Tip #1263: Microsoft Flow and Azure outages

Cans connected by a string that is cut in the middle by scissors

Most of you were probably impacted by a most recent Azure outage on May 2 (see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/status/history/). Between 19:29 and 22:35 UTC on 02 May 2019, customers may have experienced connectivity issues with Microsoft cloud services including Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure DevOps. Most services were recovered by 21:40 UTC with the remaining […]

Tip #1153: When Upgrading, Consider the Whole Ecosystem

It is that time of year when people turn their thoughts to upgrading; the October 18 release has been announced and for those on Dynamics 365 Online v8, the clock has started. I was recently with a client who had a pretty typical setup. They had Dynamics 365 Online, NAV 2016, and an online shopping […]

Tip #985: Use Azure for permanent instance backups

Floppy disk backup

In the tip 759 we suggested keeping a sandbox instance as your persistent backup because Dynamics 365 Management Center provides no control over the backup lifetime. Later, we were excited about introduction of the Online Management API and, as it turned out, all for the right reasons. Using the API, administrators can now backup a […]

Tip #794: Connect to Dynamics 365 in Azure Functions

Something useful

Delegating some work from plugins to Azure Functions turned out to be not as complex as we expected. Making function to do something useful (like updating Dynamics 365 records) was entirely different story. After running some NEL (naked eye learning) algorithms against our sales pipeline we calculated that an average opportunity value is inflated by […]

Tip #792: Invoke Azure Functions from Dynamics 365

Function app on consumption plan

You probably heard of the new kid on the Azure block: Azure Functions, that allow serverless execution of code. Wouldn’t that be nice to be able to trigger this serverless execution from Dynamics 365? I’m glad you asked! Since functions are very new, some plumbing is required but not as much as one would think. […]

Tip #631: Azure ML is coming to Dynamics CRM

Azure Machine Learning

One of the most exciting upcoming features in CRM Online is Azure Machine Learning integration (under In Preview): This release will introduce scenario-based Machine Learning (ML) integration with Azure ML for product cross-sell recommendations, and auto-suggest of relevant knowledge articles and case topic analysis. These scenarios are based on integration with Azure ML APIs for […]

Tip #207: Remove password expiration for O365/CRM Online

Like a boss meme

Password expiration in CRM Online is indeed a nuisance and can be changed but the maximum password expiration period configurable using Office 365 administration portal is 2 years. If you intend to use O365/CRM Online for longer than 2 years, you may want to consider using Powershell tools to do it like a boss. The […]