u/Brycare

Hi guys.

Our company has a new requirement whereby we must update approx. 200,000 contact records every night with updated data from another system. Each contact will have two custom fields updated each night.

We already have several jobs running that perform updates to records in custom entities at a similar volume. However, I know from previous data migration activities that contact records seem to take much longer than updates to custom entities for one reason or another.

The other jobs that we have (C# exe's) use the CRM SDK in conjunction with threading and ExecuteMultiple requests to perform the updates in batch.

I am just looking for opinions as to what people think the optimal approach would be nowadays to perform that volume of contact record updates in the shortest amount of time possible? I will be bypassing plugin execution where possible (there is an option for this when using the CRM SDK in C#).

Perhaps there are more optimal modern apaproaxches available nowadays that we should be using instead?

I saw a recommendation elsewhere around using the WebApi to perform batch updates but I'm not seeing much in the way of examples out there.

Any advice much appreciated.

Thank you

Hi guys.

The CRM system our company uses has recently been updated so that users can key in Case records (prior to this the case entity was hidden via security roles).

Sometimes users need to key in notes against cases & attach a file.

They are able to do this successfully using the file upload button that appears under the Note in the timeline.

They are now looking for the ability to drag and drop a file from their Windows File Explorer into the note & for it to save this as an attachment when the note gets created.

In testing - this functionality works fine if testing as a System Administrator.

When testing without the System Administrator security role - when a user drags and drops they get a "File upload failed. Please try again" message and it doesn't work.

Wondering if anybody knows of any way to make this work for non sys admin users? I can't seem to find anything concrete in my searches online about this.

Just to note - the case form is made available both within the out of the box Customer Service Hub app (only a sm all amount of users access this app) & also within a custom model driven app that most of our users access CRM via.

Appreciate any advice on this.

Thank you.

Hi guys.

Could I ask a question around merging changes to the same form across different environments.

This is something that usually never needs to be done, as there is typically only one active project at a time that would be targeting the same form (we are a small company).

For various reasons recently there were 2 different projects being developed at the same time on different development sandbox environments that made different changes to the same form - far from ideal clearly.

Anyhow, one of these projects has been released into production in the past week, so now the other development environment needs to get updated with this release that has gone into production.

So, essentially at the end of this =- I need the form to contain the changes that are in production plus any new changes introduced in the 2nd project that has not gone into production yet.

I just want to check what ye think is the best way of achieving this.

I have exported solutions on each environment (production and the 2nd DEV env) that just contains this single form.

Does the following plan sound sensible or is there a better way to do this (my first time having to do it)?

1. Manually compare the two customizations.xml files and produce a blended/combined xml files that contains the changes made on both environments (painful but doable I imagine).

2. Deploy the release that went into production into the 2nd DEV environment [this I assume will overwrite the changes that were made to the form on this env).

3. Package up a new solution containing the one single form using the blended XML file generated in step 2 above [this should put back in the changes made in 2nd DEV env)

What do ye think?

Appreciate any advice.

Thank you

Hi guys,

I know in CRM right now there is a Teams Meeting radio button within the appointment form.

When this is set to Yes - on save of the appointment it will turn it into a teams meeting.

Is there a way to programmatically trigger this?

We have an upcoming requirement where we need to programmatically create some appointments & need the ability to make them Teams Meetings. It isn't clear to me how to achieve this programmatically (have tried setting isonlinemeeting to true programmatically but this doesn't create the teams meeting in the background so there must be a requirement to set some additional values somewhere in the save.

Thanks for any guidance on this.

Hi guys.

Just planning a 5 night stay in Switzerland for a family of 4 (kids will be 8 and 10). We may be able to add a 6th night (not sure yet).

It will be next year and most likely starting in or around 30th May. Ideally I would come in mid to late June (Schynigge Plette and Mannlichen to Kleine Scheidegg panorama trail would be open then) but I think it will be the end of May.

I have a rough plan for the 5 days and would be very grateful if ye could offer any suggestions - be they good or bad.

I've done some research but having never been to Switzerland before it is very possible that my plans make no sense or I'd be better off replacing something I had planned with something else. I realise it is a very expensive country so am trying to plan accordingly.

We will definitely make good use of Coop for food (we will have been elsewhere in Europe for a week before this so no issue skipping eating meals out for the second part of the trip).

Also, have decided to skip Jungfraujoch and Schilthorn. I've tried to keep each day not so packed as the kids won't enjoy it if we try and pack too much in.

Also, from previous experience, it's very possible that there will be a day that everyone is just tired & we decide to just chill in Wengen and take it easy for the day. I'm okay with that too :-)

Rough plan...

Day 1:

Fly into Zurich and use public transport to get to an AirBnb in Wengen. This is €1200 for the 5 nights.

No other plans for this day as it will be a long travel day.

Day 2:

Go up to Mannlichen.

I'd have liked to do the panorama trail to Kleine Scheidegg but think this won't be open yet.

Day 3:

Allmendhubel & Murren.

Saw a recommendation somewhere to travel there via Grutschalp & travel back via Stechelberg & Lauterbrunnen.

Day 4:

Grindelwald.

Considering both Grindelwald First and Pfinstegg (purely for the alpine coaster)

Day 5:

Lauterbrunnen Valley

Possibly hire bikes or just do a reasonably easy hike in the valley (we are not really hikers per se - certainly my kids are not anyway :-))

That's it really. Anyone think that we're doing too little or too much here?

Or are there things I haven't mentioned that I may be unaware of that would be even better than the above?

I have Lake Brienz cruise and possibly Brienzer Rothorn as a backup plan also. Would really appreciate feedback as I'm really only guessing.

Thanks very much in advance.

Hi guys.

I have never used Power Apps before but will shortly need to write one that allows users to fill in person details & will end up writing those details as new Contact records in CRM.

There are several fields on the contact that are Business Required at the database level that will not be exposed in the Power App.

I have read somewhere that if you try and create a record from PowerApps - and do not provide a value for all Business Required fields - that it will throw an error.

Is this correct and if so - is there a way around this in the Power App?

For example, if I were to create a contact record in C# code using the SDK it will allow me to leave Business Required fields as null.

Is there any way to achieve this via Power Apps?

The requirement I have is to leave two required fields empty on submission - users are to be forced to update them within CRM later.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Hi.

Just wondering if anybody here has implemented a listener for outlook calendar event updates by setting up a subscription with a webhook.

I have tested one where the webhook points to a web service written in .Net 10.

Just wondering if anyone has used a Power Automate Flow instead of a custom web service. Trying to decide which is the best option to implement in production. Cheers

Hi guys,

I am new to Graph API and have a query for you guys.

I am just about to begin writing an integration between CRM and outlook.

Currently we have CRM server side sync enabled which syncs appointments to the users outlook calendar (this works fine).

We are having issues with sending meeting invites however, when additional attendees are added to the appointment post-creation.

In this scenario, only the attendees that were there when the appointment was created are getting email invites.

For this reason, we may to turn off the auto sync and manually create the outlook calendar events instead.

This way we will be able to control the sending of calendar invites and ensure that subsequent attendees get the invites.

Anyhow, as part of coding this, we would like to store down the ID of the CRM appointment record against the outlook calendar event when we are creating the event.

On researching this, I have seen both single value extended properties AND open extensions recommended as approaches to use for storing this id down against the calendar event.

Wondering if anyone here has an opinion on which way to go (or a better alternative approach even).

Appreciate any advice.

Thank you

Hi guys.

My organisation has server side sync switched on for appointments, so that any keyed in CRM appear in the user Outlook calendar.

There are never any required attendees right now and nor are there attachments associated with the appointments.

An upcoming requirement is going to change this, whereby we are looking for meeting invites to send and also attachments to be sent with those invites.

I have two things I'm struggling with & wondering if anybody can give any advice.

Firstly, I can't seem to turn on attachment syncing. Is this not possible? I have switched on the setting "Synchronize appointment attachments with Outlook or Exchange". But when I check the Synchronized Fields screen for the appointment entity, it has Attachments set to sync in neither direction and I have no option to turn it on.

Is there another setting that takes precedence or maybe this action requires higher priviliges in O365 other than just a CRM system administrator?

Secondly, if i add a Required Attendee as part of the initial save I see that an email invite will get sent. If I create the appointment without an attendee, but add one straight away afterwards in an update - no email invite sends.

Is there a way to force the invite for subsequently added attendeea?

In the scenario above where the initial attendee gets his invite, if i subsequently add a second attendee they do not get any invite.

Thanks very much for any assistance.

I've been trying to find info on these things but haven't been able to find any concrete info.