There is a common application of getting selected records information while working with custom buttons using Ribbon Workbench. Use Case: We had a requirement, where we needed the information of the all selected records from the Main View and Sub-Grid of an entity. We can achieve in Ribbon Workbench. Steps: 1. The button on which we are customizing is named as “Submit”. 2. In the Command section, click on “Actions” -> “Javascript Action” to add Custom Javascript. Then click on “Add Parameter” -> Click on “Crm Parameter” -> then on  SelectedControlSelecteItemReferences. SelectedControlSelecteItemReferences = grabs the information of all selected record from the view. 3. SelectedControlSelecteItemReferences will pass the information of all the selected records in my “selectedItems” variable passed to the method. 4. On clicking the Submit Button, the selected records information will be passed on to the Javascript Code. 5. On clicking the “Submit” button, it will pass the two selected records information to the method that the button is calling. 6. You can further read all the information from the Array and perform the actions that you want. Note: This can be done in Sub-grids of the forms also. Conclusion: Hope this blog helps to get/read the selected Information from the Main View or Sub-Grid

Introduction: From the version 10.0.10 Platform update 34, Microsoft has added a new feature Message::AddAction() which is shown in the message bar.  Details: Message API associated with display or action menu items, which is visualized as a hyperlink/link button.  It is linked with a single record at a time, called single action. In below taken example, we will show sales order is navigated to the form SalesTable from the message bar. For testing it, we’ll create the runnable class also know as job in AX 2012.  class CFSMessageAPI { public static void main(Args _args) { SalesTable salesTable = SalesTable::find(‘SH-000121′); MenuItemMessageAction actionData = new MenuItemMessageAction(); actionData.MenuItemName(menuItemDisplayStr(SalesTable)); actionData.TableName(tableStr(SalesTable)); actionData.RecId(salesTable.RecId); str jsonData = FormJsonSerializer::serializeClass(actionData); int64 messageId = Message::AddAction(MessageSeverity::Informational, “Sales order details”, salesTable.customerName(), MessageActionType::DisplayMenuItem, jsonData); } } Let’s see how it works,  In my case it’s showing Mitchell. Click on the link.  After clicking on the action link, it is navigated to the sales order record form as shown in the above link.  Hurray, How pretty feature is released !!! Conclusion: In above example, we have seen how Message API is routed to the record. Thanks for reading !!!

Introduction: In this blog, we will see how to set up email parameters and SMTP configuration for sending test mail from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. Details:  Go to the Email Parameters by follow this path: System administration -> Setup -> Email -> Email Parameter. Another easiest way to find the email parameter in a quick manner, go to the search box and simply write email parameter as below shown screenshot Steps:  1. In the configuration tab, set up the SMTP as in shown below image Move SMTP in the right box named with ENABLED to enable  2. In SMTP settings tab, configure the below stuff:      Outgoing mail server: smtp.office365.com     SMTP port number: 587     Username: put the email id from which email should be sent      Password: appropriate password of the email     Specify if SSL is required: true 3. In Test mail tab:      Email provider: SMTP     Send to: Put the email to whom test mail should be sent  In the final, click on the “Send test mail” and then sample mail will be sent to the respective email address.      Conclusion: In the above blog, we have seen how to set up SMTP configuration to test “send email” functionality from the email parameter form.  Thanks for reading !!!

In my last LinkedIn Post (Cash Position Report), I talked about the strategic importance of Cash on hand for a Professional Services Organization. In this post, I want to talk about the importance of the Overdue Accounts Receivable (AR) Report. As a Professional Services firm, most of our revenue comes from Project based delivery of Services. We have some top-line revenue from the subscription services we sell like Dynamics 365, but it’s not significant. So, our primary source of revenue is Services. We needed to ensure we bill on time, get paid on time. So we developed our Power BI AR Report as shown below – So let’s dive in! A few things to note in the above Report – It is a PowerBI Report embedded in our Leadership Team in our Microsoft Teams platform. We call it the PSA AR Report, as the reporting comes from our invoicing in Dynamics 365 PSA. Dynamics 365 PSA is our ‘single source of truth‘ for all our Project based billing. The bottom of the Report has two tabs – Services and Licensing/Commission Invoices. More on that shortly. Dynamics 365 PSA is our the single source of truth for all Customer Invoicing. We run all our Project based Services Invoicing from the Invoicing and Contract Milestone Schedule in Dynamics 365 PSA. This means our Allocations, Contract Milestones and our Time entries are always up-to-date, otherwise our invoicing schedule would be incorrect. This ensures good Project Management practices. Now PSA does not handle taxation, so you have to either setup your taxation customization or use an off the shelf tax add on that is available on the Microsoft AppSource. If none of these options are possible, then you can decide to create your invoices in your Accounting system and integrate those into Dynamics 365 PSA. We do that for our Licensing invoices to our Customers and integrate those from our QuickBooks Online Accounting system into Dynamics 365 PSA. We also ensure that invoices are only emailed to customers from Dynamics 365 so we can track these emails. Further, we update Invoice Statuses from Draft to Sent to Paid. Now let’s get into the Report. Basically, we have color coded our Report based on the following simple rules – Red for anything that is overdue by 30 days or more, yellow for anything that is between 1-30 days overdue and no color coding for current invoices. The visual impact of color coding can’t be emphasized enough. On the top left corner of the Report, we have an option to search by Customer, so we can quickly get all invoices for a specific customer in the AR Report. This becomes very useful when you want to just share a snapshot with your customer for overdue invoices.  Handling Multiple Legal Entities: We have three legal entities – India, USA and Singapore. We have three separate QuickBooks Online Accounts for each legal entity, but we use a single Dynamics 365 CRM platform. We have made customizations on our Invoice entity to ensure we capture the correct legal entity. In the example below, you can see we classify our Invoices by legal entity in our Report – You can see there is column called ‘link’ in the above reports. Clicking on any invoice in this link directly takes us to the Invoice record in Dynamics 365.  Overdue Reminders Alerts- We automated the Overdue Reminders so that our system automatically sends out a reminder for all overdue invoices every Monday.  After all this effort, you still need to ensure regular and rigorous review of this report to ensure you can take action on overdue invoices. This is done through our scheduled Monday morning Management Status Meetings. The agenda for this meeting is recurring and hence set in advance, but this Management meeting always starts with AR Report Review. Our Accounts Manager is invited for the first 15 minutes and we go through all Overdue Invoices (especially the Red color coded ones!) and decide if we need to take further steps like setting up a meeting with the customer.  If you are a small or mid sized Services organization, it is of utmost importance to get paid on time. By ensuring you have such a report and reviewing and planning action items for overdue invoices, you will run an efficient Services organization. In addition, there is another strategic benefit here – this report is like a Quality Check on your services. If your customer is paying on time and suddenly does not, your proactive action to talk with the customer can help you understand if there are any issues in your Services and you can take corrective action. Our PSA AR Report is available to our Management team (this includes our Delivery Heads and Practice Leads as well) through Microsoft Teams and they can view it any time they want, planning action items as needed. If it is hidden away only with the Accounts Team and available through some weekly PDF report, it is not efficient for your organization. This Report will help your organization achieve it’s Objective – ‘bill on time, get paid on time.’ If you are keen on understanding more about our Internal Systems that keep us running and growing, our Internal Systems page is a wonderful resource – https://www.cloudfronts.in/our-internal-systems/ or reach out to me at ashah@cloudfronts.com.

One of the issues with Dynamics 365 Retail is the way the errors are displayed to end users. I have come across many instances where it becomes very difficult to investigate and get to the root cause of an error message. The lack of clarity becomes an issue when you are not very familiar with the functional/technical aspects of HQ and POS. One of the many common errors I have seen is server side and database related issue as you can see in the below screen grab. Here the issue is with the loyalty card setup in payment methods. However the error message is not very clear in terms of where exactly the issue is. I have seen similar error once when there was an issue with printing the receipt. The issue was with the design itself. When we redesigned the receipts while adhering to proper layout the error went away. Hope this helps!

In D365 there are several option to export/Import data like Data Entities, BYOD, Aggregate measurements/Entity store. In this blog we will learn How to create entity store in D365 Finance and operations. Aggregate Measurements/Entity Stores are use to create Power Bi reports with nearly Live data where user have option to set its recurrence that is how often you want to refresh entity store there is no need to manually refresh the data as per suggested Batch job will run for respective entity stores. You can also forcefully refresh data by pressing refresh button on entity store page. So lets start with development of aggregate measurements, aggregate dimensions. Add New aggregate measurements object to the project where we required Add required attributes Add required measures Add required dimensions Add dimensions where view of dimension and aggregate measurements are different Build The Model Refresh Entity store from D365 Finance and Operation Environment Verify that respected view is created for aggregate measurement                     Add New aggregate measurements object to the project where we required.   In this step we need to right click on new item     Now select aggregate measurement and name it as per requirement in our case its “CFSAggregateMeasrure”   Now assign required views in table property of the aggregate measurement as follow     In my case I have selected “InventOnHandByWarehouse” view.                       Add required attributes Now add required attribute by right click on Attributes and assign required field in attributes as follows                         Add required measures After adding attributes add dimensions same how we added other attributes as follows   After adding measure assign required field to it and operation which you want to perform on that field (for example. :- count, Average, etc. )                           Add required dimensions By default some of the dimensions are provided like company and date which are showed in screen shot. And assign required fields in relation of dimensions                            Add dimensions where view of dimension and aggregate measurements are different If dimensions needs different view we need to create new aggregate dimension as follows   In my  case name of aggregate dimension is “CFSAggregateDimension ” Now assign required view to dimension as follows.     After this create new attributes and assign fields to that attributes as follows       After adding new dimension attribute if required you can assign more than one field reference as follows   After this step assign fields to the respective field reference as follows.     Now select the respected attribute and select its usage property and change it as key which will make it as dimensional key which will be helpful while making relations.     There are 3 options under usage property description of each as follows                               Key If you specify usage property as “key” system will define the key of the dimension using this attribute                               Parent If you specify usage property as “parent” system will parent child hierarchy with this field as parent level.                               Regular If you specify usage property as “Regular” ,this is an attribute without any special behavior and it is default value. After setting usage property attach this dimension to our aggregate measurement by dropping required aggregate measurement on dimension section of it.   Now define its dimension attribute property as follows   After this you need to make relationship among the views as follows   Fact Dimension If you want to make desired aggregate dimension as fact dimension go to desired dimension in aggregate measurement and make set “is fact dimension” property to yes/No as follows                       Build The Model   After this case build the model which is used for this development of project as follows                             Refresh Entity store from D365 Finance and Operation Environment   After successful build go to environment page’s Entity store section using following navigation System administration >> setup >> entity store and refresh the desired entity     On required entity please press the refresh button     You can also set schedule to refresh this entity by selecting edit button and enable its automatic refresh toggle and the set its recurrence as follows                             Verify that respected view is created for aggregate measurement In final step go to your VM’s SSMS and look for Axdw database in which in view section look for views with your aggregate measurement and dimension and name as follows   After select query you can see the data of that view     Now your entity store is ready to consume by power bi reporting service. Thank You!

Below is a simple example for importing data from CSV file in D365 FO using X++: /// <summary> /// import color code /// </summary> class CFSImportColorCode {     /// <summary>     /// main     /// </summary>     /// <param name = “_args”>_args</param>     public static void main(Args _args)     {         AsciiStreamIo                       file;         Array                               fileLines;         FileUploadTemporaryStorageResult    fileUpload;         CFSEcoResColorCode                  colorCode;         CFSImportColorCode                  importColorCode = new CFSImportColorCode();         Counter                             counter = 0;         EcoResColorName                     color;         #OCCRetryCount         try         {             //Upload a file             fileUpload  = File::GetFileFromUser() as FileUploadTemporaryStorageResult;             file        = AsciiStreamIo::constructForRead(fileUpload.openResult());             if (file)             {                 if (file.status())                 {                     throw error(“@SYS52680”);                 }                 file.inFieldDelimiter(‘;’); //separator                 file.inRecordDelimiter(‘\r\n’);             }             //Read a CSV File             container rec;             ttsbegin;             while (!file.status())             {                 counter++;                 rec = file.read();                 if (conLen(rec))                 {                     color = conPeek(rec, 2);                     colorCode = CFSEcoResColorCode::find(color);                     if(!colorCode.RecId)                     {                         colorCode.clear();                         colorCode.Name  = color;                         colorCode.Code  = conPeek(rec, 1);                         colorCode.insert();                     }                 }             }             ttscommit;             info(“Operation complete.”);         }         catch (Exception::Deadlock)         {             retry;         }         catch (Exception::UpdateConflict)         {             if (appl.ttsLevel() == 0)             {                 if (xSession::currentRetryCount() >= #RetryNum)                 {                     throw Exception::UpdateConflictNotRecovered;                 }                 else                 {                     retry;                 }             }             else             {                 throw Exception::UpdateConflict;             }         }     } }

In this post, I will talk about the importance of the Cash Position Report for any Professional Services Organization.  The Cash Position is your current and forecasted ‘Cash in Hand’. The importance of having Cash in your bank account cannot be emphasized enough. It is important to understand the difference between Cash Flow and Cash in Hand as they are not the same. An organization can have a solid cash flow (which is revenue tied up in Receivables), but without money in the bank, it cannot operate. Let me go into this further as it’s the foundation of our conversation here.  For any Professional Services organization, anywhere from 60 to 80% of the Monthly expenses are tied to Employee salaries. Paying salaries on time, every month is key to the organization’s credibility. Salaries need to happen on time, month after month, irrespective of your cash flow. They require cash on hand. In addition, any business planning, from HR Activities (a team lunch, an offsite meet) to Investing in the organization’s growth (new areas of business, developing expertise) also requires cash on hand.  One more topic that I need to mention is the current pandemic. Many Projects are delayed, cancelled or on hold. From a business standpoint, this kind of unforeseen event can put a tremendous strain on its ability to continue operations. But while the current pandemic is an extreme scenario, businesses constantly face challenges as we operate on a global level (2004 Tsunami, 2008 Financial Meltdown are some recently examples). Cash on Hand can mean the difference between survival and going out of business.  So we see that Cash on Hand is a Key Metric and hence should be reviewed regularly, ideally during a scheduled Management meeting on a recurring basis. At CloudFronts, we do this review every Monday morning. Our two and a half hour Monday morning Management meetings are literally run by numbers. Some of the Key Reports we review are Project Overview Report, Team Billable & Non-Billable Allocation Report, Support Metrics, Sales Pipeline, Outstanding Accounts Receivable Report, Forecasted AR Report, Cash Position Report. Each one of these is a PowerBI Report embedded into our Microsoft Teams Leadership Team Group.  So what is the Cash Position Report? I will start with a simple equation and then delve into the details –   Cash Position = Cash + AR – AP + Projected AR Now let’s walk through each of the Items in there and how we get that data – Cash on Hand – This is what is in your Bank Account when you run this Report (our report is updated every Monday morning before our weekly Management Meeting). We manually enter this data into the Report.  AR – AR is your Accounts Receivable which includes all Customer Invoices that are due this month and have not yet been paid. This includes overdue invoices carried forward from the previous month as well. If an Invoice is Paid, then it goes into Cash on Hand. Our AR data comes from Dynamics 365 PSA Contract Invoicing Schedule for both Fixed Bid and Time & Materials Projects. Our Contract Invoicing Schedule is the Single source of truth for all our Project Services Invoicing.  AP – AP is all Payables this month, including Salaries. It comes from our Accounting System which is currently QuickBooks Online.  Projected AR – Projected Accounts Receivable are any Invoices that we will generate this month and that will be due this month. This data also becomes from our Contract Invoicing Schedule. For Fixed Bid, this is based on the Contract Billing Milestones and for Time & Materials, this data comes from the Team Member Allocations.  At the top of the Report, you will see that the report is month wise. Hence as you move into the future months, you have less visibility into AR data, but rely on your Projected AR data. As you move into a month, the Projected AR starts becoming AR, which then becomes cash on hand and typically by the end of the month, Projected AR should be zero.  This Report gives the Management Team a clear visibility of the company’s Cash Position over a period of time. For us, we are looking at six months into the future, but organizations can easily set this up for longer periods. By reviewing it regularly, in a scheduled meeting, you ensure there are no surprises and you have time to react well in advance.  The benefits of such a report are further amplified when you consider its impact on our behaviour. During the pandemic, our No.1 priority has been to ensure we are a stable organization with the ability to operate through this pandemic. This report can give you that stability and allow you to stay productive and impact your team with a positive state of mind.  If you are keen on understanding more about our Internal Systems that keep us running and growing, our Internal Systems page is a wonderful resource – https://www.cloudfronts.in/our-internal-systems/ CloudFronts is one of the leading Microsoft Partners globally on implementing Professional Services Automation on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Platform. You can reach me on LinkedIn for any questions/queries or email me at ashah@cloudfronts.com

Introduction: In some scenarios, we might need that Full name of Contact Person should be Last Name and then First Name. In this blog we will see how to change the Format of Full Name for Contact Entity. Step 1: Go to Advanced settings -> Administration -> System settings Step 2: Open System settings -> you will see Option to select different Name format -> Select Format you want and click OK. Step 3: here is the short Demo:  I have created a Contact with First Name as Jon and last Name as Paul Below is the Output: Note : This can not be exported into Solution.  I hope this blog will help you to format Contact’s Name

Introduction: In this blog, we will see how we can delete any of the TFS workspace which is assigned to different user Even if tried to remove/delete the workspace from Visual Studio, We’re unable to map existing workspace to new user.   In such scenario, It is necessary to delete the workspace explicitly while getting the error as below  “The working folder ‘Workspace_Folder_Local_Path’ is already in use by the workspace : on computer Solution:  1. Open Developer Command Prompt for VS2015 from Start menu 2. For getting the list of workspaces associated with user, run below command tf workspaces /server:https://{TFS}.visualstudio.com/{CollectionName} /owner:”{Owner}” Explanation, in my case {TFS} is xxxx.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection and {Owner} as Jagdish Solanki, Eventually it will look something like this, tf workspaces /server:https://xxxx.visualstudio.com/{CollectionName} /owner:”Jagdish Solanki” Reference: 3. To delete the workspace, run below command  tf workspace /server:https://{TFS}.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection /delete “{Workspace};{Owner}” It will looks something like this, tf workspace /server:https://xxxx.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection /delete “SCM-DEV-1;Jagdish Solanki” Once the above command is executed, system will prompt you if user has any pending change(s). Are you sure want to delete the workspace? (Yes/No). Enter yes Reference: