Chapter 1, No Code Extensions, starts by covering some of the fundamental entity modeling techniques you could use when configuring your Dynamics 365 instance. This chapter also lightly touches on some of the point-and-click configuration capabilities of the platform, such as workflows, actions, rollup and calculated fields, and others.

Chapter 2, Client-Side Extensions, delves straight into the client-side development capabilities of the platform. It covers best practice reusability techniques, Web API queries, debugging walkthroughs, and advanced web resource building using frameworks such as AngularJS.

Chapter 3, SDK Enterprise Capabilities, lets you take a look inside the SDK for some valuable gems. Ranging from tools, to new Dynamics 365 features, to extensions that improve your productivity, this chapter is essential when working on large-scale enterprise solutions.

Chapter 4, Server-Side Extensions, guides you through the server-side customization's realm. Core to this book, this chapter deals with different ways of setting up your environment to build custom plugins, workflows, and activities. This chapter also walks you through server-side debugging techniques for online as well as on-premises Dynamics 365 implementations.

Chapter 5, External Integration, gives you a glimpse into different integration patterns. Using out-of-the-box interfaces or third-party tools, this chapter covers a few typical scenarios you might face in real life when integrating from and to Dynamics 365 whilst using different programming languages.

Chapter 6, Enhancing Your Code, builds on the previously discussed code extensions and introduces best practices and code structures to render your extensions cleaner and more maintainable--an essential practice when building large-scale solutions. Improved code structures further enable different types of unit testing possibilities that are also covered in this chapter. This chapter also briefly touches upon plugin profiling, building read audits, and setting up Cross Origin Resource Sharing with Dynamics 365 online.

Chapter 7, Security, covers core non-functional capabilities of the platform. With its comprehensive security capabilities, this chapter demonstrates different modeling techniques and features that will enhance your platform's security, such as team structures, field-level security, and encryption, along with their performance implications.

Chapter 8, DevOps, deals with the topics of source control integration and deployments by discussing solution structuring techniques, patching, automation, and release orchestration integration with third-party tools. This chapter's smaller recipes form the bigger picture for a complete continuous integration pipeline.

Chapter 9, Dynamics 365 Extensions, takes you beyond Dynamics CRM and covers the latest enhancements introduced with the Dynamics 365 rebranding. Dynamics 365 apps, AppSource, and the common data services with Flow are among the topics discussed in this chapter.

Appendix A, Architectural Views, is written in a solution architecture document format with different views to cater for different stakeholders. It covers a business view, a logical view, a deployment view, and a collection of non-functional requirement controls.

Appendix B, Dynamics 365, finishes off this book by talking about the significance of the Dynamics 365 release compared to previous Dynamics CRM releases, and ends the book with a brief conclusion.

All recipes in this book will require a Microsoft Dynamics 365 instance up and running. Most recipes are targeted at the online version, with a good portion also applicable to on-premises instances.

It is highly recommended that you use a non-production instance to try the recipes. Alternatively, a trial version can be requested from https://trials.dynamics.com/CustomerEngagement/ChangeSignup/.

Code customization requires Microsoft Visual Studio to facilitate the development. At the time of writing, the most compatible version is Visual Studio 2015. Some of the recipes will also require the Dynamics 365 SDK.

Some recipes require third-party products and tools that need to be installed. Most offer a free trial or a free edition, as described in their respective recipes.

This book is aimed at a wide audience. Mainly focused on people looking at extending Dynamics 365, it can also be used by executives and influencers to understand the platform’s capabilities and versatility.

New or seasoned developers, administrators, consultants, and power users who want to learn about best practices when extending Dynamics 365 for enterprises will benefit the most from this book. The wide target audience is the reason for the range of different topic complexity covered in this book, ranging from no code configuration to complex coding customization.

A basic understanding of the Dynamics CRM/365 platform, as well as some basic development skills, are recommended, but not necessary.

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Create a public business logic class called UpdateEmailLogic under a BusinessLogic folder."

A block of code is set as follows:

packtNs.graduateForm = packtNs.graduateForm || {}; 
packtNs.graduateForm.loadEvent = function(){ 
  Xrm.Page.getAttribute("packt_supervisor").addOnChange(
  populateWithTodaysDate); 
} 

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

# cp /usr/src/asterisk-addons/configs/cdr_mysql.conf.sample     /etc/asterisk/cdr_mysql.conf

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Navigate to Settings | Solutions | Packt."

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

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