Living In Tech

Scribe has made it extremely easy to work with their API.  Currently, in my limited free time, I am working on a reusable C# library to send and receive data from Scribe's API.  Once it is completed for Version 1, I will list it to GitHub, so anyone can consume it and provide feedback on improvements.  There will be a fully built out wiki with how to consume the library with references to the Scribe API documentation.  Also there will be both TDD (Test Driven Development) and BDD (Behavior Driven Development) projects.  This way you can see examples of how to consume the library as well as what I tested before release.  If you are not familiar with BDD, I recommend you check out my blog post in my Dynamics 365 blog , that gives a high level overview of it. Anyways, back to what this post is about.  While working on the library, I came across one small issue around TLS 1.2 and making sure that the web request uses it.  Luckily, this is really ea...

When we are designing a new system, one of the tools we use is user stories.  User stories allow us to define what the feature should do from the view point of the end user.  This way we take a user centered approach to designing the system.  These are also used as part of our functional testing when writing code (plugin, JavaScript, etc.) to make sure what was written matches the user story.  Even if we use Test Driven Development (TDD) we could easily miss some of the key functions within the feature and need to go back to our code to make changes and then restart our testing process.  This can be time consuming.  Wouldn't it be better to start our testing off with the user story? With advancements in frameworks and technology we now have the capability to write test scripts directly from the user story using SpecFlow .  Taking this approach is known as Behavior Driven Development (BDD) because we are testing the users interactions instead of just ...

On April 6th, 2018 Scribe released an update to SCRIBE Online.  You can read all the details of the changes  here .  In this post about the update, I want to go over some of the stuff I have seen while working with this new update, and it's an AMAZING update to the platform.  Here are my highlights: Performance  -  There does appear to be improvement to how well the platform functions in Chrome (Chrome is my primary browser).  Previously, I did have some performance issues in Chrome and on larger map's I would have to dump my cache or exit chrome and re-launch to speed it back up again (not always the case, but did need done from time to rime).  This appears to be eliminated for me.  I can clearly see marked improvements when it comes to lag and performance.  *See bullet point 4 under Platform which is under Enhancements. Agent Request Logs  - Users now have the ability to request the logs from the agent without logging i...

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...