Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Martin and Associatesmartinandassoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSCRM_PCR2016.pdf · What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM including Dynamics 365 PC Retreat

What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM including Dynamics 365

PC Retreat 2016

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Microsoft Dynamics 365

Chris Isbell

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https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/default.aspx

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Pre-release documentation. NDA restrictions apply Published: August 22, 2016

Contents

Get Ready for the Next Wave ..................................................................................................................................................... 1

Which products are available in this Preview program? ....................................................................................................... 2

New branding coming soon! ........................................................................................................................................................... 2

Dynamics CRM (online and on-premises) .................................................................................................................................. 2

What’s new in Dynamics CRM for end users?...................................................................................................................... 2

What’s new in Dynamics CRM for IT professionals, administrators, and customizers? ................................... 19

What’s new in Dynamics CRM for developers? ................................................................................................................ 27

Customer Driven Update for Dynamics CRM Online ..................................................................................................... 43

Online vs. on-premises features FAQ ................................................................................................................................... 44

Unified Service Desk Enhancements .......................................................................................................................................... 46

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

Get Ready for the Next Wave

Get Ready for the Next Wave


Which products are available in this Preview

program?

The Autumn 2016 Preview programs provide participants with access to:

Dynamics CRM (online instances and on-premises bits)

We’d love to know what you think about this guide. Please take a minute to send us a quick note. We’ll

use your feedback to improve our content.

New branding coming soon!

In the upcoming release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will be rebranded as Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 evolves our current CRM and ERP cloud solutions into a suite of cloud services

with new purpose-built apps to help manage specific business functions, including: Financials, Field

Service, Sales, Operations, Marketing, Project Service Automation, and Customer Service. This document

and the product UI will change during the course of this preview program, so expect some inconsistencies

along the way. Thanks for your understanding!

Dynamics CRM (online and on-premises)

What’s new in Dynamics CRM for end users?

Relationship Insights help you nurture business relationships and plan daily activities

based on ongoing analysis of your Dynamics CRMCRM data.

Many sales professionals spend a large part of their day working in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft

Outlook, and Microsoft Exchange. And the more you use them, the more these systems become filled with

invaluable details about your plans, activities, meetings, communications, sales successes, and more. The

new Relationship Insights features of Dynamics CRM continuously analyzes this vast collection of

customer-interaction data to help you better understand your business relationships, evaluate your

activities in relation to previous successes, and choose the best path forward.

Relationship Insights comprise the following sub-features, which all work together to amplify their

individual strengths:

Relationship assistant

Email engagement

Engagement analytics

Auto capture

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The relationship assistant automatically shows you the right information at the right time

The relationship assistant is constantly at work, keeping an eye on your activities, opportunities, and

communications with customers. It looks for patterns in your historical data and derives insights into

which activities result in successful deals, and how to optimize your communications to help nurture

healthy business relationships.

The assistant combines and analyzes all of the information at its disposal and then generates a collection

of Action Cards, which are displayed as your entry point to Dynamics CRM on mobile devices, and as a

carrousel display on your Web-based dashboards. When working with individual records, such as a


contact, opportunity, lead, or account, you’ll see the action cards that apply directly to that record. Thirty-

three different types of cards are available, each of which provides tailored information, helpful links, and

action controls for working with that information.

The system reminds you of upcoming activities, phone calls and meetings; it evaluates your

communications and suggests when it might be time to reach out to a contact that’s been inactive for a

while; it identifies email messages that may be waiting for a reply from you or from the customer; and it

alerts you when an important opportunity is nearing its close date.

Keep track of your own and your customers’ email interactions with email engagement

Learn how your contacts are interacting with your email messages with email engagement. You can now

author email messages right inside Dynamics CRM, and configure them to let you know when and where

recipients open the message, click a link, open an attachment, or send a reply. Stay on top of your email and

prioritize those prospects or customers that are most engaged.

Schedule message delivery for a time when the recipient is most like to notice and open your message.

The system even checks the recipient’s time zone and communication history to provide automatic advice

about when the best delivery time might be.


Set yourself a reminder for when it’s time to follow up on a message. Your reminder is provided as an

action card displayed by the relationship assistant, so it will be brought to your attention right away, and

include tools to investigate, act upon, snooze, or dismiss the card.

Your followed email attachments are automatically stored on OneDrive and delivered as links. Your

contacts will appreciate that your email messages occupy minimal space in their inbox, while your

attachments remain available to them everywhere and on any device. You’ll be able to see if your contacts

have opened the attachments, and how often. You’ll also get an idea of where they were when they did

so, which can sometimes indicate that the document has been shared with managers and decision makers

at other locations.

You can view the status and history of your followed messages anywhere where the messages are shown

in Dynamics CRM. The current status and most-recent interaction are shown in the Activities list for any

record where the email is relevant, and you can expand the listing to see full results. Aggregated email

results are also shown graphically by the engagement analytics feature.

To protect the privacy preferences of your contacts, you can choose to disable followed messages for

individual contacts by setting a flag on their contact record.

Monitor relationship health and activity history with engagement analytics

Keeps tabs on the health of your business relationships with engagement analytics. This feature monitors

your level of activity related to individual contacts, opportunities, leads, and accounts—and compares this

to your organization’s history of successful deals. Use this information to help keep your team on target,

focusing on the right accounts at the right time.

Grid views show the current health score and health trend for each listed record, and also show the most-

recent and next-scheduled or suggested activity. Drill down to a specific record for even more detailed

statistics, KPIs and charts that give a comprehensive picture of all the relationships that are most

important for that record.


At a glance, you can see how much time you, your team, and your customer have spent working on a

deal, plus a full record of activities that have gone into it, including email engagement results. Drill down

into your email messages, meeting notes and phone-call records to get a full picture of the deal in-

progress so when you call or meet with the customer, you will be prepared to address their concerns and

play to your strengths.

Identify your most critical and most promising opportunities at a glance using the engagement analytics

bubble chart, which shows the health, value, and due dates of all upcoming opportunities.

Engagement analytics are also an important source of information for the relationship assistant, enabling

the assistant to generate action cards that deliver just the information you need, when you need it, to help

you close deals and meet quota.


Find and follow all the relevant messages from your Exchange server with auto capture

Dynamics CRM can now analyze your inbox directly on Microsoft Exchange to find all messages that

might be relevant to your contacts, opportunities, leads, and accounts. For each of these entities, it looks

for messages to or from email addresses assigned to all relevant stakeholders, and presents you with the

relevant messages right in Dynamics CRM. With just one click, you can load any of the suggested

messages into Dynamics CRM, which makes them available to your sales team and also for use by other

relationship-insight features.

You can still follow messages in Dynamics CRM in all the ways that you could before, including by using

the Dynamics CRM App for Outlook and watched folders. All followed messages in Dynamics CRM are

available to Relationship Insights features.

For administrators: set up and enable Relationship Insights features.

For previews, you can enable or disable each Relationship Insights feature individually on the Previews

tab of your System Settings window.

Privileges related to Relationship Insights features are provided, in their own section, on the Business

Management tab of the Security Role window. These privileges are enabled automatically for all out-of-

the-box roles, but are disabled for all custom roles.

Configuration settings for the Relationship Insights features are provided on a new tabbed settings page.

To find it, go to Settings > System > Relationship Intelligence. From here you can enable, disable, and

configure the various sub-features. The settings you make here apply to all users.


The auto capture feature requires that you are using Microsoft Exchange as your email server and that

you have set up server-side synchronization (see also Set up server-side synchronization of email,

appointments, contacts, and tasks). For each user that requires access to this feature, you must approve

their email address to allow queries against Exchange (required tenant-level admin privileges).

To use followed email attachments, OneDrive must be available to your Dynamics CRM server.

Dynamics CRM App for Outlook enhancements

We’ve added many new enhancements to Dynamics CRM App for Outlook. With the latest enhancements,

Dynamics CRM App for Outlook paired with server-side sync is the preferred way to integrate Outlook

email with Dynamics CRM.

When you start Dynamics CRM App for Outlook, the app is pinned to the right side of screen. The

information displayed in the app shows the recipient list and related info for the selected email message.

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn531109.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn531109.aspx


With the new Dynamics CRM CRM App for Outlook, you can:

See info about all email recipients (including Distribution Lists). Email recipients are automatically

mapped to Dynamics CRM contacts, leads, or users, so you can view the recipient’s picture (if

available), name, job title, company name, business phone, and mobile phone. If a recipient is

unknown, you can quickly add the recipient as a contact or lead. You can also set the regarding

record with a single click, call the recipient, or add an activity (appointment, phone call, or task).

See more info about contacts and leads in the related records summary. For example, you can see

account information for the contact or lead. Click the account to open the record directly in

Dynamics CRM. Click the Set regarding icon to set the regarding record to that account. You can

also see related records for opportunities, cases, stakeholders, and competitors (as well as custom

entities), and set the regarding record.


Easily set or change the regarding record from pinned records or most recently used records.

If you search for a record, you can also take advantage of the new Relevance Search if you’re

using Dynamics CRM Online (and if your organization opts in). With Relevance Search you can

display results from multiple entities in a single list, sorted by relevance. If you’re using Dynamics

CRM on-premises, you can continue to use Categorized search.

Create new records for any entity. For example, create a new contact, lead, opportunity, case, or

account record. You can also create new records for custom entities.

Track meetings and appointments (in addition to email)

Save time when you’re composing a message by creating and using email templates

Add and attach sales literature or Knowledge Base articles when you’re creating an email message

or appointment


The app is also much faster than before, and it supports all Dynamics CRM and Exchange configurations,

including hybrid configurations (Dynamics CRM Online with Exchange on-premises or Dynamics CRM on-

premises with Exchange Online).

Meet the mobile workspace

The all-new workspace is a personalized action hub in the mobile app to help you get to common tasks

more quickly. A pane that appears when app is launched, the workspace includes a list of suggested

priorities (“intelligent cards”) in the left column. These may include upcoming meetings, info relevant to

that day’s activities, and other things that need your attention. It also has a list of favorite and most recent

items. Items that appear in the Recent feed can be added to Favorites by hitting the star icon.


New colors and layouts for the mobile app

The mobile app has new colors and a new look and feel. Layouts are more compact, and optimized to

give essential info at a glance with minimal scrolling.

The dashboard now stacks related elements, exposing more info at once.


Forms also organize items in stacks for so you can see more at once, and get the info you need faster. The

process bar is now more prominent in forms that use it, so it’s more clear where you are in any given

process.


Mobile device integration

Now you can access your device’s camera and other functions from within the app. Open a new or

existing note, and tap the icons under the text box to add multimedia content.

Business processes flows enhancements

Concurrent business process flows is a new capability that will make your work easier and a lot more

efficient. You’ll be able to switch between concurrently running business process flows without losing your

current position in the process when you return. The access to the process you are working on is limited

to users with appropriate permissions, so your work is not disrupted. For example, the marketing

department may not have access to the sales or service business processes. A process can be marked as

Active, Finished or Abandoned, to help you track the progress of your work from start to end. An

administrator can set up outgoing notifications to interested parties whenever the process status changes

from Active to Finished or Abandoned, or if you updated a field value in the record that participates in

the process flow.


Relevance Search enhancements

With new facet and filter support, you have the ability to drill into and explore the results of the search

without having to repeatedly refine the search terms. The facets for the global search that include Record

type, Owner, Modified On and Created On are shown on the left side of the search results page as

shown below. If you select a specific entity in the Record type facet, you may see additional facets

specific to the entity. For example, if you select the Account entity, you may see additional information

about the account’s annual revenue, the industry they are in, and the primary contact information. The

type of information available for a specific entity is set up by an administrator. If you want additional

information, you could ask your administrator to provide that.

Other great new capabilities include:

You can now search in documents attached to Emails and Appointments, as well as

documents attached to a Note.

The Option Set and Lookup fields are searchable fields in this release.

We also added support for showing results for records that were shared to you. Previously

we only showed records that you owned.


Introducing App Modules

As business users, you can now see modularized, task-based app modules for doing your daily work.

On the landing page, you’ll see a list of app modules based on what you have access to. You can go right

into an app module and see what is relevant to perform your tasks, thus getting a simplified working

experience. For example, in a customer service app module, you may see a simplified navigation with

only service entities.

For a custom app, your system administrator or customizer can define what you see in the site map for

that app.

Note:

Creating a custom app is a preview feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. It isn’t available in

Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premises.

Based on your organization’s licensing option, you may additionally see one or more of the following

apps on your landing page:

Sales

Customer Service

Field Service


In addition, there will be a Dynamics CRM – custom app module that offers the full functionality of

Dynamics CRM for updated organizations and for system administrators and customizers.

Interactive service hub enhancements

In this release, we’ve enhanced the interactive service hub to improve productivity of CSRs and CSMs.

They can now:

Find records quickly by using the quick find feature. Associate similar issues as parent and child cases.

Copy text as well as images to the Clipboard, so they can quickly paste it anywhere they want.

Send links to records to other team members so they can refer to it quickly without needing to look

for the records in the system.

Introducing editable grid

The new editable grids provide many versatile capabilities. It is available to you at an entity level, in

subgrids inside a form or in the dashboard. Editable grids are supported in the Dynamics CRM web client,

and Dynamics CRM for phones and tablets. Some of the editable grid capabilities include:

Editing a row with simple field types

Grouping and filtering on columns based on existing option set values

Sorting on any column in the grid

Paginating and moving or adjusting columns in the grid

Showing Lookup values based on the value of the field of the related entity

Showing calculated and rollup fields as read-only with the associated last updated date


Enabling and disabling fields based on the security role

Hierarchal view is supported

Also, you’ll be able to:

Export the editable grids to Excel

Integrate with the chart panel

Toggle between a read-only grid and an editable grid

Use command bar actions and buttons

Power BI integration

Microsoft Power BI and Dynamics CRM work together to help you stay up to date with the information

that matters to you. With Power BI, you can connect to multiple datasets to bring all of the relevant data

together in one place, which can be viewed and explored from the Power BI service or within Dynamics

CRM.

In addition to embedding and opening Power BI tiles in Dynamics CRM personal dashboards from your

web browser, other features are available in both web browser and mobile clients.

Power BI

visualization

Dynamics

CRM area

Functionality Details

Embed tiles Personal

dashboards,

Views, Forms

Embed and open Opened using filter context

from Dynamics CRM

Reports Personal

dashboards,

Views, Forms

Pin and open Opened using filter context

from Dynamics CRM

Dashboards Personal

dashboards,

Views, Forms

Pin

Also, the Dynamics CRM sales manager and service manager content packs have been improved, such as

including option set fields for out-of-box entities.


Click-to-chat

The capability for your customers to click-to-chat with your agents is a fundamental feature when

delivering leading service and support. Agents can conduct multiple live chat sessions within Dynamics

CRM or Unified Service Desk using the Click-to-Chat solution, which is made available for provisioning

from the Dynamics CRM Online Administration Center.

Click-to-Chat features include:

Can be provisioned to appear in the service areas of Dynamics CRM or the Unified Service Desk

client.

Notification presented to the agent that a chat session has been requested, either externally or

internally.

Context page that displays customer details to the agent including the customer’s chat history.

Co-browsing lets agents know what page on the website the customer is on to easily view the

same page.

Presence indicator that indicates the service agent’s presence, such as available, unavailable, busy,

or away.

Enhancements to portal capabilities for CRM

Multi-language portal support: Deliver content in multiple languages on your CRM portals. By

surfacing the multi-language content you create in CRM, you can support your customers,

partners, and employees in multiple regions. Multi-language portals also support languages with

multi-byte characters, such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Faceted search for knowledge articles: Search portal content by using different characteristics

of knowledge articles as filters to improve how quickly customers can find the content they are

looking for. Faceted portal searches can increase the visibility and effectiveness of content that

may not have been surfaced through a traditional search.

Content access levels for knowledge articles: Develop a well-structured knowledge base and

provide content to the right audience using content access levels. You can create structured

learning paths for your users and prevent content that is not relevant from surfacing.

Project service integrations for CRM portals: Vendor companies can use the project service

integration to provide access and visibility for active and closed projects across all stages of a

project lifecycle to their partner channel and customer. Partner project service team members,

reviewers and customers can view project status and view quotes, order forms, and bookable

resources directly from the partner portal.

Field service integrations for CRM portals: Vendor companies can use the field service

integration to expose information about active Agreements, Assets, Work Orders, Invoices, and

Support Cases to their Partner Channel and customers. Partner field service team members,

reviewers and customers can access this information directly from the partner portal.

Multi-partner collaboration: Distribute opportunities to multiple partners to maximize a sales

opportunity and provide the best solutions for your customers’ needs. Partner sellers can work

collaboratively to cover the needs of customers they normally couldn’t with the assistance of


other partners and provide information to one another, such as product and pricing updates,

notes or comments, and partner contacts to enhance the health of the opportunity.

Partner onboarding and recruitment: Use the partner recruitment and onboarding capabilities

to identify, recruit and onboard the best partners in your partner channel for better customer

sales and service experiences. Use in-built dashboards to get better visibility of your current

partner channel and focus efforts into enhancing your channel coverage based on identified gaps.

Partner Locator: Enable your customers to find the right partners in your partner ecosystem

based on geographic location, product expertise, supported industries, partner categories, and

more.

Partner portal dashboard: Partners can gain insight into their opportunity pipeline and their

performance using portal dashboards. With this information, partners can make more informed

decisions about opportunities they bid on, as well as currently active opportunities to more

intelligently devote resources and improve the health of their relationships with customers and

the parent organization.

Deal registration and protection: Enable your partner channel to register more deals by

providing deal registration capabilities. Partners can register opportunities through the portal to

get deal protection and other benefits. Using these capabilities, encourage your partner channel

to partner with you to sell more.

What’s new in Dynamics CRM for IT professionals,

administrators, and customizers?

Business processes unification and enhancements

Defining and enforcing consistent business processes is very important for any successful business.

Dynamics CRM provides a number of business processes, such as business process flows, workflows, and

task flows to help organizations improve their productivity and customer satisfaction. Up until now, these

processes were created and customized by using different design interfaces. In this release, we are

simplifying your work by unifying the customization experience for all business processes and business

rules under one design environment with a visual drag-and-drop intuitive graphical interface. We are also

adding a number of powerful features and capabilities to business processes, such as concurrent business

process flows, security role based processes and task flows. The following table lists some of the new

features and their benefits.

Features Benefits

Switching between concurrently running

business process flows

Concurrent business process flows let customizers

configure multiple business process flows for different

roles and associate them with the same starting record.

Users can switch between multiple processes running

concurrently and resume their work at a current stage in

the process.


Process security With concurrent business process flows, it is crucial to be

able to separate process definitions according to user

roles. For example, a customizer can configure the

processes in such a way that the sales people will not

have access to the marketing or service team business

process flows. The users will be able to work on processes

that their security role has access to without interfering

with other people’s work.

Automation (on-demand through process

events)

Business process flows trigger events every time a process

is either applied to a record, its status is changed to

Active, Finished, or Abandoned or the stage is changed.

This lets customizers call on-demand workflows to

automate the execution of actions based on those events.

Automation (through workflows) Customizers can associate business process flows with

synchronous (real-time) or asynchronous (background)

workflows. These workflows are triggered by changes in

the process instance or by changes in the fields of the

participating records.

Process designer The new visual drag-and-drop process designer allows

creating business processes, such as business process

flows and task flows, as well as business rules, using an

intuitive graphical interface.

Process finish or abandon Business process flows can be marked as Active, Finished,

or Abandoned. This helps track the progress of processes

from start to end, as well as enforcing stage gating rules

for all stages of the process, including the final stage.

Business recommendations Customizers can create new business rules that, based on

the data of records, can display a suggestion bubble to

users with text that helps guide them while they execute a

business flow or fill out a form.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) Business process flows now track the time taken on each

stage and the total time taken for the process to

complete. Reports can be created for the performance to

be visualized and analyzed for optimization opportunities.

Task flows Task flows are generally available for all online and on-

premises deployments. They support solutions and

security roles that allow customizers to separate task

flows based on a user's role.

Out-of-the-box CRM messages as Actions Certain SDK messages can now be called directly from

workflows, simplifying the automation of certain tasks.


Relevance Search enhancements

With new facet and filter support, users have the ability to drill into and explore search results without

having to repeatedly refine the search terms. The facets for the global Releavance Search that include

Record type, Owner, Modified On and Created On are shown on the left side of the search results page

as shown below. If a user selects a specific entity in the Record type facet, they will see additional entity-

specific facets that you can configure. For example, for the Account entity, you can configure facets that

will have information about account’s annual revenue, the industry they are in, and the primary contact

information. All non-text entity fields that you add as View Columns in the entity Quick Find View will be

shown as entity-specific facets in the Relevance Search results page.

Other great new capabilities include:

Users can now search in documents attached to Emails and Appointments, as well as

documents attached to a Note.

The Option Set and Lookup fields are searchable fields in this release.

We also added support for showing results for records that were shared to a user. Previously

we only showed records that a user owned.

New colors and layouts for the mobile app

The new layouts detailed above in “What’s new in Dynamics CRM for end users” have one important

implication for admins and customizers. Items are now displayed in stacks to expose more info at once.


Items in each section will be stacked together by default so users can access this feature right away, but

you can use the form editor to change the way these sections are displayed to better reflect how your

organization works.

Mobile device integration

As explained in “What’s new in Dynamics CRM for end users” above, users can now record multimedia

content directly in the mobile app.

Please note that if you’re concerned about large files, you should recommend that users change the

settings of their device to take lower resolution photos.

Introducing App Designer, Site Map Designer, and App Modules

In this release, we bring to you a new app designer that lets you quickly create simple (single entity) or

complex (multi-entity) modular apps. The app designer, which is a tile-based information structure, makes

the process of designing app modules much simpler because of its intuitive interface. You can simply pick

the required set of components such as forms, views, dashboards, charts, and process flows, and create

simple or complex app modules like case management or lead management in no time.

Note:

App designer is a preview feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. It isn’t available in Dynamics CRM

on-premises.

The new site map designer, which is integrated with the app designer, greatly simplifies the process of

creating a navigation and site map for your app modules. It is an intuitive WYSIWYG designer that lets you

quickly drag and drop areas and sub areas within the site map.

Note:

Site map designer is a preview feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. It isn’t available in Microsoft

Dynamics CRM on-premises.

You can control access and visibility of these app modules by restricting them to specific roles.

Once these apps are published, users in your organization can see these app modules as apps on the app

landing page, based on their roles.

App modules are solution-aware components that store references to the existing Microsoft Dynamics

CRM schema.

Ability to display the associated activities of the related entities

A new flag called Rollup View has been added in the Customization user interface on the Relationship

Behavior form. It lets customizers indicate that associated activities of the related entity should be

included in the Activity Associated View for the primary entity. This will let you include activities of the

related custom entities. The Rollup View flag can only be set if the following conditions are met:


The primary and the related entity must be in 1:N (one-to-many) or N:1 (many-to-one) custom

relationship. The flag can’t be set on any out-of-the-box system relationships.

The primary entity for the relationship must be Account, Contact, or Opportunity. This is because

these are the only entity forms in the system where the Activity Associated View appears. You

can’t specify any other primary entity for activity rollups.

The related entity must support Activities.

The valid options for the Rollup View flag are:

Cascade None (default)

Cascade All

New Editable Grid custom control

Editable Grid is a custom control that can be enabled for the Dynamics CRM web client, or CRM for

phones and tablets. To use the Editable Grid control, you have to enable it at an entity level in the

customization UI:

The Editable Grid can be configured at an entity level, for subgrids inside a form or in a dashboard

without writing code. For example, you’ll be able to configure the following:

Enable one or more editable grids from customization Controls tab (Settings > Customizations

> Customize the System > Components > Entities. In the Information dialog, select the

Controls tab).


Configure editable grid controls as a default control or not a default control for various clients.

This will let users toggle between read-only grids and editable grids.

Configure editable grid properties, such as Group By filter, Lookup, or related grid properties.

This will provide inline editing capabilities in the main grid and subgrids in one view, without

having to switch records or views.

Configure event handlers to support complex grid logic. For example, you'll be able to upload the

JavaScript libraries for the following events: OnRecordSelect, OnRecordSave, and OnChange.

Create business rules at an entity level to support business logic in editable grids.

Customer initiated backup and restore

Protecting your CRM data and providing continuous availability of service is important for you and for us.

You have multiple options for backing up and restoring your CRM Online instances. For CRM Online 2016

Update 1, we're introducing on demand backups that you can perform on CRM Online 2016 Update 1

Production and Sandbox instances. There are two types of CRM Online backups: system and on-demand.

About CRM Online system backups:

All your instances are backed up.

System backups occur daily.

System backups are retained up to three days. Check your expiration date.

System backups do not count against your storage limits.

About CRM Online on-demand backups:

You can back up Production and Sandbox instances.

You can only restore to a Sandbox instance. To restore to a Production instance, first switch it

to a Sandbox instance. See Switch an instance.

Only CRM Online 2016 Update 1 or later versions are supported for backup.

On-demand backups are retained for up to three days. Check your expiration date.

Access restriction with trusted IP rules

You can limit access to CRM Online to users with trusted IP addresses to reduce unauthorized access.

When trusted IP address restrictions are set in a user’s profile and the user tries to log in from an

untrusted IP address, access to CRM Online is blocked. This is a preview feature.

Business to Business authentication

You can now make use of a new capability in Azure Active Directory (AAD), that enables a tenant admin to

add a user from one AAD into another AAD. This feature will allow the tenant admin of one domain (for

example: Contoso.com) to add a partner user from another domain (for example:

[email protected]) to the Contoso.com AAD. From there, Ted will be able to login with single-

sign-on, and have access to Contoso’s assets.

https://www.microsoftonedoc.com/9eb0daf3-5cfb-4573-8717-419bd778bffb.htm

mailto:[email protected]


View metrics about your instance with Organization Insights solution

The Organization Insights dashboard provides some basic views of CRM Online usage. The new

Organization Insights solution adds more insights and metrics such as who are your most active users,

which entities are being used, and the storage used by your organizations tables.

Customer Insights

Customer Insights is a cloud-based SaaS service that enables organizations of all sizes to bring together

data from multiple sources and generate knowledge and insights to build a holistic 360° view of their

customers. Customer Insights delivers the ability to connect to transactional data sources and model

profiles of customers and their interactions. It enables organizations to generate insights through key

performance indicators (KPIs) about their business. The Customer Insights application transforms the

profile, interaction and KPI’s into rich visuals that you can customize and organize to focus on what

matters to you.

CRM Online Administrator

You can now assign a CRM administrator at the tenant level, similarly to management of other Office 365

services such as Exchange, Skype and SharePoint. The new CRM administrator role can manage all

instances, do CRM system admin functions, and access the CRM application. The system administrator

security role is assigned to users with the CRM Administrator role.


Updates for field service capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Connected field service

In this release, we bring to you Connected field service that helps service organizations move from a

costly break-fix model to a proactive and predictive service model by combining monitoring and

predictive maintenance with Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning.

Key benefits:

Reduce downtime with proactive alerts from connected devices.

Address issues faster by remotely monitoring devices and keeping customers in the loop.

Reduce maintenance costs by dispatching a technician with the right expertise, availability, and

location to do the job.

As a platform IoT also enables ISVs and partners to enable new IOT scenarios on any CRM entity.

Resource Scheduling Optimization

With Resource Scheduling Optimization, you can set up the system to automatically schedule multiple

work orders on a recurring basis to minimize overall travel time and make efficient use of all schedulable

resources. It also takes into account a number of constraints and objectives when optimizing schedules

such as resource availability, skills required, work order priority and duration, time windows, and preferred

resource.

Common scheduling solution

The new common scheduling solution provides a single solution for all your scheduling needs. You can

enable it for entity including custom entities. For example, you can turn it to schedule marking visits for an

opportunity, cases, work orders, bookings and more.


For organization that use field service capabilities you’ll see a new integrated scheduling

experience.

For organization that use project service capabilities you’ll have a new improved scheduling

experience.

Manage the encryption keys for your Dynamics CRM Online instance

All instances of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online use Microsoft SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption

(TDE) to perform real-time I/O encryption and decryption for data and log files, also known as data at rest.

With this level of encryption all of your at rest CRM data and metadata are always encrypted.

By default, Microsoft stores and manages the database encryption key so you don’t have to. However, if

you need to perform database encryption key management tasks, such as generate a new encryption key

or upload your own encryption key whenever you need, the manage keys feature in the CRM Online

Admin Center gives administrators the ability to self-manage the database encryption keys that are

associated with instances of Dynamics CRM Online.

What’s new in Dynamics CRM for developers?

CRM Web API enhancements

SDK support for creating and managing product properties

SDK support for creating and managing App Modules

Use form scripts to add icon with tooltip for an attribute in the grid

Introducing client APIs for creating and managing records in Dynamics CRM mobile offline

Client API support for the new Editable Grids

Introducing Client APIs for using native device capabilities in Dynamics CRM mobile clients

Enhanced client API support for Interactive Service Hub

Service-to-service authentication for 3rd party solutions

Process enhancements

Unified Service Desk Enhancements

CRM Web API enhancements

With this release, the CRM Web API supports:

Access to local data while Outlook client is offline

When you write form scripts that use the Web API, these scripts can work using the local data in the

Outlook client when the user is offline. This capability has been available for the Organization service

(SOAP endpoint) and the Organization Data service (OData v2), but was not previously available with the

Web API. The context.getClientUrl function automatically redirects requests to the local version of the

service when the Outlook client is offline.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334511.aspx#BKMK_getclienturl


Return created entity data on create or update

Sometimes you want to retrieve an entity right after you create or update it. Before this release, you

needed to use two operations. The POST request to create an entity returns an HTTP 204 (No content)

status and a Uri to the entity created is returned in the OData-EntityId header property. You can then use

this Uri with a GET request to retrieve the created entity. This is because the default preference is to apply

the return=minimal preference.

A PATCH request applied to update an entity will simply return HTTP 204 (No content) status when

successful.

With this release you can specify the return=representation preference in the header of the request. A

successful POST request will return HTTP 201 (Created) and include the full entity. A successful PATCH

request will return HTTP 200 (OK) with the full entity.

Reference metadata by name

With this release you can use the name of certain metadata properties as alternate keys to reference an

item of metadata. Before this, you needed to perform a query to access the MetadataId of a particular

item of metadata before you could retrieve it using that MetadataId as the key.

This will make it much easier to use the Web API with metadata. For example, to retrieve the account

entity metadata you can use a request with a URL like this using the LogicalName property as the key:

GET /api/data/v8.2/EntityDefinitions(LogicalName='account')

To access individual attributes for an entity you can also use LogicalName:

GET /api/data/v8.2/EntityDefinitions(LogicalName='account')/Attributes(LogicalName='emailaddress1')

This approach can also be applied to relationship metadata on the RelationshipDefinitions entityset. In

this case, use the SchemaName attribute property:

GET api/data/v8.2/RelationshipDefinitions(SchemaName='Account_Tasks')

To retrieve global optionset metadata from the GlobalOptionSetDefinitions entityset, use the Name

property.

GET /api/data/v8.2/GlobalOptionSetDefinitions(Name='metric_goaltype')

More information Query Metadata using the Web API

Bug fixes

There have been numerous bug fixes applied for this release. But two which have been previously called

out in our documentation are addressed below:

QualifyLead Action now available

CreateCustomerRelationships Action now available

SDK support for creating and managing product properties

You can now programmatically create and manage product properties in Dynamics CRM, which enables

you to completely automate product catalog in Dynamics CRM and integrate it with third-party software.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt607522.aspx


Earlier, you could programmatically create and manage product family, product or bundle, but not the

product properties.

The following entities that store product properties configuration are now available for create, retrieve,

update, and delete (CRUD) operations using code:

DynamicProperty entity stores information about the product properties.

DynamicPropertyAssociation entity stores information about the product family that a product

property is associated to.

DynamicPropertyOptionSet entity stores information about the option set values for a product

property of option set data type.

SDK support for creating and managing App Modules

The new App Module framework in Dynamics CRM enables you to build modular apps that are based on

the concept of functional separation where you can choose to expose a limited set of functionality for

users in CRM depending on their area of work. App modules are solution aware so you can distribute an

app module using CRM solutions. A user with system administrator or system customizer role can grant

access for an app module to CRM security roles, and by virtue of this the app module becomes available

to the end users on their landing page.

Developers can programmatically perform the following operations on the app modules:

Create retrieve, update, and delete an app module.

Associate and disassociate a component from an app module

Associate and disassociate roles from an app module

Validate an app module

Publish an app module

Use the following new SDK messages to perform these operations on app modules: AddEditAppModule,

AssignUpdateAppModuleToRole, AssociateDissociateAppModuleRoles,

DeleteAppModuleToRoleMapping, GetAppModuleDependencies, GetInconsistentAppModules,

PublishAppModule, RemoveAppModuleComponents, and ValidateAppModule.

Note:

SDK support for App Module is a preview feature in Dynamics CRM online; SDK support isn’t available in


Use form scripts to add icon with tooltip for an attribute in the grid

Use form scripting in Dynamics CRM to add an icon with a tooltip text based on the value of an attribute

displayed in the grid. You can also specify localized tooltip text.

Two new attributes, imageproviderwebresource and imageproviderfunctionname, are added to the

<cell> (SavedQuery) element in the layoutxml of a savedquery to enable this feature. These are exposed

as Web Resource and Function Name fields in the Change Column Properties page while modifying

the property of an attribute (column) in a view definition in the Dynamics CRM web client:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328458.aspx


Use the Web Resource and Function Name fields to specify a JScript web resource and the JavaScript

function name in the web resource respectively to add icons and corresponding tooltip text based on

attribute values, which gets executed asynchronously when the page loads.

The following 2 arguments are passed to the JavaScript function: the entire row object and the calling

user’s Locale ID (LCID). The LCID parameter enables you to specify tooltip text for the image in multiple

languages. For more information about the languages supported by CRM, see Enable languages, Install or

upgrade Language Packs for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For a list of locale ID (LCID) values that you can

use in your code, see Locale IDs Assigned by Microsoft

Assuming you will most likely be adding icons for an optionset type of attribute because it has a limted

set of predefined options, you must use the integer value of the options instead of label to avoid breaking

the code due to changes in the localized label string.

In the JavaScript function, specify just the name of an image web resource that you want to use for a value

in the attribute. The image should be of 16x16 pixels size; larger images will be automatically scaled down

to 16x16 pixels size.

The following sample code displays different icons and tooltip text based on one of the values (1: Hot, 2:

Warm, 3: Cold) in the opportunityratingcode (Rating) attribute. The sample code also shows how to

display localized tooltip text.

function displayIconTooltip(rowData, userLCID) { var str = JSON.parse(rowData);

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn832148.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699674.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699674.aspx

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964664.aspx


var coldata = str.opportunityratingcode_Value; var imgName = ""; var tooltip = ""; switch (coldata) { case 1: imgName = "new_Hot"; switch (userLCID) { case 1036: tooltip = "French: Opportunity is Hot"; break; default: tooltip = "Opportunity is Hot"; break; } break; case 2: imgName = "new_Warm"; switch (userLCID) { case 1036: tooltip = "French: Opportunity is Warm"; break; default: tooltip = "Opportunity is Warm"; break; } break; case 3: imgName = "new_Cold"; switch (userLCID) { case 1036: tooltip = "French: Opportunity is Cold"; break; default: tooltip = "Opportunity is Cold"; break; } break; default: imgName = ""; tooltip = ""; break; } var resultarray = [imgName, tooltip]; return resultarray; }

This results in displaying the values in the Rating column with appropriate icons and tooltip text when

you hover over the icons:


Introducing client APIs for creating and managing records in Dynamics CRM mobile

offline

Use the new client APIs under the Xrm.Mobile.offline namespace to create, retrieve, update and delete

records in the Dynamics CRM mobile offline. These new client APIs will work only if you are in the offline

mode and for entities that are enabled for mobile offline synchronization. For information about

configuring mobile offline experience for mobile clients, see Configure mobile offline synchronization for

CRM for phones and tablets

These are the new client APIs.

Client API Name Description

isOfflineEnabled Returns whether an entity is offline enabled.

Xrm.Mobile.offline.isOfflineEnabled(entityLogicalName)

Arguments

Type: String. The logical name of the entity.

Returns:

Type: Boolean. True if the entity is offline enabled; otherwise False.

createRecord Creates an entity record. This method is executed asynchronously.

Xrm.Mobile.offline.createRecord(data, entityLogicalName)

Arguments

data

Type: Dictionary object containing key : value pairs. Key is the

schema name of the attribute and Value is the value for the

attribute you want to use for creating record. For example, to

create an account by specifying just the account name, you define

the following dictionary object:

var myAccount = {"name" : "Sample Account"};

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/dynamics/crm-customer-center/configure-mobile-offline-synchronization-for-crm-for-phones-and-tablets.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/dynamics/crm-customer-center/configure-mobile-offline-synchronization-for-crm-for-phones-and-tablets.aspx


entityLogicalName

Type: String. The logical name of the entity you want to create.

Returns:

Type: Promise object. On success, returns a dictionary object

containing the ID and entity logical name of the record created. On

error, returns an object with the following properties: errorCode,

message, and debugMessage.

retrieveRecord Retrieves an entity record. This method is executed asynchronously.

Xrm.Mobile.offline.retrieveRecord(recordID,

entityLogicalName, options)

Arguments

recordID

Type: String. GUID of the record you want to retrieve.

entityLogicalName

Type: String. The logical name of the entity you want to retrieve.

options

Type: String. OData system query options to retrieve your data. The

following system query options are supported: $select and $expand. You

can also specify FetchXML by using the fetchXml parameter.

For using $expand, the related entity must also be offline enabled.

You specify the query options starting with ?. For specifying

multiple query options, use & to separate the query options. For

example: ?$select=name,revenue&$top=3

Returns:

Type: Promise object. On success, returns a dictionary object containing

the ID, entity attributes, and entity logical name of the record. On error,

returns an object with the following properties: errorCode, message, and

debugMessage.

TIP: Ensure that you specify the $select query option to limit the number

of entity attributes to retrieve. Also while retrieving related entity attribute

name using the $expand option, simply including the name of the

navigation property will return all the attributes for related records. You

can limit the attributes returned for related records using the $select


system query option in parentheses after the navigation property name in

$expand.

retrieveMultipleRecords Retrieves multiple records. This method is executed asynchronously.

Xrm.Mobile.offline.retrieveMultipleRecords(entityLogicalName,

options, maxPageSize)

Arguments

entityLogicalName

Type: String. The logical name of the entity records you want to retrieve.

options

Type: String. OData system query options to retrieve your data. The

following system query options are supported: $select, $top, $filter,

$expand, and $orderby. You can also specify FetchXML by using the

fetchXml parameter.

For $filter, only the Standard Filter Operators as mentioned under

the Filter Results section are supported; the OData string query

functions are not supported.

For using $expand, the related entity must also be offline enabled.

You specify the query options starting with ?. For specifying

multiple query options, use & to separate the query options. For

example: ?$select=name,revenue&$top=3

maxPageSize

Type: Integer. Specify the number of entity records to be returned.

Returns:

Type: Promise object. On success, returns an array of dictionary objects

where each dictionary object contains the ID, entity attributes, and entity

logical name of the record. On error, returns an object with the following

properties: errorCode, message, and debugMessage.

TIP: Ensure that you specify the $select query option to limit the number

of entity attributes to retrieve. Also while retrieving related entity attribute

name using the $expand option, simply including the name of the

navigation property will return all the attributes for related records. You

can limit the attributes returned for related records using the $select

system query option in parentheses after the navigation property name in

$expand.

updateRecord Updates an entity record. This method is executed asynchronously.



Xrm.Mobile.offline.updateRecord(recordID, data,

entityLogicalName)

Arguments

recordID

Type: String. GUID of the record you want to update.

data

Type: Dictionary object containing key : value pairs. Key is the schema

name of the attribute you want to update and Value is the updated value

for the attribute. Only the attributes and values you specify in the

dictionary object will be updated for the record.

entityLogicalName

Type: String. The logical name of the entity you want to update.

Returns:


the ID and entity logical name of the record updated. On error, returns an

object with the following properties: errorCode, message, and

debugMessage.

deleteRecord Deletes an entity record. This method is executed asynchronously.

Xrm.Mobile.offline.deleteRecord(recordID, entityLogicalName)

Arguments

recordID

Type: String. GUID of the record you want to delete.

entityLogicalName

Type: String. The logical name of the entity you want to delete.

Returns:


the ID and entity logical name of the record deleted. On error, returns an

object with the following properties: errorCode, message, and

debugMessage.

Client API support for the new Editable Grids

The new Editable Grids feature provides inline editing capabilities in the main grid and subgrids without having to

switch records or views. The new editable grids are supported in Dynamics CRM Web clients, Dynamics CRM for


phones and Dynamics CRM for tablets. For more information about editable grids, see Introducing Editable Grid

and New Editable Grid Custom Control.

The following client-side methods that are supported by the non-editable grids are also supported for the

editable grids:

getData

getEntity

getEntityName

getEntityReference

getID

getGrid

getViewSelector

getTotalRecordCount

getRows

getSelectedRows

refresh

These are the new client-side methods introduced for the editable grids:

addOnRecordSelect: Use this method to add a function as an event handler (input argument) for the

record select event so that the function is called when you select record in an editable grid. You

should use reference to a named function rather than an anonymous function if you later want to

remove the event handler for the grid.

removeOnRecordSelect: Use this method to remove the event handler that you added using the

addOnRecordSelect method.

fireOnRecordSelect: Use this method to explicitly fire the event handler that you created for an

editable grid when you select the record in the grid.

Introducing Client APIs for using native device capabilities in Dynamics CRM mobile

clients

Use new client APIs for Dynamics CRM for Phone and Dynamics CRM for Tablet to help enrich the user

experience for business users in field service, field sales, and professional services by using the device

geolocation capability to easily share/capture the current location information, and use the camera on

their device to capture and retrieve the barcode information of a product:

Xrm.Utility.getCurrentPosition: Gets the current geolocation information of the device. Returns the

Cordova geolocation object in case of success, and an error object in case of an error. The coords

attribute in the geolocation object contains a set of geographic coordinates along with associated

accuracy as well as a set of other optional attributes such as altitude and speed. The timestamp

attribute of the gelocation object represents the time when the object was acquired and is

represented as a DOMTimeStamp. Here is a sample code to use this method:

function showAlert(message) { Xrm.Utility.getCurrentPosition().then(function (a) {

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#GridRowGetData

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridRowDataGetEntity

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridControlGetEntityName

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridEntityGetEntityReference

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridEntityGetId

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_subgridGetGrid

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_subgridGetViewSelectorhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridGetTotalRecordCount

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridGetRows

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn932126.aspx#BKMK_GridGetSelectedRows


console.log(a); Xrm.Utility.alertDialog("Latitude:" + a.coords.latitude + ", Longitude: " + a.coords.longitude); });

}

Xrm.Utility.getBarcodeValue: Captures the barcode value using the device camera and returns the

barcode value in case of success, and an error message in case of failure. Here is a sample code to use

the method:

Xrm.Utility.getBarcodeValue().then(function (result) { Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(“Barcode value: “ + result); }, function (err) { Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(err); })

Enhanced client API support for Interactive Service Hub

The Interactive Service Hub now supports the following client APIs:

Tab TabStateChange event

getQueryStringParameters methods for the context object (Xrm.Page.context)

getValue, addOnKeyPress, removeOnKeyPress, and fireOnKeyPress methods for CRM controls. See

Keypress methods

getDisplayState and setDisplayState methods for tabs

openWebResource method in the Xrm.Utility namespace

Service-to-service authentication for 3rd party solutions

Do you write applications and publish them to the Dynamics CRM Marketplace? In the past, you had to

use a user access token in your applications in order to authenticate with the CRM Web API. However, this

was not very elegant as this type of authentication requires the end user of your application to provide

their logon credentials and authorize your application to access data in their organizations. Other

competing systems make this much easier by offering application access tokens for authentication and

granting application (not user) access to the business data.

ISV's, partners, and other developers can now create applications for the Dynamics CRM Marketplace that

do not require the logon credentials of the end-user in order to run and access the user's organization.

These applications can be packaged in solutions and easily exported/imported across organizations in the

same tenant. This CRM Online only feature supports service-to-service authentication using application

access tokens managed by Azure Active Directory.

Process enhancements

Process enhancements in Dynamics CRM include the following:

Access business process flow records using the Web API

Execute SDK messages and actions from processes

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334481.aspx#BKMK_TabTabStateChangeEvent





https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj602956.aspx


Associate multiple business processes with a single entity record

Simplified API for server-side process creation and management

Client API enhancements for processes

Client API enhancements for adding notifications with actions and creating custom notifications

Access business process flow records using the Web API

Business process flows are fully exposed through the CRM Web API, allowing developers and system

Integrators to manipulate processes programmatically from an external custom application. The Web API

allows applying new processes to entity records, switching the process status from Active to Finished or

Abandoned, and switching the stage of the process flow.

Execute SDK messages and actions from processes

You can now execute select SDK messages and custom actions from workflows, process dialogs, and other

actions.

Associate multiple business processes with a single entity record

More than one business process can be associated with a single entity record. You can switch between the

processes by using the extended SetProcess action or message. Switch between business processes

without losing the state and progress of each process. Business processes now support security roles as a

means of restricting user access to the process.

Simplified API for server-side process creation and management

Use simple Create, Retrieve, and Update actions or messages with the ProcessSession entity. The entity

has been extended with new attributes to support these enhanced process features. There are a few

specialized actions and messages for certain process operations – SetProcess, and

RetrieveProcessInstances.

The table below lists the message and entity combinations that are related to business processes.

Message Name Primary Entity

Assign ProcessSession

Create ProcessSession

Delete ProcessSession

GrantAccess ProcessSession

ModifyAccess ProcessSession

Retrieve ProcessSession

RetrieveMultiple ProcessSession

RetrievePrincipalAccess ProcessSession

RetrieveSharedPrincipalsAndAccess ProcessSession

RevokeAccess ProcessSession

SetStateDynamicEntity ProcessSession

Update ProcessSession

Retrieve ProcessStage

RetrieveActivePath ProcessStage


RetrieveMultiple ProcessStage

Create ProcessTrigger

Delete ProcessTrigger

Retrieve ProcessTrigger

RetrieveMultiple ProcessTrigger

Update ProcessTrigger

Client API enhancements for processes

An existing client API is updated and some new client APIs are added under the Xrm.Page.data.process

namespace to handle the new functionality for Concurrent Business Flows and the ability of marking a

process as Active, Finished or Abandoned.

Client API name New/Updated Description

setActiveProcess Updated The client API has been updated as follows:

If there is no active instance of the current process, a

new process instance is created and the record is

loaded with the instance ID.

If there is an active instance of the current process,

the record is loaded with the instance ID.

If there are multiple instances of the current process,

the record is loaded with first instance of the active

process as per the defaulting logic (most recently

used process instance per user).

setActiveProcessInstance New Sets a process instance as the active instance.

Xrm.Page.data.process.setActiveProcessInstance(processInstan

ceId, callbackFunction);

Parameters:

processInstanceId

Type: String

Remarks: The Id of the process instance to make it

active.

callbackFunction

Type: Function. A function to call when the operation

is complete. This callback function is passed one of

the following string values to indicate whether the

operation succeeded:

Value Description

success The operation succeeded.

invalid The processInstanceId isn’t valid.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn817878.aspx#BKMK_setActiveProcess


getActiveProcessInstances

New Returns instantiated processes for the current entity that

the user has access to. Xrm.Page.data.process.getActiveProcessInstances(callbackFun

ction);

Parameters:

callbackFunction

Type: Function. The callback function is passed an

array of key-value pairs where key is the process

definition Id and value is the process definition name.

addOnProcessStatusChang

e

New Use this method to add a function as an event handler for

the process status change event where the function is

passed a string representing the new status of the active process

instance.

removeOnProcessStatusCh

ange

New Use this method to remove the event handler that you added using the addOnProcessStatusChange method.

getInstanceId New Returns the unique identifier of the process instance.

Xrm.Page.data.process.getInstanceId()

Return Value

Type: String. Value represents the string

representation of a GUID value.

getInstanceName New Returns the name of the process instance.

Xrm.Page.data.process.getInstanceName()

Return Value

Type: String

getStatus New Gets the current status of the active process instance.

Xrm.Page.data.process.getStatus()

Return Value

Type: String. The value can be one of the

following: Active, Abandoned, Finish.

setStatus New Sets the current status of the active process instance.

Xrm.Page.data.process.setStatus(status, callBackFunction)

Parameters:

Status


Type: String. The values can be Active, Abandoned,

Finish.

callbackFunction

Type: Function. The callback function is passed a

string representing the new status of the active process

instance.

Client API enhancements for adding notifications with actions and creating custom notifications

Earlier, you could set only an error type of notification for a control in Dynamics CRM using the client API

(setNotification). In the current release of Dynamics CRM, you can now add two types of notification for a

control using the new addNotification method: error or recommendation. The error notification when

present on the form blocks saving the form; the recommendation notification does not block saving the

form when present. Further, you can also specify messages and corresponding action that a user can take

for the displayed notification.

Xrm.Page.getControl(arg).addNotification(object)

Argument:

Type: Object that defines the message, notification level, uniqueId of the message, and an array

of actions. Only the message part in the object definition is required, rest are optional. If you do

not specify the notification level, by default the notification level is set to ERROR.

Example: Here is an example of the object that you should pass to the addNotification method:

var myNotification = { message:"This is a recommendation", notificationLevel: "RECOMMENDATION", uniqueId: "my_unique_id", actions: [{ message: "This is an actionable text", actions: [function () { // function reference }] }] }

Returns:

Type: Boolean: Indicates whether the method succeeded.

To clear all the notifications for a control, use the clearNotification method without specifying the

uniqueId parameter.

You can also use the new Xrm.IBusinessRuleNotificationProvider interface to implement custom notification,

if required. The Xrm.IBusinessRuleNotificationProvider interface exposes the following methods:

getNotifications

o Arguments: Anonymous filter function to allow users to filter the notifications returned




o Returns: filtered notifications. If you do not specify the input argument, all the notifications are

returned.

clearNotification: Same as the existing clearNotification method.

addNotification: Same as the addNotification method described earlier.



Customer Driven Update for Dynamics CRM Online

Update status is now displayed as part of CRM Online instance status.

Update status

Status Description

Queued (Not

Started)

The update is queued and will start at the scheduled time.

Backup The CRM Online instance is being backed up. A copy of the instance is backed up

before the update for recovery purposes.

Restore The CRM Online instance is being restored.

DB Upgrade The CRM Online instance is being updated.


Online vs. on-premises features FAQ

The following table shows which features are available in Dynamics CRM Online and which are available in


Feature Online On-Premises

Relationship Insights

Dynamics CRM App for Outlook

Partner Relationship Management

Field Service


Exchange booking integration

Scheduling Unification

Gamification

Mobile UI Productivity

Mobile Homepage with Relationship Insights

Mobile UI productivity

Authenticated Mashups in Mobile

Mobile Offline Data API

Customer Insights

Analyze with Power BI (requires Power BI)

Business process analytics (requires Power BI)

Data Warehouse for CRM Online

Relevance Search

Advanced Service Analytics

Sovereign cloud Germany

Threat Management with SIEM


CRM Online Administration

Online Customer Backup and Restore

Visual Process Designer

App Source

CRM Connector Updates for Power App and Flow

Editable Grids

Portal Service

Task-based experiences

Document Recommendations

Office 365 Groups


Unified Service Desk Enhancements

Introducing the chat feature in Unified Service Desk

Unified Service Desk now provides customer service agents the ability to engage with the customers using

the Chat functionality. Chat is one of the important customer interaction channels, and provides yet

another way of listening to and addressing customer issues apart from telephone interactions.

The Chat functionality in Unified Service Desk provides an immersive and rich experience for agents that

includes presence control, chat indicators, visual engagement with customer through co-browsing (Cafex

Live Assist), and multiple chat sessions.

The Chat functionality in Unified Service Desk is developed by Cafex as a third-party solution. For more

information, see https://www.cafex.com/

Display notifications to your agents in Unified Service Desk

You can now configure and display notifications to your customer service agents in the Unified Service

Desk client to alert them about an action that they should perform or to guide them in their customer

interaction process. The notification content is defined using a Unified Service Desk Form instance where

you specify XAML to define the notification content. Next, you create an instance of the new hosted

control type called Notification Control, and then configure the action controls on this hosted control

instance to define when to show the notification (the form you created earlier), location of the notification

on the Unified Service Desk client, and the timeout information for automatically hiding the notification.

Use the enhanced Debugger capabilities for better debugging and troubleshooting

The Debugger hosted control in Unified Service Desk has been enhanced to support the following

capabilities:

Copy action calls data: The data in the in the Action Calls tab contains information about the action

calls that have occurred in the system as a result of user actions in the client. Tracking the action call

progress, as well as the values used in your replacement parameters, can give you valuable

information about your hosted controls. Now, you can copy the data in the Action Calls tab to

clipboard and paste it in a notepad or Word file to easily review the data or send it over to another

person through email for troubleshooting.

Refresh the client without having to restart it: Any configuration changes done in Unified Service

Desk entities on your CRM server required you to restart the client application for the changes to take

effect. Now you can click on the Refresh button to refresh the client with the latest configuration

changes on the server without having to restart the application.

Configure the splash screen for custom branding

Developers/customizers can modify the theme for the Unified Service Desk splash screen to change the

branding as required, including changing the font, style and color scheme of all the elements on the

splash screen to meet their corporate branding guidelines. You can now also use keyboard to navigate to

https://www.cafex.com/


the Change Credentials link in the Unified Service Desk splash screen by pressing the TAB key to view the

login page.


© 2016 Microsoft. All rights reserved.

Project-based organizations empowered by project service automation capabilities can

improve all aspects of their business by bringing people, process and technology together.

This enables them to become an integral part to their customer journey by delivering value

at each interaction. On-time, on-budget service delivery excellence requires rich,

collaborative experiences, efficient and effective interactions and a trusted advisory

relationship. Project service automation is an end-to-end solution that provides a single

system of customer engagement for project sales, resourcing, delivery and billing. It

delivers an 'out of the box' experience with Microsoft productivity apps and machine

learning capabilities on the device of choice empowering you to deliver personalized,

predictable and profitable customer experiences.

“Service organizations must

develop a balanced and holistic

approach to improving all

aspects of their business as they

mature. Increasing levels of

business process maturity result

in significant performance

improvements.”

SPI Research, Service

Performance Insight LLC

Key Benefits

Deepen Engagement

Build trusted customer relationships by developing credibility

and increasing customer confidence using a predictable customer-

responsive engagement model to deliver consistently value-add

successful projects.

Empower Professionals

Provide your consultants a collaboration-rich experience that enables

transparency across all aspects of the business, empowering them

to deliver relevant expertise and project productivity with every customer

interaction.

Optimize Growth

Prioritize, innovate and invest in service offerings based on actionable

insights that anticipate rapidly changing industry trends, customer needs,

technology landscape and everything-as-a-service enablers.

Key Capabilities

Opportunity Management

Provide integrated sales dashboard with visibility to

project-based opportunities, and key metrics to help

forecast profitability and feasibility. Streamline and

integrate the process allowing the Sales manager to

quickly create project contracts, track labor rates and

generate SOWs.

Opportunity management

Project Planning

Resource Management

Team Collaboration

Time and expenses

Customer Billing

Analytics and Integration

© 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS,

IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. Some examples are for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association

is intended or inferred.

Project Planning

Make it easy for Sales manager to collaborate with PMs

to Estimate and define the work using standard project

templates. And visualize cost, effort, and sales value of

the work as he submits the final customer proposal.

Build credibility by collaborating with customers for

project planning, estimation and tracking.

Resource Management

Leverage Azure Machine Learning to recommend right

resources for the right work based on updated skills and

availability of consultants. Simplify the engagement model

between Sales, PM and Resource managers to forecast

demand and resource allocation. Empower consultants to

apply directly for open and relevant project roles.

Team Collaboration

Provide powerful, easy-to-use, mobile-ready O365 productivity

tools for Project teams and customers to communicate and

collaborate. Enable Office groups to access documents and

monitor status on project deliverables. Empower project

managers by providing real-time status updates for risk

management.

Time and Expense Management

Make it simple, effective and efficient to

manage and track estimated and billed project time by

integrating the tasks and deliverables on the calendars.

Connect the right person to the right tool through the right

device and right experience to enter time and expense, and

update project status and skills profiles. Provide real-time

financial insights to customers and empower them to take

collaborate on timely corrective actions.

Customer Billing

Provide Project managers a one-stop-shop dashboard to

review, override, track overruns and approve all costs and

time impacting their projects. Ensure the Project invoices

reflect the terms of the contract and the approved work and

expenses and customers have visibility to projected v/s

actuals budget. Automate generation, approval and

distribution of accurate and reconciled invoices in email and

on the web. Enable integration with best-in-class back-office

applications for financials.

Analytics and Integration

Empower management to embrace change with a unified

system with 360 visibility to project and portfolio metrics

through robust analytics and interactive dashboards

providing proactive insights like Resource utilization across

the organization. Ensure integration with back-office

financial systems including Dynamics ERP, QuickBooks and

others for profitability, revenues, accruals, and inter-

organization expenditure tracking by enabling a strong

basis for reporting, integration, and analytics.

Global Availability

Project service automation capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available in 130 markets and in 20 languages.

For more information, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-customer-care.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-customer-care.aspx

Sales and Project/Service Delivery Alignment

for improved productivity, profitability and client satisfaction

INTRODUCTION

Companies in every market have transitioned into

becoming project-based organizations (PBOs), in

other words turning most, if not all work into

projects. These organizations long ago began using

project management to increase efficiencies and

maintain cost control. But as more have taken this

project focus to external customers and clients, the

market has required greater integration with the

sales and invoicing processes. Some examples of

these project-based organizations include:

Professional Services (PS) – plan, sell, execute and invoice for consulting, architecture and engineering and other professional services.

Manufacturing– because many products have been commoditized, it is the corresponding services that help differentiate products as well as demonstrate value to the customers.

Construction – longtime users of project management, deliver complex projects in phases, many times using subcontractors.

Microsoft responded to this need for a holistic

project focused solution and recently introduced

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service

Automation (Dynamics 365 for PSA), a solution built

on the Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship

Management (CRM) platform, a leading Online CRM

solution.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 for PSA?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for PSA is an integrated

suite of solutions built to enable PBOs to manage

services, from sales through invoicing.

As Dynamics 365 for PSA is built on Microsoft

Dynamics CRM, no integration will be required as it

operates as one holistic solution. Because of this

architecture, Dynamics 365 for PSA enables billable

project-based organizations to manage all aspects of

client facing activities, from sales through project

staffing, project delivery and invoicing. The

collaborative framework provided by Dynamics 365

for PSA allows team members to work together to

ensure customers and clients are satisfied, as well as

maintain or exceed profit margin requirements.

Dynamics 365 for PSA consists of 7 core modules

that include:

1. Opportunity management: an integrated

dashboard that provides visibility into

potential opportunities, their cost, duration

and projected profit. This capability enables

management to better understand the

organizations pipeline.

2. Project planning: enables sales and project

managers to collaborate on the work

proposed with the visualization of the cost,

duration and value offered to the

prospective customer or client.

3. Resource management: provides visibility

into the resources so that the best potential

fit (skills, cost, availability, etc.) can be

brought in to the project work.

4. Team collaboration: during project

execution provides a collaborative

environment for team members to share

information and collaborate on project

deliverables.

5. Time and expenses management: enables

individual consultants to accurately track

Service

Performance

Insight, LLC

Research Note

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for


October 2016

SPI Research Note Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation

October, 2016 Page 2

their project time and expenses related to

specific tasks and deliverables to maintain

cost control within the project-based work.

6. Customer billing: allows project managers

to track, review and update and approve all

project related costs followed by invoice

generation and emailed to the customer.

This capability is integrated with leading

financial solutions.

7. Service analytics: interactive dashboards

provide the infrastructure for management

to understand all aspects of the projects

delivered, their success, cost, revenue and

other critical key performance indicators

necessary to successfully run a project-based

business.

How is Dynamics 365 for PSA different from

Microsoft Project?

Microsoft Project is the leading project management

solution built to support more complex project-

related activities, with a project portfolio

management engine to help better prioritize work.

The solution is used primarily for project

management for internal activities where there is no

customer or client facing organization. Therefore,

there has not been a need for integration with sales

and billing functions. Microsoft Project is integrated

with Dynamics 365 for PSA and can be used when

project scope becomes complex

MICROSOFT’S TWO-PRONGED

STRATEGY

Microsoft has long been a leading player in the

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) market for

project-driven enterprises. Professional Services

(PS), IT consulting, construction space, etc., as well

as in new product development and internal IT.

With its introduction of Project Service Automation,

it immediately becomes a serious competitor in the

customer or client facing professional services space.

Microsoft will be able to create projects with

Dynamics 365 for PSA both vertically and

horizontally. Introducing Dynamics 365 for PSA to

Microsoft Dynamics’ application infrastructure will

be significant. Many are already using Microsoft

Project. However, in many of Microsoft’s other

industries, considering PSA fits nicely with new

product development, internal IT, Marketing and

service delivery, Dynamics 365 for PSA will help

further cement Microsoft Dynamics as a preferred

application vendor.

THERE IS A BIG UPSIDE TO DYNAMICS

365 FOR PSA

Microsoft already offers the world’s leading project

portfolio management solution, Microsoft PPM, as

well as Microsoft Project online, a leading SaaS-

based solution. Dynamics 365 for PSA now provides

significant benefits for customer and client facing

organizations involved in selling projects and

services and to help them grow fast profitably.

Price to win in a complex organization

Dynamics 365 for PSA helps organizations to create

competitive bids with resources from around the

company, and with a solid understanding of the skills

required, their cost, and the time to complete the

work. This way, the organization can price bids to

meet margin requirements, but also to improve the

probability of them being accepted.

Figure 2: Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA) core modules

Source: Microsoft, October 2016


October, 2016 Page 3

Quick-turnaround on project estimates

Dynamics 365 for PSA offers project templates to

enable organizations to more easily, and in much

less time, create bids and reduce the cost of sales. It

also helps provide customers and clients with a

schedule that allows for a higher probability of on-

time project delivery.

Assign the best available resources

One of Dynamics 365 for PSA’s greatest strengths is

that of enabling organizations to find the right

individuals, with the right availability and cost to

begin project-based work when required. This

capability helps drive higher levels of billable

utilization, which is one of the most critical

components of profitability. This capability also

extends to subcontractors and other third-party

partners, which typically accounts for between 10% -

15% of all billable resources.

Engage and develop professionals

Dynamics’ PSA’s architecture enables consultants

and other billable employees to view upcoming

project-based work, which allows them to

potentially bid on the work. This capability will help

reduce attrition in project-based organizations,

which is one of the most important areas HR

directors are focused.

Simplify timesheets and approvals

Dynamics 365 for PSA offers intuitive calendar-based

tracking and mobile application to improve the

tedious task of maintaining project time and cost. It

helps reduce overhead by increasing efficiency and

can also improve employee satisfaction. An

important feature of this is its integration with

leading calendar solutions, including Microsoft

Office.

Invoice-as-agreed

Because Dynamics 365 for PSA enables employees to

record time and expenses through the solution or in

the mobile app, it ensures that when invoices are

generated, they will be transparent and accurate,

increasing client satisfaction and reducing the

potential for rejected invoices. Rejected invoices can

significantly delay payment, which increases days’

sales outstanding (DSO).

Figure 2: Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA) Dashboard

Source: Microsoft, October 2016


Service Performance Insight (SPI Research) is a global research, consulting and training organization dedicated to helping professional service organizations (PSOs) make quantum improvements in productivity and profit. In 2007, SPI developed the PS Maturity Model™ as a strategic planning and management framework. It is now the industry-leading performance improvement tool used by over 15,000 service and project-oriented organizations to chart their course to service excellence. SPI provides a unique depth of operating experience combined with unsurpassed analytic capability. We not only diagnose areas for improvement but also provide the business value of change. We then work collaboratively with our clients to create new management processes to transform and ignite performance. Visit www.SPIresearch.com for more information on Service Performance Insight, LLC.

© 2016 Service Performance Insight Page 4

PSA IS PART OF THE MICROSOFT

DYNAMICS FAMILY

One of the benefits of all Microsoft Dynamics

products is their integration with the Microsoft

Dynamics 365 Office suite, the global leading

business productivity application suite. Microsoft

touts the integration comes on several fronts, some

of which include:

Microsoft Project (client) integration: Links

MS Project with its robust project scheduling

and management capabilities to PSA’s real-

time resource management and project

economics to help improve project estimation

to completion process.

Scheduling Unification: A consolidated

scheduling experience that leverages resource

availability and skillsets from multiple modes

of service to help optimize assignments and

improve utilization across cases, work orders

or projects.

Exchange Booking integration: A consolidated

view of personal appointments and project

work assignments on exchange calendar, and

ability to capture personal appointments in

PSA work calendar, helps increase employee

efficiency and streamlines time reporting.

Unified contracts and billing with Field

Service: A consolidated customer contract to

manage the sales and invoicing processes

across Field Service and PSA, and the related

actuals integration with Dynamics 365 for

Operations, enables a centralized and

consolidated customer service delivery model.

Collaborative Portals: Customer and partner

visibility to project-related tasks, status,

resources and invoices including approval of

quotes helps enhance project productivity.

CONCLUSIONS

Dynamics Project Service Automation (PSA) enables

PBO’s to more efficiently and effectively sell projects

to external customers and clients with greater

knowledge toward beginning dates, duration and

ultimate cost. The solution allows the project or

service delivery arm of the organization to better

understand the work sold, and its cost and due date.

With this knowledge, the organization can better

staff and manage its professionals to achieve

revenue and satisfaction targets. And obviously,

with rich integration and alignment between sales

and project delivery, the organization can grow

faster and more profitably.

Dynamics Project Service Automation (PSA) provides

a collaborative environment for PBOs to complete

work more efficiently, insuring on-time and on-

budget delivery. Every team member will have

visibility and access to their specific obligations,

making it much easier to complete work. This

environment will reduce risk (staff, schedule,

financial, etc.) as everyone will work with the same

information as to effort, cost and duration –

improving financial governance throughout.

Project Service Automation is great addition to the

Microsoft Dynamics family. The fact that it is

developed on Microsoft Dynamics platform makes it

a clear choice for those project-based organizations

that desire greater sales and service delivery

alignment. The fact that it is integrated with the

other Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office

365, enhances PBOs ability to plan, sell, and execute

project-based services.

Documents

Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Martin and Associatesmartinandassoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MSCRM_PCR2016.pdf · What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM including Dynamics 365 PC Retreat