visualization Embedding inside Dynamics 365 CE.

Navigate to Settings à Administration à System Settings and enable Power BI integration.

Open CRM, and select New to create a new Personal Dashboard and select Power BI Dashboard

It will load the all the Workspaces and the corresponding Dashboard inside it to which the user has access to.

Enable for mobile will make the dashboard available on Dynamics 365 for Tablets and Phones.

Select the Dashboard and click Save.

The Dashboard inside Dynamics 365 à

Similarly, User 2 can create a personal Power BI Dashboard inside Dynamics 365 CE and select the dashboard that is shared.

Apart from adding the Dashboard, we can also add the Power BI Tile to the Dashboard.

Create a new Dynamics 365 Dashboard, click on add a Power BI tile option to add the tile as shown below.

The CRM Dashboard showing Power BI tile à

This completes the sharing and displaying the power bi dashboard and reports part inside Dynamics 365 CE, next we will cover how the data can be refreshed so that users are looking at the most up to date data possible.

Hope it helps..

Power BI with Dynamics 365 CE – Publishing Power BI Report to the web


In the previous post, we learned how to create a simple Power BI Report using Power BI Desktop

https://nishantrana.me/2018/08/20/power-bi-with-dynamics-365-ce-creating-report/

Now let us publish the report to Power BI Service from within the Power BI Desktop.

To do so, select the Publish button

Publish window will ask us to save the report file (if not saved) before we could publish it.

Here we are publishing it to the default “My Workspace” app workspace within Power BI Service.

Publishing the report from Power BI Desktop publishes both the report and dataset associated to it in the Power BI Service. We can think of DataSet as the Database.

After successful publish we can see the Report and Dataset being added inside the Power BI Service (https://app.powerbi.com)

From with Power BI Service, we have the option of Publishing the report on Web so that it could be accessed by anyone having that URL.

To do so,

Select File
à
Publish to Web to publish it.

The Embed dialog box pops up as shown below with all the information.

Clicking on Create Embed Code will open the confirmation dialog box, that shows the potential risk associated with sharing the information over the internet.

Here, clicking on Publish generates the link for the report and also the HTML code which can be used for embedding it within an IFrame.

Within Dynamics 365 CE, we can use this public URL to show it inside the IFrame component of the Dashboard.

The report within Dynamics 365 CE’s Dashboard.

Next, we will see how to create Dashboard from the reports created and how to share them with other users and how to use the Power BI Dashboard and Power BI Tiles feature of Dynamics 365.

Hope it helps.

Power BI with Dynamics 365 CE – Creating Power BI Report


To begin with, let us first create a Dynamics 365 Trial.

https://trials.dynamics.com/

After our CRM trial is setup up successfully, we will install the OOB Sample Data which we would be using for creating the Power BI report.

Next, we need to create a free trial for the above user to use Power BI Service.

Go to Power BI site, and click on Start Free to get started.

Use the same user account (trial) that was used to set up the Dynamics 365 trial.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us

Note: If we already have an organization account with Power BI License we can use it to log in to Power BI else can associate a free trial to the same organization account instead of creating a new one. The gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc personal account are not allowed. https://app.powerbi.com/.

Download the Power BI Desktop as well as click on Try Free.

Power BI Desktop is basically a feature rich windows application that allows us to get data from various services online or on-premise and develop Dashboard and Reports efficiently.

The alternate way to download is through Microsoft Downloads siteà

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45331

After installing it and signing in and click on Get Data ribbon button to connect to the Dynamics CRM Online.

Select Dynamics 365 Online as the Online Services to connect to.

Specify the Web API URL of the instance.

Copy it from Customization à Developer Resources

Select the Organization Account and Sign in to the CRM Instance.

In the Navigator window, we have searched Lead entity and clicked on Edit to select the columns that we need for our sample report.

In the Query Editor window, click on “Choose Columns“, we have selected the Revenue, Created On, Subject and Owning
User field to be used for the report.

Now to get the Full Name of the system user for Owning User, expand that column, and select Full Name as the value to be displayed as shown below.

Click on Close and Apply to apply the changes to the query and to go back to the main editor.

Back in the main editor, we can see the fields added.

Now from the Visualizations section pick any of chart type.

Here we have picked a Stacked Bar Chart to start with. We can drag the fields and specify Area, Legend, and Value and also use the Filters section to generate the report as shown below.

The report after adding the fields à

Similarly, we can add our filter in the FILTER section to filter the records further as shown below

We can also add multiple charts in the report by selecting it from the Visualizations section.

For e.g. here we have used a Clustered Column chart to see all the leads based on Owner and Created On Date.

This completes the creation of simple reports which uses Dynamics 365 Online as Data Source.

In the next post, we’d publish this report to Power BI Service and display it within Dynamics 365 CE.

https://nishantrana.me/2018/08/20/power-bi-with-dynamics-365-ce-publishing-power-bi-report-to-the-web/

Hope it helps..

“Cannot update a published workflow definition” exception in Dynamics 365


We would get this exception if we try updating an Activated Workflow using Update Request.

So basically, if we need to update the activated\published workflow i.e. Activate or Deactivate it or change the Owner of the workflow, we would need to use the SetState and Assign Request. If we try doing it using the UpdateRequest we will the above error message.

Perform specialized operations using Update

Also, we noticed that if we try changing the state from Deactivated to Activated through Update Request, it will not change the State to Activated and it will not throw an exception as well.

However, if we use Update to Change the Owner for the deactivated workflow, it works fine.

Hope it helps..