Dynamics 365 Monthly Update – March 2017

Pre-scheduling of all 8.1 Online orgs to 8.2 has been completed and the pre-scheduled Customer Driven Updates (CDUs) for version 8.1  to 8.2 will start on April 1st and run through August 31st.  These will be optional CDUs and require approval prior to the pre-scheduled date. Customers can use the tools in the Admin Portal to re-schedule if needed within the CDU window (April 1st to August 31st) as capacity allows.

For a complete description of the update process, see Manage Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) updates.

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Microsoft cloud services, such as Office 365 and Dynamics CRM require licenses which are assigned to each user who needs access to these services. To manage licenses, administrators use one of the management portals (Office or Azure) and PowerShell cmdlets. Until now, licenses could only be assigned at the individual user level, which meant for large-scale deployments, organizations were required to write complex PowerShell scripts to add and remove user licenses.

To address those challenges, Microsoft has introduced group-based licensing in Azure AD. Administrators can assign one or more product licenses to a group and Azure AD ensures that the licenses are assigned to all members of the group. Any new members who join the group are assigned the appropriate licenses and when they leave the group, those licenses are removed.

For more information on the features of group-based licensing and step by step instructions, review the Group-based licensing basics in Azure Active Directory article on the Microsoft Azure site.
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Customers have reported experiencing issues with the forms, dashboards and sub grids not rendering properly in IE with CRM 2011. This problem is specific to Dynamics 2011 and applies to Windows 10 and all IE11 platforms. (Edge and Chrome are not impacted). Several patches were provided on March 22, 2017 to resolve the issue:

Windows 10 links

RS1 - OS Version 14393.X – KB4016635 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4016635

Download Link - http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=KB4016635

• Addressed a known issue with KB4013429 that caused form display issues with CRM 2011 on Internet Explorer 11.
  
• Addressed the issue with KB4013429 that prevents users from updating apps from Windows Store with 0x80070216 error.
  

TH2 - OS Version 10586.X – KB4016636 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4016636

Download Link - http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=KB4016636

• Addressed a known issue with KB4013198 that caused form display issues with CRM 2011 on Internet Explorer 11.
  

TH1 - OS Version 10240.X – KB4016637 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4016637

Download Link - http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=KB4016637

• Addressed a known issue with KB4012606 that caused form display issues with CRM 2011 on Internet Explorer 11.
  

NOTE: All Windows 10 updates are available here.

Windows 8.1 and 7 SP1

KB4016446 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4016446
Download Link - http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=KB4016446

• This update is required only if you are experiencing the symptoms that are described in the "Symptoms" section, and you have cumulative security update 4013073 installed on Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7 SP1, or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
  

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A new preview feature, available in Dynamics 365 online, allows customers to recover from synchronization failures with on-demand resynchronization from the Export Profile toolbar.

More information, see Resolving synchronization issues.

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• Social Selling Assistant Insights: Introducing a new recommendation type for Social Selling Assistant. In addition to Sharing recommendations, Social Selling Assistant now offers Insights recommendations for posts about your customers, competitors, and other topics of interest so you can stay on top of the latest developments.
  
• More information in engagement history: The engagement action history now shows the name and profile picture of the user who performed the action in Microsoft Social Engagement.
  

For more information, review the following article.
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The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Asynchronous Processing Service (or async service) executes long-running operations independent of the main Microsoft Dynamics 365 core operation.  This results in improved overall system performance and improved scalability. The async service features a managed queue for the execution of async plug-ins, workflows and long-running operations. Since these operations are queued, there are certain quota settings applied for every organization:

1. AsyncMaxExceptionCountInTimeUnit
   
2. OrgMaxAsyncThroughput
   
3. OrgMaxThreadCount
   
4. AsyncMaxExceptionCounterTimeUnitInMinutes
   
5. AsyncThroughputCapResetTimeIntervalInMinutes
   

For more information about these settings and to learn how to review the health of asynchronous operations, review the following blog post.

To help with Dynamics 365 (online) administration, customers can now assign users the Dynamics 365 Service Admin Role which allows them to manage Dynamics 365 at the tenant level without having to assign the more powerful Office 365 global admin privileges.

Users with the Dynamics 365 (online) service admin role can:

• Sign in to and manage multiple Dynamics 365 online instances. If an instance uses a security group, a service administrator would need to be added to the security group in order to manage that instance.
  
• Perform admin functions in Dynamics 365 because they have the Dynamics 365 system admin role. The service admin must be assigned a Dynamics 365 license.
  

A Dynamics 365 Service Admin cannot do functions restricted to the Office 365 global admin such as manage user accounts, manage subscriptions, access settings for Office 365 apps like Exchange or SharePoint.

More information can be found at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt793847.aspx

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights (DCI) SaaS offering provides big data analytics and insights for sales, marketing and service functions. To extract the most out of DCI requires bringing in data from different sources. The key to DCI success is in the ability to bring in data from multiple sources, integrating that data and continuously extracting insights from the data. To learn how, take a look at Using Connectors to simplify data ingestion at scale in Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights.

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Get the most up to date training and eLearning information for Dynamics 365 from the Help Center. The highly anticipated Training & Adoption Kit for Dynamics 365 is also available for download which includes user guides, quick reference cards, eBooks for end users and admins. Feel free to modify the content and distribute to your customers.

Want to know what new features are available for both online and on-prem customers? Then check out What's new in Dynamics 365 Help and Training.

CustomerSource is a password-protected site for customers using Microsoft Dynamics and related business products, provided as a benefit of a service plan. Use it to search the knowledgebase, download updates, view online training and find other information resources virtually 24 hours a day.

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource
NOTE: Login is required

PartnerSource is a portal available to partners who focus on Microsoft Dynamics and related business products. It provides up-to-date tools that help partners connect to customers, improve the skills of their personnel, and deliver innovative products and superior customer service. PartnerSource is available any time, from anywhere, giving partners access to product updates, downloads, and training materials; attend online sessions, register for special events and much more.

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource
NOTE: Login is required

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Easily share business objects and collaborate with users across business units in Microsoft Dynamics 365 with owner teams or access teams.

An owner team owns records and has security roles assigned to the team. The team's privileges are defined by these security roles. In addition to privileges provided by the team, team members have privileges defined by their individual security roles and by the roles from other teams in which they are members.

An access team doesn't own records and doesn't have security roles assigned to the team. The team members have privileges defined by their individual security roles and by roles from the teams in which they are members. The records are shared with an access team and the team is granted access rights on the records, such as Read, Write or Append.

For more information on setting up teams, review this TechNet article.
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