Living In Tech

One of the benefits of working with Scribe Online is how easy they make it to create connectors if one does not exist.  In this blog post we are going to look at how to get setup, if this is the first time you have made a connector for Scribe Online.  But, before we get into that, we should first make sure that a connector doesn't already exist that can handle what we need. We can do this by looking in the Scribe Online Marketplace .  Still not seeing what you need?  Reach out to Scribe directly or ask in the Scribe forums if a connector exists for an application.  There are instances where a connector exists but is not listed in the marketplace.  An example of this is for a client that I built a connector for.  They didn't want to setup a system to run the on-premise agent, so they asked me to set up the connector to run on Scribe's cloud agent.  This meant that I had to submit the connector to Scribe for validation.  Once published the co...

Recently, while working on a data migration task, I had a requirement to transform data stored in a string delimited by ";" and parse it to create multiple line items in the target systems.  Here is an example as a visual: Source: productA, productB, productC, productD... Target: productA ProductB ProductC ProductD ... In the target system, each product would be a line item on an opportunity.  In the source system this was all listed in a text box as a string and delimited by ";".  Also the cell where this data was in the source could be null, have one item, ten items, fifty items, etc.  So I needed a way to loop through this. To set this up I needed to use three connectors, source, target, and Scribe Labs - Variables .  Below is an image of the section of the mapping where I achieved what I needed to happen: If Product To Add - This is the null handler.  If the field where the products are listed in the source is null, then we skip adding a...

I am pleased to announce that this week, I published an update to my XrmToolBox Bulk Attachment Manager plugin.  For those that are not aware my plugin allows a user to download note attachments, email attachments, or both from Dynamics CRM. This update includes bug fixes and a major enhancement that was requested by a user.  The enhancement is the ability to create a report of attachments in the system.  To do this, follow these steps: In Step One, choose if you want a report on notes, emails or both. In Step Two, choose "Report Only". Step Three, click on "Run". You will see the table populate with information.  Once it is done, click on export and you will be provided with a pipe delimited ("|") .csv file with the data in the table.  You can take this to quickly find attachments you are interested in.  With the note GUIDs from the export you can provide them as a filtered down list, so you only export those attachments using the "Specific...

Today I have published version 2018.2.2.7 of my XrmToolBox plugin.  The purpose of this plugin is to make it easy to download and backup attachments in CRM.  This release is a major release as it is the first built version with all pieces working.  The first version  only had note downloads working. Overview of Plugin: Current Version: 2018.2.2.7 Purpose: Download Attachments and E-Mail attachments GitHub Link . GitHub Wiki Link . Nuget Package Link . How To Use The Tool: Launch XRMToolBox. Connect to organization. Step 1, choose what you want to download. (Once a choice is made, Step 2 becomes usable) Notes - Download attachments from note entity. E-Mail - Download attachments from emails. Both - Downloads attachments from notes and emails entities. Step 2, choose if you want to download all attachments in the system or specific attachments.   All Attachments - This will search the chosen entity to find all records that have a...

When we are setting up CRM Portals to allow customers to update their information, open cases, fill out an applications, etc. We want to make sure that we are validating their input before it is committed to CRM.  This way we ensure that our data is clean and meaningful to us and the customer. CRM Portals already has a lot validation checks built into it. But, on occasion we need to add our own.  To do this we will use JavaScript to run the validation and also to output a message to the user to tell them there is an issue they need to fix. Before we can do any JavaScript, we need to check and see if we are using JavaScript on an Entity Form or Web Page.  This is because the JavaScript, while similar, will be different.  First, we will go over the JavaScript for Entity Forms.  Then, we will go over the JavaScript for Web Pages.  Finally, we will look at the notification JavaScript. Entity Form: if (window.jQuery) { (function ($) { if ...

In my SCRIBE Online blog , I wrote about how we can use SCRIBE Online in Microsoft Teams.  In this post I am going to talk about how we can use Microsoft Dynamics 365 in Microsoft Teams.  For those that might not be familiar with Microsoft Teams, it was released by Microsoft in 2017 to help increase communication and productivity within Teams.  The best part about Microsoft Teams is it is 100% FREE.  Click here to download Microsoft Teams .  Since it's release there have be many updates and added connectors, that increase its functionality and usability. To leverage Microsoft Dynamics 365 within Microsoft Teams we can use either the Website Tab or the Dynamics 365 Connector.  First we will start with how to add the Website Tab. In you team, choose the channel you want to add the tab too. Click the "+" in the channel you have chosen and you will get a pop-up Click on "Website" There will be a pop-up asking to input the tab name and URL.  At this ...

  Recently while creating map's for a data migration from a legacy system to Microsoft Dynamics 365 using SCRIBE Online, I found that I needed to bring in Opportunities.  Anyone that has worked with CRM for a time, know's that migrating closed opportunities into CRM can be a bit of a pain.  I was having one issue in particular when bring this data in, the actual close date was being set to the day the record was migrated into CRM.  This is because of how CRM handles opportunities when they are closed. Here is what I was doing: I performed all my look ups first to get the associated account and contact from CRM. I created the opportunity with the closed status of won or lost (see links below for website to get the standard values for reference). This makes the opportunity as read only (which I expected to have happen.  But, the actual close date was set for the day the record was created.  Even though I provided a date in the actual close dat...