BPFs to Visio – XrmToolBox tool
You have @TheMarkChristie to blame for this. I have shied away from creating a tool that documented your Business Process Flows for a while. You would think it was easier than Power Automate documentation but the inconsistencies and difficulties in the format of the XML that is the BPF is quite something. Persumambly, it is logic Microsoft has just added to over the years. But, yep, it is… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
AZ-900 – Azure Fundamentals
As a Power Platform / D365 solution architect a lot of the time you are being asked to think about integrations and creating applications on the outside of the core platform. Azure, for the most part, is the place where we will go to host external integrations and apps and is a smorgasbord of services to assist in making great applications. To keep myself progressing, I wanted to test my… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
PVA to Visio Builder – XrmToolBox Tool
Sorry, it has been quiet on the blog. When you create tools, as a hobby, the time to release new features or new tools is dictated by time spent and complexity. This means I don’t post as much as I want to. But, more importantly, I have a new tool available! Introducing PVA to Visio Builder! TLDR; I have created a tool for the XrmToolBox which enables you to document your Power… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Nov 21 Updates to Flow To Visio
I have been busy on a new job, actually socialising and living life recently, but got back to doing some updates for the Flow to Visio tool. The main description is updated here but I will just highlight the changes. Comments Comments on Flows are a new, preview, a feature recently announced at Ignite November 21. It only allows for comments in flows stored within a dataverse environment… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Access Checker – XrmToolBox Tool
Frequently, my day job is inspiration to develop a tool and Access Checker was just that. Though not mine, the great @Tanguy Touzard did the original, I felt that I could update it to include how the user has access. The original tool allowed you to select a record, select a user and be presented with what access that user had to that record. My enhancement is to present to the user how… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Updates to Mind Maps
Microsoft has introduced a new way of renewing certifications recently (well, December 2020) in that you don’t have to retake the whole exam. This is invaluable for those, like me, with limited time. In the past, you had to spend at least a couple of hours either virtually or in-person re-taking the whole exam. This change means you have to answer 20-25 questions and extend your… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Role Replicator – XrmToolBox Tool
Santosh, he of Role Documenter fame, highlighted to me that one of his tools has fallen by the wayside. He is a busy man and has not found time to keep this tool up to date. XrmToolBox and the underlying Microsoft tooling, has changed quite significantly over the years; like any software project, it needs to be updated regularly to keep in line. I have helped him out bring the tool back and… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Using Power Automate and Graph API to manage External access to Teams
MCJ and I presented API’s – The most powerful tool, anyone can use! for D365 UG and Swiss Power Saturday recently and I thought it would be good to share the Cloud Flow I created to automate the onboarding of external users to a Microsoft Team. This is usually an admin driven activity – A team owner will have to type in the email address for each guest they want to add, rather than… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Site Map Documenter
In my never-ending journey to document everything in the Power Platform, I thought I would take a crack at Site Maps. You know, the list of stuff on the left-hand side of a model-driven app. Again, as a consultant, it needs documenting and Microsoft doesn’t provide a tool to do so. Tanguy Touzard, the wizard behind XrmToolBox has already got an app to edit Site maps, which I piggy backed… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Mockaroo Data Munger – Data Sets
Working with demo or test data, you normally need a set of data rather than one table. For instance, for a Customer Insights demo, I would want hundreds of accounts, thousands of contacts associated with those accounts and tens of thousands of cases associated with the contacts. This will have to be realistic, randomised data that shows the last 3-6 months rather than a stale set of data. The… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
PL-200 – Power Platform Functional Consultant
I have finally got round to taking this exam, I have only just (well it feels like) passed MB-200 and so when this exam was announced, I was a bit “meh” about it. Thankfully, the amazing Julian Sharp asked for people to review his new book Microsoft Power Platform Functional Consultant: PL-200 Exam Guide and I jumped at the opportunity. As ever, I used Mind Maps to assist me in… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Logic Apps to Visio – XrmToolBox Tool
So, we all know Power Automate Cloud Flows are basically Logic Apps right? Which means I should be able to document them and convert to Visios in the same way as my Flow To Visio Tool right? Actually, it is true! After numerous requests, I finally got round to doing it. TLDR; I have included the ability to document Logic Apps in the Flow to Visio tool. < h3>Document Logic Apps… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article on...
Role Documenter – XrmToolBox Tool
As you can see from the various tools I have produced this year, documentation is the bane of my life. I love developing, coding and producing solutions, but invariably end up at a customer with the unenviable task of documenting either the solution we have developed or one that has been in situ for a while. One of those daunting documentation tasks is security roles. Imagine being able to… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Fundraising and Engagement for D365 Sales
There is a new app on the block. At the end of October, Microsoft announced their latest pitch to drive adoption of Dynamics in the Non-Profit sector. They have been using their Tech for Social Impact initiative to brilliant effect over the last couple of year, introducing and encouraging adoption of a Common Data Model across development partners, not just Microsoft, to reduce the burden of… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
MB-220 – Dynamics 365 Marketing
Microsoft has 4 main functional exams, each focused on a separate application. Sales, Service and Field Service are all parts of the suite that I have worked in anger (deployed at a client) but the fourth in the series, Marketing is an application that I never have had much involvement with. Yes, I know what it is capable of, as a Technical or Solution Architect, you are expected to at… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Flow to Visio – XrmToolBox Addon
Sorry, the blog has been quiet, there is only so much time to spend on out of work activities, and this tool has been my time sink in the last 6 weeks. Not complaining, loved getting back to my routes. Documentation for many consultants is the worst part. Implementing stuff is fun, taking the same amount of time documenting what you have delivered is not. With this in mind, I created the
Accelerators: Nonprofit – Part 3 – Awards
This is the third post in the series looking at one of Microsoft’s Solution Accelerators, namely the Nonprofit version. This article will be discussing the Awards app. This app revolves around distributing funds to various projects and includes tracking of the associated programme delivery. I have already discussed installing and the Fundraising app in part 1 and the Constituents App in
Mockaroo Data Munger – XrmToolBox Addon
Another tool I am please to announce – Mockaroo Data Munger! This tool is an interface between Mockaroo and your CDS environment. Mockaroo is an excellent random data generator which has been my go to source for data over the last couple of years for building demo or test data sets. I found myself regularly configuring Mockaroo data exports, creating Excel spreadsheets and then importing… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
PL-100 – Microsoft Power Platform App Maker
One of the newest exams on the block is PL-100 Power Platform App Maker. This exam is targeted at individuals who are currently making apps for their company and want to certify their talents. I saw this exam similar to the MB-200 exam, which is soon to be replaced with PL-200, but I was wrong. The qualification associated with this exam is Power Platform App Maker Associate. The exam is… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Accelerators: Nonprofit – Part 2 – Constituents
This is the second post in a series as a tool to educate me and document the functionality in the Microsoft Industry Accelerators. This post will dig a little deeper into the Nonprofit accelerator, with the second model app available to you, namely Installing and a guide to the Fundraising app can be found here TL;DR Walkthrough of the Constituents application which forms a central… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article on...
Accelerators: Nonprofit – part 1 – Fundraising
Microsoft Dynamics is a great set of tools, which cover a lot of the requirements for most situations. These Sales and Service tools tend to focus on a generic requirement rather than those that can be specific to an industry. To get a more specific version of the application, one that is more suited for an industry vertical, Microsoft provides several Accelerators. The accelerators are a… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
ERD Visio Builder – XrmToolBox addon
As with my Org Settings tool, creating Visio diagrams to represent and document your entities and relationships in Dynamics has long been on my list to find a better solution than making them yourself. There is already a couple of Entity visualisers in the XrmToolBox suite, but non that output to Visio. The project is available in XrmToolBox, source here and I am indebted to Saveen… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article on...
Adding to Calendars using Power Automate
D365 Customer Service and Field Service both use Calendars associated with resources to schedule working time. This is accessible via the resource calendar and typically relies on the individual working a set time frame each week. Fiona works Monday to Friday, 8-5. When you are working with volunteers, this doesn’t work. Each volunteer will have an inconsistent schedule, with most of the… Continue Reading ‘s Article...
D365 Org DB Settings – XrmToolBox addon
Regular readers (Hi Mum) will remember I have done several articles on Org DB Settings. I have got 2 pages in the top bar dedicated to a description of each setting, the first all about the various Email Settings you can tweak, the second covering the rest of them. Both articles continue to be readily used by people, assume looking for a better understanding, as the Microsoft documentation… Continue Reading ‘s Article on...
Approvals – Showing History in SharePoint
Last week, I took part in the Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon. This was a branch out for me, as it wasn’t specifically Dynamics 365 or Power Platform related, though everything is one now right? My talk was around Approvals, displaying 3 types of approvals, from a Send with Options to Adaptive cards, topics I have covered in my blog before. During the sessions, one of the questions was… Continue Reading ‘s Article on...
Customer Service Insights
Following on my series of posts about Sales Insights, I thought I would learn more about Customer Service Insights. Sales Insights, in my view, is all around making the sales process more effective reducing the time spent editing data, highlighting activities that a sales user should be doing and tracking activity with your customer. Sales Insights includes forecasting and predictions as… Continue Reading ‘s Article on...
Using Power Automate to generate Data
Previously, I have used Mockaroo and Flow to generate data, but the data I required for demoing the Customer Services Insights functionality has to be linked from existing data to be valid. In this post, I will guide you through the methods I have used to randomise and create demonstration data that fits the requirements for Customer Service Insights, just using Power Automate and an… Continue Reading ‘s Article on their...
Sales Insights: Sales accelerator
This is the final of a 6 part series on Sales Insights, where I attempt to walk through of the Sales AI functionality that is part of the suite. The other articles are listed here. Basic (Free) Setup – The “free” AI capabilities that can be added to any Sales Instance Assistant Studio – Full capabilities – The full suite of options for Insight Cards Productivity Intelligence –… Continue...
Sales Insights: Predictive Models
This is the fifth in the series on Sales Insights, were I attempt to walkthrough the Sales AI functionality that is part of the suite. The other articles are listed here. Basic (Free) Setup – The “free” AI capabilities that can be added to any Sales Instance Assistant Studio – Full capabilities – The full suite of options for Insight Cards Productivity Intelligence – Activity and… Continue...
Launch (Self) – Check App permissions in Power Apps
On the Twitterverse yesterday, it was announced that you now have the ability to Launch an application to replace itself. Formulas: Launch to self and Self operator Some long awaited features for Power Apps canvas formulas! When run in a web browser, a canvas app can now replace itself with another canvas app or a web page. This has been a long running community ask and also came up when we were created the COVID-19 Hospital Emergency...
Mockaroo and Flow: Perfect Demo data
As a consultant, architect or just a blogger, you have to do a lot of demos. Recently, with my look at Sales Insights, the amount of data I needed was increasing. I had used Flow in the past to automate data entry, and it worked well, so I thought I would create some data for my environment using Flow, but first sourcing the data in Mockaroo. Mockaroo Mockaroo is a free data generator… Continue Reading ‘s Article on their...
Sales Insights: Connection Insights
This is the fourth in a series walking through the Sales Insights add-on application. The series list is below for your reference. Basic (Free) Setup – The “free” AI capabilities that can be added to any Sales Instance Assistant Studio – Full capabilities – The full suite of options for Insight Cards Productivity Intelligence – Activity and Contact suggestions as well as Notes… Continue...
Sales Insights: Productivity Intelligence
This is the third instalment of my review/walkthrough of the Dynamics 365 Sales Insights application. Part 1 detailed the free features, with Part 2 detail the first of the premium features, Assistant Studio, including custom Insight cards and how to prioritise them. This time, the blog is about Productivity Intelligence. This encompasses Auto capture (automatically bringing in content… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Sales Insights: Assistant (full capabilities)
In my previous post, I walked through the configuration of the standard, “free” features of the Sales Insights offering for D365 Sales. This time, I am going to start on the premium features covered by the £37.70 per month license fee. If you look at the Sales Insights administration screen, the list of the capabilities is quite hefty. For this post, I will concentrate on the Assistant,… Continue Reading...
Sales Insights: Basic set up
I have been working for quite a while on Customer Insights, running workshops and generally getting to know it, but I realised that there is a multitude of products in the Insights suite, Customer Insights, Customer Service Insights, Product Insights, Marketing Insights and Sales Insights. These tools each have their own niche, and I don’t know them at all well. So I thought I would educate… Continue Reading...
MB-400: Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Developer Associate Exam
This week, I am on holiday, meant to be in Egypt watching the kids swim in the Red Sea, drinking as much beer as I can & getting pink. As this didn’t happen, I decided to fit in an exam instead. Why not get another qualification instead? MB-400, the new developer exam, was the one I was dreading, more so than MB-600 I did a couple of weeks back, as my hands-on development has really ground… Continue Reading...
Changing working habits – WFH isn’t easy
As a departure from my usual posts, I wanted to share my thoughts on coping during the biggest change to our professional life: COVID-19. Social distancing rules have meant that a lot more of us are having less social contact with our colleagues, family and friends. This leads to stress and anxiety, exhibited in numerous ways, and if not tackled, depression. Further, our professional… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
3 Minute Features: Episode 10: Keys
When I started this series, my intention was to create a series of videos to guide a user in the fundamentals of the Power Platform, starting with Entities and working my way through each of the parts. The trouble with video is that it takes a long while to edit and prepare. Each video was taking 4-6 hours to produce. This, I am well aware, is most likely down to my lack of skill, but it… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
MB-600 : Microsoft Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Solution Architect (beta)
Last week I sat the MB-600 exam, which for any aspiring Solution Architect in our world is the pinnacle qualification. Still in beta, so not sure how I got on, but thought I would share my thoughts while I still remember. As part of my learning, I create mindmaps, it helps me focus my understanding and is quicker for me to review later for last-minute cramming sessions. With the rest of… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Quick Approvals – Send with Options
As I digitally transform the club I am involved with, stardiving.org I come across ways in Power Automate that are pretty useful. I have previously talked about Adaptive Cards for approvals and this works great, but only for internal use. Same with Approvals, they are perfect for what I wanted to achieve, but limited to internal users. Send Email with options is a great way of getting… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Incident App (Part 2)
In the first part of this series, here I established an application I wrote to improve incident management at the club I am proud to chair. Requirements Centralised, secure list of incidents – (Part 1)Ability to add divers to list for trials or competitions (Part 1)Data entry must be easy and not time-consuming (Part 1)Weekly notification of all incidents to the welfare officerEmail to… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 5) – Using Azure Service Bus
In my previous post I walked through swapping out Power Automate with Azure Functions for responding to Alexa in our Field Service scenario. This post is about finalising the code by using Service Bus function to create the Work Order. In the Power Automate version I used a child flow call to allow the response to happen quickly, without waiting for the numerous calls to establish data… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 4) – Using Azure Funtions
I was lucky enough to be given a speaking slot at Summit Europe in Barcelona on this Alex subject. Unfortunately this event is now postponed until June, but I set myself the challenge to replace the Flow in this solution with a more capable (quicker) response time. Power Automate is great, don’t get me wrong. I love that a low code alternative to connecting applications is available. I… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 4) – Using Azure Functions
I was lucky enough to be given a speaking slot at Summit Europe in Barcelona on this Alex subject. Unfortunately this event is now postponed until June, but I set myself the challenge to replace the Flow in this solution with a more capable (quicker) response time. Power Automate is great, don’t get me wrong. I love that a low code alternative to connecting applications is available. I… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Scottish Summit – A Review
The extra day a year only comes around every 4 years and it seemed appropriate that a lot of the Power Platform community came together to celebrate in Glasgow. Scottish Summit 2020 was sponsored by Avanade and myself and several colleagues went along to enjoy the event, cement Avanade in the community, share our knowledge and learn from others. With over 1000 people descending on the… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
3 Minute Feature : Episode 9 : Dashboards
A common staple of the Model driven app experience, my 9th video runs you through creating single and multi stream dashboards Episode 9 : Dashboards Transcript Dashboards have 2 variants, those that are connected to an entity and those that are not. An entity dashboard, called Single Stream previouly, are designed for support desk users or similarly focused indviduals. The… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
3 Minute Feature : Episode 8 : Charts
Charts in a model app are a great tool for customisers to visualise data Episode 8 : Charts Transcript Charts in D365 allow a visualisation of the data from a view. We discussed views earlier in the series so won’t go into that. Starting at the Entity in your solution, you navigate to charts, select Add Chart The new chart display comes up We will begin with a simple… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog 3...
Incident App (Part 1)
Most of you won’t know this, but to keep me busy (as if work, blogging, presenting & community isn’t enough) I am the chair of my local platform diving club, Star Diving. Give them a look at http://stardiving.org/ if you or your son or daughter want to learn a great sport that pushes you to control your body & keep fit. My youngest son is part of the Skills squad (very proud parent) and he… Continue Reading...
3 Minute Features : Episode 7 : Forms Pt2
This is the second part of the Forms feature, highlighting some useful tips & where to start when Business rules is not enough. Episode 7: Forms Pt2 Transcript With forms, if business rules don’t meet your requirements, you may have to resort to Javascript. These little code snippets allow you to do pretty much anything on a form that is not possible in business rules, but be… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
2020 Release Wave 1: Improved Email
Part of the 2020 Wave 1 were some changes to the Email functionality, namely contextual email communication & Easier selection of email templates. I have already been through enabling the Wave 1 release here, so won’t do that again. Easier selection of Email templates Previously, in an email, you can select the Template box, and it just gives you a selection of the templates. < div...