This blog walks you through the steps to receive Office 365 Message Center Messages in email.

What is the Message Center

The Message Center is the place to keep track of upcoming features, releases and issues related to Office 365 and Microsoft SaaS offerings such as Dynamics 365, SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange. It’s where Microsoft posts official announcements about new and changed features, enabling you to take a proactive approach to change management.

Dynamics 365 communication

• For major release events (April and October), and minor service updates, (weekly builds and patches), Microsoft posts the notifications in the Message Center; Microsoft doesnt send email to the customer about these announcements.
• For planned maintenance activities, Microsoft posts notifications to the Message Center and sends an email if there is expected downtime or user impact. The following roles/users receive these emails.
  • Organization admins.
  • Email addresses set in the Dynamics 365 Admin Center notification option for each instance.
  • Users with the System Admin user role.
• For unplanned maintenance activities, Microsoft sends an email and publishes messages to the Message Center. These events are rare.
• For service incidents, Microsoft posts the updates in Office 365 Admin Center >>Health.

For details, check Policies and Communications for service incidents.

Scenario Description

The Message Center is a part of the Office 365 Admin Center. You might want to receive the message center notifications in an email for the following reasons:

• In general, Dynamics 365 delivery teams do not have access to the Message Center as it requires the admin role in Office 365. As a result, delivery teams miss out on these notifications unless someone with an admin role proactively checks and shares them.
• The above can cause issues if the delivery team plans its solution deployments or data migration activities at the same time as Microsoft deployments.
• Sometimes, the delivery team isnt aware of new functionalities and fixes deployed in the weekly builds.

Solution Overview (proof of concept)

The Office 365 Service Communication APIs expose the methods to retrieve the messages from the Message Center. You can leverage tools such as Microsoft Flow, to send these messages to stakeholders

You can use the APIs to access the following data:

• Get Services: Get the list of subscribed services.
• Get Current Status: Get a real-time view of current and ongoing service incidents and maintenance events
• Get Historical Status: Get a historical view of service health, including service incidents and maintenance events.
• Get Messages: Find Incident, Planned Maintenance, and Message Center communications.

The proof of concept uses Get Messages to retrieve the message center messages.

I have built a proof of concept using Microsoft Flow. The flow performs the following high-level steps.

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The solution sits outside the Office 365 Admin Center and uses polling to check for new messages every 4 hours. The polling time can be configured as required.

The following API call without any filters retrieves all of the messages, including incidents, planned maintenance, and messages for the last 7 days.

https://manage.office.com/api/v1.0/{DomainNameOrTenanantId}ServiceComms/Messages

The proof of concept uses the above API call whilst filtering based on the MessageType and StartTime attributes. IThe following API call filters messages on the MessageType being of Type Microsoft.Office365ServiceComms.ExposedContracts.MessageType’MessageCenter’ and also on the StartTime of the message being greater than a specified time (in this example it is a flow variable that will be explained further below).

https://manage.office.com/api/v1.0/@{variables(‘TenantId’)}/ServiceComms/Messages?$filter=MessageType%20eq%20Microsoft.Office365ServiceComms.ExposedContracts.MessageType’MessageCenter’%20and%20StartTime%20ge%20@{variables(‘StartTime’)}

Results

The following screenshot displays a sample message in the Microsoft Outlook:

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Setting up a proof of concept

1. Download the flow

Download the flow used for the proof of concept.

MessageCenterMessages-Blog.zip

2. Register an app to access the Office 365 Management Activity APIs

This step registers an app to allow access to the Office 365 Management Activity API.

For step by step instructions on registering an app in Azure Active Directory, refer to Storing Common Data Service activity logs outside of Office 365. In step 7, choose Service.Health under Office 365 Management APIs, as shown in the following screenshot.

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3. Import the flow

The proof of concept uses Microsoft Flow as a webhook to receive notifications in this solution.

1. Import the flow from the zip file downloaded in step 1. Check the following link for instructions: https://flow.microsoft.com/blog/import-export-bap-packages/.
2. Open the flow in Edit The flow has many steps, and most of them initialize variables. I have done that to make the flow easy to configure for the customer.
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3. Configure the Interval and Frequency value for the Recurrence trigger in step 1 as required. This flow uses 4 hours.
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4. Select Initialize StartTime, select addHours() and then change the value on the Expression tab as shown in the following screenshot. It must match your recurrence interval.
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5. Replace the values for variables TenantId, ClientId and Secret in steps 3, 4, and 5. The TenantId is your Azure Tenant Id, ClientId and Secret come from the Register an app to access the Office 365 Management Activity APIs.
6. Replace the value of variable ToEmailaddresses with the email recipients.
7. Save your changes and test the flow.

Taking it Further

This PoC should be used as a template.

• The customer can remove the MessageType filter from the API call and retrieve incident and maintenance messages.
• You can remove the filter step in the flow and receive all the message center messages that belong to other Office 365 services.
• You can modify this flow, call it from a canvas app and embed it in a CE dashboard.

We hope you find this approach a useful scenario to show how you can receive message center messages in an email.

Thank you for the interest in the topic and feel free to comment and give your feedback.

Amreek Singh

FastTrack Solution Architect

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

The post How to receive message center messages in an email appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

As announced earlier this year, the non-UCI versions of Field Service and Project Service Automation are going end of life.

As of July 29th 2019, Microsoft has empowered administrators to enable their existing environments that currently have Field Service (FS) version 7.x and Project Service Automation (PSA) v2.x to upgrade to FS v8.x and PSA v3.x. Where administrators previously had to contact Support, this self-serve process enables the installation of our latest versions of FS and PSA, which have been created to take advantage of the Unified Interface. With the process detailed below, the org can be enabled for the Unified interface applications of Field and Project Service Automation by using the PowerShell cmdlets for the Online Management API. However, administrators that do not wish to use the method outlined below can continue to reach out to Microsoft Support to request that this change be made.

The flights for Dynamics 365 for Field Service can be enabled on your tenant using the Online Management API for Customer Engagement.

Pre-requisite:

To use the Online Management API, you must have one of the following admin roles assigned to you in your Office 365 tenant:

• • Global administrator
  • Service administrator

Steps:

• Start a PowerShell session
• Enter the following cmdlet

install-module Microsoft.Xrm.OnlineManagementAPI -Scope CurrentUser -force

• Establish your credentials and connection

$user = “spencerl@ContosoXYZ.onmicrosoft.com”

$password = “********”

$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($user, (ConvertTo-SecureString $password ASPlainText Force))

$namurl = https://admin.services.crm.dynamics.com

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• Get the OrganizationID/InstanceID of your Organization

Log into your Dynamics 365 organization, go to Settings -> Customizations -> Developer Resources and Copy the ID from the Instance Reference Information section

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To enable the Unified Interface applications of FS (v8.x) and PSA (v3.x) on your instance which still has FS (v7.x) and/or PSA(v2.x), opt-out of the FPS WebClient Flight (ID:4ab1654b-c6b4-4c80-9d16-e7c31429ef55). The Remove-CrmFlightAudience cmdlet removes the instance as an audience to a particular flight. Run the below commandto opt-out the Web client flight:

Remove-CrmFlightAudience -ApiUrl $namurl -FlightId “4ab1654b-c6b4-4c80-9d16-e7c31429ef55” -InstanceId “49d16efc-c535-417f-a4dc-2780c5c8dce1” -Credential $cred

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Once the above command is run successfully, you will be able to see the Unified Interface applications of Field Service and Project Service Automation available for upgrade in the Dynamics 365 Administration Center.

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Note: If you have difficulty following this self-serve process, administrators can still reach out to Microsoft Support to raise a support request to enable them on your environments.

Vinay Nalam, Jason Cohen.

Dynamics 365 Engineering

The post Self-Enabling Install of the Unified Interface Versions of Field & Project Service appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

The August 2019 update of Dynamics 365 for Marketing is ready and rolling out starting now! We’re also releasing early access features, which you can choose to enable together with the August 2019 update. This will let you try out a few of the upcoming features we have scheduled for final release with the 2019 release wave 2, which is planned for October 2019.

We’ll be rolling out the production update and early access features on a region-by-region basis, and we expect them to be available to all regions by early August 2019.

For more information about recently released and planned new features, please see the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Release Plan.

How to get the update and/or early access features

The procedure for getting the August 2019 update depends on whether you want to include the early access features or just the production-ready August 2019 update.

How to get the August 2019 update with early access features

You can opt-in for early access on any instance, but we recommend that you only do so on trial, test, or sandbox instances, which will give you a chance to learn the new functionality before it shows up on your production instances later this year. When you opt-in for early access on an instance, you must then also update that instance to the August 2019 version and will therefore receive the latest generally available features, improvements, and bug fixes together with the early access features.

For instructions on how to opt-in and enable early access, see Enable the 2019 release wave 2 updates for Dynamics 365 for Marketing.

For more information about the 2019 release wave 2 release schedule, and answers to frequently asked questions about the early access program, see Dynamics 365 release schedule and early access.

We encourage all customers to provide feedback related to early access features on the Dynamics 365 for Marketing forum and/or through Microsoft Support.

How to get the August 2019 update without early access features

You can apply the August 2019 production update to any type of instance without enabling early access. This will provide all of the latest bug fixes and performance improvements, but won’t significantly impact user experience. We recommend updating all Marketing instances, including production instances, as soon as you can. To do so, you must apply it to each of your Dynamics 365 for Marketing instances manually. As soon as the update is available in your region, you’ll be able to see and apply it as described in Keep Marketing up to date.

Early access features available in August

This section provides an overview of the new early access features that will become available in August 2019.

Integration with Customer Insights

The new Customer Insights app for Dynamics 365 applies artificial intelligence to analyze rich pools of customer data collected from across other apps like Dynamics 365 for Sales, Service, and Marketing. Its standard functionality generates powerful analytical displays for each contact, which makes the information easy to understand and use. In this release, the integrated solution can:

• Load data from Dynamics 365 for Marketing into Customer Insights and combine it with customer data from other sources.
• Apply data cleansing, enrichment, fuzzy matching, and more.
• Use segments created by Customer Insights to target customer journeys in Dynamics 365 for Marketing.

To take advantage of this integration, you must first set up a trial or production instance of Customer Insights.

More information: Use segments from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Email A/B testing helps take the guesswork out of creating a successful marketing email design

Use email A/B testing to test two slightly different email designs on a small part of a target segment to find out which design is more successful, and then automatically send the winning design to the rest of the segment. You start by creating an initial design (the “A” version), and then use that as the basis to create a “B” version of the design in which you have modified a small part of it (such as the subject). Finally, choose your conditions for success (such as most opened or most clicked) and run the test as part of a customer journey.

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In the early access version of this feature, you’ll be able to A/B test the message subject or sender name. In the final release, we expect also to enable testing on email content.

More information: Design and run A/B test on your email designs

Multi-column layouts in the email designer

Previously, the only way to set up a multi-column email message was to start with one of the out-of-box templates, or by entering HTML code directly. Now we provide a new set of layout design elements, each of which creates a different column layout, such as one, two, or three columns with various width ratios. Just drag one of these elements onto your design and the start filling each column with content. You can even create multiple rows of columns, each with a different number and ratio of columns, as required.

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More information: Design multi-column layouts for email messages

Improved segmentation experience makes it easier to define target segments for customer journeys

We have created a much improved experience for establishing your target segments. The new interface is much more graphical and intuitive compared to the previous version. Use it to create powerful and detailed logic for identifying the precise selection of contacts that you want to target, based on demographic and firmographic details, interaction records, and more. It even lets you work across related entities to establish wide-ranging selection criteria.

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More information: Create segments with the new segmentation designer

Easy setup for subscription lists

Subscription lists in Dynamics 365 for Marketing are based on the static marketing lists normally used for the in-app marketing feature of Dynamics 365 for Sales. Previously, you needed to take care when setting up a subscription list to ensure that you set it up correctly to make it usable with the Marketing app. But now, we’ve added a new Subscription list entry to the main navigator of the Marketing app, and from here you can get started with a correctly configured subscription list with just one click. Now you’ll have many fewer distractions on your way to creating fully functional subscription lists.

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As part of the new easy subscription list feature, you can also now see which lists any of your contacts is subscribing to. To see a contact’s subscriptions, open their contact record, go to the Details tab and check the Subscription lists section.

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More information: Easy subscription lists

View details about failed form submissions

Marketing forms must be designed to submit values for all mandatory fields and fields used in contact matching, lead matching, and duplicate detection. For option set fields, forms must also provide valid index values that map correctly to available values in the database.

Every now and then, errors in form design or changes to system settings can cause form submissions to fail some or all of the time. Previously, failed submission were usually lost, but now the system will store what it can of erroneous submissions so you can examine them later and possibly recover key information from them. This information can also help you learn how to correct your form designs and/or system settings to prevent failed submissions in the future.

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More information: View and recover from failed form submissions

Cleaner header design for all forms

As part of the platform update that you’ll receive when opting in for early access, you’ll notice a cleaner and more compact header design for all forms. We think you’ll like this new design, but please note that it will slightly impact the way you make settings for Marketing entities that previously allowed you to edit values directly in header. With the new design, you can still edit these values, but you must use the drop-down menu at the side of the header to access the settings.

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Legend:

1. Record name: This is the name of the record, which you can edit using the new drop-down dialog available at the side of the heading. You can typically edit the record name other places too, such as on the main body of the General or Summary tab. The value shown here first updates when you save the record.
2. Important settings and values: Here you can see a few other important details about the current record. The information shown here varies by entity type. To change any of these settings, open the drop-down dialog using the expand-settings button next to this area.
3. Expand settings button: Select this button to open or close the drop-down dialog, which you can use to edit the values shown next to this button in the heading. Some or all of these settings may also be available elsewhere, such as on the General or Summary tab.
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Build an approvals feature for Marketing processes

We have now extended the architecture of Dynamics 365 for Marketing to make it easier for developers to build on its functionality, and one of the first capabilities we have in mind for this new extendibility is the ability to create an approvals feature based on Microsoft Flow. We’ve also extended a few standard entities to make them ready for approvals.

The approval workflow functions by replacing the Go live button on relevant entities with a Send for approval button, which, rather than going live right away, instead triggers an email sent to a preselected approver who must approve the record before it can go live. Core approval scenarios include:

• Request approval for a record
• Cancel request for approval
• Approve or reject an approval request
• Delegate a request for approval
• Manage an overdue approval request

To support developers interested in creating an approval feature, we are providing developer documentation that explains how create the feature and customize it to meet the needs of a wide variety of organizations. Because each organization probably has its own business process and hierarchy, Microsoft Flow provides the flexibility required for easy customization by business users, makers, or partners.

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More information: Build an approvals feature

Bug fixes included with the August 2019 update

The August 2019 release, both with and without the early access features, fixes the following bugs on all instances:

• Customer journey activity tiles sometimes create activities (tasks, phone calls, or meetings) that are owned by the system owner instead of the customer journey owner.
• In a customer journey, trigger tiles set with zero timeout sometimes don’t forward contacts to the positive path.
• In a customer journey, trigger tiles with zero timeout may behave arbitrarily.
• Customer journeys may go into an inconsistent state if inconsistent metadata is found in a target segment.
• On re-opening a live customer journey, an incorrect error message is sometimes shown.
• The selected customer journey template may be ignored when first creating a customer journey.
• Customer journeys can’t be stopped if a target segment fails to change state.
• In the email designer, there is no way to revert to the default email from-address after editing it.
• In the email designer, test sends will fail if the default contact has been deactivated.
• In the content designer, formatted content pasted into the design view causes incorrect HTML to be generated.
• Refreshing dynamic content metadata may cause exceptions.
• In the email designer, test sends fail to resolve dynamic content taken from content settings (shows as blank).
• Event registration is accepted even if values for mandatory customer registration fields are missing in the submission.
• The inflow numbers shown in customer journey insights use a standard count operation, while email tiles use a count distinct operation to get the count of sent emails. This can create a discrepancy if there are multiple email-sent interactions with the same contact ID.
• When you use the calendar to create an event in month view, and select one of the first days in the next month to start the event, the calendar jumps to the month of the event, but only loads the events of the first week.
• When browsing the marketing calendar by month, it sometimes jumps to the wrong month.
• When validating a marketing page, a more descriptive error message is needed to describe the error that occurs if a parent page has been deleted.
• When working with a subscription list, the text toolbox sometimes doesn’t load to allow editing the name of the list.
• When working with marketing pages, a more descriptive error message is needed to describe the error that occurs when the user has disabled the portals status code.
• Transactional emails are not sent to contacts with contact preferences set to “Do not allow bulk email” (only commercial emails should be blocked by this setting).
• When communicating with an external consent-management system, transient failures can sometimes occur.
• The segment designer allows users to select lookup fields that aren’t set to sync to marketing services.
• In the segment designer, a business process error is shown if a user changes the segment query type from profile to interaction and then goes live.
• The error check for segments sometimes blocks valid segments from going live, requiring query text to be removed and pasted in again.
• In the email designer, the warning From: The field contains dynamic content which cannot be validated at this stage is always shown–even this issue hasn’t occurred

The post Dynamics 365 for Marketing August update and early access are rolling out now appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to: Dynamics 365 Remote Assist (version 2.04)

The Dynamics 365 Remote Assist team is pleasedto announce the August update of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, which includes the following improvements:

• Doubled the resolution of PDF files on HoloLens to make them easier to read.
• It’s now easier to position windows exactly where you want them since they no longer snap to surfaces.

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• App startup time is significantly faster.

Dynamics 365 Remote Assist now requires a minimum operating system version (version 1803–April 2018 update, build 10.0.17134). For more information on updating the HoloLens operating system, see Updating HoloLens. For information on using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, see the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist documentation.

The post August release of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist doubles PDF resolution, adds other improvements appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

We have now enabled early access to new capabilities included in the 2019 release wave 2, October update including end-user impacting features that will be enabled by default. Early access allows customers and partners to try and validate these new features in a non-production environment. To prepare for these changes with confidence, were making additional readiness assets available to application administrators. These include release overview guides and videos outlining the important new capabilities that are delivered as part of the 2019 release wave 2.

Early access is now available

During August and September 2019, customers and partners will be able to validate the latest capabilities that are part of the upcoming release updates early in the cycle. These features include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled for users in production environments in October 2019. Therefore, we encourage application administrators to review these changes to understand their impact in case you need to update training resources for your users.

A total of 74 features are available for early access across Dynamics 365 applications (including Dynamics 365 for Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance and Operations, and Retail) and the Power Platform (PowerApps, Flow, and Power BI). You can learn about all the features available as part of the early access and how to enable them in the 2019 release wave 2 documentation.

Overview guides and videos

Weve enhanced our pre-release readiness experience for you to learn about the upcoming release wave capabilities in a simple and easy to use product updates page. Application administrators and other technical roles can find release wave plans, key milestones, and release overview guides and videos for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

You can learn more about the updates at your own pace by watching the overview videos and reading the overview guides. These will help you assess productivity and efficiency gains of the new capabilities, as well as equip your end users with new capabilities. Start by downloading the Dynamics 365 for Sales, Dynamics 365 for Customer Service, and Power BI overview guides. Additional guides and videos for other products will be coming soon later this month.

Take advantage of the early access period, try out the latest updates in a non-production environment, and get ready to roll out updates to your users with confidence. And as a reminder, you can find the complete list of features in the 2019 release wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

If you have any questions or feedback, please join the discussion in the Release Readiness forum in theDynamics community.

The post Early access to 2019 release wave 2 capabilities is now available appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Adding a data-driven customer experience strategy can help organizations remain competitive and engage customers in more meaningful ways. Interestingly, this is no longer a marketing-only function and requires a shared effort across the business in order to be successful. Chief marketing officers cant rely solely on traditional methods and channels to connect with audiences anymore. They need the ability to collect, analyze, and interpret vast amounts of customer data at scale in order to deliver personal and intuitive customer experiences that hinge on the cooperation of both the chief marketing officer and chief information officer.

Both roles have grown in recent years as organizations respond to the changing customer landscape where the chief information officer has become the new experience maker and the chief marketing officer has become the new data steward. With customer experience hinging on the infrastructure and analytics to successfully manage and interpret customer data, its essential to remove barriers between IT and marketing to allow for greater cooperation and effectiveness. By working together in support of a more customer-centric vision, the two business leaders can establish more comprehensive data compliance and security protocols while driving cross-department ROI on technology investments and efforts behind the customer experience strategy.

Bridging the gap

A customer data platform (CDP) like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provides a win-win for IT and line of businesses across the organization such as sales, services, or marketing. Intended as a line of business-managed system, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights helps dramatically reduce the burden on IT, simplifying data unification and systems integration along with built-in compliance and security protocols that safeguard all customer data in a hands-off fashion. This not only helps organizations realize faster time to value, but gives line of businesses more control over data-driven initiatives with only the occasional heavy lifting needed from IT. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights unifies all sources of customer data including structured, unstructured, and third-party, from across the organization along with the capability to both interpret and act on that data at scale all without the need for complex, redundant, and time-consuming configurations.

Key benefits of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

1. Unification of data: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights takes the legwork, complexity, and cost of unifying data from across the organization in a central location, with the ability to automatically discover, ingest, and store all of the data generated from all sources and channels.
2. Self-service: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights self-service configuration enables business users to get up and running quickly with very little lifting from IT, but also allows line of businesses to have more control over initiatives without waiting on technical assistance for every change such as integrating new data sources, adding segments, or creating reports.
3. Data-driven decisions: With built-in analytics capabilities, AI, and machine learning, business users can quickly gather actionable insights, then leverage pre-built connectors to take immediate action through the external tools and platforms like email campaigns, point of sale, and social media that are used to engage customers.
4. Data ownership: Without a customer data platform, organizations have to rely on third-party providers to handle their first-party customer information, which leaves data open to security vulnerabilities that are out of the organizations hands. With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, organizations have complete control over their data as it resides in their own tenant.
5. Data protection and compliance: In the wake of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), its all about knowing where your customer data comes from, where it resides, and how to remove customer data if requested. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights makes identity resolution safe and error-free, creating a single, unified image of each customer that makes it simpler to maintain compliance and reduce the amount of hands-on work required by IT. Once a customer opts-out of engagement, the system automatically removes them from receiving any future contact, keeping the organization compliant with GDPR regulations.

Learn more

• Watch our webinar Personalized Experiences with a 360-Degree View of Your Customersfor a closer look at how Dynamics 365 Customer Insights helps your marketing, sales, and service professionals tailor digital and one-to-one customer interactions at scale.
• Download this eBook, Digitally Transforming Customer Experiences or visit the website below to get started with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

The post Customer data platform: A win-win for the entire C-suite appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Dynamics 365 Customer Insights team is happy to announce new updates made available in the last month!

New features

• Performance improved for Power BI connector
• Segment as an entity
• Progress indicator

Performance improved for the Power BI connector

After making some adjustments, the performance for our Power BI connector has been significantly improved. Now, loading larger datasets that used to take several minutes can be done in less than 60 seconds, so you can do less waiting and more analyzing!

Segment as an entity

Until now, only measures were saved as entities, but from now on your segments will also be saved as entities, unlocking for you a series of important usages.

What new capabilities will I gain through this feature?

Among other benefits, now you can:

• Apply a machine learning model on a segment: Using the Export destination screen, now you can also choose a segment as the entity you wish to apply your ML model on.
• Use a segment as an entity in Microsoft Flow and PowerApps

What will happen to my existing segments?

Segment as an entity will not change anything in the existing behavior with regard to segment definition, segment editing, segment activation, and so on. In addition, all of your existing segments will be stored now as entities that you can use in various new ways (some are mentioned above). As a result, you can also expect to see your segments in the Entities screen.

Progress indicator

The new progress indicator provides a quick way to navigate back to the prerequisite steps to build a unified customer profile and configure activities.

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The post Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – August 2019 release notes appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Have you heard about the new Virtual Agent in a Day program were rolling out? This full-day hands-on workshop is designed to help anyone (yes, anyone!) learn to build a fully functional virtual agent with no technical expertise required and with no code.

The full agenda includes short lectures and hands-on lab exercises that cover these main areas:

• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights
• Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service
• Integration of Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service with Microsoft Flow
• Virtual Agent optimization and best practices, including natural language understanding (NLU) triggering and conversational design

We’ve already conducted the workshop for over 300 attendees worldwide. Attendees gain in-depth understanding of Microsoft AI solutions for customer service, start using Customer Service Insights and Virtual Agent for Customer Service to take their day-to-day customer service to new levels, and leave feeling eager to use their own virtual agents to impress their customers.

Microsoft and our partners will be bringing Virtual Agent in a Day programs to your city (or nearby) in the next few months. Stay tuned!

For anyone interested but unable to attend in person, we’re planning to publish a series of Microsoft Learn courses soon so you can complete your own hands-on experience.

Happy bot building!

To learn more, visit:

• Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service:https://aka.ms/GetMyVirtualAgent
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights:https://aka.ms/GetMyInsights

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The post Psst! Want to build a bot without writing any code? appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (August 2019, release 1).

Database scale out and migrations

After previewing this feature with customers in many regions, we are continuing our database scale out by Azure region. In this release, we are enabling East US, East US2, North Central US, and South Central US customers.

Customers with new deployments in these regions will notice that their databases belong to different Azure SQL Servers. We will also begin migrating existing customer so that their Sandbox environments scale out existing databases. Communications will be sent to the Environment managers and Project owners prior to any migration.

This change impacts actions that replace your databases, such as Database Refresh from Production to Sandbox. Historically, the database would have been placed on your Sandbox single Azure SQL Server and now will be placed on the next available Azure SQL server in our clusters for your region. The result is that your connection string will change when you perform such actions.

To determine which SQL Connection string to use, locate the Database Accounts section on the Environment Details page in Lifecycle Services.

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To build the correct connection, use the SQL Server\Database Name combination in SQL Server Management Studio. The server will require that you append “.database.windows.net” to the SQL Server name value. Sign in using the axdbadmin account.

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You will also need to explicitly connect to your required database by selecting the Options button and updating the database name.

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Restricting database backup access

In September 2019, we will restrict access to the Database Backup section of the Project asset library. Based on customer feedback, we are limiting the access to those Lifecycle Services user roles that can already perform Database Export or Database Import.

The result is that only Project owners and Environment managers will have access to see, upload, and download database backup assets from the Project asset library.

Enable customers with expired AX 2012 licenses to take ownership of their projects

Starting with this release, customers with expired AX 2012 licenses will continue to have access to LCS. This will allow these customers to transfer the ownership of their LCS projects and other resources to a new organization with valid licenses. Today, this process requires a lot of back and forth communication between the customer, support, and the engineering team to complete the transfer of ownership. With this feature, the administrator for the expired organization can sign in to LCS, and then go into their projects to invite users from the new organization by selecting Manage project users on the Organization users page. When opening the project, users will be able to select Take ownership of project to complete the transfer. When an organizations licenses are in the expired state, some LCS functionality will be disabled or non-functional. In addition, any user opening a project owned by that organization will be routed to the Project settings and instructed to transfer ownership of the project to a valid organization.

The post Lifecycle Services – August 2019 (Release 1) release notes appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to: Field Service version 7.5.12.53 on Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement version 9.x

Visit the Admin Center for Dynamics 365 solutions page to install the update. For details, refer to how to install or update a preferred solution.

Please visit Field Service Docs for Field Service updates and related content.

End of Life Notice

Note: After February 2020, we will no longer support Field Service and Project Service Automation legacy versions.

This includes:

• Field Service version 6.x or 7.x
• Project Service Automation version 1.x or 2.x

Please ensure that you have plans to upgrade to the latest version of these solutions. These solutions should be upgraded no later than February 2020.

• Administrators can follow instructions to enable their environments to install the latest FS and PSA,or you can contact support to enable the install on your organizations.
• We have publisheda quick start guide withspecial focus on Field and Project Serviceto help organizations get started in the upgrade process.
• Lastly, please plan to conduct the upgrade and test your use cases in a non-production environment prior to conducting this upgrade on a production environment.

Field Service enhancements

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Missing Order Invoice Product field security permissions for Field Service Administrator.
• Fixed: Missing Quote Invoice Product field security permissions for Field Service Administrator.

The post Enhancements and Bug Fixes for Field Service Version 7.5.12.53 appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Failure to identify, attract, and retain great talent is a top concern among todays healthcare providers for good reason. Recent changes in the healthcare landscape have made recruiting and hiring tougher than ever. Most significantly, the healthcare job market has exploded, and healthcare is fast becoming one of the largest sources of jobs in the U.S. And more available jobs will force healthcare organizations to compete for top talent.

At the same time, an aging U.S. population is creating a higher demand for care, but the talent pool simply isnt keeping pace. According to a 2015 Healthcare Recruiting Trends survey by Health eCareers:

“By 2020, the U.S. will face a serious shortage of both primary care and specialist physicians to care for an aging and growing population.”

Of course, as competition for top healthcare talent has intensified, so has the cost to hire. And all the while, providers are facing ongoing pressure to reduce HR costs.

Theres no question about it, talent acquisition professionals have a tough job, but getting it right is critical. As healthcare leaders know, better teams lead to better patient care. It pays to invest in recruiting the very best talent.

How to attract great talent

Are you confident your current recruitment strategies are the best they can be? As you assess your competitive positioning, here are some key things to consider:

• Are you using multiple channels for engagement? To optimize your recruitment efforts, you need to meet potential candidates wherever they are on any device or channel they choose.
• Are you making the most of modern technology? In the digital age, providers that fail to adopt advanced analytics and innovative solutions for recruitment and hiring will quickly fall behind.
• Are you communicating effectively? Finding and nurturing the very best talent requires consistent, personalized interactions.
• Are you tapping into your existing talent pool? Your employees are often the best candidates for future job openings. By creating an internal talent database, youll have quick access to a valuable pipeline of highly skilled workers. Whats more, by keeping your employees abreast of new opportunities within your organization, you can reduce the risk of losing them to competitors.

How to increase employee retention rates

Healthcare workers are highly mobile, and the turnover rate is high. This means once youve acquired the very best employees, you cant rest on your laurels. You need to work equally hard to hold on to them.

To keep your best employees from leaving, its important to have a strong employee value proposition (EVP)the unique and compelling benefits employees will gain in exchange for the talent they bring to your organization. Here are three effective ways to strengthen your employee value proposition:

1. Improve the onboarding process for clinicians and other skilled workers
2. Analyze employees skills on a regular basis, and focus on individuals key strengths
3. Support career growth through ongoing training and mentorship programs

How Microsoft can help

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator is a holistic solution that enables systems and applications to help you streamline your HR processes so you can better identify top talent, lower your cost and time to hire, increase offer acceptance rates, and improve retention. Here are some tangible examples of what you can do:

• Reach and attract talent with multi-channel communications including optional integration with LinkedIn Recruiter.
• Simplify recruitment processes by importing potential candidate lists, tracking responses, and automating follow-up tasks.
• Improve clinician onboarding with relevant and timely communications.
• Build a culture of continued learning by providing ongoing training based on skills and competency analysis.
• Create mentorship programs so leaders can educate internally.
• Leverage talent insights from business intelligence to anticipate needs and improve employee satisfaction.

In todays challenging healthcare job market, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator gives you the analytics, artificial intelligence, and talent-specific capabilities you need to attract and retain todays top talent.

Read more by downloading this free eBook, Reimagining healthcare with Microsoft.

The post How to attract and retain top talent in today’s healthcare market appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Creating Configuration Packages is a great way to import/export table data in Business Central. In this blog, we will go over some tips in creating these packages.

Building the Configuration Package:

In Configuration Packages, we give you the option to remove/add columns to the pages you are trying to integrate. It is recommended to make sure that the fields you include in the Configuration package are the fields that you would normally ‘manually’ enter when entering the transaction in the front end solution.

To access the fields you would click the Fields button on the Configuration Package page:

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To Add/Remove a column from the integration you would check/uncheck the Include Field Check box:

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You can also order the fields of a configuration package. The best practice would be to order the fields in the same order as you would manually entering the line. That way you ensure the proper checks are being made as some fields change based on another field.

To change the order of the columns you would use the Move up/Move Down buttons:

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When manually entering a transaction, if there are fields that are automatically populated, before importing the transaction that field data will need to be in the system. For example, if you are importing Customers and you are including the Payment Terms, you need to make sure that the Payment Terms which you are including in the import exist in the system.

Adding Shortcut Dimensions (1&2) to a package:

There are a few ways to create Configuration Packages in Business Central. The first is through the Configuration Package page and the other is through Configuration Worksheet page. Through the Configuration Package page there is not an option to include Shortcut Dimensions in the integration. With the Configuration Worksheet there is an option check box called Dimensions as Columns. Below is the tooltip from that option field:

Specifies whether the configuration includes dimensions as columns. When you select the Dimensions as Columns check box, the dimensions are included in the Excel worksheet that you create for configuration. In order to select this check box, you must include the Default Dimension and Dimension Value tables in the configuration package.

Comparing integrated data vs manually entered data:

There are multiple ways to for data to flow into Business Central (Manual entry, Edit in Excel, Configuration Package/Worksheets). If the data you are importing is not looking correct on the page you can manually enter the line on the page and export the configuration package. You can then compare the manually entered line vs the integrated line to see what specific columns are populated that might be different than the imported file.

Integrating Historical data:

We dont allow importing into historical (Archive) tables. If you are importing Invoices and Payments/Cash Receipts those will need to be applied to be fully settled on the Customer/Vendor accounts.

Helpful Links:

Prepare a Configuration package

Importing Business Data from Other Finance Systems

The post Configuration Package tips from Business Central support. appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Every organization is becoming a data company, striving to manage and extract value from volumes of data across departments, from traditional sources such as operations, finance, sales, and marketing to digital sales and marketing initiatives, and new observational sources like device telemetry and customer sentiment analysis.

The struggle most organizations face is managing data stashed in silos across on-premises databases and cloud services and normalizing the data to be used by services to process, analyze, and extract meaningful value from it.

Dynamics 365 Industry Accelerators take a big step to help solve these data conundrums.

With built-in collaboration with industry leaders, the freely-available accelerators extend the Common Data Model to include new entities to support a data schema for concepts within specific industries, enabling ISVs and other solution providers to quickly build industry vertical solutions.

Industry accelerators include powerful connected experiences that are designed to support common, existing business needs for specific industries, enabling solutions that deliver new insights and more personalized customer engagements. This helps simplify efforts to procure partner solutions or build custom applications by providing access to a unified data layer that saves customers the time and resources they would have spent creating their own proprietary data layer or attempting to integrate disparate systems and solutions.

Five industry accelerators are currently available, either in preview or generally available, to help accelerate innovation and deployment:

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Automotive

The Dynamics 365 Automotive Accelerator is designed to provide a consistent, centralized data service that automotive organizations can use to deliver differentiated customer experiences. By building on the automotive common data model, businesses can merge data surrounding deals, sales contracts, specifications, fleet, warranties, inspections, test drives, branding, customer-vehicle relationships, vehicle and equipment, leads, service and after-sales management, and more.

The accelerator was developed in partnership with automotive technology partners such asAnnataandOxlo, to lower the barrier of entry for vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), mobility providers, dealer groups, and importers, and introduce standards that enable a richer customer experience.

A new white paper, Transform Automotive with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Automotive Accelerator, details the solutions and scenarios ideal for the Dynamics 365 Automotive Accelerator.

Banking and financial services

The Dynamics 365 Banking Accelerator is now generally available onAppSourceandGitHub. Developed in partnership with global financial services, the banking data model extends the Common Data Model to provide a shared and consistent metadata definition for common banking and financial industry data elements including loans, mortgages, referrals, branch details, collateral, deal, limit, facilities, and more. This common schema allows customers and ISVs to build solutions on the same data modelopen-sourced and interoperable with open banking and The Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN)to rapidly bring to market solutions that deliver a better banking experience, one that differentiates banks from the competition and drives customer acquisition, loyalty, and long-lasting relationships.

Read our Transform Banking with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Banking Accelerator white paperfor a closer look at how the Banking Accelerator helps empower innovation.

Higher education

TheDynamics 365 Higher-Education Accelerator provides easy access to data entities such as students, faculty, extracurricular activities, previous education, test scores, courses, academic periods, programs, test types, registration status, and areas of interest. Institutions can create solutions that optimize student and faculty engagement, improve institutional effectiveness, and predict outcomes and gain insights from analytics.

When the accelerator is installed into Dynamics 365, the experience is transformed into one specifically built for higher education and allows institutions to quickly build PowerApps and Power BI visualizations. The higher-education data model, solutions, data samples, Power BI examples, software developer kit (SDK) extensions, and more are provided as part of the open-source creative license and available onGitHub and AppSource.

Nonprofit

Nonprofit organizations often contend with adopting technologies designed for for-profit companies that dont fit their specific needs. The Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator, now in preview on GitHub and AppSource, aims to cut costs and boost efficiencies for nonprofits through interoperability, best practices, development of turnkey solutions, and deep analytics. It includes extensions to the Common Data Model to develop solutions for managing constituents, raising funds, grants and awards, program delivery, and tracking impact. The accelerator is developed in partnership with the Tech for social impact group within Microsoft Philanthropies, which works to empower nonprofit and humanitarian organizations around the world to advance their missions through the power of technology.

Read more about the Nonprofit Accelerator in this recent blog post, now available on AppSource and GitHub.

Healthcare

The Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator helps provide the interoperability you need to improve clinical care outcomes and drive more revenue. It unifies electronic health record (EHR) data while enabling a suite of systems and applications to help more easily manage and understand patient outcomes. When patient data is easily accessible, organizations can develop solutions that help gain a 360 view of patients and their individual experiences, better communicate and educate patients, make better patient care plans, decrease return visits, and more.

Download the eBook, Reimagining healthcare with Microsoft, for an overview of the accelerator and supporting solutions and scenarios. Also, keep up on the latest in our ongoing blog series by Doug Adams and Rebecca Crowe on the Microsoft US Health and Life Sciences team.

Take the next step

The five industry accelerators available today are the first in an ongoing effort to drive interoperability and innovation across industries. Stay tuned on the blog for updates and explore the resources below for a deeper dive into industry accelerators.

• Watch a presentation on the future of Microsoft Business Applications through industry accelerators
• Read an overview ofindustry accelerators
• Learn more aboutour investments in industry acceleratorsto enable ISVs and solution providers to help you succeed
• Learn more about theCommon Data Model

The post Industry Accelerators: Rapidly deploy solutions specific to your industry appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights helps customer service managers make better decisions and proactively improve customer satisfaction by providing AI-driven insights. We’ve been working hard to make the service available to as many people as possible, no matter what language they speak or use in their case data.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Customer Service Insights workspaces are available in 39 more languages, with Serbian (Cyrillic) and Serbian (Latin) coming soon. Along with the English-language service which is already generally available, that makes a total of 42 supported languages.

In addition, for public preview we’ve added four more language models (for a total of five) to support better automatic grouping of cases into topics.

Workspaces available in 42 languages

We know that people are more comfortable and productive working in their preferred language, so weve translated the user interface elements in the workspace, including menus, buttons, messages, and reports (not including your case data). Customer Service Insights displays your workspace based on the language set in your web browser. For more information on how to set your language preference, see choose your language settings.

The table shows a list of supported languages. (We ‘ll update this blog post when the two coming-soon languages are supported.)

Five language models for improved AI insights (Public Preview)

Customer Service Insights uses natural language understanding and other artificial intelligence technology to discover actionable insights by automatically grouping similar support cases into topics. To find similar cases more accurately, we’ve added four language models in addition to the English one, which includes three models optimized for French, German, and Spanish, and a general model for all languages. Each new language model has the capability to process English cases, in addition to the other language its optimized for. This feature is currently in public preview.

The language-specific models enable better understanding for the corresponding languages. When Customer Service Insights refreshes your workspace and processes the case data, it automatically detects the primary languages used in your cases. If most of your cases are in the languages supported by a single model (either English or one of bilingual language models), that model will be used to discover topics from all your cases (we set the threshold as 70% today and are open to your feedback). Otherwise, the general model is used.

More languages to come based on your feedback

You’ll find more details about language support in the help article Supported languages for Customer Service Insights. We’ll continue enhancing the language support in your workspace and the AI model. Your feedback is critical for us to prioritize whats next. If you have any suggestions or ideas, please don’t hesitate to submit an idea or vote on others ideas.

If you have questions about these or other features, we’re always available at the Customer Service Insights forum to help you.

Enjoy!

The post Announcing availability of Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights in 42 languages appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

The landscape in which ERP solutions operate is undergoing major changes. Those changes are also being referred to as the digital transformation or the industrial evolution 4.0. For Dynamics NAV to stay relevant, the product had to join that transformation and become a cloud solution, operating in the heart of the intelligent cloud. It had to become Business Central.

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This fundamental change of the technology ecosystem requires fundamental changes to Business Central, which now must deal with the increased complexity of the ecosystem in which it operates. With the business application being a monolith, made for a code customization model, there are several challenges which arise, as the application is:

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Hard to understand and to document	Hard to extend and build upon	Hard to evolve	Hard to maintain

In order to restore simplicity and move forward efficiently, one of our initiatives is to componentize the monolithic application into smaller modules.

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By componentizing the business logic in Business Central from the bottom-up, we get to start over and build the foundation, upon which a more extensible business logic can evolve. We are building a new foundation upon which the business applications of the future will be built.

Initially, we are factoring out all functionality that isnt business logic as such. This code is a gang of low level helpers that support functionality and frameworks we call it the System Application, the interface to the Business Central platform and cloud ecosystem:

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By constructing the System Application out of small building blocks, the so-called modules, we achieve a variety of advantages, as modules have the following properties:

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They separate concerns and are functionally coherent	They have stable, well documented APIs that are exposed through facades	They encapsulate complexity and hide implementation details	They have a small attack surface, which makes them easier to secure
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They are faster to compile and publish, which supports a good developer experience	Their size and clear purpose allow for a code contribution model and focused design discussions	They are easier to performance test and monitor	They allow for individual versioning and effective upgrading

For the first release of the System Application, the collection of modules looks as follows:

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As the foundation is work in progress, you should expect new modules to be appearing regularly. If you would like to look into the latest state, you can always go to the GitHub repository where we will publish the latest improvements: https://github.com/Microsoft/alappextensions

In a series of blog posts, you will learn more about the architecture of the System Application, and you will get more details about the individual modules.

The post Breaking the monolith: Introducing the Business Central System Application appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

The new Service scheduling on Unified interface in built on top of Universal resource scheduling. If you are using legacy Service scheduling on web client and are planning your move to Unified interface, you need to plan your migration of data from legacy Service scheduling data to the new one.

Once you plan your migration, you can do the following.

• Manually configure records in the new experience. For more information, see Configure entity records in the new scheduling experience, or,

• Migrate using the migration solution.

Get Migration solution

Join the preview program on Insiders portal

Go to Dynamics 365 Service Scheduling – Migration to join the preview program on Insider portal and provide org details on which youd like to enable the migration tool

Install the migration solution

Go to Dynamics 365 admin center and follow the installation steps to install the migration solution. After successful installation, go to Customer service hub Scheduling Data migration

Migrate data

As part of the data migration, youll be able to migrate all the configuration and scheduling data associated with legacy Service scheduling

• Migrate configuration data

The following will be the snapshot of configuration data post migration

• Migrate Service activity scheduling data

The migrated Service activities will have equivalent Bookings for the resources that have been scheduled on legacy Service scheduling

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Learn more about Service Scheduling migration tool

• The preview is currently supported in English
• Learn more about the Migration Tool, from the feature documentation

We are eager to see how you leverage the migration tool in your migration to the new Service scheduling experience, and we look forward to your feedback!

The post Migrate from legacy Service Scheduling to the Service Scheduling on Unified interface appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to: Field Service version 8.8.2.160 on Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement version 9.x

Visit the Admin Center for Dynamics 365 solutions page to install the update. For details, refer to how to install or update a preferred solution.

Please visit Field Service Docs for Field Service updates and related content.

Field Service enhancements

Enhancements

• Performance enhancements.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Master Field of Child Assets (Sub-Assets) Do Not Update When Parent Asset’s Parent is Changed.
• Fixed: Fix incorrect field description of Travel Charge Item (msdyn_travelchargeitemid) field on FS settings.
• Fixed: New button missing on the standard invoice form if form does not have FS library.
• Fixed: When Work Order Product line status value is set to Used by Default, the work Order Totals are not being calculated.
• Fixed: Conditional upgrade issue when both FS and PSA are present, improved handling of Generic Resources resource type required.
• Fixed: Issue converting case to work order where billing account is not carried to the work order from case.

Connected Field Service (CFS) enhancements

Enhancements

• Device Readings (preview): To help you understand the current state of a device, its repair history, and the effect of performed work orders, the Connected Field Service add-in displays near real time device readings and historical sensor measurements in a chart alongside work order details. This feature utilizes Azure Time Series Insights for providing this embedded IoT experience. For more information about the device readings capabilities, please see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/field-service/cfs-visualizations-iot-hub
• The connected field service deployment app has modified to optionally provision Azure Time Series Insights in both new and existing CFS deployments.
• Solution Health Checker: New rules have been added for Connected Field Service in solution health checker, that checks for alert parenting configuration as well as endpoint configuration for IoTHub.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: Function msdyn.caseForm.onLoad on Case form is missing Library and causing an error.
• Fixed: Cryptic error on IoTDevice form for when an IoTDevice creation fails since the DeviceId already exists for another device.

The post Enhancements and Bug Fixes for Field Service Version 8.8.2.160 appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

With the newest version of Outlook clients, the Outlook team has changed the way add-in manifest files specify their contextual rules for matching text within the body of the email. This change rolled out in requirement set version 1.5, which is used by the latest version of the Outlook 2016 desktop client as well as the new version of OWA. In short, the Document View add-in is no longer usable in the newest Outlook clients.

Fix on the way

The Document View Outlook add-in for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central has been updated to version 2.1.0.0, which includes the required changes so that any document numbers found within the email body will be highlighted once again, giving you the ability to quickly look at document information in the context of your email. This update is part of the upcoming 2019 release wave 2 for Business Central.

Great! What about in the meantime?

If youre feeling adventurous, you can download and modify your Document View add-in manifest file so that you can get your Document View back sooner than thenext major update of Business Central.

Step One: Download the add-in manifest file

The first step is to get to the Office Add-in Management page in Business Central and download the Document View manifest file.

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This will download a file titled Document View.xml to your machine. We will need to open this file in a text editor.

Step Two: Append a new section to the add-in manifest file

Once you have opened your Document View manifest file, identify the closing </OfficeApp> tag.

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In between </Rule> and </OfficeApp>, we will be adding a new XML section to the file. Make a new line after the </Rule> element, then copy and paste the XML below into this area.

 <DisableEntityHighlighting>false</DisableEntityHighlighting> <VersionOverrides xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/mailappversionoverrides" xsi:type="VersionOverridesV1_0"> <!-- VersionOverrides for the v1.1 schema --> <VersionOverrides xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/mailappversionoverrides/1.1" xsi:type="VersionOverridesV1_1"> <Requirements> <bt:Sets DefaultMinVersion="1.5"> <bt:Set Name="Mailbox" /> </bt:Sets> </Requirements> <Hosts> <Host xsi:type="MailHost"> <DesktopFormFactor> <!-- DetectedEntity --> <ExtensionPoint xsi:type="DetectedEntity"> <Label resid="contextLabel" /> <SourceLocation resid="detectedEntityUrl" /> <Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="And"> <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Message" /> <Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="Or"> <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" ... /> <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" ... /> </Rule> </Rule> </ExtensionPoint> </DesktopFormFactor> </Host> </Hosts> <Resources> <bt:Urls> <bt:Url id="detectedEntityUrl" DefaultValue="Copy URL From Above" /> </bt:Urls> <bt:ShortStrings> <bt:String id="contextLabel" DefaultValue="Document View" /> </bt:ShortStrings> </Resources> </VersionOverrides> </VersionOverrides>

Figure 3 – New manifest section

Make note of the two highlighted sections. In the next step, we will copy values from the original part of your manifest file, replacing these values.

Step Three: Update the templated values

Regular Expression Rules

In the original part of the manifest file, there were either one or two regular expression rules. One is to match document names (such as invoice, order, and so on), and one matches document numbers (such as SQU-1001, INV-1000, and so on). Find these two rules (depending on how you have your number series set up, there may only be one rule). Then copy them and replace the rules in the new section (highlighted in Figure 3).

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Detected Entity URL

The last thing to update is the detectedEntityUrl value within the Resources section of the manifest file. You will get this from one of the URLs in the top part of the manifest file, within the FormSettings section.

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Once you have made the required changes, make sure to save your manifest file. It is now ready to deploy to Outlook.

Step Four: Deploy your add-in manifest file

To deploy the new manifest file, we will need to open up OWA. As there are multiple ways to deploy Outlook add-ins, if you already have a preferred method, you can do that and skip this step. The easiest way Ive found to deploy add-ins is to navigate directly to this URL: https://outlook.office.com/owa/?path=/options/manageapps. Give it a second to load, and then you should see something similar to Figure 6.

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Click the + button at the top of the add-in list. Then choose Add from a file. In the flyout window on the right, browse to your updated manifest file, then click Next and review the confirmation warning. Finally, click Install. Assuming everything in your manifest file is correct, you will get a success confirmation.

Thats it

Your Outlook add-in is now ready to go, and it should now highlight document numbers the same way that you are used to.

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The post Where did my Dynamics 365 Business Central Document View in Outlook go? appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

If you are upgrading customers from Dynamics NAV 2017 or earlier versions to the latest version of Dynamics 365 Business Central, then you probably have an existing Help solution for the customized functionality in their old Dynamics NAV solution. However, Business Central does not support the field-based approach to context-sensitive Help that Dynamics NAV 2017 and earlier use. So what to do?

The difference between Help in Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central

In this blog post, I will suggest a couple of options. None of them are particularly simple or easy workarounds, because Business Central understands Help in a completely different way compared to Dynamics NAV. It’s far easier to extend and customize the Help for Business Central than it was for Dynamics NAV 2009, for example – at least, I think so. The structure for the Help for the base application in Dynamics NAV was easy to understand but annoying to maintain: We shipped thousands of HTML files with each release, and you then had to guess which of them were completely new, which had been updated, and what that meant for your customized Help.

Here’s a list that I have shared before that outlines the journey the docs have been on since 1999:

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Many of you never cared what Microsoft did with the Help, such as those of you who never installed the Microsoft content, or if you gave your customers PDF files rather than installed Help. That’s totally fine, and this blog post is not meant for you. Instead, I recommend that you read our content on how to migrate your content.

The rest of this blog post is for those of you who have existing content in the object-based format for a version of Dynamics NAV. In other words, you were planning to use the familiar Help Server with files such as T_12345.htm, T_12345_1.htm, N_12345.htm, R_12345.htm, and B_12345.htm.

But for Business Central, that no longer works for context-sensitive Help. Business Central relies on tooltips for the field descriptions and a mapping between page objects and conceptual Help for the description of features and workflows. So again: What to do?

Option 1: Use the object-based content as-is

This option is for those of you who prefer to keep things as-is until Microsoft comes up with a magic solution of some sort. That’s a perfectly legitimate approach, but it would mean that your Business Central customers would not get access to context-sensitive Help for your functionality.

If that’s an acceptable experience for your customers, then you can deploy a Help Server instance, populate it with your HTML files, and make sure that as much as possible is listed in the ToC.xml file so that users can find the relevant Help through navigation.

On a related note, you can still download the files that were made available for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017.

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The download consists of 45 CAB files with the content from the Dynamics NAV 2016 DVD rebranded to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017. The download includes CAB files with the W1 application Help translated into each of the supported languages plus the local functionality for the country/region where that language is spoken. There are also CAB files with local functionality in English. The files were published as a single download so each administrator could choose exactly the files that they needed at the time. For more information, see Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 Classic Help Download.

Option 2: Update the Page Documentation system table with page-level UI-to-Help mapping

This option is for those of you who like to play around with PowerShell. I don’t, so I haven’t been able to give you an example of who to populate that mysterious system table that in the current version of Business Central provides a UI-to-Help mapping between page objects and Help.

In the current version, table 2000000198 Page Documentation, lists all page objects in the default version of Business Central and associates each of them with a target Help article. This means that multiple page objects can be associated with the same Help article, such as when a specific workflow involves multiple pages.

The table associates page IDs with target articles, but the URL to where to find the target article is specified at the application level that defaults to thehttps://docs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/business-central/ site. In an extension, you can overrule this URL so that all calls for Help go to your site instead, for example. For more information, seeConfiguring the Help Experience for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Caution: The following content is intended as an example. You can choose to do things differently, and while you can use these scripts as inspiration, reusing the Dynamics NAV legacy Help, the legacy Dynamics NAV Help Server, and populating the system table,Page Documentation, is not the recommended path going forward. We recommend that you convert any existing content to the Business Central format instead, and that you fork our GitHub repos.

The way that Microsoft populated the system table was based on an Excel sheet in the following format:

In this example, you want to replace the values of the fields in theRelative Pathcolumn with classic page-level Help files:

With the Windows client and C/SIDE with the Object Designer soon gone, you cannot run that table anymore from the development environment. But you can find it in the SQL Server database and manipulate it there, for example. Or use PowerShell to set the ContextSensitiveHelpPage property on the relevant AL page objects, for example.

This option means that your users get context-sensitive Help on a page level, and you can then let them rely on Search and links to find information about tables, fields, and reports, if that is important to them and to you.

Option 3: Squeeze your field-level Help into tooltips and ditch the rest

This option is for those of you who want to deliver an experience that complies with the Business Central user assistance model but are fed up waiting for us to deliver you tools to help you achieve that. We might still surprise you in that area, but I can’t blame you for thinking you’re better off figuring it out on your own.

Again, this is where my lack of skills in PowerShell scripting comes into play. But I know it’s possible to write a script that takes the opening paragraph from a field topic such as T_12345_1.htm and puts that into the TooltipML property on the relevant page object. Or even better: Port the field description into the Tooltip property elements in the XLIFF file for your app, using whatever third party tool you use to process XLIFF files.

The following snippet illustrates what this might look like in an XLIFF file.

<ding="utf-8"?><xliff version="1.2" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:1.2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:1.2 xliff-core-1.2-transitional.xsd"> <file datatype="xml" source-language="en-US" target-language=da-DK original="ALProject1"> <body> <group id="body"> <trans-unit id="PageExtension 3469146285 - Control 2143966609 - Property 1295455071" maxWidth="999" size-unit="char" translate="yes" xml:space="preserve"> <source>Specifies the company's taxpayer identification number.</source> <target>Specificerer firmaets skatteydernummer.</target> <note from="Xliff Generator" annotates="general" priority="3">Page - Page</note> </trans-unit> </group> </body> </file></xliff>

Yes, you guessed it: We’re still working on getting our tooltips into XLIFF files.

Is this yet another breaking change?

No, it’s not. Business Central was born as a cloud-first offering, and the Business Central user assistance model serves that purpose. Getting from the Dynamics NAV 2016 Help experience to the Business Central user assistance model is not even as big a challenge as when we dropped the application manuals – and that wasn’t all that big a change to begin with because most of you kept the manuals from Navision Financials and shared them with your customers, if you were working on the product back then.

Then why is it so complicated, you may ask. Well, I might answer, it’s isn’t all that complicated. Here I have outlined a couple of scenarios, and there are probably many more. Depending on your particular solution and which format your existing Help is, things are either a bit tough or smooth and easy. Just like the code behind your solution – code customization makes upgrades more difficult, that’s just how it is. With the Help, you can even take it by degrees, slowly reworking the content you already have.

To make things easier going forward, join us in GitHub! For more information, see Extend, Customize, and Collaborate on the Help for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Wait! What about Dynamics NAV 2018?

Oh, yeah … As you hopefully know, we were working on Dynamics NAV 2018 and Business Central at the same time, and as a result, the code change that disabled the classic way of looking up context-sensitive Help based on object IDs trickled back into Dynamics NAV 2018.

We did it on purpose at the time as part of a simplification effort that aimed at making things better for Business Central online, but we forgot that it would affect Dynamics NAV 2018 customers.

The good news is that you can use your classic object-based Help on a Help Server instance for both Dynamics NAV 2018 and Business Central on-premises. But as explained above, the website cannot give your users context-sensitive Help.

I hope we will have good news about context-sensitive Help in a few months, so cheer up, and let’s move forward.

The post Reusing classic object-based Help on your Dynamics 365 Business Central Help Server appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.

In todays competitive buying market, customers have access to more content, purchasing channels, and brand options than ever before. With an overload of information and choices available, businesses can no longer survive by simply providing the bare minimum necessary to keep customers from leaving. Instead, they must demonstrate they understand and value their customers and can deliver exceptional experiences and outcomes.

While a highly relevant customer experience is essential, simply implementing a personalized marketing strategy is no longer enough. Its necessary that organizations structure themselves around the customer across all lines of business. They must stop looking at customers from siloed marketing, sales, and service perspectives and leverage a 360-degree view of the customer that accounts for every interaction they have with the brand.

Several data management platforms and methods exist, like customer relationship management (CRM) and master data management (MDM), that organizations often leverage to help consolidate data sources, though these solutions still leave the burden of configuration, ongoing management, and compliance all on the shoulders of IT while isolating marketing and IT functions.

Beyond the traditional customer relationship management (CRM) platform

Creating highly personal experiences across all channels and touch points like email, social media, purchases, or contact centers, is extremely difficult when customer data is fragmented in multiple independent applications and departments. According to a marketing insights study by Adobe, 60 percent of companies still struggle to personalize content in real time. And according to Marketo, 78.6 percent of consumers said they are only likely to engage with a brand using coupons or other offers if those promotions are directly tied to how they have interacted with the brand previously.

While typical customer relationship management (CRM) platforms that most organizations rely on can help surface some customer data, they typically only deliver narrowly specific details like a customers name, address, or basic purchase history. In order to add or process additional types of data, organizations are challenged with integrating sources across multiple departments and third-party applications. Establishing and maintaining those connections can cost excess time and money, and to derive any actionable insights requires additional investment in machine learning or analytics capabilities.

Why master data management (MDM) misses the mark

With a set of processes requiring configuration and management by IT, master data management brings together data throughout an organization and essentially delivers a master record, ensuring data accuracy and consistency. What it can do is help provide a singular point of reference for structured data including customer names, phone numbers, and transactions, yet it cant account for the large quantity of unstructured and event-based data such as social media engagements, emails, phone call transcripts, etc. generated by todays customers. Master data management still requires that data be integrated in multiple platforms and external marketing tools in order to surface insights and take action, which is difficult and time consuming for IT and creates potential slowdowns and roadblocks for marketing teams who need the ability to react immediately to customer needs.

Deliver customer-centric experiences with a customer data platform

The ability to deliver exceptional experiences at scale requires a complete, unified view of customers from both transactional and behavioral data that enables intelligent, actionable insights, something that many companies still struggle to achieve and results in poor, disjointed customer experiences. This is where the customer data platform (CDP) is helping to evolve the customer experience landscape, providing organizations with the means to not only gain a deep understanding of their customers, but to then leverage insights that power proactive action and meaningful engagement throughout every touch point.

What sets Dynamics 365 Customer Insights apart?

In a world where companies have only a few minutes to make a lasting impression, organizations need to do more than simply compile customer data they need to derive actionable insights and get those insights into the hands of every employee who interacts with customers. Marketing, sales, and service professionals need firsthand access to holistic customer information, enabling seamless and intelligent customer experiences no matter which department theyre interacting with.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, organizations can seamlessly unify data from every channel in a much simpler fashion and derive insights to enable intelligent action at every touch point. Effortlessly connect data from every source of interaction and arm employees with a single source of truth right within the external business applications they use every day including seamless, pre-built integration with the rest of the Dynamics 365 marketing, sales, and service applications many organizations already leverage.

Unlike other customer data platforms, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a self-service solution that enables faster time to value with zero to minimal consulting engagement, freeing up time, costs, and resources typically required from IT. Atop a unified data estate, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights utilizes analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to create 360-degree customer profiles with actionable insights, adding proprietary customer data enrichment with Microsoft Graph for more complete customer segments. Organizations can connect to a myriad of data sources to seamlessly run analytics on their data estate through Power BI, build custom lines of business applications through PowerApps, and leverage intelligent insights to trigger business processes in Microsoft Flow. Additional extensibility is made possible through a large ecosystem of Microsoft partners to help organizations optimize and tailor solutions that address specific industry or business needs, maximizing the capabilities of their marketing, sales, and service departments.

Learn more

Its exciting to see how Microsoft is innovating in the area of the customer data platform and empowering organizations to harness their customer data to change the way they engage with customers and drive results. To learn more, download this customer experiences eBook or visit the Customer Insights website get started with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

The post Customer data platform: Going beyond MDMs and CRMs appeared first on Dynamics 365 Blog.