Using the Deny Permission from the AOT in D365FO
The Deny permission in D365FO is a powerful piece of functionality that I’ve written about before. But if you want to utilize this feature from the AOT, there are some things to know about and keep in mind to ensure you are correctly configuring this access. In the AOT If you are setting up object access within the AOT and want to apply a Deny permission to an object you will need to go to the… Continue Reading...
How Do You Track Everything a System Administrator Does in Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations? You Don’t.
The request to track everything a user assigned the SysAdmin role is something I see quite often; the problem is that this request is not feasible in the way that it is in other ERPs. Let’s explain where this request normally comes from, why it not feasible, and what we can do to address this. Where This Request Comes From Normally this type of request comes from an internal/external… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
Microsoft Updates Dynamics 365 License Pricing to Take Effect October 1st 2024
Microsoft Updated Dynamics 365 License Pricing Update Microsoft recently announced updated pricing for Dynamics 365 licensing which will take effect October 1st, 2024: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2024/04/12/new-pricing-for-microsoft-dynamics-365-effective-october-2024/ Here is an excerpt of the pricing, you can see: As is probably expected, there is an increase in pricing… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Release of D365FO Environment Comparison Utility
Building off the latest release of the D365FO Admin Toolkit, I am excited today to announce the first version of the D365FO Environment Comparison solution. This solution allows you to export data / configurations from a source environment and compare it to the data / configurations in a destination environment. It then exports an Excel file with the findings of what has been added, removed,… Continue Reading Alex’s...
New Release of D365FO Admin Toolkit v1.3
Excited to announce the v1.3 release of the D365FO Admin Toolkit! Version 1.3 Release D365FO Admin Toolkit v1.3 Deployable Package D365FO Admin Toolkit GitHub Note: The deployable package has been built against a CY24Q1: 10.0.38 version of D365FO, which is now GA. Navigation Updates I started to break out the different features into separate sub menus to make navigation easier as more… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
New Release of D365FO Admin Toolkit v1.2
We have a new release of the D365FO Admin Toolkit that includes some exciting new community contributions and features! Version 1.2 Release D365FO Admin Toolkit GitHub D365FO Admin Toolkit v1.2 Deployable Package Download Note: The deployable package has been built against a CY24Q1: 10.0.38 version of D365FO, which is now GA. New Features Based on community feedback, one of the requested… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
New Feature Release of the D365FO Admin Toolkit (v1.1)
There has been some fantastic feedback already about the D365FO Admin Toolkit! I appreciate everyone that reached out with feature requests, bugs they found, and overall encouragement! Based on all of the feedback we already have a new release with some new features, bug fixes, and functionality changes. See below for details! Version 1.1 Release D365FO Admin Toolkit GitHub Deployable Package… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Public Release of the D365FO Admin Toolkit
I’m excited today to release something I’ve been working on, the D365FO Admin Toolkit. The idea of this solution is that toolkit created for the Dynamics 365 FinOps community by the community itself. It is my hope and goal that this will be a platform that myself and others can add to going forward to help with some of the tasks normally faced by D365FO administrators. Links Link to the… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Add Logging to SysAdmin Role Assignments in D365FO
This is a follow up blog post to one I had a few weeks ago about being able to grant/revoke the SysAdmin role for testing purposes. One of the things I called out there was that before implementing this solution there needed to be a logging functionality to be able to audit when a user was granted or revoked this access. Here’s how I added this functionality. Design The first thing I needed… Continue Reading Alex’s...
How to Test Role Access Without a Test Account in D365FO
For a recent project, I needed the ability to test custom role access within a D365FO environment but was having a difficult time getting a test account created to assign this access to. My personal user had SysAdmin access, was there anyway for me to be able to test role access with just my user account? Here is the solution I came up with! Solution The idea that I had was to have a simple… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Field Level Security for Custom Field Extensions in D365FO
This blog post was co-authored by Sarah Guthrie a Senior Consultant at Protiviti Have you ever wondered how you can utilize security to restrict sensitive access in Dynamic 365FO? One way to accomplish this is by using field level security. This can serve as a valuable gatekeeper, ensuring that a highly sensitive pages are restricted to only necessary editable fields. For out of the box… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
Hidden Feature Flag Changing How User Licensing is Performed in D365FO
In the past I written and presented on the topic of user licensing in D365FO, the methodology used has not really changed since October 2019 when Microsoft released their new ‘privilege based licensing’. Recently though I was contacted about some interesting behavior on how D365FO was reporting particular licenses. I did a deeper dive into why this was and wanted to share my findings. The… Continue Reading...
My Experience at Dynamics Communities North America Summit 2023
Last week was one of my favorite weeks of the year professionally with the Dynamics Communities North America Summit conference this year hosted in Charlotte, North Carolina. I wanted to share the sights of the conference from my experience! Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations Security Overview Academy Class My Summit week started off with teaching a pre-conference academy class where we… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Dynamics Communities Summit North America 2023 Speaking Activities
We are officially one week out from Dynamics Communities Summit North America 2023 conference and looking forward to a great event, here is a listing of my speaking engagements during the conference. Security Overview of D365FO – Academy Monday Oct 16th 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM Location: E212CD D365FO Telemetry Data Overview Tuesday Oct 17th 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM Location: W209B D365FO General Session –… Continue...
Using Telemetry Data for Read Auditing in D365FO
One question I get quite often in D365FO revolves around the ability to capture when a record is read or viewed within D365FO. The ‘read auditing’ feature is standard in other Dynamics 365 offerings but does not exist natively in D365FO, so what can we use to achieve this outcome? One possible solution is to use the telemetry framework available within D365FO, let’s look at how this can be… Continue Reading...
D365FO Data Entity Metadata
I’ve written about D365FO data entities in the past and have had the opportunity to use them extensively from a ISV and consulting perspective. While working with them I have found myself at different times wanting to have a centralized source of information surrounding their metadata, the data sources used (both root data source and all data sources), and if there was a way to see… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
Import Number Sequences via Data Entity
Overview Number sequences are used to generate readable, unique identifiers for master data records and transaction records. These sequences are normally one of the first things set up after a legal entity is deployed. When either implementing or migrating these number sequences between environments you can utilize either the ‘SequenceTables’ or ‘SequenceV2Tables’ data entities to help with… Continue...
Warehouse Mobile Device Security Overview
The warehouse mobile app is a way for end users to have external devices (such as RF guns) to interact with D365FO to improve efficiency with warehouse tasks. I recently had the opportunity to do a deep dive into how this functionality was secured and wanted to give an overview and then a set of best practices for securing it. Warehouse Mobile App Overview Here is an overview of the setup and… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Apply Environment Update to D365FO via Command Line
Following up on my previous post about deploying a local VHD of D365FO, I wanted to show how you can then update your environment when Microsoft releases newer versions. The first step is to download the update deployable package from LCS by navigating to the Shared Asset Library: Then navigating to the ‘Software Deployable Package’: Now download the deployable package update that you would… Continue Reading...
Step by Step Guide to Deploy a Local VHD of D365FO
There are two main ways to deploy D365FO for development and testing purposes, the more streamlined way is to deploy a preconfigured environment via LCS. While this is extremely straightforward it does incur Azure costs as the resources (virtual machine, networking, storage, etc) are deployed within your Azure instance. The other option is to deploy these resources locally via a virtual hard… Continue Reading Alex’s...
How to Secure Form Fields Populated By Data Methods in D365FO
I have written in the past about using field level security to help secure sensitive information within your D365FO environment, but what if the field you want to secure doesn’t correlate directly to a SQL table field and instead is populated by a data method? Let’s see how you can still secure this! Scenario Let’s say I want to secure the Bank Account Number field on the Vendors form, if I… Continue...
My First Microsoft MVP Summit
Last week I got to experience my first Microsoft MVP Summit in person since becoming an MVP in November of 2019. It was great to see old friends and meet new ones (face to face!) in the Business Application for D365FO space. So many great sessions, information being shared, and connections being made! I wanted to share a few pictures from the trip and to let everyone know to keep an eye on… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Spring 2023 – Presenting at Upcoming User Group Conferences
I’m excited to be speaking in-person at a couple upcoming conferences and sharing my knowledge and expertise! Here are two spring 2023 conferences I am speaking at! DynamicsCon Live! DynamicsCon Live! is being hosted in Scottsdale, Arizona from May 22nd – May 25th and looks to have an awesome line up of speakers and content! I am presenting two sessions at the conference, the first is D365FO… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Utilizing Telemetry Data Within D365FO
I’ve written before about the telemetry data now available in D365FO, but is there a way to consume this telemetry data within the application itself? Let’s see how we could do this! Problem Statement In our case let’s see if we could automatically disable users that have not logged in within the last 90 days. We should be able to query the telemetry data, see which users have logged in within… Continue Reading...
Potential Upcoming Licensing Changes in D365FO?
Going off of recent posts where I was looking for things that have been upgraded recently, I noticed in 10.0.30 and 10.0.31 that there were some changes to the LicensingServicePlansPrivilege table within D365FO. I started noticing the ‘Activity’ license showing up in this table, which hasn’t happened before: This of course raises a lot of questions that I had to performing some testing to… Continue Reading...
Netmodule File Missing Error in 10.0.31
If you are partner, ISV, or anyone delivering custom code to end users in D365FO, there is a change in 10.0.31 that you need to know about. Issue If you have a customer that upgrades to 10.0.31 and the next time they try to check in a deployable package to their source control build pipeline and they get an error similar to ‘Netmodule file missing: Dynamics.AX.<module>.<number>.netmodule’ like… Continue...
Security & Audit Features Added in 10.0.31
The latest platform release notes for D365FO 10.0.31 has recently been made public, there were a couple security and audit related features I wanted to highlight. ‘Can Be Deleted From UI’ Security Role Property There is a new property on security roles called ‘Can Be Deleted from UI’. This setting controls where a particular security layer can be deleted via the D365FO user interface. The… Continue...
Interesting Issue With the SecurityUserRoleOrganization Data Entity in D365FO
Data entities within D365FO allow for external applications to interact with D365FO data. One data entity that I use both professionally and in my personal projects fairly regularly is SecurityUserRoleOrganization. This data entity is utilized to restrict a user role assignment to specific organizations within a D365FO environment. In most cases this is a legal entity or organization hierarchy… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Comparing Security Between D365FO Environments Solution Released
I’m happy to announce the public release of my ‘D365FO Security Comparison Utility’ available on my GitHub! Solution Download The solution download is available here: https://github.com/ameyer505/D365FOSecurityComparisonUtility/releases The source code for the application can be found here: https://github.com/ameyer505/D365FOSecurityComparisonUtility Overview of Solution Install the… Continue Reading...
Comparing Security Between D365FO Environments – Beta Solution
One complaint I hear quite often and a huge gap in the current D365FO offering from a security perspective is that there is not a good way to compare security between environments. This becomes especially difficult when upgrading to a new D365FO version or when wanting to confirm that no new security changes have been added between a testing environment and production along with many other… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Overview of Telemetry Data in D365FO
In the 10.0.30 release of D365FO, which went GA on Oct 21st 2022, Microsoft added the ability for customers to report on the telemetry data of their end users. I wanted to take a quick overview of this feature and start to look at opportunities to use this data. Prerequisites The telemetry data from Microsoft is stored in Azure Application Insights, so we have to create a resource for us to… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
D365FO Extensible Data Security (XDS) Scenarios
I recently attended the Dynamic Communities North America Summit Conference and presented numerous sessions surrounding security and licensing in D365FO. One of my new sessions was around Extensible Data Security (XDS) and I was a little worried about such a technical session being put on the final morning of the conference. But I didn’t need to worry at all because I had a full room of… Continue Reading Alex’s...
How to Approach Advanced XDS Scenarios in D365FO
I’ve written about Extensible Data Security (XDS) in D365FO a couple times before, in those posts the XDS security policy is applied between two tables that have a direct tie to each other (ex: customers and customer groups). In this post, I wanted to show how you can use XDS even in scenarios where there isn’t a direct association or relationship between two tables. The Scenario The scenario… Continue Reading...
How to Identify and Options for Fixing Segregation of Duties and Licensing Issues in D365FO
There are many different options available to fix or address segregation of duties (SOD) and licensing issues in D365FO, I wanted to show the different options available so you can apply the best option for your particular scenario. Please note: The options provided for possible solutions are not a complete list of every possible way to address the issues With the scenarios below, if you are… Continue Reading Alex’s...
How to Handle Batch Jobs When Disabling or Deleting a User in D365FO
I had someone reach out to me about the ‘right’ way to handle batch jobs when disabling or deleting a user from D365FO. Let’s look at the options you have to avoid any issues. Why This is an Issue Batch jobs within D365FO allow for a way to execute a set of instructions that can be scheduled to run on a periodic basis. These are used extensively to perform business calculations and because… Continue Reading...
How to Use a .NET Project Within a D365FO Solution
I wanted to write today about why I utilize .NET projects for certain scenarios when developing X++ solutions for D365FO. How Is This Possible? How is it possible that you can have two different project types under one solution? I actually wrote about the changes that were happening to the X++ compiler way back in 2017, the change we are most interested in is that X++ code now compiles and… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
An Update to ‘Creating a Read Only Role for D365FO – User Interface’
I had a comment on one of my blog posts that Microsoft had updated the functionality that existed to help create a read only role from the D365FO user interface so I wanted to show how much easier it is to perform this process now. In my previous post, I showed how you had to manually manipulate an XML file and use regular expressions find/replace to achieve the desired security file to be… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Issue With FieldObject Method on DictTable Class in D365FO
I recently ran into an interesting issue with using the FieldObject() method on the DictTable class when programming in X++ for D365FO. Scenario The scenario to replicate the issue is to create a DictTable object and then perform a fieldObject() method call on a field that doesn’t exist. According to Microsoft documentation, this method should return null if the object could not be created.
How to Grant Access to Navigation Modules in D365FO
A question I recently got asked was ‘Is there an easy way to grant access to different modules in the navigation within D365FO?’ I wanted to show how this can be done and provide some resources to hopefully help out! How is the Navigation Access Decided? Which navigation objects a user sees within D365FO is directly related to the menu items the user is assigned as the entries in the… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Segregation of Duties in D365FO
I’ve referred to the Segregation of Duties (SOD) feature in Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations before but haven’t really gotten into the specifics of the feature itself, what it allows you to do and the shortcomings/gaps. What is Segregation of Duties? The idea of Segregation of Duties (aka Separation of Duties) is that a single user should not be able to perform certain actions in a… Continue Reading...
Presenting at Upcoming Microsoft Dynamics Conferences
DynamicsCon (virtual) When: March 15 – 17th 2022 Price: Free Register Here Session Information: Common D365FO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them I am co-presenting this session with another Microsoft MVP Andre Arnaud de Calavon. In this session, we will demonstrate real-world common D365FO security mistakes that customers make, discuss why these actions can introduce risk into your organization,… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Comparing D365FO Security Between Versions
A frequent request I get is with OneVersion updates in D365FO, how do we as end users know what security changes are occurring between D365FO versions? A fellow Microsoft MVP, Nathan Clouse, reached out to me asking about wanting to add the same information to his dynamics.fo website. He has dedicated this site to show changes that are occuring between D365FO versions. We decided to… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
How to Use Temp Tables as Grid Datasources for Data Analytics in D365FO
I was recently asked to find a way to perform some simple data analytics across some data within D365FO. In my case, this was audit data that could easily be millions of records so just exporting to an Excel file to do this was not really an option. Instead I wanted to build a simple form that would perform the analysis for me. Note: This could also be done very easily within a full data… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
Voting Now Open for DynamicsCon 2022 Sessions
Voting has now opened for DynamicsCon 2022 sessions! I have submitted two different sessions and there are many more great sessions to check out and vote for! Be sure to get your votes in before January 19th 2022! Successfully Navigate D365FO User Licensing Do you find user licensing in D365FO confusing? Do you second guess the number and type of licenses you need? Are you worried you are… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Automated Solution to Find Table Relations in AX 2012 and D365FO
Problem For anyone that has dealt with creating queries in AX 2012 and D365FO, you know it can be extremely difficult to determine possible table relations between tables. To help with this Microsoft released an ERD for AX 2012 (this can still be used for D365FO), unfortunately they no longer maintain this project but do allow for others to host it themselves. This ERD helps to show the… Continue Reading Alex’s Article on...
Get Custom D365FO Objects at Runtime Using X++
A while back, I asked a question on the D365FO forums about being able to generate a list of custom objects within an environment at runtime via X++. I never followed up on my answer there so I wanted to give a detailed response to how I ended up solving this. Before We Begin In the discussion on my initial question post it was brought up that you should be using a source control system (TFS,… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Restoring Deleted Security in D365FO
Recently ran into an interesting scenario where an end user deleted a security layer from the user interface and wanted to restore it. This security layer was an out of box security layer so it existed in the AOT. Here is the process on how to perform this task. Note: The following process only works in the scenario that the security layer exists in the AOT and you remove it from the user… Continue Reading Alex’s Article...
Determine Where Form Data is Stored in D365FO
There are many scenarios in D365FO where knowing where data on a form is coming from is needed. A couple scenarios include trying to write custom reports or for tracking data changes using something like the Fastpath Audit Trail tool. There are a couple different options on how to accomplish this so I wanted to walk through them. I’ve written about a similar topic to this in the past, but… Continue Reading Alex’s...
Creating a Read Only Role for D365FO – User Interface
I previously wrote about how to create a read only role for D365FO via the AOT. A lot of users thought my use of the term ‘easy’ in the title was misleading, which I can’t really argue with, It does get slightly technical on how to create it. So I thought it might be a good idea to make this process a little more user friendly and make a read only role that anyone could import into their… Continue Reading...
Using TPF to Protect Sensitive Data in Grid Columns for D365FO
I’ve covered the topic of the Table Permission Framework previously but wanted to give an example of how it can be used for protecting columns within grids in D365FO. Scenario There is a form within D365FO that contains a grid that has a sensitive data within a particular column that you would like to hide from certain users and only allow users explicitly assigned access to see/interact with… Continue Reading Alex’s...