Understanding Dual Write in Dynamics 365: A seamless data integration approach

New to dual write? Here's where you should start from. This isn't a deep-dive into this new capability from Microsoft, but the first step for you to understand the key differences between noth Dynamics 365 CE and F&O and why was this required.

What is Dual Write?

Dual Write is an out-of-the-box infrastructure that ensures data consistency between customer engagement apps (CE) and finance and operations (F&O) apps.

Customer engagement apps, such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service, focus on managing customer relationships, sales, and marketing interactions. These are process driven and can tailor to your customer's needs and business processes.

On the other hand, finance and operations apps, like Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, handle back-office functions such as financial transactions, inventory, and supply chain operations. These are more rigid applications because they fulfil a certain purpose and cannot be customized to the extent that a front-office app can be.

Historically, these two areas operated in silos, leading to data duplication and inefficiencies. Dual Write was introduced to bridge this gap, ensuring real-time data flow between the front office and back office, enabling businesses to operate with a unified and accurate data set across departments.

Key Benefits of Dual Write

• Seamless Data Synchronization – Ensures that customer, product, and financial data remain consistent across systems.
• Enhanced Business Processes – Provides a unified experience across sales, customer service, supply chain, and financial management.
• Real-Time Updates – Improves decision-making by reducing latency in data updates.
• Reduced Customization Efforts – Eliminates the need for complex custom integrations.
• Improved Customer Experience – Ensures that all teams have access to up-to-date customer information, leading to better service.

Use Cases of Dual Write

• Customer Data Management: Keep customer records synchronized between CRM (D365 CE) and ERP (D365 F&O), ensuring all departments have access to accurate information.
• Product and Pricing Updates: Synchronize product catalogs and pricing details across sales, e-commerce, and finance platforms.
• Order Processing & Invoicing: Automatically sync order details and financial transactions across systems to streamline the order-to-cash cycle.
• Inventory & Supply Chain Management: Ensure accurate stock levels, purchase orders, and logistics data across finance and operations teams.

Technical Considerations

• Customization and Extensibility: Dual Write supports custom tables and extensions, allowing businesses to tailor integrations to their needs.
• Data Security & Compliance: Ensure that data policies and governance are in place to comply with industry regulations.
• Performance Monitoring: Regular monitoring and performance tuning can help prevent sync failures and maintain optimal system performance.
• Error Handling & Troubleshooting: Implement robust error logging and resolution mechanisms to address data conflicts or sync issues.

In conclusion, I see this as a game-changer for businesses using Dynamics 365. By using this organizations can achieve real-time data consistency and reduce costs. As companies adopt digital transformation strategies, dual write becomes a key enabler for a unified and connected enterprise.

Microsoft Planner | Comments not visible in Planner [SOLVED]

A little something I noticed while using Microsoft Planner. Thought to bring it up.

I recently created a plan and started updating tasks under the plan. Now I wanted to comment certain updates on the tasks and noticed there was no comments section in the task.

This got me thinking, something that I was able to do earlier seems to be missing now.

When we create a Plan using Microsoft Planner, i.e., navigating to https://planner.cloud.microsoft/, and create a new task under the plan, the comments section isn't visible.

However, when you create a Team / Channel in MS Teams and create a plan under the Team, now you can add comments to the task.

Just a little something that you might want to keep in mind if you want to keep ongoing conversations around a task between team members.

D365CE | Alternative to Input Mask PCF control

It's been quite a while since the input mask PCF control has been retired in Dynamics 365 CE.

I recently had to implement a mask on phone number fields and was disappointed to learn that Microsoft had retired the control and hasn't offered any alternatives.

So I had to look for other options and I came across this Check Phone Number PCF control which I found it to be very comprehensive. You can read the full documentation on github.

Steps and options to configure

• Once you download and import the solution, you can select the field on which you want to enable the component.
• The Output format helps you transform to the following:
• International: +91 87855 85545
• National: 87855 85545
• E164: +918785585545

Note: I prefer the E164 format. Sure it isn't readable, but it is easier during search because it is impossible to remember the correct format for all the country codes. Having said that, it depends if you're implementing this for only a particular country, then an International or National format could work better for you.

• You can setup the default country code. When you enter the number without any code, a default country code is automatically setup.
• You can also setup a list of allowed and excluded country codes. To setup the allowed country codes, you can follow the list here or check the screenshot for an example: ISO 3166 (alpha 2) country codes needs to be used.
• You can also specify whether you want to phone call button to be shown and which app must be the default calling app.

Here are some sample numbers I have entered for UAE, Italy and India.

Hope this helps!

All about Addresses in Dynamics 365

We had a requirement regarding addresses that had to be addressed in Dynamics 365 CE. I thought to share it.

Requirements

• To be able to select the following fields as a dropdown, preferably a lookup. Fields: District, City and Country because the District and City list may continue to expand in the future.
• To be able to add multiple addresses against the Account. 2 or more.
• In case we need to update an address, there must be a provision in the Address table to select the District, City and Country as well. i.e., these fields must be available in the Address table as lookup fields.

These requirements sound simple to implement, however the address entity lacks flexibility due to which we had to think of a workaround.

Things I have learnt about Addresses

1. On the Account we can add maximum 2 addresses. Address 1 and Address 2. Let's call this embedded address. If we need to add a 3rd address related to an account, we need to create a new address record (in the related system Address table).
2. While the Country and State fields are available, these are text fields in the embedded address and related system address table.
3. The related address table is non-customizable. We cannot add additional lookup fields in that entity.
4. When an Account or Contact record is created, blank Address records are automatically created and linked to the Account (or Contact). These are associated with the embedded address records and are numbered as "addressnumber" 1 and 2. addressnumber 1 represents invoice address and 2 represents delivery address by default.
5. The system Address tables don't have lookup to Account or Contact. The relationship is identified by 2 fields namely, "objecttypecode" and "parentid". objecttypecode recoginzes if this related address is linked to "Account" or "Contact" and parentid is the actual GUID value of the Account or Contact.

Workaround to address the limitations

Since the system Address entity is linked and tightly integrated in Dynamics 365 CE, we couldn't replace the system Address table with new custom Address table. I am saying this because, system Address primarily linked to Account and Contact, but when we update the address on Lead and qualify it, the embedded Address and correspondingly the system Address records are also updated. Also, indirectly linked with Opportunities, Quotes and beyond. If you're considering dual write integration with Dynamics 365 F&O, these are again tightly integrated there.

Having analyzed this, we went ahead with a custom Address entity but ensured we are keeping the system Address entity records in sync as well.

What did we do?

1. We created 3 custom lookup fields called District, City and Country on the Lead, Account and Contact tables for easy data entry from users perspective. When the user selects these fields, we populate the OOB District, State and Country text fields and those are automatically updated in the related system address records.
2. We introduced a custom address entity and ensured the user uses this for their data entry and viewing. When the user updates the embedded address, we also need to create custom address records related to Account.
3. When the custom address records are updated, we need to update the related system address entity records.
4. When a new custom address is created, we create a related system address entity record and link it with the respect Account by updating the objecttypecode and parentid.
5. When the custom address is deleted, we need to also delete the related system address record and update the embedded addresses if the addressnumber matches. By update I mean we had to clear the values in the embedded address fields on the Account record.
6. For the most part we can treat system Addresses as a target only, as they are a copy of the custom Address entity data. We can set up a business process and data entry process in such a way that system addresses are not updated, however, if some process we don’t know about updates a system Address, it needs to get reflected up to the custom Address as well.

Hope that helps!

D365 CE | Identify and clean up storage space

Accumulation of data over time can lead to storage issues that in turn impacts system performance in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE). If you're receiving constant notifications, it means you are reaching the capacity limits or already over capacity.

Here's how you can analyze the database capacity usage and steps you can follow to clean up the data using Power Platform, Bulk Record Deletion and Advanced Find.

Check Database Capacity

Here are the steps:

• To check database capacity navigate to Power Platform Admin Center.
• Click on Resources > Capacity. This takes you to the summary page that shows you the overall database usage and percentage available / over. In this case you can see that the Log is much over capacity. So let's see what do these Logs contain.

• If you click on Dataverse located across  the page as a tab next to Summary, you can see all the Environments and usage based on area like Database, File or Log storage.
• Click on the chart icon to see the details.

• Here you can see based on the area and tables that are occupying the most storage. In the below image you can see how the Log usage for table AuditBase has been growing exponentially.

So let's delete the Audit Logs and follow other methods to delete data from specific tables.

Free up storage capacity

• To do so, navigate to Power Platform Admin Center and click on the Environments.
• Select the Environment for which we need to delete the audit logs.

• Select Delete Audit Logs. You can also setup how long you want to retain the logs for for automatic ongoing maintenance.

• A window will pop-up from the right where one can select appropriate action.

Note: The system can take up to 24 hours to update storage information. It is recommended to wait up to 24 hours and monitor your storage.

This is one of the methods you can use to free up storage space.

• Similarly you can delete PluginTraceLogs (Advanced Settings > Settings > PlugIn Trace Logs).
• WorkflowBase

• Notes with attachments.

Hope this helps!