Category: Dynamics 365

Custom Entity icons for the Unified Interface

So, getting icons for your custom entities was relatively simple. You just needed to find an icon that was relevant to the purpose of the entity and it would have to satisfy the following guidelines:

  • For classic web application, a 16×16 pixel image in .gif, .png or .jpg formats
  • For entity forms, a 32×32 pixels image in .ico format (later these could be in .gif, .png or .jpg format as per the 16×16 image)

Some sites which provide useful sources of royalty free images, at no cost with or without attribution are:

With the introduction of the Unified Interface, a new approach is now needed as the image needs to be in the scalable vector graphic (.svg) format which, as the name suggests, can scale itself to suit different sizes as required. The issue is that a lot of sites that provide icons don’t cater for .svg files as the method for creating them isn’t quite as straight forward as fixed size images.

After trying a few sites that claim to automatically convert from standard image formats to svg, I couldn’t find one that provided usable results. Eventually I discovered an online image editor that allows images (eg. .png, .jpg) to be loaded, edited if required, and exported to a .svg file. The editor is the Method Draw SVG Editor and can be found at https://editor.method.ac/

The Method Draw SVG Editor

Start by changing the canvas size in the top right corner. Double click on each number and change them to Width: 32 and Height: 32.

Once the canvas has been resized, go to File > Import Image… Load the image you want to convert, make any adjustments as required and then go to File > Same Image… to save the image to a .svg file.

Resized canvas with File menu open

Once you have all of your icons in .svg files, the XrmToolbox () has a great add-in called Iconator which allows you to easily upload the images to D365 CE and associated each one with the relevant custom entities.

Hopefully this helps in adding that bit of pizazz to your systems.

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Pricing Quick Reference Guide v2 released

I’ve released version 2 of my pricing quick reference guide for Microsoft Business Applications suite of products. They are only minor updates primarily on the capacity allowances thanks to feedback from Ben Thompson. I’ve also moved it to a different page on this site (ie. from /licensing to /guides).

Let me know if I haven’t done one for your currency and I’ll put one together pretty quickly.

They can be found at https://notjust365.com/guides/

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Automating Releases for D365 & Power Platform – Episode 5 Reference Data

In this video, we use the Configuration Migration Utility to define which reference data should be extracted by our Azure DevOps Pipelines to take our data into version control (Git) ready for deployment to a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement / Power Platform CDS instance.

The configuration tools can be downloaded via https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/powerapps/developer/common-data-service/download-tools-nuget

Your support by SUBSCRIBING to my YouTube channel is very much appreciated.

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Automating Releases for D365 & Power Platform – Episode 4 Portal Deployment

In this video, we explore CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) using Azure DevOps Pipelines to take our portal configuration into version control (Git), package it up and deploy it to a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement / Power Platform CDS instance.

To download the configuration file for the portal contents mentioned in the video, please refer to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/admin/migrate-portal-configuration

Your support by SUBSCRIBING to my YouTube channel is very much appreciated.

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Pricing Quick Reference Guide

I’ve compiled together the pricing and licensing restrictions of many of the Microsoft Business Application products into a single page quick reference guide as it makes things a lot simpler when having discussions with clients or putting together a quote.

I’ve also done different versions for various currencies. Let me know if I haven’t done one for your currency and I’ll put one together pretty quickly.

They can be found at https://notjust365.com/guides/

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Automating Releases for D365 & Power Platform – Episode 3 Solution Deployment

In this video, we explore CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) using Azure DevOps Pipelines to take our solution contents from version control (Git), package it up and deploy it to a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement & Power Platform CDS instance. We also look at how we can recall a solution from any point in time as the basis for our deployment.

To make things easier for you, below are the strings used to specify the source folder and 

Source Folder of Solution to Pack:
$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/Azure_Source/D365_Solutions/$(SolutionName)

Solution Output File  and  Solution Input File:
$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\$(SolutionName).zip

Your support by SUBSCRIBING to my YouTube channel is very much appreciated.

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Automating Releases for D365 & Power Platform – Episode 2 Version Control

In this video, we explore CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) using Azure DevOps Pipelines to copy our Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement & Power Platform solutions to version control (Git) so that we can a) see what has changed over time and b) recall a solution at any point in time that was captured.

In the video, a couple of copy/paste blocks were used. I’ve provided them below for easy reference.

Powershell Script:

$date=$(Get-Date -Format 'yyyyMMdd')
Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=CurrentDate]$date"
Write-Host "Set CurrentDate to $date"

Command Line:

echo Commiting all changes
git config user.email "justin@notjust365.com"
git config user.name "Automatic Build"
git checkout master
git add --all
git commit -m "Automatic solution commit $(CurrentDate)"

echo Push code to repository
git -c http.extraheader="AUTHORIZATION: bearer $(System.AccessToken)" push origin master

Your support by SUBSCRIBING to my YouTube channel is very much appreciated.

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I’m presenting about Oct 2019 licensing changes at this week’s D365 UG in Melbourne

Come along and join us for breakfast at the Microsoft Melbourne offices this Thursday 26th September 2019.

The folks from Sprinklr will be talking about their user experience platform. Nilhan will be giving some tips about embedding canvas apps in model driven apps. And finally I’ll be tackling the licensing changes across D365 and the Power Platform that are coming next week on October 1.

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XrmToolbox add-in: Themer

As part of doing a client presentation, it always makes a difference if you can add a little effort to personalise the experience for your customers.

Using themes within Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement or PowerApps model-driven app, you can add a custom logo to the top left corner and use the customer’s colors for the top banner, etc. The out of the box experience allows you to edit these things but you have to do a bit of manual work such as resizing the image to exact dimensions and setting each of the colors appropriately.

The other painful aspect is that this has to be done manually for each environment as themes are not part of a normal solution and cannot be exported any other way.

To deal with the above, I’ve created a plugin for the versatile XrmToolbox. Some of the functionality it provides is:

  • Color picker instead of having to enter hex codes for colors
  • Select a banner image and automatically have it resized correctly
  • Upload / download all theme settings/colors
  • Save / load theme settings to/from local disk

On top of these, there is a little Easter egg within the plugin which you can find out about in the video below.

Here is a demonstration video that shows you the features of the plugin and how they are used.

Please feel free to comment below if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvements in the plugin.

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