Dynamics 365 Monthly Update-June 2018

Featured News

Dynamics 365 Versions

As updates are deployed to the Dynamics 365 service, there are two separate versions that are tracked:

App Version: Application version represents the binary version that is deployed to the Dynamics 365 servers. These updates contain product improvements and bug fixes that are delivered through application code changes.

DB Version: Database version represents the version of the organization’s database. These updates contain customization changes to support new features, product enhancements, and bug fixes.

There are two primary scenarios where the App Version and DB Version will not match.

App-only Update: As Microsoft continues to increase the frequency of updates to Dynamics 365, it is common for a release to only include application updates with no database updates required. In such a scenario, the App Version will be incremented, but the DB Version will remain the same. On a subsequent release that involves both application and database changes, the versions will once again align.

Update Sequence: During the update sequence, application servers are updated first, followed by the update of the organizations themselves. Multiple organizations are batched together and updated concurrently to speed up the overall release. Depending on when an organization is picked up for processing, the versions may not match during this window of time.

What should customers do when the versions do not match?

As described in the scenarios above, it's entirely normal for the App Version and DB Version to occasionally differ. The application is built specifically to support compatibility with previous database releases, so mismatched versions are generally not a cause for concern.

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Readme/Known Issues

Review the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Readme/Known Issues for important information on services and applications availability, security requirements, known issues and possible workarounds.

Updates & Releases

New Application Feature: Activity Logging

Protecting data, preserving privacy, and complying with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation are some of the highest priorities for a business. It is critical that organizations audit the entirety of data processing actions taking place to be able to analyze for possible security breaches. The Activity Logging feature in Dynamics 365 provides this capability for the use of Office and Dynamics 365.

How does this differ from past audit logging?

Audit logging covers enabling and viewing logging for specific entities and attributes. What is logged is largely based on the context of the activity. Open a record and activities such as who created the record, what values were entered and changed, who updated it, etc.…are logged for that particular record.

Activity Logging has two significant differences with prior Microsoft Dynamics 365 auditing:

• Administrators can log user and admin activities across Office and Dynamics 365 apps.
• Auditing occurs at the SDK layer of Dynamics 365 which means much more data is logged than just activities.

For more information on this feature and how to set it up, review Enable and use Activity Logging.

Portals Capabilities Release 9.0.6.7

Portal capabilities version 9.0.6.7 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is now globally available for all customers.

This release includes Portal host version 9.0.6.7 and Solution Version 9.0.6.1 (for Dynamics 365 org version 9.x) and 8.4.6.2 (for Dynamics org versions greater than or equal to 8.1).

New solution packages will be available after portal host upgrades have been completed globally. The portal host will automatically be updated by Microsoft, but action must be taken by your organization to upgrade the solution packages. Until the solution packages are updated, some enhancements will not be available to portal administrators and/or users. For instructions on how to upgrade the portal solution packages, please refer to this Knowledge Base (KB) article.

New Features:

Dynamics 365 Portals app: The Dynamics 365 Portals app provides a new experience to configure and manage the online platform to communicate and collaborate with customers.

Reset a portal: Customers can now reset a portal if they plan to move to another geolocation or to another tenant, and don't want to use the portal anymore. For more information see Reset a portal

Change the base URL of a portal: Customers can now change the base URL of a portal after it is provisioned. For more information see Change the base URL of a portal.

Resolved issues include:

• Fixed: Global Search was ignoring special characters like double quotes(") or ampersand(&) when Facets were enabled in the Portal.
• Fixed: Entity list action buttons were getting rendered in the opposite direction.
• Fixed: Create related record action didn't work when invoked through Entity list and only worked within entity forms.
• Fixed: Not all records were shown in Dynamic Lookup set filter when the selection mode was checkbox or radio button.

For more information, review this KB article.

Universal Resource Scheduling Updates

Requirement Calendar

Schedule anything in Dynamics 365 using Universal Resource Scheduling (URS). Customers can enable scheduling for any entity including custom entities. For example, customers can enable scheduling for the opportunity form and schedule marketing visits for the opportunities. This same functionality is available for the case form and scheduling time to work on cases.

URS also includes a requirement calendar to create requirement details. When creating a resource requirement, each requirement record is associated with a calendar. On the requirement form, there is a “modify calendar” option on the ribbon bar, which allows customers to modify the calendar for the requirement.

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For more information how to use this feature, review this post on the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Team blog.

Extensibility Documentation

Detailed documentation for URS scheduling extensibility is now available. For more information and additional resources such as sample walkthroughs and an overview video, review this post.

Field Service and Project Service Automation Update Release

The latest update to the Field Service and Project Service Automation solutions for Dynamics 365 is now available. This release includes improvements to quality, performance, and usability, based on customer feedback and requests.

Field Service enhancements (v7.5.1.37)

Resolved issue:

• Fixed: Cannot add new line for revised service quote

Project Service Automation (v2.4.4.30) Enhancements

Resolved issues include:

• Fixed: Unable to add any lines to the project contract if the contract has 2 lines for same project.
• Fixed: After clicking update prices, the actual cost/sales of tasks become 0
• Fixed: Resource Requirement is not taking project work template into consideration while creating generic resources
• Fixed: Time entries refresh issue on importing bookings

Universal Resource Scheduling Enhancements

Note: Improvements and bug fixes for Universal Resource Scheduling apply to Field Service and Project Service Automation as well as to other schedulable entities in the Sales or Service applications.

Improvements include:

• Display completely unavailable resources with Schedule Assistant
• Search icon added to resource search bar on Schedule Board
• Selecting resource in hourly Schedule Assistant loads booking panel

Resolved issues include:

• Fixed: Changing settings on Schedule Board vertical view removed demand panel when in Schedule Assistant.
• Fixed: Users can no longer create rating values outside specified range on rating model.
• Fixed: Issue booking work order service tasks if the entity was enabled for scheduling.

For more details and to see previous release notes, review this blog post.

Microsoft Social Engagement 2018 Update 1.6

The Microsoft Social Engagement 2018 Update 1.6 is now available.

New and updated features:

• When an administrator assigns a Social Engagement license to a user, this user will get Power Analyst and Responder permissions. This enables users to create search topics and engage in conversations with other authors.
• The retention time for Social content has been reduced to 15 months.
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols 1.0 and 1.1 are disabled.

For more information review this blog post.

Additional News

Microsoft + GitHub = Empowering Developers

Microsoft announced an agreement to acquire GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform. GitHub is a great resource for Dynamics 365 developers. From Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, “Microsoft has been a developer-focused company from the very first product we created to the platforms and tools we offer today. Building technology so that others can build technology is core to our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

For more details on the why behind the purchase and the opportunities ahead, review this blog post from Satya.

Training Corner

Removing records from the AsyncOperationBase/WorkflowLogBase table

When an async workflow is triggered in a Dynamics 365 organization, a record will be created in the AsyncOperationBase table to track the processing of the async job. Additional records will also be created in the WorkflowLogBase table to maintain logs for the workflow execution.

Business Process Flows also store BPF stage transition and action logs for the BPF in the WorkflowLogBase table.

For organizations that use workflows or business process flows heavily, these table will grow over time and eventually become large enough to introduce performance issues as well as consume excessive storage in the database.

Customers can leverage the bulk delete system job under Settings > Data Management > Bulk Record Deletion to delete unneeded records from these tables.

For details on how to setup the bulk delete system job, review this blog post.

Transforming Customer Engagement at Microsoft

With the rise of mobile and social technologies, customers are now more powerful than ever. Their always-connected status and ability to find information in seconds puts them in control of their own experience, and this trend has forced businesses of all sizes to rethink how they engage and connect with their customers. Businesses are no longer focused on “touch points” during the marketing, sales and customer service process, but instead find a need to engage in meaningful, ongoing relationships that involve frequent online and real-world interactions.

Your Roadmap for a Digital-First Business provides insight on how businesses can stay relevant as unprecedented processing power, revolutionary cloud storage, and continuous connectivity change the face of business. This e-book provides ideas on how Dynamics 365 helps businesses:

• Reinvent productivity and enable a data-driven culture.
• Optimize and enhance analytics and mobility.
• Create new delivery systems and models for HR services.
• Test new products and services at a fraction of the cost.

Microsoft Business Applications Summit

Microsoft is bringing together the Dynamics 365, Power BI, Excel, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow communities to connect and collaborate at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit. The summit takes place in Seattle, Washington, July 22-24. This is a perfect opportunity for Analysts, Business Users, IT Professionals and Developers to advance their skills, learn about applications that are critical to their business, learn how to simplify the management of data and identify key elements of the platforms to help drive innovation.

For more information and to register, visit the event website.