Every time a document is created in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a corresponding temp is created by the system. This step consumes a lot of database storage. This article provides step by step instructions on how to

A) find the correct temporary data files and how to
B) create a workflow that purges the temporary data files automatically

A) How to find the correct temporary data files

Step 1
Click on the [Advanced find]-button in order to open the Advanced find.

Figure 1: Open Advanced Find

 

Step 2
Open the Drop-Down-Menu next to the Look for:-field and select
MSCRM-ADDONS.com User/Temp Settings.
Click on the blue and underlined Select-fields in order to modify your search options equal to figure 2. Please notice that these are OR-criteria. 

Figure 2: Specify criteria  

Please select the following criteria (combine with OR-statement):

Name begins with AM_Doc
Name Equals DCPConcatenatedDocument
Name Equals SharePoint Doc converted
Name Equals SharePoint Template 
Name Equals DCPSaveToSharePoint 
Value Begins With print:?id=
Value Begins With fetch:<fetch
Value Begins With <DSSetting

Step 3 
Click on the [Results]-button in the Advanced Find-tab and…

Figure 3: Get results

 

Step 4
… be prepared to receive your results. Now you have two options. You can manage your temp data manually every day (which could be a little exhausting) or you create a workflow (which is explained below in part B)). 

B) How to create a workflow that purges the temporary data files automatically

Step 1
Open the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Settings and click on Data Management in the extension.

Figure 4: Open Data Management

 

Step 2
Please click on Bulk Record Deletion in the next window that opens.

Figure 5: Open Bulk Record Deletion

Step 3
Click on the [New]-button in the left upper corner.

Figure 6: Create new bulk record deletion

Step 4
The workflow wizard window opens. Click on the [Next]-button in order to proceed:

Figure 7: Workflow wizard

 

The wizard helps you to define your deletion criteria for your workflow. Open the Drop-Down-Menu next to the Look for-field and select
MSCRM-ADDONS.com User/Temp Settings. 
Click on the blue and underlined Select-fields in order to modify your search options. Please select the same criteria you have selected in Step 2. 
Please select the following criteria:

Name begins with AM_Doc
Name Equals DCPConcatenatedDocument
Name Equals SharePoint Doc converted
Name Equals SharePoint Template 
Name Equals DCPSaveToSharePoint
Value Begins With print:?id=
Value Begins With fetch:<fetch
Value Begins With <DSSetting

Step 5
In the next window, you can select your preferred scheduling and notification options. Decide when and how often the workflow should start, name it properly and set a notification (optional). Click on the [Next]-button in order to proceed.  

Figure 8: Select preferred scheduling and notification options

Step 6
The next window provides you with an overview of your settings. If you are fine with them, click on the [Submit]-button. Congratulations! You have just created a workflow!  

If you want to change your settings, simply click on the [Back]- or the [Cancel]-button in order to cancel the workflow.  
Figure 9: Finalize workflow

 

Step 7
To modify your created workflows, simply set the My Bulk Deletion System Jobs in the [VIEW:] and find all your workflows listed.

Figure 10: Modify workflow

Clicking on NEW will create a new workflow.
Clicking on PRINT will print the list.
Clicking on EXPORT TO EXCEL will export the selected data to Excel.
And clicking on the MORE ACTIONS dropdown menu provides you – surprisingly – with more actions like shown above. You can set a view as the default view, modify the recurrence and cancel, resume, postpone or pause your workflow.

 

Additional: How to delete the MSCRM-ADDONS.com Debug records

Setup another Bulk Deletion Job, this time for the MSCRM-ADDONS.com Debug entity:

 

 

Additional: How to delete the MSCRM-ADDONS.com  AutoMerge-Working-Items

Setup another Bulk Deletion Job, this time for the MSCRM-ADDONS.com AutoMergeWorkingItems entity:

Again, the wizard helps you to define your deletion criteria for your workflow. Open the Drop-Down-Menu next to the Look for-field and select MSCRM-ADDONS.com AutoMergeWorkingItems.

Setup the following parameters:

Status: Equals  =  Inactive
CreatedOn: Older Than X Days  =  7

 

 

Setup the scheduling options again and submit your workflow, like you can see it below.

 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to office@mscrm-addons.com.

This blog article outlines how easy it is to set up the DocumentsCorePack Online Service Configuration. Additionally please also find our video tutorial for DocumentsCorePack that shows how to start the DCP Online Configuration, here. 

Please follow the below step-by-step tutorial in order to start a DocumentsCorePack  Online Service properly.

Step 1: Open the Online Configuration Service
One possible way to start a new DocumentsCorePack Online Service Configuration is via our website www.mscrm-addons.com. On our website, please navigate to ❶ Products, select DocumentsCorePack and then, click on the ❷ [Configure Service]-button.

The registration is quick and free. Once logged in, you will: 

• have access to all our free 14-days trial versions
• be able to request full support on all trial versions
• receive our newsletter
• be able to upgrade free trial versions to licensed products

So – if you haven’t registered yet – it’s worth a try!

Step 2: The Online Configuration window
Once you have logged in, you will be provided with the Online Configuration window. Please note: If you have already configured a service, you get an overview of your hosted service(s) ❶. 

 If there is no service configured,  you can set up a service with a click on the [Add]-button ❷.

 

 

❶ Select your CRM type
- Server2Server, Office 365,  IFD (hosted) 

❷ Type in your CRM URL
- for example https://alist9.crm6.dynamics.com

❸ Type in your user credentials
- in this case your username and your password

To finish the process, click on the [Retrieve Organizations]-button ❹. 
Figure 5: Create a CRM Connection Profile  

 As soon as your organization appears in the ❶ Available Organizations section, click on the ❷ [Verify Connection & Save Profile]-button.
Figure 6:  Verify your connection and save your profile

Now the following window appears. It is important that you do not close this window or navigate away. 

 

You are now back in the same window as before. This window supports you in creating a new service.

 

❶ Service Name
Please enter your service name here. But choose wisely, because the name cannot be changed anymore!          

❷ DocumentsCorePack Instance
Please select on which instance the DocumentsCorePack Service should run. The instance with the highest bandwidth is automatically selected for you. 

❸ SharePoint Integration
Please select if you want to enable CRM integrated SharePoint, which allows DocumentsCorePack to connect to SharePoint and upload documents. Once you enable this option, two fields appear where you have to enter your SharePoint credentials. 

❹ Show Advanced Options (Optional)
A click on this button, allows you to refine the settings of your new service.  More information about this options can be found in the corresponding documentation on page 19. 

Next, click on the [Save Service]-button in the right lower corner in order to proceed. Click on the [OK]-button in the window that appears now (see figure below).

 

 Do not close the following window or navigate away as long as the service is saved. Instead, have a break and enjoy some coffee or tea.

 

Step 3: Service Configuration Completed
As soon as the service configuration is completed, you will be informed about the next steps you can take. Click on the License Status-option in order to check your license status. Please read the instructions carefully and click on the [OK]-button in order to proceed.

Figure 11:Service Configuration Completed

 

Step 4: Watch your service running
Congratulation! You have finished the configuration of your service. You are now redirected to the service configuration overview. The DocumentsCorePack service is already running. Using the buttons at the end of the service overview, you can define which steps you would like to take next. Please find a brief description of the DocumentsCorePack buttons in the corresponding documentation at page 10. 

 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

 

 

 

This blog article outlines how the heartbeat service restart behaviour works in case that Dynamics 365 is not available for some reason. For example, there is an update: after the update Dynamics 365 will work as usual, but not our services - they will stop. Therefore we provide the heartbeat service. 

The heartbeat service is verifying every service available in the WatchedConfigurations registry key. It runs every 5 minutes and verifies each service is in “Running” state.

Not running services are checked for 20 times every  5 minutes. If the service has still not been restarted after those 100 minutes, the heartbeat service will check and try to restart this service every 50 minutes for a total of 24 hours monitoring time of a particular service.

If a service still has failed to start after those 24 hours, the heartbeat service will stop trying to restart this service. 

Any service with the “AlwaysRestartService“ flag set will never be removed from the watched configurations, regardless of its state. 

 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

In this example we build a Multilevel-Relationship from Quote > Quote Line (Quote Product) > Product. This might be needed as the Quote Product inherits the name of the parent product. Here you can see a simplified illustration of the structure in CRM: 
Figure 1: Structure of a Quote-Product relationship in Dynamics 365

To get the values for the product we first need to resolve the relationship from Quote to Quote Line (Quote Product) and select the desired fields. This is a 1:N (one to many) relationship. 
Figure 2: Quote to Quote Line realtionship 1:N 

Once this is done, we need to add another layer to the relationship by clicking on the [Add]-button, this will open a second dialog as you can see below. 
Figure 3: Add another layer to the relationship 

Afterward, we need to click on the [OK]-button on every dialog that has been opened during building the relationship. So the new created Multilevel-Relationship has been saved and can be used to build a DCP table. 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

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This blog article describes how to proceed if you turned on multi-factor authentification and you are using apps that connect you to your Office 365 account. 

If you turn on multi-factor authentification you can still use the Office 365 connection type, but you need to generate for this user an app-password. An app password is a code that gives an app or device permission to access your Office 365 account. For example, if you're using Outlook 2016 or earlier with Office 365, you will need to create an app password.

Please follow the steps in the corresponding article from Microsoft about how to create an app password for Office 365.  

If you do not want to use an app password you should use the recommended way and use the Server2Server connection type when setting up our service. For more information about how to set up a service have a look the corresponding videos on our YouTube Channel: 

• AttachmentExtractor Online Service Configuration
• DocumentsCorePack Online Service Configuration
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That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

      

 

You have enabled the default signature of Dynamics 365 or defined a default sender via the ActivityTools Signature Editor. But on reply/forward from within ActivityTools, it is not set. This article shows how this can be solved.

 

This feature is only available for Dynamics 365 version of ActivityTools (2017.xx).

 

E.g. for your system user you have an email signature with the option “Set as Default” similar as below:

The signature is inserted correctly when you create a new email, but not if you reply/forward from within ActivityTools. A common reason is that the ActivityTools onload scripts are not added to the user email form.

 

For the main email form named “E-Mail”, this is done automatically via the “ActivityToolsPluginConfig” solution which is part of the ActivityTools installation. To check if the solution is installed got to Dynamics 365 > Settings > Solutions.

 

For all other email forms, these scripts have to be added manually as described below.

Open Dynamics 365 > Settings > Customizations > Customize the System

In the so opened window select Entities > Email > Forms > and open the relevant email form as you can see in the figure below. 

 

In the so opened email form hit on ❶ “Form Properties”. Next, add the libraries ❷ “ptm_GeneralJSFunctions.js” and “ptm_ActivityTools/js/Signature.js”. For the event select ❸ “OnLoad”  and add the function ❹ “PTMATN.InsertSignature” of the library “ptm_ActivityTools/js/Signature.js”.

 

Save and publish the form. If it does not work immediately, close and restart your web browser.

 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

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This blog article describes how to make for PowerSearch for Dynamics 365 FIPS compliant.

This article is ONLY relevant for you if FIPS compliance is enabled on your Dynamics 365 server OR you plan to enable it in the future.

Minimal PowerSearch version: 2017.12.1

It is recommended to create a backup of your existing PowerSearch configurations first. More information about how to export/import PowerSearch configuration records can be found here. 

Then open Dynamics 365 Settings, navigate to the MSCRM-ADDONS-area and open Products. Select PowerSearch and add a new settings key to its settings subgrid by hitting the [+]-button on the right side and enter: 

Name: PSFipsCompliance
KeyValue: true

The sample message below tells that 4 configs will not work if FIPS is enabled on the server. Hit the [OK]-button. 

Figure 3: 4 PowerSearch Config message

 

 
If everything was successful you will see the following notification: 
Figure 4: Success notification

 

But if FIPS is already enabled on your server, it is not possible to convert the values directly. In this case, the following dialog will pop up: 
Figure 5: Message if FIPS is enabled

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It asks for permission to regenerate the config records instead of converting them. This is similar to a change of the InputFetchXML in the PowerSearch config. Afterward custom labels, orders, default values and so on will be reset. Hit the [OK]-button in order to start.

 If you now see the following notification, the process was successful. 
Figure 6: Success notification

Finally please install the FIPS compliance license key which you get from our Support team (support@mscrm-addons.com). 

 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

This blog article outlines how to enable Dynamics 365 Plugin Tracing.

Please follow the steps below: 

1) Open Dynamics 365, navigate to Settings > Administration and select System Settings as you can see in the figure below. 

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 If your Dynamics 365 Online will be upgraded to the version 9.0.2.751, you will have to switch to the latest versions of ActivityTools, AttachmentExtractor, PowerSearch and SmartBar. 

After the upgrade, you will face the problem, that ActivityTools, AttachmentExtractor, PowerSearch and SmartBar are no longer loading, nothing is displayed and the license indicator remains blank. 

To avoid this problem, please upgrade our solutions to the versions below. More details about how to find the version number for each mscrm-addons products can be found here.  

• ActivityTools: version 2017.21
• AttachmentExtractor:
  General version to 2018.37
  AttachmentExtractorCore Version to 2017.13 - Download here
  Please notice: If it still does not work - Disable all plugins starting with PTM.AE.Storage. 

• PowerSearch: version 2017.14
• SmartBar: version 2017.8
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All versions can be found in our Download Center.

Please note that the zip files contain an installer executable and a subfolder containing the solutions only. If you do not have a local Installation, please update the solutions in your Dynamics 365 manually. You only need to update the solutions, that are already present in your system.

The mscrmaddons.com general solution only needs to be updated once per organization.

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That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

 

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In this blog article, you will learn how the DocumentsCorePack ServerBased functionality can be used to save generated documents to a specified SharePoint URL in a workflow. More information about how to create a workflow can be found here. We will skip this part and focus on the step which saves the generated documents to SharePoint. 

Therefore, we have to create a new MSCRM-ADDONS.com AutoMergeWorkingItems, which makes sure that the generated document will be saved to a specified SharePoint URL. To do so, please add a new step to your workflow and set click on the  [Set Properties]-button. The properties for this step could look like in the example below: 

 

❶ Name
Type in the name of your newly created step - a name that reminds you of what it contains.  In this case "Save File to SharePoint" makes sense. 

❷ AutoMergeAction
Open the drop-down menu and select CreateDocument. Select this option to create a document in any Microsoft Dynamics 365 standard and/or custom entity.

❸ PrimaryRecordUrl
Insert the PrimaryRecordUrl here by using the Form Assistant on the right side (highlighted in yellow). A description of how to set a PrymaryRecordsUrl-field can be found in this blog article. 

❹ TemplateToExecute
Open the Look up-record and select the template which should be executed. 

❺ SharePoint URL
Insert here your SharePoint URL, which can be dynamic or static. 
If you want to specify a folder, the url has to end with a '/'. eg. https://xyz.sharepoint.com/sites/dcp/account/
If you want to specify a folder and a file name then you type the full url with the filename, but  without extension into this field. eg. https;//xyz.sharepoint.com/sites/dcp/account/myfilename

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❻ Direction
Select the direction of your SharePoint service here. In this case "Entity to SharePoint" because we want to save a generated document based on an entity to SharePoint. 

After defining the properties please save your newly created process and do not forget to activate it in the My Processes-section by hitting the [Activate]-button in the command bar.  

Please also have a look at this blog article to learn how to upload a SharePoint document to an email. 

 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.