New in Dynamics 365 v9.0 - Apps Enhancement

This blog is part-2 of a multi-series blog which focuses on the new enhancements to Dynamics 365 (v9.0) Customer Engagement application. 

The Part-2 of this blog is on Apps enhancements. You can read the Part-1 - enhancements to the User Experience here. With this release Microsoft is moving to an Apps based application development and consumption model and I get the feeling that everything is in Apps and App is everything.

1. Apps  - Introduced in Dec’2016 update is further enhanced and it is now the default way to create unique user interface and experiences. I had a blog earlier which details how the app is designed and you can read it here.

Here is how the new Tier-1 Customer Service dashboard looks like – 

Fig-1: new Tier-1 Dashboard

Below is the app designer. When creating a new App you can copy from an existing app and all the components gets copied over.

Fig-2 – App designer

2.  App Type - Microsoft has 9 OOTB managed apps as listed below. The Apps can be differentiated into 2 types based on the Client type.

Fig-3 – App Client Type

The table below shows all the managed apps with client type. (Note - I am using a trial version for this blog)

Table-1: OOTB managed Apps with Client Type

Note – All the apps above are accessing the same instance (and hence the same data) of Dynamics 365.

Microsoft has provided recommendation for the interface for some of the managed app based on performance results.

Table-2: App recommendation for best performance

 3.       Unified Interface – This is a new design framework applicable to all new Apps. It is created to  provide an “optimal viewing and interaction experience for any screen size, device or orientation”.

The new Sales Hub, Customer Service Hub and new mobile app are based on the Unified Interface. 

Here is how the new Customer Service Hub app dashboards looks like – (note – I am using the Custom time Frame to change the date range)

Fig-4: Tier-1 dashboard with Visual Filters

Fig-5: Tier – 1 Dashboard

The Case form – The unified interface changes can be better appreciated when we look at the form design changes in the Case form.

·        It has the new Timeline feature.

·        The tabs are now on the top – Summary / Details / ….

·        The time is now shown (16 D) in the business process flow stage

·        When clicking on the stage (example – Identify) it will show you the steps in that stage

Fig-6: The new Case form design

4.         Security – Apps can be secured by limiting the security roles that have access to the apps. 

Go to the Custom App and within the custom app go to Settings > My Apps.

Select the App you want to secure the access to and click on the “…” and select ‘Manage Roles’

In summary, some of the points to consider when designing with Apps.

1

•       Create a new app from an existing managed app. This will copy all the components within the Managed apps
•       Secure the access to the app and provide a user friendly url
•       Follow the recommendation for performance from Microsoft
•       Some of the new features like timeline view is only available in the unified interface app

Hope the above helps you to jump start using the new Apps within Dynamics 365. Do let me know if there are any new feature which you like or dislike. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah

365WithoutCode