In April, we will release the next major update for Dynamics 365 for Marketing, but customers and partners who would like to get an early look at some of what’s coming can set up a preview instance already now! We released the initial public preview in February, and now we’ve expanded the preview to include even more upcoming features.

We’ve also added a several new production-ready, generally available features, and these too are automatically visible on updated preview instances.

IMPORTANT: updates to the February or March versions are not currently available for production instances because we are working to update the update system itself. Preview instances, however, can be updated all the way up to the latest preview version at any time. New production instances installed will include the newest production-ready features available at the time of installation.

How to get the preview

You can enable the preview on any trial, test, or sandbox instance starting now, but you shouldn’t enable it on production instances because some of the preview features may not be fully tested yet. When you enable the preview on an instance, you will also update that instance to the latest version and will therefore receive the latest generally available features together with the preview features.

For instructions on how to install and enable the preview on one of your test instances, see  Activate and use preview features for April 2019.

Updates are enabled for preview instances, so if you enabled the preview in February then you can update to the March preview version by using the standard update procedure.

Public preview features

This section describes all the preview features that we added in both February and March.

Preview: Provide personalized marketing page content

Personalized marketing pages show content that varies according to who opens the page. When a known contact visits the page, it can fetch values from that contact's content record and show those values on the page—or use them to modify page layout or content. For example, you could greet the visitor by name, show the logo for a visitor's company, or display the photo and contact details of the visitor's personal sales contact.

The system uses cookies to identify known contacts. The required cookie is set the first time a contact submits a landing page, or when a contact visits a subscription center using a personalized link sent to them in email. Page personalization itself is based on JavaScript, so you have the full power of JavaScript available to you when designing your personalization features.

The feature uses field white lists and contact opt-in to help protect contacts' data and privacy preferences.

More information: Activate and use preview features for April 2019

Preview: Bring your own CMS with expanded support for externally hosted forms

The current version of Dynamics 365 for Marketing already lets you create marketing forms that you can embed on your own, external website, but with a few limitations. We're working towards removing these limitations to enable you to create fully functional marketing pages that can run on your own, external website or CMS system. The following elements of this functionality are now available as preview features:

• Enable prefill on embedded forms
• Run a subscription center as an embedded form
• Use external forms for inbound customer journeys
• Create customer journey triggers that react to external form visits and submissions

Additional features for integrating with external CMS systems are planned for the April release, so stay tuned!

Preview: In-app social posting to Twitter and Facebook

In April we're planning to introduce social posting, which will enable you to schedule and post messages to a variety of popular social media channels right from Dynamics 365 for Marketing. You can preview this capability already now. In February, we previewed the ability to post to Twitter, and in March we are adding the ability to post to Facebook. We expect more social channels to be available in April.

More information: Activate and use preview features for April 2019

Preview: Track your marketing contacts quota and usage

Dynamics 365 for Marketing is priced, among other things, according to how may marketing contactsare stored on your tenant. Dynamics 365 for Marketing now lets you keep an eye on your marketing contacts by showing the total number you have purchased and the total number that are using. To see these values, go to Settings > Advanced settings > Other settings > Quota limits.

More information: Activate and use preview features for April 2019

Preview: Segmentation API

Developers and system integrators can now interact programmatically with segments in Dynamics 365 for Marketing. The segmentation API leverages the standard Dynamics 365 API for manipulating entities or messages.

More information: Basic Operations on Segments using Segmentation API

Generally available features added in March

In addition to the preview features, we’ve also released several production-ready features, which are generally available for all production instances installed since March 8, including instances that don’t have the preview enabled. These features are also available on preview instances updated after March 8.

The March release includes all the new production-ready features that were introduced in February, including instances that don’t have the preview enabled, plus all preview instances. For details about the February features, see our blog post for the February release.

We expect the improved update system to be up and working very soon, and we’ll let you know as soon as you can start updating your production instances to the latest version. Keep your eye on this blog for the latest Dynamics 365 for Marketing news and announcements.

Improved assist-edit for creating dynamic email content and field values

We've greatly improved the user experience for placing dynamic field values in your email messages with assist-edit. The feature was previously very compact, but a bit tricky to use—especially when traversing database relations. Now, we’ve implemented assist-edit as a two-step wizard that makes all dynamic values easier to place. It also makes relations much easier to identify and can now help you select fields from related entities.

As before, you can use assist-edit to display values in text elements, and can also place field expressions in some settings fields, such as the email subject, sender email address, image URLs, link URLs, and more—anywhere where you see the </> button.

More information: Use assist-edit to place dynamic field values

Improved inbox previews for email messages

The Dynamics 365 for Marketing inbox preview feature provides real-world inbox previews that show your email designs exactly as they will appear in a wide variety of target email clients and platforms. The feature was included in the initial release of Dynamics 365 for Marketing, but we’ve added several improvements to it for the March update, including:

• Improved authorization flow
  Your Marketing license includes a limited number of inbox previews. Once those are consumed, users who would like more inbox previews must integrate their own Litmus accounts. We’ve now improved the flow for integrating your own Litmus accounts.
• New preview clients
  We’ve added several new email clients to the list of available inbox previews.
• Recently used inbox previews
  The inbox preview page now shows up to 10 recently used previews in a section at the top of the list to make them easier to find.

More information: Use the advanced inbox preview feature

Improved segment designer makes data relationships easier to find and use

The segment designer in Dynamics 365 for Marketing enables you to set up detailed logical expressions for finding the contacts to include in each segment. You can even traverse across database tables to find contacts associated with a wide variety of related entities, such as event registrations, accounts, leads, and much more.

Previously, it could often be challenging to identify and navigate database relationships using the segment designer. But now we’ve replaced the long and cryptic relationship names with more intuitively understandable names. And we’ve streamlined the selection process for creating queries against related objects.

We’ve improved the experience for choosing values from lookup fields, so now you can view, search, and choose from among the available lookup values rather than remembering them or entering index values instead. (Lookup fields are actually just simple table relations, so the related table must be synced to the customer-insights database for the values to be available to the segment designer.) You can even specify multiple lookup values at once, together with an operator for combining them, such as:

• Is / is in: finds records that have any of the values specified
• Is not / is not in: finds records that don’t have any of the values specified

We’ve also made static segments easier to work with by making it possible to add or remove members while the segment is live. All changes go live immediately on save.

More information: Working with segments

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

Last week, I was asked if I knew of a quick way to update the Basic Personal Exemption amount in Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked as it’s relatively common for an “oops” on the CPY Year End Close routine to either forget to update the personal exemption amounts or that somehow the wrong amounts are in there. So, today’s #TipTuesday is a short one: what’s the quickest (& safest) way to update this if it was wrong on multiple people?

What is it?

I believe if you’re reading this, you are already aware of what this is but to be a little more clear, it’s the Basic Personal Exemption amounts for either Federal or Provincial tax purposes, most commonly seen on a TD-1 Form that an employee fills out when they are hired or need to make changes. The BPE is fixed each year so the Canadian Payroll module’s year end close routine has a window where you can verify the % change for the new year and mass update everyone that way during the year end process.

The window itself, on an employee card, is under TD1 Values > Tax Credits and from there, it defaults to “CA” (Federal) but once you click on the Clear button on the toolbar, the Jurisdiction is selectable.

If you only had to update one employee, you would select the correct jurisdiction and click on the Update box to enable editing of the values in the window. However, if you forgot to run the indexing or if the indexing % was incorrect, here’s a quick SQL script to correct the values.

SQL Update

The table name that contains the current year’s TD1 tax credit info is the CPY10105 table. It will typically contain 2 records per employee, if your employee works in one jurisdiction (one will be “CA” for federal and one will be for your province or territory).

It’s super important to know which tax credit BPE you want to update as you could inadvertantly update all jurisductions on each employee with an incorrect amount if you’re not careful.

As with any SQL direct update approach, TEST TEST TEST. This isn’t a complex script but testing will save you from a lot of hassle if you forget the where clause or get the amount incorrect.

My approach is this:

1. Run a SELECT script on the table first, with the proper WHERE clause to get the number of records I need to update. This is the expected results I should see later.
2. Test the script on a test company database first, and then check Dynamics GP to spot check some of the employees that should have been changed (in their tax credits window). Better yet, get a screen shot of some employees before and after to ensure you updated the right thing.
3. When running it for real, use BEGIN TRANSACTION and COMMIT TRANSACTION as a safety net if you’re uncomfortable still, after careful testing. (Google it if you’re unsure what I mean by this…)

Below are some example scripts to update Federal BPE amounts. I’m showing 3 common examples of how you might do this.

1. Setting the amount to a hard coded value for a jurisdiction.
2. Setting the amount to a % based on the previous amount for a jurisdiction.
3. Setting the amount to a static value for a given jurisdiction AND where the previous amount is a specific amount.

I’ve had to use different approaches at different times depending on what went wrong. For example, many years ago a client noticed that the exemption % was only updating active employees who had income “last year” during the year end close process. If they re-activated old employees (after a layoff for instance), they all had out of date TD1 values so we wanted to mass update but not all employees at a %, as that would increase everyone’s including those that were already correct. In that case we used a version like #3 below, only updating those with a specific previous value.

-- Check the # of expected results in my specific where clause
SELECT * FROM CPY10105 WHERE PJurisdiction = 'CA'

-- Update script with hard-coded amount (example 1)
UPDATE CPY10105
     SET PBasicPersonalAmount = 12069.00
     WHERE PJurisdiction = 'CA';


-- Update script with % change (example 2) 
UPDATE CPY10105
     SET PBasicPersonalAmount = PBasicPersonalAmount * 1.02
     WHERE PJurisdiction = 'CA';


-- Update script only where previous matches a specific amount (example 3) 
UPDATE CPY10105
     SET PBasicPersonalAmount = 12069.00
     WHERE PJurisdiction = 'CA'
           AND PBasicPersonalAmount = 7748.00; 

That’s it for this post, it’s a pretty straight-forward one if you need to do some updates at some point in your environment.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service is a powerful system to unify the way people experience your business. It makes information available across engagements so your agents can offer the consistency and personalization your customers expect (and require).

One area that we feel is especially powerful for our clients is Case Management.

Would your company benefit from Case Management? Take a look at our last post: 5 Questions To Determine if You Can Benefit from Case Management in Microsoft Dynamics 365

With that in mind, in this post we will give an overview of how Case Management works and the high level benefits. Then in our next post we will talk about specific industries, including many outside the traditional “customer service” model, and how they benefit from Case Management.

Case Management Overview

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Service Management is designed to support incident based services called Cases.

• The Case Entity provides incident based tracking for issues that may arise from customers, whether they are external or internal.
• A customer service representative creates an incident (case) to track a customer request, question or a problem.
• All actions and communications can be tracked in the incident entity. An incident can be in one of the three states Active, Resolved or Cancelled.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cases are commonly used in help desk scenarios, where a customer has an issue with a product or service. Then the activities to resolve the issue can be tracked in an organized way from when the issue was first reported to resolution of the issue.

• Keep track of the customer requests and issues by creating support cases in Dynamics 365.
• When a customer contacts support with a question or problem, it can be quickly verified if there is an existing case or open a new case and start tracking the issue.
• The cases can also be escalated, reassigned, or put a case back into the service queue if enough information is not available or due to time constraints.
• Before providing support, Customer’s entitlements can also be verified.
• Entitlements are like contracts that illustrates about the type of support a customer is eligible for.
• Verification of Customer Contract information
  • Support terms are based on number of hours or cases,
  • Support channel, or based on the product or service that the customer has purchased.
• To help you select the right status of a case, your admin may have set things up so that you only see a limited set of status based on the current status of a case.

Case Form Layout

Typical Flow of Case Management

• System receives an email regarding any issue.
• Cases will be automatically created from email messages.
• Send automatic email response to the Customer for the ticket creation.
• This ticket will be routed to the Support queue.
• The ticket will then be assigned to specific CSR based on the routing rules set in the CRM system.
• CSR will make further communications with customer.
• CSR will resolve the case and notification will be send to the customer for the case resolution.

Successful companies can use Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service to:

• Track customer issues through cases.
• Record all interactions related to a case.
• Share information in the knowledge base.
• Create queues, and route cases to the right channels.
• Create and track service levels through service level agreements (SLAs).
• Define service terms through entitlements.
• Manage performance and productivity through reports and dashboards.
• Create and schedule services.

This powerful application within Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be used across many industries. In our next post we will give examples of the type of companies that we have seen use “Case Management” in new and creative ways.

If you are interested in exploring Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications for your business contact Crowe today.

By Ryan Plourde, Crowe, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Gold Partner

www.CroweCRM.com

Follow us on Twitter: @CroweCRM

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/customer-service/overview

https://suyati.com/blog/case-management-in-ms-dynamics-crm-2016-part-1/

The post Overview of Case Management in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.

You are invited to join your peers in Johannesburg, South Africa, 12-13 June 2019 for the User Group World Tour!

The User Group World Tour stop in Johannesburg delivers the “best of” Dynamics 365 Business Central & Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP, Power Platform (Power BI, PowerApps, Flow), and Microsoft 365 content. This is THE technology event for small & mid-market corporate users and partners who seek to enrich their Microsoft knowledge and professional lives. Join your peers, register today.

"After a very informative session on SQL Server I was able to go home that evening, log into my server environment and immediately implement performance changes. Returning to work after the conference, I am already able to see the performance gains in our environment."

Gavin Hundermark
Technical Support Specialist, Smart Global & 2018 attendee

Content to Fit Your Needs
The pace of change in the Microsoft community has never been faster! Events like the User Group World Tour are tailored to make your journey through the technology landscape as simple as possible. Attendees will have access to:

• A keynote presentation and 80 educational sessions, curated by professionals, covering:
  • Dynamics NAV / Dynamics 365 Business Central – Functional and Administrator topics; On-Premises, Cloud or Hybrid deployment; Industry Extensions
  • Power Platform – Best practices on integrating Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow into your existing business applications
  • Dynamics GP – Functional, Reporting and Developer topics; Solution Roadmap update
  • Microsoft 365 – Discover the modern desktop featuring Office 365, Windows 10, Mobility and Security
• Network and learn from local Users, Subject Matter Experts, MVPs, and members of the Microsoft product team.
• Discover add-on solutions and how they can enhance your current software products to improve business productivity.

________________________________________
Call for Proposals is Open
If you are interested in learning about a certain topic or speaking, submit your session ideas here through 29 March.

Sponsorship Opportunities
Showcase your products and services while building your brand recognition. Get notified when sponsorship sales open. 
________________________________________

This User Group World Tour stop is the ONLY SOURCE of in-person education on Microsoft technologies from the User Group in South Africa in 2019. 

Make sure to look at Ian’s post on fixing a corrupt Fixed Allocation Master.

The Feb’19 release for Dynamics AX 2012 R3 version is now available in LCS on the updates tile inside your R3 project. This update represents a typical collection of smaller functional improvements and technical fixes.  Bugs were fixed in all areas with enhancements found in Warehouse & Transportation, Master planning, Service Management, BI and Reporting, Procurement, Sales, Client, Server, SI, Project Accounting, Inventory, Retail, Invoicing and Payments, Regulatory Reporting, Dimensions, Reports, Payroll, Public Sector, Project management, Timesheets, Workflow, Production, Server, Cash and Expense, Tax updates. Please see the full list of hotfixes below to search for your specific issue newly included in this release. This release is intended to give visibility into fixes recently shipped for R3, including some features and design changes that are newly released in this quarter.

NOTE: This will be the last blog for this site that is scheduled to retire in March.

Here are a few details related to this release:

• Primary Build: 6.3.6000.8149
• Number of Application hotfixes: 246
• Number of Binary hotfixes: 32

Details of the install process can be found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh538446.aspx#PackageR3

What is included in this month’s release?

Known Issues: -

Design Change Requests

Fixes Released