Tip #1238: Painless upgrade from 8 to 9

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200

Chance and Community Chest card

When planning upgrade of your 8 or 8.2 on-premises instance to version 9, there are two rules:

  1. Do not, I repeat, do not consider in-place upgrade.
  2. Raise a support ticket and get yourself a build 9.0.02
    EDIT: download service update 0.3

If you are using VMs either on-premises or in Azure, or if you have spare physical capacity, always, I repeat, always go for the first option which is Migrate by using a new instance of SQL Server. Why? Because it’s painless and fast. Do you really run your current version on Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016? I’m asking because both are required. You don’t have to go through painful upgrades if you opt for a new instance. Just install RTM build, add the 0.02 patch (is it like $0.02 patch?!)

EDIT: ignore the rest as service update 0.3 is available for download.

Why to create a support ticket? Because if you use RTM build of version 9, changes are that during the organization upgrade you will receive an error message at the last mile:

Error : The AttributeLookupValue (Id=81cde1dc-2241-db11-898a-0007e9e17ebd) entity or component has attempted to transition from an invalid state

Build 0.02 takes care of that nasty error and for every single version 8 or 8.2 databases we imported so far, the upgrade did take a bit of time but it went as smooth as butter.

Cover photo by Paul Felberbauer

Tip #1237: Access D365 admin center when you are not O365 admin

If you need to go to the instance selector to manage one of the Microsoft solutions but you are not an O365 admin, you can’t go through the O365 admin portal. No sweat, go to Power platform admin center and you can get to the Dynamics 365 instance managers from there. In fact, to paraphrase:

All admin centers are equally represented

John Bender

Thank you Joel Lindstrom for the tip (since he could’t be bothered writing it himself)

Cover photo by Brooke Lark

Tip #1236: Review RetrieveMultiple plugins before migrating to Unified Interface

It’s not uncommon to register a plugin on RetrieveMultiple message and fiddle with the output, e.g. drop some values, add some calculations, etc.

Chances are that you are changing the QueryExpression, and the plugin is working fine in the classic UI but you will have challenges migrating to Unified Interface.

The reason is that in the Unified Interface Dynamics 365 uses FetchExpression, so you’ll need to handle both cases if you want to use both classic UI and Unified Interface.

To reuse as much of the existing code as possible, use FetchExpressionToQueryExpressionRequest to convert, then do what you need to the QueryExpression, and then change it back with QueryExpressiontoFetchExpressionRequest. Sample code is available.

Thank you Guillaume Domont for the tip! (And don’t forget to send yours to jar@crmtipoftheday.com).

Cover photo by Lucas Vasques

Tip #1235: Create personal charts in Unified Interface

Nasty rumors (and this official page from Microsoft) claim that you cannot create personal charts from Unified Interface.

This is not true anymore.

From any view in your unified interface model-driven app, click “show chart” then under the more options (…) menu, click “+ new.”

This will launch the classic chart builder in a new window.

And BTW, audit logs are also now available. So what are you waiting for?

Thanks Rob Dawson for the tip. Send your tips to jar@crmtipoftheday.com

Cover photo by unsplash-logoIoana Cristiana

Tip #1234: When Dynamics 365 App for Outlook hasn’t found what you’re looking for

You set regarding in the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, but you don’t get the results you expect.

If you are in Outlook desktop, you should be aware that behind the scenes webpages rendered in Outlook (and the entire Office platform) are rendered in Internet Explorer. This issue can be caused by cache issues in IE.

Microsoft is working on a fix for the issue, but for now, if you or another user has this problem, the following steps should fix the issue (as reported by Lu Hao on this Dynamics Community forum thread).

Clear your browser cache

  • Shut down IE and Outlook. Make sure in task manager that no IE or Outlook processes are running.
  • Clear Internet Explorer Cache, Cookies, History, Temporary Internet files completely. 
  • There is a setting in Internet options under Browser history section: Settings > Caches and databases tab. If dynamics.com has a cache, delete it. 
  • Restart Outlook.

F12 Chooser

If this bug only appears in desktop client and clearing the cache via Internet Options does not help, try clearing it via F12 chooser. Here is the process (steps are not applicable for Windows 7)

  • Open Dynamics app in desktop client
  • Open IEChooser.exe in %WindowsFolder%\System32\F12
  • Click on Dynamics 365 thread
  • Go to Network tab and click clear cache button

Cover photo by unsplash-logoAnnie Theby

Tip #1233: Make connections via quick create

Anyone ever use any voodoo to make Quite Create from connections/stakeholders?

Experienced customizer

(pretending I am Joel – t.j.)

If your question is how to make connections via Quick Create, I’ve created a custom entity that creates connections using workflow. You could show that via Quick Create form.

Connections are useful but have notoriously bad user experience. We’ve been dealing with them using dialogs since 1957. Now it’s workflow. I guess we are all waiting for a magic that would enable us to create a PowerApps custom control to deal with this abomination.

Cover photo by unsplash-logoisrael palacio

Tip #1232: Dynamics 365 v9 on iOS

If you try to use the Dynamics 365 mobile app on iOS and experience the app repeatedly returning to the login screen, there is a simple fix.

Log in to D365 in Safari.

Safari will prompt you with the question “would you like to increase the database size for (URL of your D365 environment)?”

Answer yes, and the app should work correctly for you.

Cover photo by unsplash-logoSergey Pesterev

Tip #1231: Activity Quick Create in Unified Interface

I’m testing Unified Interface and when I create an activity from the timeline control I don’t see the quick create form.

Reader question

One thing that can cause this to happen is if you don’t have the Appointment, Phone Call, and Task entities in your model driven app.

In other words, if you just have the Activities entity in your app, but don’t have the entities for the individual activity entities, users that create activities from the timeline control will get the full activity form, not the quick create form.

Cover photo by unsplash-logoEugene Zhyvchik

Tip #1230: Launch KB hyperlinks in a new window

We use Dynamics 365 Knowledge Base in USD (Unified Service Desk – t.j). We have links to PDF’s and images of schematics and detailed drawings in our KB articles. When users click the link they see the complex image or document in the KB article frame. How can we open the image or document full screen?

Reader question

If you have a link in your KB article, you can right mouse click on the link and select “open in a new window.” This will launch the link in a new window.

Tîpp Jäår $0.02 + tax

When Joel entered this tip, my first reaction was “Really, Joel? Run out of things to say?”. But then I remembered how popular tend to be our simplest tips about shortcuts or scrolling, and all other userly things. And you may have noticed that we stopped adding target="blank" to the links in our tips.

So where’s your promised $0.02, you may ask? Here you are, three more ways to open a hyperlink in a new tab (or window, depending on your browser settings):

  • Press middle button or clickable wheel (try pressing it, you never know!) on your mouse.
  • Ctrl + left mouse click
  • Ctrl + ENTER if you are using keyboard and the hyperlink is in focus

(Cover photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash)

Tip #1229: Use math to make your chart look good

It’s Friday afternoon and the management asked you to create a quick chart illustrating your team’s bug handling pipeline. Easy-peasy.

Step 1 – extract data from the Squash-A-Bug system

Status Count
New 4268
Under Review 1921
Planned 516
Completed 229

Step 2 – visualize it as a small dashboard:

image

That…. does not… look… good… (tried funnel – that’s even worse)

We appear to be choking under the flood of new bugs… It’s Friday, for crying out loud, can’t give bad news to the management!

(busily searches dusted brain corners for the high education leftovers)

Found!

Here’s your tip of the day:

If your numbers are disproportionally skewed, use the logarithmic scale. It brings the values “closer together”

Tîpp Jäår
logcheat

And the end result:

image

Ahhh, that’s much better. Take that, management!

Friday night, here I come!

Thank you, Dynamics 365 for the idea (pun intended), and Crissy Jarvis on Unsplash for the cover photo.