What’s new? Dynamics 365 Marketing features wave 1 2022
Amey Holden Amey Holden

What’s new? Dynamics 365 Marketing features wave 1 2022

The release notes for Dynamics 365 Wave 1 2022 have arrived! Me and the wonderful Megan V Walker talk through the new proposed features coming to Dynamics 365 Marketing.

A summary of what each feature means, according to my own interpretations/hopes/dreams/despairs. Plus some suggestions on how they could be useful or what excites me most about it.

Read More
Sync Dataverse Email Attachments to SharePoint using Power Automate

Sync Dataverse Email Attachments to SharePoint using Power Automate

When you ‘set regarding’ an email in The Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, an email record will be created in Dataverse, linked to the relevant record(s) then any attachments are created as files in Dataverse. Storing files in Dataverse is not often a good idea. Instead, you can automatically upload these files into the relevant SharePoint folder the document is ‘regarding’

Read More
Set Dataverse Choices in Power Automate  dynamically - without a switch statement!

Set Dataverse Choices in Power Automate dynamically - without a switch statement!

Setting the value of a Dataverse choice option set or choices multi-select option set column field in Power Automate can be a little tricky. Flow expects either a static choice or the choice ‘Value’ rather than the ‘Label’. Smaller choices work ok with a switch statement but what about when your choice has 10+ choices? Here is a way to avoid cumbersome switch statements to handle larger choice lists.

Read More
Which web page was my Dynamics 365 Marketing form submitted from?
JavaScript, Dynamics 365 Marketing Amey Holden JavaScript, Dynamics 365 Marketing Amey Holden

Which web page was my Dynamics 365 Marketing form submitted from?

How to use the same dynamics 365 marketing embedded form on multiple pages in your website, and being able to know which web page the form was submitted from.

For example you have a general enquiry form which is a request for more details, you embed this on multiple pages about various services you offer. It is valuable to know which service the enquiry is about, without relying on the customers message to tell you or having to create different forms for each page with a hidden field set to a default value.

Read More
How to use PCF controls in Model-driven Power Apps and Dynamics 365
Amey Holden Amey Holden

How to use PCF controls in Model-driven Power Apps and Dynamics 365

PCF components and custom controls let you transform your apps into a much more visually enhanced experience. But how do you use them? I will show your step-by-step how to set up a custom control to directly search the Australian Business Register for a businesses details including ABN number, GST Resgistration, Entity Type and much more. Without leaving your app!

You can use it on any table (custom or out of the box), so long as you have a single line of text column to configure it to.

Read More
Mapping Dynamics 365 Marketing Form Submissions to Custom Tables with Power Automate

Mapping Dynamics 365 Marketing Form Submissions to Custom Tables with Power Automate

Marketing forms in Dynamics 365 are great for creating and updating contact and/or lead records, but not much else. The documented way to handle form submissions beyond lead or contact is to build a classic workflow but that in itself is very restrictive. By moving the automation into a Power Automate flow it opens up many more doors in terms of generation submission reports, notifications and sophisticated record manipulation that cannot be achieved with classic workflows alone.

Read More
Document Templates and Rich Text Controls

Document Templates and Rich Text Controls

Document Templates and Rich Text Component Controls are both excellent features of Dynamics 365/Model-Driven Power Apps, but they do not work well together at all. The solution isn’t perfect but by combining some Power Automate flow magic and a simple Word Document setting you can restore some slight harmony between the features.

PS. don’t waste your time trying to add/remove line breaks in Power Automate

Read More
Monitor Data Import Jobs in Model-driven Apps
Amey Holden Amey Holden

Monitor Data Import Jobs in Model-driven Apps

The data import experience in the unified interface is a million times better than it ever used to be. But if you forget to click on the ‘Track Progress’ button, its a bit of a faff to get back to monitor your data import jobs. You have to go via advanced settings - a place most users should never have to go. Why not add it to the sitemap of your model-driven app instead?

Read More
Set Customer Voice Survey Variables using Dynamics 365 Marketing

Set Customer Voice Survey Variables using Dynamics 365 Marketing

Sending Dynamics 365 Customer Voice surveys via Dynamics 365 Marketing is possible today already. Unfortunately it is not possible to set any survey variables (except first name and last name which is taken from the contact record)… until now!

This post is going to be using the ‘Real-Time Marketing’ functionality of Dynamics 365 Marketing to send personalised customer voice surveys, with all the variables you could ever dream of!

Read More
Create custom Dataverse triggers for Dynamics 365 Marketing - without a developer!

Create custom Dataverse triggers for Dynamics 365 Marketing - without a developer!

Real-time marketing comes with a bunch of pre built triggers which come with the installation such as ‘Contact Created’ and ‘Lead Created’ but obviously none for my custom tables. How to create your own real-time Dynamics Marketing customs triggers based on activity/data in Dataverse - without a developer!

Read More
Track and Process Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

Track and Process Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

Every customer application is unique, the additional evidence & supporting documents they need to provide depends on how they answer the questions. We can use Power Automate to send specific and personalised directions on what they need to do next after submitting an application.

Linking a customer voice response back to its originating invitation and related enquiry so that we can track all activities in one place. Ensuring any user can clearly see what is/was required and help move the application process along.

Read More
Sending Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

Sending Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

This post will focus on sending a personalised, uniquely identifiable application form to a potential customer with dynamically generated email content from the simple click of a button of a business process flow. Customer Voice and Power Automate are a serious work force when combined!

Read More
Handling ‘Run Flow’ failures from a business process flow

Handling ‘Run Flow’ failures from a business process flow

Current limitations mean you cannot use business rules on the ‘Run Flow’ button on the business process flow, so its entirely possible for a user to run the flow when the scenario is going to cause silent failure in the background. Lets look at how to mark a business process flow step as failed, so you can handle flow run failures - gracefully and informatively, in a user friendly manner!

Read More
Make the Activity Timeline Control Useful in Model-Driven Power Apps

Make the Activity Timeline Control Useful in Model-Driven Power Apps

The Activity Timeline you see in Model-driven Power Apps & Dynamics 365 is actually a huge awesome PCF control called ‘Timeline Control’. It has a massive range of configurable options available now from the new solution explorer. These are my top four highlights - Customising activity cards, Hiding the blobby things (aka ‘Persona with Initials’), cleaning up the timeline to speed up the load time and allowing/preventing creation from the timeline.

Read More
Custom Data Restrictions in Customer Voice
Customer Voice Amey Holden Customer Voice Amey Holden

Custom Data Restrictions in Customer Voice

Did you know it is possible to add restrictions to what type of text you respond with in a Customer Voice survey? You can restrict their answers to be a number, an email address, or a special string in a predefined format (based on a specific ‘regular expression’ AKA RegEx) such as a passport number. Along with a customised error message to explain what the correct format is.

Fun Fact: RegEx has been around since 1951!

Read More