Category Archives: CRM 2016 Update 1
An OptionSet may not be a Picklist
An OptionSet may not be a Picklist, but a Picklist is always an OptionSet.
This is something I had to consider last week to fix an issue within the Dynamics Custom Emails solution and handle State and Status attributes correctly.
The issue was caused by an unexpected cast from StatusAttributeMetadata to PicklistAttributeMetadata.
Both classes inherits from EnumAttributeMetadata, which represents an OptionSetValue.
When you are working with data, like using IOrganizationService to retrieve some records, the attribute type for one of those records could be an OptionSetValue. If you then retrieve the corresponding metadata (e.g. RetrieveAttributeRequest), this OptionSetValue could be multiple attribute types: a Picklist, an EntityName, a State or a Status.
The following entity diagram shows you the same. These classes are part of the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.dll assembly.
Please notice the issue has been resolved in the new Github solution as part of the latest release 8.2.0.2
Getting ready for Summit EMEA 2018 Dublin
Time flies and suddenly 2018 will be there, when the next Summit EMEA will take place in Dublin from 24th to the 26th of April.
During the Summit EMEA, multiple users groups will participate in the conference and offer several events including presentations, essential peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges, product insight forums, and networking opportunities.
My main focus will be on the D365UG|CRMUG user group . This week we have had our first committee meeting to discuss the agenda structure and how the sessions are going to be organised, very exciting… 🙂
If you would like to be a speaker, watch this space because there will be a call for papers very soon.
I’ll keep on posting any news.
Ramon.
Dynamics Custom Emails migrated to Github
Few years ago, I started a project in Codeplex called “Dynamics CRM Custom Emails“, which allows you to send emails from a Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM process (e.g. workflow, action) based on an Email Template. Additionally, these emails can contain dynamic values for any entity (out-of-the-box or custom) and any type of attribute (e.g. lookup, option set, currency, etc).
Today this project got more than 3500 downloads and every day there are still several ones. Since Codeplex is going to die very soon, I have decided to update it and migrate it to Github.
So the old project URL https://crmcustomemails.codeplex.com has been now replaced by https://github.com/rtebar/dynamics-custom-emails
Apart from just migrating the project from one place to the other, I have also updated it to the latest Dynamics 365 version.
There are some open issues in Codeplex that I would like to review, so I will try to do it before Codeplex closes and reflect them in the new Github project. I would like to thank you those guys who have collaborated and provide their feedback.
For those who has never seen this project, I would like to show you a quick example with some screenshots.
Let’s say we had the following Email Template:
We could then produce an email like this:
These would be done by a Dynamics workflow like this one:
This workflow will use the custom workflow activity provided by this solution. You can then specify the corresponding context parameters:
You will find more documentation in the Github project site:
https://github.com/rtebar/dynamics-custom-emails
Enjoy it!
Too many active business process flows
Have you seen that message before on your Microsoft Dynamics CRM organisation?
You may have if you have tried to activate more than 10 business processes at the same time for the same entity.
This is a limitation by design which is well-known and described on the Microsoft technical documentation, have a look at the following article.
This limitation can be changed using the organisation property Organization.MaximumActiveBusinessProcessFlowsAllowedPerEntity. The easiest way to to change this attribute is using the following tool: Dynamics CRM Organization Settings Editor (OrgDBOrgSettings)
And now, you may be thinking: “why on earth would you do that??”
If your CRM deployment is heavily used, some core entities (e.g. Case, Opportunity) may be used intensively on different processes across an organisation.
Note: the current CRM version I’m using is: (8.1.0.369) (DB 8.1.0.369)
New Dynamics CRM Email Signatures
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Update 1 brings Email Signatures as an out of the box functionality. They can be used on Users or Queues (based on Teams).
Create a new email and you will see a new icon on the email designer to insert signatures:
To create more signatures, go to Personal Settings or, as an admin, Administration => Templates section.
Personal Settings:
Administration => Templates:
Notice Email Signatures is a new entity and it is part of the security roles. So, for instance, if the Customer Service Team requires to use Email Signatures, they should have access to the Email Signature Entity. See below an example security role:
Note: My current on-line build version is : 8.1.0.362 – DB 8.1.0.359
You can find more information in the following Microsoft CRM article:
