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Purchased licences can be spread across instances. For
example, if 100 bought, then 50 can be used for Production and 50 for Sandbox.
Can not use 100 for Production and 100 for Sandbox.
It is useful to populate Field Service with some sample data
for demo and training purposes. Please follow this link to populate data and
carry out initial configuration
Pre-defined Security profiles providing access to certain
data on forms are available. It is recommended after assigning a security role
such as ‘Field Service Dispatcher’, associated Field Security Profile shall
also be assigned to user.
A work order in Dynamics 365 for Field Service has
information on what work needs to be done. It is used to coordinate and
schedule resources and activities. It can be used for different types of work,
such as installations, repairs, or preventive maintenance.
A work order is usually created from a case or
opportunity. It is then scheduled either manually or using the schedule
assistant and then dispatched. Once the work is complete, it is reviewed and
approved by a manager.
Work orders can be
categorised for reporting etc. Dynamics 365 provides ability to create Work
Order Types for segregation. Work Order Type can be installation, sales, repair
etc.
In UCD Work Order
Type can be accessed by going to
Field Service
Settings -> Work Order Type
Please refer to Figure 2: Field Service Settings in UCD
This section
illustrates the configuration items that should be aimed set up during
workshops. Understanding of following entities will aid in carrying out
workshops and justifying the need to gather information around these.
It is good to have
these defined. Work orders can be auto populated by selecting an appropriated
Incident Type. These work as a template for Work Orders
This defines the
products or services that can be billed to customers. Field Service tab under
Product can be used set this as Service or Inventory when adding a product to
Work Order.
Only products
defined as Service can be selected as Service when creating a Work Order.
Items defined here
can be linked to Price List and priced for billing purposes.
These define steps
that are needed to complete a Work Order or a Service sold to customer within a
Work Order. Service Task Types have estimated duration associated with them.
These roll up to calculate duration of Work Order.
Dynamics 365 allows
for a case to be converted to Work Order automatically. However, there are
prerequisites that should be in place for this to happen.
Characteristics of a resource can be defined. Certificates,
qualifications, colours etc. These can be match against work order bookings if
particular characteristics are required from the booking.
Resource Pay Type keep track of cost of resources being
used. When a booking is set to ‘Complete’, journal entry is created according
to Pay Type.
Following journal types are available:
Travel
Working Hours
Break
Overtime
Business Closures
Resource Pay Type is created for each journal with
percentage override. For example, Resource Pay Type for overtime can be set to
125%. When a resource specifies overtime, the normal resource cost will be
increased for that period.
Resources Pay Type is defined under UCI by going to:
Field Service Settings -> Resource Pay Type
Figure 5: Resource Pay Types in UCI Figure 6: Flowchart Showing Steps Taken to Set Up Resource Figure 7: Bookable Resource Configuration ERD
This add-in can be configured to automatically schedule work
orders for most appropriate resources. It can be configured to optimise
bookings for shortest travel time, available work hours and other constraints.
Powerful tool that can feed diagnostic information straight
into Dynamics Field Service module. Instead of waiting for breakages or
incidents to occur, this add-in uses power of Azure and MS Flow to connect
devices to internet. Notifications can be set up for defined criteria.
Notification will automatically be sent using Flow to
schedule maintenance or service job etc.
Key benefits of Connected Service are:
Reduce downtime by connecting to
IoT devices to diagnose problems before customers are aware of an issue
Address issues faster by remotely
monitoring devices and keeping customers in the loop
Device telemetry and service
maintenance data helps to make intelligent decisions around dispatching
technicians with the right expertise, availability, and proximity to the job
More information on setting up installing and Configuring
Connected Field Service can be found at:
This article looks at how Microsoft Forms with Flow can be used to create forms quickly that can pass data to Dynamics 365 online.
In the past, this task has always been a challenge. Getting developers to create forms that can create Leads in Dynamics 365 or using third party ISVS.
Benefits and Advantages of Using MS Forms and Flows:
Microsoft Forms and Flows can not replace fully the normal method of creating Web to Lead Forms. However, it can come close and advantages are clear for System Admins to use this methodology
Marketing Teams can quickly design forms without using third party resources. Drag & Drop interface including themes and colour pallet.
Forms can be used for surveys as well and shared via email.
More economical then getting forms developed by third parties.
Responses are stored within Forms as well and can be exported out to Excel
Forms can be shared via link or embedded in a website.
Steps to Set Up Web to Lead Capture
Login to Microsoft Office and select Form from apps selector. Log into your office online account by clicking here.
Figure 1: Office Short Menu
This menu is accessed by clicking on dots at top left of banner. This is a condensed menu and you may need to click on All apps to view Forms.
Figure 2: Extended App Menu
click on Form to enter to start designing a new form. Follow simple steps to create a form. You may chose to design a quiz as well.
Figure 3: Form Setting Menu
Once inside Form creation, there are various ways of personalizing the form for your needs. Different images, themes etc can be chosen. However, purpose of figure 3 above is not to go through form customization and highlight the settings menu. Clicking on … in top right menu activates from menu. Clicking on settings will pop up settings menu.
If you plan to use this form publicly, make sure ‘Anyone with link can respond’ is selected
Here various settings can be chosen. Most important, if you plan to use this form publicly, make sure ‘Anyone with link can respond’ is selected.
Once we are happy with the form, next step is to decide how to use and share the form. Several options are available to chose from.
Figure 4: Form Share Options
Options currently available:
Send a Link
Download QR Code
Embed to a website using iframe
Email Directly
Fun Bit. Connecting the Form to Dynamics 365
This is where the fun begins. The form design is complete. You have decided how to use the form. Now we need to make sure that responses from the form are pushed into Dynamics 365.
We leverage the functionality provided by Microsoft Flow interface.
Using the office menu as in figure 1 above, click on Flow.
There are already pre-built templates available that can be used for various functionalities.
Figure 5: Selecting Flow Template
You can be really adventurous and start with a blank canvas. However, to make things simple, I chose the template in Figure 5 above and modified it to create record in Dynamics 365 instead of SharePoint.
NOTE: Access to SharePoint site is required to start using the above template. Template attempts to connect to services as shown in Figure 6 below. If access to SharePoint is not available, choose a different template or start with a blank flow and add steps as illustrated in Figure 7 and 8.
Figure 6: Flow Connection Screen
Edit template as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Edit Flow Template
Add Dynamics 365 create record connector
Figure 8: Add Dynamics 365 Create Record Connector
Adding Dynamics 365 Create Record action will connect to one of 365 organisations that can be accessed by logged in user. Organisation to use can be selected from drop down.
Figure 9: Dynamics 365 Create Record Connector Configuration
The connector is highly configurable and will display all the fields available for the selected entity by clicking on ‘Show advanced options’. Fields can be set to have specific value as well. For example, ‘Lead Source Label’ in Figure 9. This is set to Advertisement for any record being created through this process. Hence, it is very simple to categories records being created from different forms and sources.
Next step. Hit Save and enable testing……..
Figure 10: Flow Save And Test
As seen in Figure 11, below, trigger even can be selected. Select ‘I’ll perform the trigger action’ as trigger for the flow is submission of data. This will occur when a user clicks ‘Submit’ button on the form
Figure 11: Test Flow Trigger
After clicking ‘Test’ the Flow becomes active.
For testing purposes, copy link to the form created and open in a browser window.
Figure 12: Demo Form Submit Data
Figure 12 shows the demo data that has been entered for blog purposes.
Figure 13: Form Submission Confirmation
And as by magic, a lead appears in Dynamics 365 as seen in Figure 14 below.
Figure 14: Submitted Record in Form as Lead in Dynamics 365
Good Things About using Flows
will provide the list of usage of flow. Can click on any instance to view the status and timing etc. For example, for the form that was submitted earlier in this blog, the steps with times is displayed in Figure 15 below
It seems like Microsoft is listening and are improving their products according to feedback provided. Albeit a bit slow sometimes, however, things are improving.
Now it is possible to find records that do not have a related record
With Spring ’18 release Advanced Find has been updated with a very useful feature.
Now it is possible to find records that do not have a related record.
Example – Cases with Tasks associated with them
A typical scenario can be where Tasks are assigned to staff members for cases raised.
In the past it has been straightforward to locate Cases where tasks are associated with a Case with certain criteria defined.
Figure 1: Advanced Find window prior to Spring ’18 release
As seen in Figure 1, above, old Advanced Find will search for related records with a criteria selected and return all the cases where any associated Tasks are due on 18/06/2018.
There is no feature or option to find Cases that do not have any Tasks associated with it.
Inability to search for records that do not have associated records causes major issues for clients. How do you find those records????
Help is at hand in Dynamics 365 Spring ’18 release.
Figure 2: Advanced Find window after Spring ’18 release
As it can be seen Microsoft has added extra option for a related Entity line. Now it is possible to select ‘Does Not Contain Data’ option for related Entity.
In the above example, figure 2, this will result in displaying all the Cases in the system that do not have any Tasks associated with them.
In the previous versions this was a difficult task to achieve.
I feel this new feature in Advanced Find is a very useful addition and will help companies in various ways.
I also hope highlighting of this feature will assist users in creating new queries and resolve some of the issues that are being faced daily.
Microsoft released the latest Spring ’18 release in March 2018 and with it brought out some very useful new features. #D365 #CRM
One of them is MultiselectOption Set. This has been a long awaited and did present an issue when compring to other CRM system. Prior to this, to achieve same behaviour, either lookup type field had to be implemented or some clever web resource in conjuction with lookup field for better presentation.
Now there is a MultiSelect Option set to take care of this:
Let’s have a walk through this new field type and look at exciting things that can be done with it.
Below, the field has been added on the form and it is very easy to select all of the options in one go or select the ones that are needed as in my case.
Biggest Advantage comes from User Perspective by using MultiSelect Option Set.
Easy to use. No need to go through lookup window and records
No subgrid involved and acts like as any other field on the form
Much simpler to use with Advanced Find. MultiSelect and ‘Equals’ mean that a record includes the multiple options in the field (see Advanced Find example below)
Similarly, reporting is much simpler with field showing the values and no related tables to resolve in the reports.
Options can be displayed in Views.
Advanced Find Examples using MultiSelect Option Set
Using the above record we can run Advanced Find on it.
Example 1: Search for records that have A,B,C selected for the field
As it can be seen, this search did not produce any results. Advnaced Find will only show results that have these three values set. However, there is a ‘Contains’ option in drop down. Selecting that option would have shown the record edited earlier because Advanced Find will match any one of the values present in MultiSelect Option Set.
Example 2: Search for records that have A,C selected for the field
Above search brings up the record that was edited earlier with that field.
Conclusion
As it can be seen it is a very useful feature to have.
Makes it easy to place on form and use compared to having a sub grid for MultiSelect.
Users can run more intutive Advanced Find queries.
Reporting becomes easier for users. It’s a field that will display the chosen values.
Views become more useful. The field can be placed as a column and all values being shown in the view. Filters and criteria can be set for this field in the views.
I feel this a very useful feature and one that will be used quite often. I can say this from experience. Having set up this feature on other CRM system for users, I can definitely see the power of it. No doubt that is one the reasons that Dynamics developers have been requesting for this for a while now.
It’s here and now and time to make best use of it.
Let me have your thoughts. Looking forward to any comments on this feature….good or bad…
Contact us for further information or with assistance of any aspect Dynamics CRM implementation
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