Problem Definition: The sales cycle in my company demands me to create an opportunity every time a CR is requested or there is an additional estimate via a proposal that we ask on the current project from the customer. This needs me to go through the cycle from Opportunity to Quote to Contract. But, in this cycle, I do not want to create another Quote or contract, but update the existing one to add another Quote Line Detail. This is not possible once the Quote is marked a won in PSA. Solution: Following is what can be done to enable the Quote to move it to Draft mode an make it editable. Step 1: Go to the Quote and click on the Flow button in the Ribbon control and click on Create New Flow as shown in the screenshot below. Step 2: Use the Common Data Service Template and click on Continue. In case you see this page and you are not signed in with your account, please sign in and continue. Step 3: On the next screen select the details as shown in the below screenshot. Step 4: Select the Update Record Option from below as shown.   Step 5: Click on Add Dynamic Content link and select Quote field from there as shown below. Step 6: Change the field “Status Value” to Draft and Save the Flow. Step 7: Navigate to the flow and name is as shown below. Step 8: Its time now to test the Flow developed. Navigate to your Quotes and filter out the Won Quotes. Open one Quote and Click on Flow button from the Ribbon control and select the Flow that we wrote as shown below Step 9: Refresh the page and check that the Flow has done its job and the Quote is now in the Draft mode, ready to edit. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for the last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project management, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Problem Definition: One of my clients decided to use Expense module in PSA and to his surprise he could see the amount value to be 0 in the Actuals. But, at the same time the Cost line had values in it. Upon researching and digging into all the configurations I was tired and couldn’t conclude. Finally, one configuration that made it work was to add the Transaction Category in the Sales Price List and make it Chargeable at Cost. Below is how to do it: Navigate to the project contract. Open the Pricelist associated with the Contract. It can be either the default pricelist or can be the custom price list for that particular contract. In the case shown in the screen shot, it is the Custom Price List. How do we Identify whether it is a Custom Price List is that, with the name of the Pricelist i.e. Sales Price List USD, there is the name of the opportunity and the Timestamp appended to it. You will see it in the screenshot below. Once you open that Custom Price List and Navigate to Category Prices, Click on “+ Add New Transaction Category” You will see a Quick Create Form opening up to add the Transaction Category. Fill in the details as shown in the below screenshot. The click on Save and Close and you will see your transaction Category added in the Grid. Your configuration is now ready. The next step is: To raise an expense as shown below. Configure/Create a Expense Category and relate it to the Transaction Category as per below. Navigate to Settings Area and Click on Expense Categories and then click on New. 2. Fill in the details as shown below. If you observe in the above image, there is a Transaction Category associated with the expense category and that is the one that should be present in the PriceList that we discussed initially in the above part of this blog. Once the expense is raised, Submit it. Submission sends it for the project Manager for approval. Project Manager approves it and as soon as the Project Manager approves it, it gets converted to Actuals as shown below. 4. Last step is to Create Invoice and see if the Expense gets shown up in the Invoice. For the same traverse to Project Contract and Open the specific project contract. It will automatically take you to Invoice Entity where the Invoice will be generated as shown below. Tips to remember: For Fixed Bid Project contract, you will need to create one more project contract line header which is of T&M type. This will be associated with another project on which you can raise the expenses. For T&M, we can still continue to raise the expense on the same project and there is no need of creating one more project contract line header. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Customers are crucial to the success of any business. When you build your business focusing primarily on giving the best experience to your customer, your business is going to bloom. Your profits are going to multiply each year. Dynamics 365 for customer service is one of the best ERP solutions that you can find in the world.  It will help in streamlining the processes in all the departments to make your business customer-friendly and customer biased. When customers know that you value their association, they are going to stay with you for a long time becoming your loyal customers.  People who never used this ERP solution may not know how to find what they want. Here is a topic that you should learn as it will be quite helpful to you in the long run. Data Integration project support two types of executions Manual and auto-refresh i.e. schedule-based refresh. For a manual refresh, we have to select the project and click on run. In this blog, we will learn how to create a schedule to run an Integration project at a specific date and/or time. First, go to Admin Center Go to the Data Integration -> Projects and click on the ellipses of the project to be scheduled and click on Schedule We will get two options a. Run Manually b. Run on specific day and/or time  Now let’s schedule the project, in this example we going to schedule the project every hour starting at 17-Aug-2019 to 30-Aug-2019, and it should run form 12 AM to 2 AM. After scheduling click on save We can schedule the project in another way also, to do this  go to the scheduling after selecting on the Integration project After clicking on the project following window will open and then click on the Scheduling and same scheduling window will appear. In this way we can create schedule-based refresh for the Integration project

Error handling is very important part of any integration project, it is also very important to fix the issue when it is recognized, so it is very important to take action to resolve it earliest. In the Integration project of CDS we can setup email alert option in following way. First go to Admin Center Go to Data Integration -> Select the project -> Go to Scheduling Following window will appear Tick the checkbox and specify the email address on which we wanted to receive the alerts and click on save. In this way we can set up the email alert notification for Integration progress in CDS.

Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation helps companies to have control over the projects that they undertake. It is the main reason why a lot of companies love this particular ERP solution. Companies can complete the project within the timeframe and the budget that is allocated. Estimating the project budget and planning resources becomes a lot easy. Communication between employees in the company improves substantially. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation equips the project managers with the essential tools to make them efficient. It helps companies to become organized and to become successful. Here are some quick tips on how you can give your colleagues access that is necessary to do expense and time entries without exposing them to other available entities on the system. Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation is a software application that companies need to buy and use if they want to have full control of a project. Organizations can use this application to manage, track, and deliver project-based services on time. Creating work schedules and quotations utilizing this system is secure. You can manage and assign resources with ease when you use this software. Mastering how this system works is quite essential if you desire that your projects become successful. You might encounter so many unique problems when you are using this particular system. Here are some probable solutions that will help you to solve these problems. Problem Definition: We sometimes have a few team members who only need to do the time entries and expense entries. They do not need any exposure to other entities. How do we make it possible via the OOB (Out of the box) security roles in PSA V3.X. Solution: From the security–>Users–> select the user–>Manage Role and Only keep “Project Resource” Role. 2. Go to Security–>Security Roles–>Open the security Role “Project Resource” –> change the following 2 parameters read/write access as shown below in the image. 3. Log off and log in again and you are set 🙂

These days there are so many companies that are developing software applications to help businesses manage the projects. But, nothing comes close to dynamics 365 project service automation. It is unique and is one software that every business should have if they want to manage projects and help them to become successful. Companies can track as well as manage projects well when they use this particular software.astering this software is essential if you want to use this application efficiently. PowerApps is one service that Microsoft offers, and developers can use it to build apps as per the requirement of the client. As my thoughts build to initiate writing this blog, similar was the feeling when I first thought about exploring Power Apps. The expression was, “What exactly is Power Apps?”. When the world is talking about it, it brings me more curiosity to understand what is so powerful about it. Let’s first commence with understanding what exactly is Power Apps: PowerApps is an initiative by Microsoft that allows developers and nontechnical users to build mobile applications from selectable templates. The objective of PowerApps is to enable business users to build new capabilities via apps, without requiring that they have code expertise. Types of Power Apps: Model driven apps: These types of apps directly publish the entity on the mobile/ tablet. These apps can be used from Microsoft Dynamics 365 App from mobile. They are very easy to make and can be ready within 15mins of time. Canvas apps: These apps are blank canvas given to the developers with a free hand to design the app in the way they want. In this blog we shall focus more on how to make a Canvas app. Follow the steps below to make a PowerApps. Step 1: Login to www.portal.office.com Step 2: Click on PowerApps icon as shown in the image below: This will open a new browser tab where we need to select what kind of app do we need to make. Step 3: Click on Canvas app from blank, which opens a pop up. Please name your app and select whether the app is for Phone or for Tablet as shown below and click on Create button. This opens the Canvas app editor as shown below: To take this blog forward, I will use an app that is created by me and explain a few commands used by me and how was the design done in that app. The app captures the Grievances of people in office. There are 5 screens created by me and they are: list_Grievances Screen: This list all the grievances in the system. 2. frm_GrievanceRecord Screen: This opens a grievance record. 3. Frm_NewGrievance Screen: This screen is used to capture a new grievance. 4. Frm_CameraScreen : This is used to capture the image of the grievance using camera control. 5. SuccessScrn: This is used to display the success on the screen. Technical dive Let’s take a dive in each screen and get into understanding of functionalities developed on each screen: List_grievances: a. New Grievance button: This button will navigate to a frm_NewGrievance Record to capture new grievance from the employee. The code written behind that is:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Navigate(frm_NewGrievance,ScreenTransition.Fade );   …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….b. To display the list of Grievance I have inserted a List Screen as shown in the image below: c. To display the list of Grievance, we need to add a Data Source. How to add a data source is shown below: There are approximately more than 250 Data sources to which Power apps can connect. Select the data source you wish to connect. In my case, I will connect to Dynamics 365 Data Source. It will ask you to choose your entity and then you can click on connect. Your Data Source “Grievances” will start appearing in Items drop down of Property Window. Post that we can align the attributes that we need to see on the list view: To Display Employee Full Name, below is the code that I wrote: ………………………………………………………………….. ThisItem.’Employee Full Name’ ………………………………………………………………… To get the department value, which is a lookup to another entity below is the code that was written: …………………………………………………………………. LookUp(Departments,new_departmentid=ThisItem.Department, new_name) …………………………………………………………………. To display the image from the SharePoint Library, below is the code: LookUp(GrievanceLibrary, Title = TitleGrievance.Text, Image)   Where GrievanceLibrary is the Sharepoint Datasource added in Powerapp and Title and image are the fields created in SharePoint.   To open the Grievance record on frm_Grievance Record, write the below code: Navigate(frm_GrievanceRecord,ScreenTransition.Fade,glryGrievances.Selected)   frm_NewGrievanceRecord: To store the new grievance record, we used the Form Screen. On the update button, write the below code: Patch(     Grievances,     Defaults(Grievances),     {         new_employeefullname: DataCardValue3.Text,         new_description: DataCardValue15.Text,         _new_departmentl_value: DataCardValue10.Selected.new_departmentid,         _new_grievancetypel_value: DataCardValue6.Selected.new_grievancetypeid,         new_signature: PenInput4.Image     } ); Patch(     GrievanceLibrary,     Defaults(GrievanceLibrary),     {         Title: DataCardValue3.Text,         Image: First(Collection1).Url     } ); UpdateContext({resettext: !resettext}); UpdateContext({resetcombobox: !resetcombobox}); Navigate(SuccessScrn,ScreenTransition.Fade); frm_CameraScreen Insert a Camera Media Control on the form as shown in the below screen shot. Insert an image control on the form below the Camera Media control. Capture button code: ClearCollect(Collection1, Camera1.Photo) Collection 1 s described above is the SharePoint collection object which needs to be cleared and then referred with the new Photo from the Camera Control, which in our case is Camera1. Confirm button code: Confirm Button will only Navigate it to New Grievance form and the code is ass per below: Navigate(frm_NewGrievance)  To summarise: We learned how to create a Canvas Power app. Different controls that can be used. How to store image on Sharepoint in a Power app. Again I am sharing the code for storing the image on Sharepoint herewith: Patch(     GrievanceLibrary,     Defaults(GrievanceLibrary),     {         Title: DataCardValue3.Text,         Image: First(Collection1).Url     } ); To explain the above code, GrievanceLibrary is the SharePoint site of which Data Source is added. Title: This is a field in the Sharepoint library that will store the name of the Grievance. The data type in Sharepoint for Title is Single line Text Image: This will store … Continue reading First Canvas Power App: Learn Few Easy and Important Commands →

Problem Definition: Post upgrading to V3 I faced issues while importing the time entries from my Resource bookings. This was not the case with V2. In V2 when I went to Import Time Entries from Resource Bookings, it used to pick up all the time entries that were in Active State. Resolution: The resolution to this was simple, but, little tricky. Below are the steps to be followed to get the issue resolved. Step 1: Go to the D365 – Custom App as shown in the below image. This will take you to the classic interface of D365 CRM as shown below. Step 2: Navigate to Settings à Customizations Step 3: Click on Customize the System This will open a screen as shown below. Step 4: Navigate to Entities- Bookable Resource Bookings – Views and open the view named Resource Bookings for Time Entries Import Step 5: Click on Edit Filter Criteria and add a condition Status  – Equals  –  Active These conditions ensure that only Active bookings are to be selected. Then click on OK and Save and Close. Finally, click on Publish All Customizations. Now when you try to import the time entries from Resource booking it will import only the Active time entries and leave behind the canceled time entries. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for the last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project management, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

There is good news for people who were using Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) with the latest update. Microsoft allows it’s users to make adjustments to time entry using the plain journal entry in the past. For example, if a user wants to adjust the time entry from one to three hours, they have to make a new journal entry for the three hours. But, the only problem is that you cannot track it against a particular time entry. Now, if you are using PSA V3.7, you can make the correction or adjustments on the existing time entries with ease. Here are the steps you need to follow: Problem definition: With the previous releases, PSA could allow adjustment of Time Entry hours via mere plain Journal entries. That means, if we need to adjust a couple of hours or adjust a time entry worth 4 hours, we needed to make a 4 hours journal entry, which could not be tracked against a Time entry. Problem Solution: With PSA V3.7 there is a Journal correction for Time Entries which can be done against a Time Entry done. How do we do it is shown in the below steps: Suppose we a do a Time entry of 1 hours for a Project and Submit it for approval as shown in the below screen shot. 2. Approve the same via Time Entries for approvals. 3. As soon as the time entries are approved, they get converted to Actuals. This can be validated by going to Project Contract – Select the appropriate Contract – Actuals. You will see there are 2 records that get created: 1.Cost 2.Unbilled Sales. 4. In order to get the same adjusted via Journals, go to Journal Entries, SalesàJournals and click on +New 5. Write the Description and select the Journal Type Equals “Time Correction” and Save the record. 6. Click on Browsers back button, Open the Record from Active Journal view and click on Time Entry Corrections Tab. 7.Fill in the fields: Project Project Task Time Entry Date Bookable Resource Resource Role 8. From the below grid select the Time Entry for which the correction is needed, by clicking on the Add Existing Time Entry and then select the time entry from the quick create form that opens and click on Add. 9. Post Step 7 and Step 8 is done, click on Preview Button from the Ribbon control as highlighted in the screen shot below. 10. It will highlight the Journal Lines Tab and show you the Journal Entries with negative values of the value of the time entry and there will be 4 records that can be seen. 2 with a positive value of the time entry and 2 with negative that is the Adjustment value. This is how we can do the adjustment of the time entry which indirectly creates a Journal entry against the time entry done. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Problem Definition: I have observed a fact in PSA that when the task in PSA Schedule (WBS) is deleted, the corresponding Resource Requirement doesn’t get deleted. Hence, it keeps on appearing in the Schedule Board to allocate. Resource Managers face difficulties in order to understand whether to allocate them or not. Hence, it is a job of Project Manager to ensure they are not appearing on the Schedule Board to allocate. Solution: Following are the steps with which the Resource Managers can ensure they do their job end-to-end post the task is deleted from the Schedule (WBS). Step 1: Check in the Schedule Board in the Project Tab whether the task appears to schedule. If not, then the job is done. Else, do an advanced find on the Resource Requirement with the below-mentioned criteria shown in the screen shot. See the results of the Advanced Find shown below. Open the task from Advanced Find by Double Clicking on it and check the status of the task. Change the Status of the Task to Canceled and Save the form. The task will now not appear in the Resource Requirement. You are done with the solution. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

There are tons of CPA software solutions that CPAs, accounting firms and other business professionals use to simplify their complex tasks. However, when it comes to mid-sized CPA firms, the only technology that will streamline processes in a good way is Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA). It is well-known that PSA is one of the most trustworthy and best CPA software solutions designed and developed by Microsoft. More than a utility software, it is more like a CPA Firms practice management software. Let me take you through an example of how U.S. based CPA Firm BPM is leveraging PSA to streamline their sales process and enhance their internal operations. About BPM Certified Public Accounting Firm: BPM is one of the largest California-based public accounting and advisory firms. Ranking amongst the 50 major firms in the US, they have offices across Oregon, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands. They serve a range of sectors from financial services, technology, life science and consumer business to real estate, non-profits, wine, and craft beverages. You can read more about BPM at https://www.bpmcpa.com/. Business Requirement: BPM wanted a solution that would streamline their sales processes and make customization and enhancements in their existing D365 for PSA for greater capability. Solution Delivered: CloudFronts commenced its professional journey with BPMC in December 2017 and continue to work with them. We worked with them every single day to cater to their existing Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation capabilities. The team rectifies and modify their reports, along with adding functionality to their existing PSA deployment. Further, the team had a review of the critical entities within the Sales module of Dynamics 365 and customized them as per the client requirements and specific business needs. Till date, the CloudFronts team is working with them to upgrade their D365 environments from v8.2 to v9. SSRS report was developed for Managers to view the availability of Team and their allocations on different Projects. Key Technologies 1.       Dynamics 365 Sales 2.       Dynamics 365 for PSA (Project Service Automation) 3.       SSRS Reporting Post Go Live: BPM went live with the project on 20 July 2018. With the ongoing support and maintenance of Dynamics 365 for PSA provided by CloudFronts, the BPMC team is now able to deliver projects on time without any obstructions while increasing employee productivity tremendously. By leveraging the enhanced capabilities of D365 Sales module, the BPMC team is now able to provide a robust end-end overview of the streamlined sales process thus increasing productivity and get actionable insights. Professional Services Automation software offers CPA’s digital tools they need to streamline and standardize their project accounting activities, even though each project is distinctly different from all the others. Fundamentally, every CPA firm is a business that sells the services of accounting, so mastering its business practices is key to its success. Several PMI studies reveal that adopting a standardized, structured approach to operations and practices was the strongest indicator of corporate success. Want to know how we can prove beneficial to you? Contact us now for free consultation and demo here. https://www.cloudfronts.in/contact-us/