10 Things to consider when Managing Enterprise Apps - Microsoft Dynamics 365 on Microsoft Cloud

 Once an enterprise application like Microsoft Dynamics 365 goes live within an organization there is lot of excitement. The project team is happy with the results of the efforts over the year/s. It is the day after going live that the operations team is faced with the post go-live challenges. There are lots of questions on how to support, operate, manage, adopt and scale the new Dynamics 365 application. Microsoft Dynamics 365 in an enterprise cloud environment can be very challenging. There could be multiple integrations with other systems within and outside the organization, compliance and security requirements, business enhancements needs and performance management. This requires planning and coordination with multiple teams. This blog series is about how to prepare and plan for managing of an enterprise Dynamics 365 app. Here are the top 10 things to consider - 

1. Governance (decision making) - There needs to be a governance team in place. There could be multiple operations support teams working on the system for example the application support and maintenance team, the infrastructure and security management team and the application enhancement team. There has to be a defined governance team that may consists of representatives from business, IT, Project and executive management. This helps the operations team to report any blockers, get the guidance and support for the system management. The governance teams meets on a monthly cadence and reviews the teams progress and challenges. They will discuss how to resolve the blockers, improve the operational performance and opportunities for enhancing the Dynamics 365 application.

2. Security and Access control - As the Dynamics 365 application usage increase so does the need to add new users and give them proper access. There could also be challenges with the existing users who may need to modify their security roles, teams and business unit. It is an ongoing challenge to manage the users access and application security which needs to be considered and managed. Assigning a role based user security template will make the access streamlined. 

The tasks for the security team is to regularly review and update user security roles, active directory teams and business units as user responsibilities change. Also remember to remove users and reassign licenses when the users are no longer required to access the app. Finally regularly audit user access logs on a monthly or quarterly basis to identify any unauthorized or suspicious activities. 

3. Data security and integrity - Having a reliable quality data is important for the adoption and success of the Dynamics 365 app. Users should be confident that the data that they rely on to make business decisions is safe and trustworthy. Implement a data governance practice to maintain data integrity and quality. Regularly set reviews, cleanse and maintain data for accuracy, completeness and consistency. Users should be provided training in proper data entry and maintenance standards. 

The data loss prevention rules should be in place to prevent the leakage of data. Sensitive data in the Dynamics 365 app should be protected and secured using field level security. Duplicate detection should be in place and active where needed. It is essential to set-up data validation and duplicate detection rules to prevent erroneous and unreliable duplicate data. Data lifecycle, archival and storage needs to be planned as the data size grows with complexity.

4. Application Performance Monitoring - The Dynamics 365 application and related infrastructure should be continuously monitored for any issues, bottlenecks or maintenance requirements. A mechanism should be in place to trigger alerts and auto create incident support tickets for any identified issues. The error logs, system logs and performance metrics should be reviewed for measuring the performance of the application. Users should be trained in identifying and reporting issues with proper documentation. 

Microsoft provides many options to monitor and manage Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. The Power Platform Admin Center has OOTB performance metrics that can be reviewed. Additionally Azure Monitor and Application Insights can be set-up to track and monitor the performance. Additionally you can even use Power Automate to trigger alerts and create incident support tickets.

5. Support Team  - Plan to have a dedicated multi-level support team. The teams can be set-up on a Tiered support level based on the incident complexity, severity and priority. Tier 1 and 2 support can be provided by the organization support helpdesk. Tier 3 support can be provided by the Application Manage Services Partner and Tier 4 support can be from Microsoft product support team. It is important to have the team trained on the business application and on supporting Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

6. Product updates and upgrades - Microsoft provides 2 major updates annually for Microsoft Dynamics 365. Plan in advance to have the Dynamics 365 updates tested and implemented. 

Safe deployment of updates for Dynamics 365 by region

The business and IT needs will require regular enhancements of the Dynamics 365 application and supporting infrastructure. Ensure proper training of the support team as part of the enhancement of the Dynamics 365 application and infrastructure.

I hope this helps your organization in planning for the post go-live operations and management of the Dynamics 365 enterprise application on Microsoft cloud. Please stay tuned for my next blog where I will discuss the remaining 4 items to consider when managing Microsoft Dynamics 365 enterprise applications. Let me know your thoughts and thanks for reading.

@MihirCRM

365WithoutCode

 

 

What's New in Power Platform - 2022 Release wave 2 - Managed Environments

       It is that time of the year for reviewing what's new in Microsoft Power Platform for the 2022 Release Wave-2. In addition to the many enhancements to the existing functionality there are also new features that are being added. In this blog I am reviewing the new capability of Managed Environment.

As the Power Platform is becoming mainstream in the enterprise domain, there is the need to set boundaries and maintain governance. Just like the new shiny toy that every kid on the block wants as present, the power platform, once introduced to the users, they will want to play with it. The power users want to try, make and see what is the realm of possibilities with and within the platform. They will find out sooner that it has a lot to offer and all with no code or less code. This can get out of control very fast same as the gold rush!!

Microsoft has realized the problem at hand and provided apps and guidance for managing the power platform. This guidance came in the form of the excellent - Power Platform Center of Excellence kit. To add to that Microsoft is also releasing the Managed Environments capability.

What is a Managed Environment ?  Managed Environments is a suite of capabilities that allows admins to manage Power Platform at scale with more control, less effort and more insights. Basically to do more with less.

Note - One of the requirements for an environment to be enabled as Managed Environments is that all the users in the environment should have premium usage rights for example - a Power Apps or Power Automate - per user or per app per user stand alone plan. 

Managed Environments elements

Currently there are 3 elements of Managed environments and I hope more are added in the near future.

1. Limit Sharing - This helps to prevent makers from sharing Canvas Apps with security groups and also limit the # of people the app can be shared with by the makers.

Limit Sharing

This is useful in a Dev environment you want the maker to to limit sharing and test it before sharing the app to other users. This will also limit the # of apps that a user sees in the environment.

2. Usage Insights - This provides a weekly email digest for Power Platform admins and Dynamics 365 Services Admins on the Managed Environments. The email gives insights as below -

Active apps / flows / users in the last month

This shows how is the adoption rate of the apps. A graph of the active app users will be more useful to show the growth of adoption over time.

Last time the app was used

This shows what apps are no longer being used. IT can ask the maker to remove / delete the app if it is no longer being used. Good for keeping the environment clean and useful.

Most useful apps and flows

This shows the top run apps and flows. Makers can learn from the top used apps / flows and update their apps.

3. Data policies - This shows all the data policies applicable to the managed environment. 

Applicable Data Policies

I will update my blog as new elements and capabilities are added for Managed Environments a step in the right direction to do more with less. I hope this helps you in deciding upon and enabling Managed Environments capability.

Thanks for reading. 

@mihircrm | 365WithoutCode

Integrating Teams with Dynamics 365 - Part-II

This is the 2nd part of my blog on Teams and Dynamics 365. In Part-1, I discussed about Teams and Office 365 apps. This blog will show how to integrate Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement with Teams.

Teams is integrated with Office 365 Apps. Creating a team also creates a SharePoint team site and also an Office 365 group for the team, which can be accessed from Outlook. As discussed in my earlier blog, Team consists of Channels and all communications and collaboration is done within the Channel. You can add a tab to the channel to show records from other Apps like Dynamics 365 and GitHub.

Teams will be useful for users to form groups to discuss, collaborate, share and do meetings together. It helps the team members to have one go to location for all messaging, documents, notes, design and meetings.

For example I have created a Team called Big Deal Opportunity. Within the team is the Bids and proposal Channel. I want to link my channel with the Dynamics Account - Bob the Builder so I have all the up to date info about the Account and Opportunity in  one place where the team is working together for bidding and proposal development.

1. On the channel select the '+' sign to add a Tab. Search for Dynamics and select Dynamics 365 - preview (Note - The Dynamics 365 integration is in preview and needs to be enabled in Dynamics 365 > Settings > Preview tab)

Add an App to Team

2. Select Org and Entity - If you have multiple environments it will ask you to select the Dynamics Org and also the Unified Interface App.

Select Org and App

Note -
1. Only Dynamics 365 v9 and above will work for Team integration
2. Only Unified Interface Apps will work. Not Web Client.

3. Select Entity and Record - The last step is to select the entity (Account) and the record.

Select entity and record

Once you are done a new tab will be added to the Team channel and it show the record in the Tab itself.

Account Tab in Teams

As you can see now the team can get all the info from the Dynamics 365 Account record (or any other record) on to the Team Tab.

Another good integration for Teams, is with One Note. I added a One Note Tab  on the Channel, which the Team can view and work on as they collaborate.

One Note Tab in Teams

I hope the above help you to integrate Teams with Dynamics 365. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah
@mihircrm
365WithoutCode

Teams in Office 365 & Dynamics 365 - Part-1

Dynamics 365 online is part of Office 365 family of productivity and collaboration suite. It is well integrated OOTB with many other Office 365 apps such as SharePoint, One Drive, Yammer, One Note and Teams. This multi-series blog is about Teams and its integration with Office 365 Apps and Dynamics 365. Part-1 of this blog focuses on Teams and Office 365 apps.

Apps in Office 365

One important thing to note is that the apps are very much interconnected. You create an Opportunity team in Teams and this will auto create a Opportunity Group in Office 365 with its own email address that you can access from Outlook. This also create an Opportunity SharePoint team site to store and share files. You can add One note, Power BI, Power Apps, Dynamics 365 etc as tabs to the channels within a Team.

About Teams – Teams according to me is one of the best Office 365 app, that can really helpful in improving collaboration and communication within an organization. The below gives you an overview of setting up a team and linking it with other apps. .

1. Create Teams and Channels -

You can create a public, private or org wide team. A team owner can add members to the team. 

Teams consists of Channels. A general channel is auto created when you create a team. Additional channels can be created as needed. All team users have access to all the Channels within a team. (Channels are not private)

All collaboration takes place within the channels of the team.

In a channel you can start conversations by @mentioning users. Also add attachment files, start audio / video meetings (skype) and more. 

Channel collaboration

2. Chat with other user/s – You can start chat messaging with one or more users. The chats are private to the members in the chat only. 

Team chat

3. Meetings – You can start an instant audio / video meeting from within a channel or chat. The meeting can also be scheduled as shown below. This is a great alternative to having meeting outside Office 365. This also creates a tab for adding meeting notes within the channel. 

Schedule meetings

Hope this blog helps you in getting started with using Teams in Office 365. I will write about the integration with Dynamics 365 and Teams in the Part - II of this blog.

Thanks for reading. Please let me know your experience working with Teams.

Mihir Shah

@mihircrm

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihircrm/

365WithoutCode

What’s new in Dynamics 365 Spring 2018 – Customer Service

Microsoft has released the latest version of Dynamics 365 applications for Spring 2018. This blog talks about what’s new in the Customer Service application. OOTB there are 2 apps for Customer Service process in Dynamics 365 – Customer Service app on the old web client interface and Customer Service Hub app on the new Unified interface. To read about What’s new in the Sales refer my earlier blog here.

The Customer Service Hub was introduced in ver 9.0. “Built on the Unified Interface framework, the Customer Service Hub is a focused and intuitive application for case and knowledge management on any screen size, device, or orientation.”

Important things to note –

•           Timeline and Knowledge management (articles) is available OOTB on the Customer        Service Hub app
•          Knowledge Management is enabled for Case entity only by default

Customer Service Hub application has the following new features –

1. Case – With Spring 2018 release Case Management and Knowledge management business processes, related entities are on the Customer Service Hub - new unified interface framework. This includes – Account / Contact / Case / Queues / Knowledge article / Activity …

It may be important to note that there are some known issues with the new Unified interface framework. You can get more details in this link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/readme-9#sales-hub-and-customer-service-hub-apps-

Below is an example of the Case form in the Customer Service Hub app on unified Interface. The business process is on the top in a floating mode. The Case form also has the new Timeline feature.

Case form with floating BPF

Below is the Case form with the business process docked on the right side.

Case form with docked BPF

2. Timeline  -  Timeline is a new feature that was added with v9.0. It allows users to see and create customer interactions including activities like appointment, phone call, email, task, notes and system posts. Note: Timeline is only available on new unified interface.

Timeline on a Case form

3. Knowledge Management (KB articles) - Customer Service Hub app has the Knowledge Management feature which enables the Customer Service user to quickly search for Knowledge articles from the related panel on the Case form. 

KB article in related panel of Case form

Users can search, author, review and publish knowledge articles using a rich text editor. Below is a KB article and its business process flow.

KB Article with BPF

4. Dashboards – There are new Dashboards in the Customer Service Hub. Some of them are discussed below.

a.       Tier-1 dashboard for customer service agents to deliver 1^st level of support and handle multiple customers at the same time.

Tier-1 dashboard for Customer Service agents

a.       Tier-2 dashboard is for Service Managers or Tier-2 agents to get an overview of the cases and monitor more complex or escalated cases in a single view.

Tier-2 dashboard for Customer Service Managers

c.       Knowledge Manager dashboard – gives an overview of the KB articles to KB managers

KB dashboard

I hope this gets you started to try out the new features in Dynamics 365 – Spring 2018 release for Customer Service. 

Please do let me know your questions and experience with the new capabilities. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah

365WithoutCode

Analytics using Power BI with Dynamics 365 - Part-3 - Data Insights

This is part-3 of a multi-series blog on Power BI and Dynamics 365. The earlier blogs are on integrating Power BI with Dynamics 365 (Part-1) and the Power BI Desktop (Part-2). This blogs focuses on data insights from Power BI with Dynamics 365.

Once you have integrated Power BI with Dynamics 365 and built your data-sets it is ready for you to get insights on your Dynamics 365 data. Microsoft research has developed advanced analytical algorithms to enable for getting quick insights from your data without having to write any code. 

It also helps to be able to quickly analyze your data without missing any significant insight. 

Below are some of the insights that I got using the sample data sets for Sales Analytics and Customer Service Analytics with Dynamics 365 and Power BI.

Email and Web are the dominant origins for Cases

Most of the Cases are questions and not problems

Cases are resolved mostly in the middle of the month

You can pin the insight to an existing or a new dashboard.

You can also expand the insight visual which opens the visual into a Focus mode. You can filter the visual in focus mode to get to the data insight you want as shown below.

Pin to a dashboard or Get further insights on this visual

Also you can get further insights on the data within the insight visual only. This is scoped insights as the data is now restricted to the visual only and not the entire data set.

Note – The insights is only possible on data uploaded to Power BI. It will not work on Direct Query.

How to get quick insights? -

In Power BI online go to My workspace > Dataset. Select your specific data set and click on the … (ellipses) in the Actions column. Than click on “Get Quick Insights” option as shown below.

Insights from a Dataset in Power BI

Now Power BI will start analyzing your data and building the insights for you. Once done it will let you know that your insights are ready for viewing.

Hope this helps you get started with getting the insights from your data. In my next blog I will write about the types of insights that you can get using Power BI and Dynamics 365.

Mihir Shah

365WithoutCode

Analytics using Power BI with Dynamics 365

As the usage grows exponentially in Dynamics 365, so does the requirement to analyze the treasure trove of data. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool that can be used by business users along with Microsoft Dynamics 365 to get insights on data, visualize trends and take actions.

This blog is part-1 of multi-series blog detailing Power BI analytics with Dynamics 365. This blog focuses on the integration of Power BI with Dynamics 365 online.

Power BI is a set of business analytics tools that enables users to connect, analyze, visualize and get insights from data. Power BI Service is used to connect to and integrate with Dynamics 365 online.

A customer service Power BI dashboard with the Dynamics 365 sample data is shown below – 

Customer Service dashboard - Power BI

     To set-up and integrate Power BI with Dynamics 365 - 

1.       Pre-requisite -  You will need Dynamics 365 online and Power BI subscription. For this blog I created a demo for Dynamics 365 online and also a trial for Power BI. I assigned the licenses for both the subscriptions to my users. 

Licenses for Power BI / Dynamics 365

Note – The subscriptions for both products are in the same tenant for this blog.

      2.  Set-up Power BI – Login to PowerBI.com and add the content packs. Microsoft has provided few Power BI content packs on Microsoft app source to use with Dynamics 365 – Customer Engagement. For example - 

•       Sales analytics for Dynamics 365
•       Customer Service analytics for Dynamics 365
•       Microsoft Dynamics 365 process analyzer

       3. To get the content pack into Power BI –

•       In Power BI, click on Get Data
• ·        Select Microsoft Appsource > Services
• ·        Search the content packs and click – get it now
•       Login to the Dynamics 365 online 

Now you should be able to see the content pack in Power BI

       Once the content packs are loaded in Power BI you can see the interactive dashboards                           and visualization of Dynamics 365 data in PowerBI.com.

Now we can connect to Power BI and get the tiles and dashboards to show in Dynamics 365.

       4. In Dynamics 365 Go to System Settings > Reporting Tab and allow Power BI embedding

5.  Now you can create a Personal dashboard, charts and views using Power BI tiles as below. 

Custom dashboard using Power BI tiles

Note - 

1. Power BI tiles cannot be used with System dashboards. You can share the personal dashboard created in Dynamics 365 with other users or teams

Hope the above helps you to get started with analytics with Power BI and Dynamics 365.

      Thanks for reading

     Mihir Shah

     Dynamics365WithoutCode

New in Dynamics 365 v9.0 - Multi-select option set, Virtual entities & Flow

This blog is the part of a multi-series blog on the latest updates in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement v9.0. The Part-1 on User Experience enhancement is here and Part-2 on Apps enhancements is here.

This blog is about the following new features in v9.0 –

1

•        Multi-select Option sets
•        Virtual entities 
•        Microsoft Flow integration

1.      Multi-select Option set – This was one of the most requested and long awaited features which customers asked for in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

When you are creating a new custom field for an entity. there is a new field type – Multi-select option set.  For example, I am creating a new field for Contact – Hobbies. This is a multi-select option set as each contact can have more than 1 hobby.

Multi-Select Option Set

After creating the new field I can add a list (options) of Hobbies for the Contact.

Hobbies - Multi-select

Now add the custom field to the Contact form and you have a multiple choice for Hobbies to select for a contact.

Add multiple Hobbies for a Contact

And once you select all Hobbies for the contact the data looks great. Thank you Microsoft Dynamics 365 product team!!

Nice work!!

Some of the things to know about Multi-select option sets –

1.         You can enter upto 150 options max in the list
2.            Multi-select option set can also be a Global Option set (I recommend all Option sets should be  Global Option sets) so it can be used across the board with Multiple entities - For example Hobbies for Leads and Contacts
3.           You can also add the multi-select option set to a view as shown below

Multiple Hobbies in a Contact View

    

Now it is time to plan for the data transformation - Moving data from custom entities created before multi-select was available, to the new multi-select option set.

2. Virtual Entities –

      Clients have data stored in multiple external systems, applications and databases. It is useful to show the data from external systems in Dynamics 365 and not to import or replicate the data. This is where the new feature of Virtual entities will be beneficial.

      For example Virtual entities provide the ability to connect to an ERP database and show the necessary information for Customer Order status or Account status, payments and receivables information.

Steps to create a Virtual entity –

1. Create a Data Source – Settings > Administration > Virtual Entity Data Sources

2. Enter the necessary information – Note – Currently this support Odata v4.0 only

Data source for Virtual Entity

Once the data source is created you can create the custom Virtual entity and refer the above Data Source.

New Virtual Entity - checkbox

The Virtual entity now can be used in Dynamics 365. Some points to consider about Virtual Entities –

1. -        Virtual entities are read only
2. -        Currently it supports OData v4.0 service
3. -        You cannot trigger workflows or plugins with the data retrieved from Virtual entities, as the data is not stored
4. -        Only organization owned entities are supported
5. -        Field level security is not supported with Virtual entities
6. -        The external data source entities must have a GUID primary key

3.  Microsoft Flow  – A user can now create or edit a flow from within Dynamics.

The flow button is available from a list view or record form – For example on the active Account list view the following flow options are available.

Flow in Dynamics 365

It requires the user to have an account and login to Flow. Once logged into Flow, they can create a new flow, manage all the created flows and see the run history of the flows.

I have few concerns with the Flow integration –

1.      Flow is useful for a system admin to create integrations between Dynamics 365 and 1 or more external application. For any internal to Dynamics 365 processes I would prefer to use Workflows or Actions within Dynamics 365

2.      There is no Global setting or configuration in security role within Dynamics 365 to control which user/s can use Flow. I think this is a security flaw and it may require admins to disable the flow button for all users except the few who can and should be allowed to create flow

3.      There is a cost to the Flow runs and it needs to be compared with other options

I hope the above is useful for you and let me know your observations on the above.

Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah
365WithoutCode

What’s new in Dynamics 365 v9.0 – Part-1 User Experience enhancements

Microsoft has recently announced the release of Dynamics 365 v9.0. This blog focusses on the new enhancements to Dynamics 365 (D365) Customer Engagement applications including – Sales / Customer Service / Field Service / Project Service Automation.  This is a major release from Microsoft and also it was much awaited. I had the opportunity to be part of the preview program and got to test out some of the new functionalities and enhancements.

The Part-1 of this blog is on enhancements to the User Experience.

New form design for v9.0

       D365 v9 has vastly improved user experience with a new form design, tabs and consistent spacing. One of the pet peeve of many clients was the amount of white space on forms. This version aims to reduce / eliminates the white space as shown above and detailed below.

a.      The forms are now divided into containers for content display. There is a border along each container

b.      The spacing of sections and fields is standardized and the fonts on the form are standardized

c.      There are horizontal tabs and buttons, making it easier for a touch enabled experience

d.      The empty sections have a default message for the user

e.      The colors of the sub-grid can be customized (example - Recent Cases). 

Add color to Sub-grid on a form

f.   There is a new system wide setting for text wrap that Admin can enable or disable.

Text wrapping feature

g.    There are now 3 standard themes to select from – Customization > Themes

New themes

h.      Search – Advanced find now has the “Does not equal” operator. For example - I want to find all contacts which are not in the State of NY.

"Not-In" operator

Let me know your feedback on the new user experience enhancement. In my next part of this blog, I will write about the other enhancements in v9. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah