Dynamics for CRM

Building an Agent Using Microsoft 365 Agents SDK and Microsoft Agent Framework

The Microsoft 365 agents SDK allows developers to create agents, use their preferred AI services, orchestrate and manage knowledge, and deploy them across multiple channels. It's an evolution of the Bot Framework SDK, now archived in favor of the Microsoft 365 agents SDK. In this post, we will

MCP

Create a Model Context Protocol(MCP) Server With Azure Functions and Use It in Copilot Studio

If you've been working with AI agents lately, you've probably heard a lot about MCP. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard created by Anthropic that enables AI assistants such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, and ChatGPT to connect with external data sources and tools.

azure

Building a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) App with Azure AI Search and Azure OpenAI

Azure AI Search is a cloud-based solution for indexing and querying various data sources and creating comprehensive, high-scale search solutions. Azure AI Search consists of four main components: * Data Source: Indicates the data that we want to search. This could include unstructured documents, such as PDFs or Word files, stored

AI Vision

PCF Component: Extract Text From Image Using Azure AI Vision

I recently explored Azure AI Vision and wanted to learn more about its services and capabilities. Azure AI Vision service processes images and videos and provides the associated information. This includes the following significant features: * Optical Character Recognition (OCR): Deep-learning models extract printed and handwritten text from images and documents.

powerautomate

Power Automate: Remove Special Characters From A String

When working with string in PowerAutomate we often have to remove special characters from the string. Some common use cases include field cleanup, file creation, etc. Let's look at building a reusable flow that can replace the special characters from a string easily. The flow has the following

customconnector

Create a Custom Connector in the Power Platform Using OAuth 2.0 Service Principal and Azure Function App

Custom Connectors are great when we to extend functionality to 3rd party APIs that do not have connector support or APIs that are specific to the business processes within an organization. This helps with easily using it across multiple instances in a tenant. A few months back Microsoft announced support

copilotstudio

Copilot Studio - Hand off to Live Agent in Customer Service Workspace

Copilot Studio provides an intuitive interface for managing customer interactions, while Customer Service Workspace Live Chat ensures real-time support for your users with a human agent. Together, they streamline the transfer process, ensuring that customers receive timely and personalized assistance from a live agent when needed. In this post, I

copilot

Open a Copilot Studio Bot in Model Driven App Side Pane with Context

In my previous blog post, I explained how we could leverage global variables to be used as parameters in the URL to pass information to the Copilot bot and provide context to the bot thus improving the user experience. In this post, I will expand on that and show how

dynamics365

Enabling Export to PDF Command on Case Entity in Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Sales provides the capability to create and share PDF files of the sales entity records. This feature has been expanded in 2020 release wave 2 to support custom entities. We can configure the entities in the Sales Hub app by managing the setting Convert to PDF However, the

copilot

Pass Parameters to Copilot Studio Bot from Calling Site

When building a Copilot there are times when we need to be able to pass context to the Copilot to improve the user experience by passing data that could be helpful in greeting the customers or retrieving customer information ahead of time. Microsoft has provided some documentation on how to

Dataflows

Using Data Flows to Migrate Data Between Dynamics 365

Data Flows is one good feature that I feel is underrated and doesn't seem to be used widely for the feature set it provides. Until recently I have used alternative tools like SSIS with KWS connector or Data Transporter from the XrmToolBox for some of the use cases

attachments

Upload Attachments from Canvas App to Dataverse

Requesting attachments is a common use case we encounter every now and than when collecting information from the user for requests tied to cases, contact creation etc. Typically this would require the help of a developer in the pre low-code no-code days when we need to build an attachment control

powerautomate

Power Automate: Easily Replace New Line in Flow Expression

When recently working on a flow to do some data transformations to convert a CSV file into a JSON array, I had to find a way to replace the new line character from the string. My initial thought was, this should be very easy to do using replace [https://docs.

Omnichannel

Omnichannel for Customer Service - Missing Productivity Pane

When recently working on Omnichannel to enhance our existing chat channel configuration, we noticed that the productivity pane disappeared when sessions are created. No Omnichannel Productivity PaneNothing has changed since the previous testing and I was unsure what's causing this behavior. The first odd thing I noticed was

subgrids

Show/Hide 'See associated records' and 'See all records' on Sub Grids

When using sub grids in Dynamics 365, we often have to use the 'See associated records' button to perform additional operations on these associated records. Let's look at an example using the case entity In the above picture, when we click the See associated records, we

Omnichannel for Customer Service - Missing Parameters on Resolve Case Macro Action

Macros [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/omnichannel/administrator/macros#overview-of-macros] for Omnichannel in Customer Service, are very useful for performing repetitive and monotonous actions efficiently. One such useful macro action is the Resolve a Case [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/omnichannel/administrator/macros#resolve-a-case] When recently building an

Embed Canvas App on a Model Driven App Dashboard

In this post we will look at how we can add a canvas app [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/getting-started] to a system dashboard on a model driven app [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/model-driven-apps/]. For the sake of simplicity I'm using a

powerautomate

Power Automate: Group By Multiple Columns on a Collection

When recently working on a flow, I had a scenario where we need to group an existing collection using multiple columns. Typically this would be a very straight forward to accomplish using code. I thought the same can be achieved in flow easily. However, after checking the functions reference documentation

cds

Using Environment Variables in Common Data Service

Dynamics 365 now allows configuring of environment variables [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/common-data-service/environmentvariables] that makes storing and retrieving configuration data easy. This has the following advantages: * Better management of configuration data compared to hard coding and other approaches such as the need for a custom entity

usd

Troubleshooting Unified Service Desk Hang After Clicking Install

When recently installing Unified Service Desk, the installer just keeps hanging with the below blue screen and doesn't do anything. When looking at the Event Viewer there wasn't much information to identify what's causing the installer to hang. After looking up the documentation for

Using FetchXml/Web API to Query Data Between Timestamps(Minute part) in CDS

When working with data validation or some special cases we would need to query data between timestamps. Although we can use Advanced Find to build the query it doesn't allow us to provide the minute part in the query. This blog shows how you could accomplish this easily

powerautomate

Power Automate: Send Dynamics 365 Email Using Common Data Service

Power Automate comes with a default Mail connector that we can use to send Emails easily, this just requires us to have the email addresses along with the content of the email. But if we want to send an Email with a mix of both static email address which do

powerautomate

Power Automate: Get Distinct Count From Array/Collection

When working with Power Automate we might be limited by the functions [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/workflow-definition-language-functions-reference] that are available to us, that we have traditionally used in programming languages. Recently when working on a requirement that requires using distinct count of records for a certain property

canvasapp

Set the Text on the Text Controls in Canvas App

When working with Text controls in Canvas app, one common use case we often encounter is setting the value of the text in the control based on some event that occurred on a different control. This can be easily accomplished by using one of the below approaches * Set [https://docs.

ApplicationUser

Dynamics365 Application User Form is Missing

As a best practice Microsoft is recommending to use Server-to-Server Authentication or the OAuth for external applications to interact with D365. Once we create the Azure AD application for CRM, we have to create a user with the app id and client secret. To do that CRM has given a