Microsoft Dynamics 365 Extensions Cookbook

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Extensions Cookbook

Overview of this book

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a powerful tool. It has many unique features that empower organisations to bridge common business challenges and technology pitfalls that would usually hinder the adoption of a CRM solution. This book sets out to enable you to harness the power of Dynamics 365 and cater to your unique circumstances. We start this book with a no-code configuration chapter and explain the schema, fields, and forms modeling techniques. We then move on to server-side and client-side custom code extensions. Next, you will see how best to integrate Dynamics 365 in a DevOps pipeline to package and deploy your extensions to the various SDLC environments. This book also covers modern libraries and integration patterns that can be used with Dynamics 365 (Angular, 3 tiers, and many others). Finally, we end by highlighting some of the powerful extensions available. Throughout we explain a range of design patterns and techniques that can be used to enhance your code quality; the aim is that you will learn to write enterprise-scale quality code.

Title Page

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Customer Feedback

Preface

Free Chapter

No Code Extensions

Introduction

Modeling denormalized entities

Modeling normalized entities with a common parent

Modeling independent normalized entities

Using a Business Rule to show and hide attributes

Building a configurable e-mail notification workflow

Building your first action

Setting up the rollup fields

Setting up calculated fields

Duplicate detection using alternate keys

Client-Side Extensions

Introduction

Creating your first JavaScript function

Wiring your event programmatically

Writing reusable JavaScript functions

Querying 365 data using the Web API endpoint

Querying the 365 metadata services

Building a custom UI using AngularJS

Debugging your JavaScript with Edge

Debugging your JavaScript with Chrome

Unit testing your JavaScript

Customizing the Ribbon

SDK Enterprise Capabilities

Introduction

Server-side concurrency control

Client-side concurrency control

Executing a request within a transaction

Batch requests

Staging data imports

Creating early bound entity classes

Extending CrmSvcUtil with filtering

Extending CrmSvcUtil to generate option-sets enum

Migrating configuration across instances using the CRM configuration migration tool

Server-Side Extensions

Introduction

Creating a Visual Studio solution for Dynamics 365 customization

Creating a solution using the Dynamics CRM Developer Toolkit template

Creating a LINQ data access layer

Creating your first plugin

Impersonate another user when running your plugin

Creating your first custom workflow activity

Creating your first custom action

Deploying your customization using the plugin registration tool

Debugging your plugin in Dynamics 365 on-premise

Debugging your plugin in Dynamics 365 online

External Integration

Introduction

Connecting to Dynamics 365 from other systems using .NET

Connecting to Dynamics 365 from other systems using OData (Java)

Retrieving data from external resources using external libraries

Connecting to Dynamics 365 using web applications

Running Azure scheduled tasks

Setting up an Azure Service Bus endpoint

Building near real-time integration with Azure Service Bus

Consuming messages from an Azure Service Bus

Running no code scheduled synchronization using Scribe

Integrating with SSIS using KingswaySoft

Enhancing Your Code

Introduction

Refactoring your plugin using a three-layer pattern

Replacing your LINQ data access layer with QueryExpressions

Logging error from your customization

Converting your plugin into a custom workflow activity

Unit testing your plugin business logic

Unit testing your plugin with an in-memory context

Integration testing your plugin end-to-end

Profiling your plugin

Build a generic read audit plugin

Using Cross-Origin Resource Sharing with CRM Online

Security

Introduction

Building cumulative security roles

Configuring business unit hierarchies

Configuring access based on hierarchical positions

Configuring and assigning field-level security

Setting up teams and sharing

Setting up Access Teams

Encrypting data at rest to meet the FIPS 140-2 standard

Managing your Dynamics 365 online SQL TDE encryption key

DevOps

Introduction

Exporting Dynamics 365 solutions using PowerShell

Deploying solutions using PowerShell

Building a solution hierarchy

Patching a solution

Staging a solution

Using SolutionPackager to save solutions in source control

Packaging your solution with configuration data using PackageDeployer

Triggering builds on solution version increments

Integrating your deployment cycles with Octopus Deploy

Dynamics 365 Extensions

Introduction

Dynamics 365 applications

Dynamics 365 Common Data Services

Building a Dynamics 365 PowerApp

Using Flow to move data between CDS and Dynamics 365

Installing a solution from AppSource

Using the Data Export Service solution for data replication

Building Power BI dashboards from CRM data

Architectural Views

Business view

Logical view

Deployment view

Non-functional requirements

Dynamics 365

Customer Reviews

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Introduction

One of the main strengths of the Dynamics 365 platform is its capability to easily integrate with other systems. Integration is an appealing feature that makes the platform a true enterprise contender. Most Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365 implementations I have worked on in the public sector require a degree of integration with another system. Portals, batch processing, and data synchronization are some of the typical integration examples.

With integration comes challenges. Some systems are only available on-premise, whereas others are exposed to the public but have strict security restrictions.

In this chapter we will look at a few design patterns that address different scenarios. We will target Dynamics 365 online however, most patterns are also applicable to Dynamics 365 on-premise or IFD instances.

We will start with the client/server pattern where a fat client application (.NET or Java) connects to Dynamics 365 as its backend, as depicted in the following diagram. The arrows...

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Extensions Cookbook

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Extensions Cookbook

Overview of this book

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Introduction