Introduction In this blog article, we will see how to resolve the below error while creating a record in Sales Line in AX 2012. Solution: This error causes because Sales Line has a primary index set as InventTransId and the value for it is not being generated while inserting a new record in Salesline. 1. Go to Inventory Management -> Setup -> Inventory Management Parameters -> Go to Number Sequence tab 2. Select Lot Id -> Right click -> Select View Details 3. In the General Tab -> Uncheck the manual checkbox.   OR   This error can also be caused because there exist unused Number Sequence list. 1. Go to Accounts Receivable -> Setup -> Accounts Receivable Parameters -> Go to Number Sequence Tab 2. Select Sales order -> Right click -> Select View Details 3. On Action Pane Select Manual Clean up -> Select current Tab. 4. On Number Sequence Form -> Select Cleanup 5. Click OK.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sales Process aims to generate potential sales opportunities and gives a new lead and boost to your business. It is intended to help the business procedure from gaining another lead through the end of a deal and to create exact deals gauging. Via mechanizing and enhancing a few phases, it smoothes out the business procedure while improving the pace of the conclusion. It additionally helps track and measure each deal’s action and see each number and segment of the business pipe so as to develop pay. Utilizing the Dynamics CRM deals process, you can focus on the correct leads and construct a remarkable deals pipeline. The CRM sales process ultimately increases the revenue of a company which every organisation aims in doing by supporting the business from beginning to end Introduction: With CRM 2016, Dynamics added controls which can be used in Phones, tablets and some on web forms as well. One such important control is the signature control in Dynamics CRM. This control is available for Phones and tablets, and very important in the modern sales process. In this blog, we will see how to add Signature control on Mobile and Tablet forms. Steps: Create a Multi-line text field with minimum length greater than or equal to 15000. Let’s say the name of the field is “Customer Approval” Add the Customer Approval field to CRM form. Add the Pen Control on the Customer Approval field. Once you publish, you can now see this control on your Mobile and Tablet application. It will look like below. Note: You also need to select the check box below the signature for the app to save the data. Once Customer/ Person signs using the above, the information is stored back in CRM. Other Information: The control cannot be used on Web forms. It will look like a Text box field. So, it is advisable to have this field locked or hidden on Web. On web form, and in CRM DB, the data is stored as the base64 format inside the field. So if you open the form on CRM, it will look like below. Conclusion: Using controls for forms on mobile, and tablets vastly improves the user interface on handheld devices. It is important to understand controls and apply them at relevant places on CRM forms. PS: I will be writing another blog, which will automatically convert the base64 data of the signature and store it as an attachment on the entity.

Overview: FetchXML is used to query the Dynamics 365 database. A great advantage of using FetchXML is that it can be easily designed by using Dynamics 365 database and it is easy to understand. FetchXML tester is available in the XRM Toolbox which can let you test and fetch results quickly. FetchXML also provides facilities like aggregation and grouping of data. Using FetchXML: FetchXML must conform to the fetch.xsd schema provided with the Dynamics 365 SDK under the directory SDK\Schemas\fetch.xsd FetchXML must be built into a query string which can be used with IOrganizationService.RetrieveMultiple to retrieve data from Dynamics 365. FetchXML query can be saved in Dynamics 365 by creating a SavedQuery record.   From the above sample query, a query can be constructed inside <fetch></fetch> tags. In the above example, I’m retrieving Contact records with the attributes Contact ID which is the Primary Key and the Full Name of the Contact. In the above query, using count=’3’ will retrieve a maximum of 3 records. Executing the FetchXML query: You can simply use the above query in the FetchXML tester provided in the XRM Toolbox and get results or you can construct a query string and use it with IOrganizationService.RetrieveMultiple() and get results in the EntityCollection object in your application. Using the above query, here’s how I can make it into a query string and retrieve the results in my application. Then, I can use foreach() to loop through the result returned in the EntityCollection. FetchXML Aggregation: The following aggregation functions are provided in FetchXML: sum avg min max count(*) count(attribute name) Example of max used with aggregation: In the above example, I’ve used the attribute aggregate=”true” in the FetchXML header and used an aggregate aggregate=”max” with the field Employee which is count of Employees in an Account. The result returned for the same was: The above result returned a formatted value of 13000 which is the max for an Account. Also, notice that the tag is <total></total> since it was the alias I used in the query. Likewise, you can use other aggregates and grouping functions. Understanding Results of FetchXML: FetchXML results are returned in the <resultset></resultset> tags as shown in the sample below: Each record is retrieved under an individual <result></result> tags. Paging: At maximum, a FetchXML query can return not more than 5000 records. If results are more than 5000, morerecords attribute in the resultset will return “1” and will be shown like below: In order to fetch further records, you’ll need to use PagingCookie. A sample code has been provided in the SDK under SampleCode\CS\GeneralProgramming\Queries\FetchPagingWithCookie.cs to leverage the same. Also, if you want to return results with even smaller numbers, you can use paging in the FetchXML tested by using the following: In the above example, I’m choosing to show only 2 records per page and I’m retrieving page no. 2 of all the records. Hope this was helpful!  

Introduction: We have various methods to query CRM like, “query expression”, “fetch expression” and “LINQ”. If we want to query data of two different entities, then we should have relationship between entities otherwise you will not get data. In case you want to process data of two different entities which are not related to each other then what to do. We can achieve this using fetch Expression in with the common field data type. Description: We had a requirement where we wanted to get the data from two different entities which were not related to each other but both of them had common field Email Address. So we can query the CRM using Fetch expression by providing from field and to field which will connect to each other. Solution: To demonstrate this how it works I have tested it with account and contact entities as an example. We are testing it with “email address”. To execute this query XRM tool box is used. You can download it from given link http://www.xrmtoolbox.com/ Account: Contact: Query: <fetch version=”1.0″ output-format=”xml-platform” mapping=”logical” distinct=”true” >     <entity name=”contact” >         <attribute name=”fullname” />         <attribute name=”emailaddress1″ />         <order attribute=”fullname” descending=”false” />         <link-entity name=”account” from=”emailaddress1″ to=”emailaddress1″ alias=”Account” >             <attribute name=”emailaddress1″ />             <attribute name=”name” />         </link-entity>     </entity> </fetch> As you can see that we have linked contact and account on the basis of emailaddress1. Once you execute the query you will have all the records which are related to each other with same email id As you can see there are more records matching with same email id on account and contact. So it returns all the records with the matching email id. Conclusion: You can query CRM data of two different entities using the same data type fields.

Introduction: This blog explains how to hide custom buttons on create form in D365. Problem Statement: We often get requirement from Client to hide custom buttons on Create record and to be shown on updating of record. Solution: We can achieve this functionality by having ribbon Customization with Enable Rules using FormStateRule. Steps of Implementation: 1. Create a new Command. 2.  Create a new Enable Rule. 3.  Create a new FormStateRule. 4.  Set Enable Rule on Command. 5.  Set Command on Button. Conclusion: Below image confirms button is hidden on Create Record and it is shown on Update Record. Create Record: Update Record:

Introduction: Like asynchronous workflows, real-time workflows can be used to model and automate real world business processes. Real-time workflows are for business users, for example business analysts, to implement similar functionality to synchronous plug-ins without requiring .NET Framework programming experience. How to use Real time Workflows for Custom Business Validations: Real time workflows can be used to not only implement business logic in Dynamics, but also simple and complex validations in the business flow. Let us understand this using 2 examples: Example 1: We have a business Validation that leads with employee size less than 100 should not be allowed to qualify. Earlier, we used to do this either from JS form scripting or using Plugin. But we can also use Real time workflow to achieve this, and it can throw a validation message as well to user. 1. For it to throw a validation message, we need to stop the workflow and select reason as cancelled. Then we can set the status reason as the message we want to display the user. 2. This is what the User will see if he/ she tries to qualify a lead with employee size less than 100. 3. This is the workflow that we configured: 4. You can specify the validation message in the Stop Workflow properties. Please note that Status of “Stop Workflow” should be cancelled for users to see the message. Example 2: We can have more complex validations as well using Real time workflow. 1. For example, Lets say we don’t want the opportunity to be Won unless the Account (Customer) has Credit limit greater than the Opportunity Budget Amount. We can configure this condition as well in Workflow. Refer Screenshot below: 2. And the End user will see the error message as below when he/ she tries to mark the opportunity as Won when the customer’s credit limit is less than the Opportunity Budget. Conclusion: Real time workflows are very powerful, and can be leveraged to perform server side validations in Dynamics CRM, along with real time CRUD operations and Email messages.  

Introduction: In this blog, we shall see how can a user create an Entity List OData Feed using custom JavaScript in CRM Portals. Pre-Requisites: D365 CRM Portals D365 CRM Environment Why Use OData (Open Data) Protocol? OData provides external access to a data source via a website. Recommended for the Open Government Data Initiative. Data API for Microsoft Azure Data is delivered in JSON format unlike XML format. Use of OData for custom live reports, new feeds, external applications, or leveraged by client-side AJAX for unique Entity List UI. Scenario: In the following scenario the user will learn how to configure an Entity List OData Feed and Configure OData Display Using Client-Side JavaScript. The following below image shows the OData feed from an Account Entity List, that we are going to create using client-side JavaScript. Fig 1. The OData to be configured using client-side JavaScript Steps for Implementing Above Scenario Step 1: The user will have to first create a new ‘Entity List’ in this case a ‘Account’ Entity List by going to Portals>Entity List and click on ‘New’ and in the Entity Name input select ‘Account’ and create a view Name “Active Accounts” that will display a grid view of all the Active Accounts as shown below in the following two images. Fig 2.1 Creating a New Entity List Fig 2.2 Setting Properties for the Entity List Now, user will have to enable the Entity List for OData Feed by checking on the ‘Enable’ option and entering the details into the input fields in the OData Feed Section for the Entity List as shown below: Fig 2.3 Setting Properties of OData Feed for the Entity List Step 2: The user will have to create a Page on the CRM Portals to display the following Entity List. The user will have to use the Admin panel and click on ‘Child Page’ to create a new Page which will display the Entity List after setting the properties of the page as shown below. Fig 3.1 Setting Properties for the Portal Page that will display the Entity List Fig 3.2 Setting up the Account Entity List Page Step 3: The user will now have to obtain the OData Feed by entering ‘/_odata’ to the end of the Portal URL that the user uses to open the CRM Portals which will open a XML page as shown below. Fig 4.1 OData URL of the CRM Portal Note:  The user will have to save the odata xml format and open it in another application like ‘Notepad’. Fig 4.2 XML Format of the OData Feed on CRM Portals Now in the above XML format we can see that accounts is being used as the href. To obtain the JSON format of the OData Feed the user will have to add the href used in the XML format to the end of the previously seen OData URL which is shown below. Fig 4.3 URL to obtain JSON format of the OData Feed Fig 4.4 JSON Format of the OData Feed on CRM Portals Note: The user will obtain a URL to the bottom of the JSON Format of the OData Feed which will provide the user to go to next set of records for the Entity List Step 4: Once the user has obtained the OData Feed the user will have to render the following OData Feed with a unique UI provided by ajax JavaScript on the client Side. The following is the Custom JavaScript containing the ajax call function against the OData Feed as shown below. Fig 5.1 Custom JavaScript to display OData Feed on CRM Portal Page The user will have to paste the code into the source code of the CRM Portal Page as shown below to which he wants to display the OData Feed as shown previously in the Scenario above and click on Save as shown below.  Fig 5.2 Pasting the JavaScript into the Source Code Conclusion: In this way the user can implement a simple Entity List OData Feed on CRM Portals using a client side custom JavaScript.

Overview: The purpose of this article is to help fellow entrepreneurs and sales managers leverage technology for effectively managing their sales pipeline with a few easy steps. As an entrepreneur, one of the most difficult aspects of my work is generating sales and building a healthy sales pipeline. On June 1st 2017, CloudFronts will complete 5 years and looking at all the systems we have in place, I feel we have adequate sophistication in our Operations and Administration processes. On the other hand, I feel our Sales processes are still not mature and need to evolve. This and future articles will focus on how we can leverage Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales for managing sales. This is something we use today and so I feel it should help others. “I know I need to keep track of my sales pipeline, but I am just so busy.” Step 1 – Data Entry We are always so busy and entering data into CRM can be such a pain! Just quickly sending out that email makes sense when you have just a few opportunities to manage. Eventually this method fails as our memory can only hold so much information. So, you will need to enter data in your CRM! While the term, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ applies to data, this is apt for a sales person – “No data entry = lost opportunities”. So, take a few seconds (now is the best time) and enter that Customer, Contact and Opportunity data into CRM! You already paid for the licenses, might as well use it! Step 2 – Managing your pipeline by keeping your ‘Est. Close Date’ up-to-date. Once I enter my Opportunity for the first time, I just really want to update the Est. Close Date and sometimes the Est. Revenue. I really do not want to open the Opportunity every time. I could have used Editable Grids for this but I also wanted to add some ‘intelligence’ here which I could use later for analysis. I wanted to capture some notes on why I changed the Est. Close Date and put these notes in the Notes section with a predefined title (like – ‘Est. Close Date Change Reason’). I worked with our CRM team to setup a simple workflow dialog. This is how I manage my Opportunities now – 1. My Open Opportunities View> Select my Opportunity and then run my Dialog. The dialog is simple and really has only 2 input options, Est. Close Date and Reason – The reason becomes a note record on my opportunity. The above process works well for me for my Pipeline Management. My opportunity view is sorted by Est. Close Date, so this further ensures I do not have any past due opportunities. Step 3 – Just do it. No, we don’t need to really buy a pair of running shoes, but we need to do the above 2 steps diligently and every day. The benefits of this exercise will become obvious very soon and you will be running faster than before towards better close rates as things stop falling through the cracks (of our brain). Remember – ‘Sales cures all.’ Let’s take care of that sales pipeline! You can always email me at AShah@CloudFronts.com to discuss your sales processes and technology adoption. In the coming articles, I will talk about how Sales Pipeline Management ties into business decision making – from Resource Allocation to Recruitment.

Introduction: In this blog, we are going to discuss how to set a party list field using JavaScript in Dynamics CRM. Many times, there is a requirement that any email send from CRM must be send from a specific user, irrespective of the user logged in to CRM. Scenario: In the Incident Management, there is a need that each mail send from CRM to Customers must be send from Support User. Steps: Step 1: Write a function on load of email form. Retrieve the Queue or User you want to set from Web API Step 2: Party List basically consists of User or a Queue. So, we can set User or a Queue in party list. You can differentiate the User and Queue by specifying the Entity Type. a. Queue: “queue” b. User: “systemuser” Code is given below:  var partylistData = new Array(); partylistData[0] = new Object(); partylistData[0].id = queue.value[0].queueid; partylistData[0].name = queue.value[0].name; partylistData[0].entityType = “queue”; Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“from”).setValue(partylistData); More validation can be set on basis of the requirements. On the status of the email validation can be done.

As an entrepreneur, if you want to streamline your operations and finance departments, you should go for an ERP solution. Countless companies are offering ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning solutions or software. Dynamics 365 for finance and operations, however, is one of the best ERP solutions that you can find in the market today. One of the key reasons why a lot of companies are using this software is that it is easy to install, configure, and to use. You can scale your business when you use ERP solutions like Dynamics 365. A lot of resources are available online that will help your employees become smart and efficient.  Deploying this software is easy. Here is some information for you In this blog article, we will see how we can deploy the package in Dynamics 365 Operations. This Package can be any latest update, hotfix or deployment package you have created. Prerequisites: LCS login VM Instance Steps: 1. Download, Extract and Unblock Package 2. Update topology configuration data 3. Generate a runbook from the topology 4. Execute runbook Download, Extract and Unblock Package a. Login to LCS and download the Zip file of Deployable Package. b. After downloading, go to downloaded Zip file properties and select unblock. c. Extract the Zip file to a non–user folder. Update topology configuration data a. Go to extracted folder and open the file “DefaultTopologyData.xml” b. Populate the file with VM name. i. Go to This PC -> Properties. Find the name of the machine. ii. Update the VM name with the machine name in the file. c. Populate the file with installed components i. Open a command prompt as an administrator. ii. Run the command from extracted folder path to see a list of all installed components on the computer. iii. Update the file with a list of components. 3. Generate a runbook from the topology a. Run the command to generate a runbook. AXUpdateInstaller.exe generate -runbookid=[runbookID] -topologyfile=[topologyFile] -servicemodelfile=[serviceModelFile] -runbookfile=[runbookFile] Example: b. Runbook will contain instructions in sequential steps to deploy the package. 4. Execute Runbook a. Import the runbook. AXUpdateInstaller.exe import -runbookfile=[runbookFile] Example: b. Verify the runbook. c. Execute the runbook. AXUpdateInstaller.exe execute -runbookid=[runbookID] Example: d. Export the runbook. Export the runbook for future reference, you can use it to refer the steps, time to execute each step and logs for each step. UpdateInstaller.exe export -runbookid=[runbookID] -runbookfile=[runbookFile] Example: