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Changes coming to Unified Interface

Whether I am working with the Web/Classic interface or the Unified Interface, I have always found it clunkier than it needs to be. Why not make the navigation as simple as possible? I don’t need all that extra fluff.

 

The NEW Unified Interface will take a big step forward to try to improve this, and in an upcoming release they will make it even better.

**UPDATE: This feature is expected to be rolled out to organizations in early December**

Old Unified Interface

  1. I have found that this navigation interface is still tricky to navigate – especially when you do not expand the flyout navigation. Even when you do, it is tough to know if there are other tabs to it.
  2. User’s won’t know which icon is which without lots of trial and error.
  3. The command bar is a single color and is tough to tell where one command starts and another ends.

New Unified Interface

  1. The navigation flyout will be expanded by default. This will certainly allow users to find what they are looking for much faster and without error.
  2. The entity you are currently in will be highlighted so that the user doesn’t get lost in the system.
  3. Recent records will show up in the top of the navigation, as well as the ability to pin records.
  4. The area switcher is at the bottom of the navigation.
  5. The command bar will highlight which command is selected.
  6. Colors are added to the command icons.

Overall, it is not perfect but makes navigating the system much easier for even the most advanced users.

Use the CDS trigger to set the scope of your flow

Chances are if you are reading this, you know that new and upgraded instances of Dynamics 365 are now synonymous with the Common Data Service. And because of this the D365 and CDS Flow triggers can work on the same data.

There may be an circumstance where you want to create a Flow that only runs when YOU update or create a record. With the D365 connector – this is not possible. The trigger will run on any record that is created/updated.

BUT if you use the CDS trigger, you get more options! You can set the scope of the trigger to “user” – and if you select that option it will only run for records that YOU trigger.

A pretty handy trick to keep in your back pocket.

Benefits of Office 365 integration with Dynamics 365

I’m going to keep this introduction short and sweet. If you are making the decision between Dynamics 365 and another software or are wondering how to leverage Dynamics 365 and the other Microsoft productivity tools, it is a no-brainer to use the integration between Office 365 and Dynamics 365. Here’s why:

Outlook

These days, every CRM system needs to integrate directly with Outlook – and none do it better than the Dynamics App for Outlook. You can work in Outlook all day and have complete access to the full functionality of Dynamics without skipping a beat. If you have emails coming in from leads all day, Dynamics 365 will know their data without your input and you can update their information right from the Dynamics 365 side panel. Turning on email tracking will also allow any emails sent to/from records in Dynamics will be tracked to its timeline.

outlook integration

Cortana

Microsoft is pushing Artificial Intelligence very hard. And one of the main places they are pushing it is in Dynamics 365. The relationship assistant monitors daily actions like tasks, sentiment in emails and opportunities nearing their close date to provide you with actionable insights. Data cards show up in your dashboards and on forms to give you friendly reminders to send the client that email or follow up on that opportunity. Just look at this list of AI features rolling out in the October ’18 releases here. AI is going to give you everything you need to have a leg up on the competition and close more deals.

RA1RA2

Flow

Use Microsoft Flow and it’s expansive list of connectors to send data to and from Dynamics, Office 365, Azure, SQL and many other 3rd party software…. the list goes on.

SharePoint

Another powerful tool that you should leverage with your Dynamics implementation. Every business uses documents and needs a place to store them. With the SharePoint integration, you can link those documents to that quote, opportunity or any record you choose, and it can all be surfaced in SharePoint. Along with all the functionality you get with it, such as versioning and workflows.

OneDrive

By enabling the OneDrive integration, you can manage and work on documents from Dynamics 365 and have them automatically synced to your desktop or mobile device. Go with OneDrive if you want a more private file management solution.

Excel

The integration with Excel allows for data export/import, creating templates, and being able to refresh or edit Dynamics data directly from Excel using Dynamics worksheets.

PowerBI

PowerBI is a no-brainer when it comes to business analytics and interactive reports. Create powerful visualizations with your Dynamics data and embed it right into the D365 dashboards. You can also share these reports with non-Dynamics users.

PBI

OneNote

For every record in Dynamics, you can keep a OneNote notebook to store notes, pictures, videos or voice recordings. This enables your employees to collaborate on the sales deal or project in one of the best productivity tools that Microsoft has to offer.

O365 Groups

With this integration, you can create or link O365 groups to Dynamics 365 records. This gives you a way to link emails, conversations files and collaborations to a record. This is great for projects or big sales opportunities that may involve several users that need a place to collaborate.

Skype for Business

Dynamics allows you to click on any phone number in the system to automatically open your Skype for Business account and give them a call. This is a great tool for sales people who are constantly calling their contacts, lead ands opportunities that don’t want to worry about managing contacts and phone numbers.

Dynamics 365 is a powerful platform on its own, but when you can leverage the functionality available in all the other Office 365 applications it cannot be beat. Combining the two will bring your organizations productivity to another level.

How to get rid of that pesky GUID in your PowerApp

This is a common problem with PowerApps that isn’t immediately evident to someone who may be a citizen developer. You want to create an app to view or edit the data you have stored in SharePoint, Dynamics or some other connection that you have made. But why do the Lookup columns or fields display the GUID?

GUID example

It is a simple fix that just takes some experience in PowerApps to Master.

As an example, I will walk through this issue with Opportunities data from Dynamics 365.

1.  To start, go to PowerApps and click “Create an App.”

Create an app

2. From here, you will be asked to choose your data source, if you don’t find your data source, Microsoft might not offer an out of the box app for it. You should still be able to get connected by starting from a blank app or using a Dynamics or SharePoint data source as a template and substituting your data source in for it. I’ll cover this in a later blog.

Choose your data source

3. After selecting your data source, you will need to specify what environment this data is in, as well as what table you would like to pull from.

Connections - dataset

In this scenario I am connecting to “Opportunities” from our production environment of Dynamics 365.

Opportunities from Dynamics

4. Your app will be built automatically by PowerApps! Sit back and relax…for the time being.

Building your app

After your app has been created, you may notice that some of the fields are an incoherent mix of numbers and letters. This is a GUID and means that there is a lookup field in our data! Not to worry, we can fix this.

GUID

 

 

 

 

This happens because we only are able to specify 1 connection when creating the app, and the lookup values on the opportunity entity stores the GUID for Accounts and Contacts, not the friendly names.

5. To fix this we need to add connections for the Account and Contact entities or tables.

The first step is to click “View” from the top menu of our app and then “Data Sources.” This will flyout a menu with a list of all our sources.

Data Sources

As you can see, “Opportunities” was our only option so we need to click “Add data source.” From there, we can add the Accounts and Contacts from Dynamics 365 as our Data Sources.

Add Data Source Add Accounts  Add data

6. After adding the Accounts as a data source, now we can go to the PowerApp to edit the field that is using the GUID. To make this a friendly name, we use the Lookup() function to lookup to the Account entity or table. In our scenario, the formula is as follows: Lookup(Accounts, accountid = ThisItem._parentaccountid_value, name).

This formula basically says “Lookup to the Accounts table, where you find a match in the Account ID to this items’ Parent Account ID, return the Name of the Account.” Pretty straight forward, but if this is your first go around with PowerApps – it might not come very easily.

Account lookup

7. Now, do the same for contacts – and there you have it!  No more GUIDs!

Account Lookup 2