Upgrading Dynamics CRM: Development Improvements

There are many reasons for you to upgrade your Microsoft Dynamics CRM to the latest version, and these extend to new features for development and customization.

Understanding these new features can save you time and money on your upgrade, because they may allow you to skip rewriting code that was needed in earlier versions of the product.

For instance, each new version has brought increased customization capabilities “code free”

●2011 - Dialogs

●2013 - Business Process Flows, Business Rules

●2015 – Calculated and Rollup fields

Dynamics CRM versions have also Improved the environment for extension coding

●2011 – Solution model, form subgrids

●2013 – Custom actions

●2015 – Mature Enterprise DB capabilities - Concurrency, transactions and trace.

These are just a few of the new features that you may want to tap in an upgrade.

Key Concepts for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Tenant, Instance, App and Solution

Updated 8/15/2022 To understand Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) and Power Apps, you need to learn some new terms and concepts that may be a bit different from what you know from databases and solutions that are hosted on premises. These concepts also apply to Power Apps. The main difference is that with Power Apps you are not starting with a Microsoft app but more of a blank canvas for your custom apps. This post introduces some key terms and how these concepts are important for planning your implementation. While Dynamics 365 is still available on premises, it is most commonly deployed on the Microsoft cloud. This blog post discusses only cloud implementations. Microsoft has multiple clouds such as commercial and government community clouds in several countries. We start with a Microsoft tenant . A tenant is the account you create in the Microsoft Online Services environment (such as Office 365) when you sign up for a subscription. A tenant contains uni

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Solutions for Education

Student Portal by James Townsend For over three years, Microsoft has released solution accelerators based on Dynamics 365 for industries including healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, finance, nonprofits and education. Each year we are seeing new solutions and updates to solutions based on Dynamics 365, Power Apps and the Common Data Model. In August 2021 Microsoft released the Higher Education component in the latest version of the Dynamics 365 Education Accelerator v3.2.3.10 . Here are some highlights from the Higher Ed solution A student portal An advisor dashboard A business partner dashboard for events, hackathons, internships, scholarships, and grants. The Accomplishment extension tracking student work outside courses. The Grants phone app that allows research faculty to keep track of applications and approvals. Rich reporting on students applying for internships, grants, and scholarships. System views for tables including students, faculty, extracurricular activities, pr

My Favorite Microsoft Power Apps Bloggers and their Blogs

by James Townsend Updated 7/5/2022 Microsoft Power Apps is one of my favorite subjects, and I enjoy reading blog posts from members of this thriving technical community. Here are some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs: The Official Microsoft Power Apps Blog I have to start with the official Microsoft Power Apps blog. It has many contributors, largely Microsoft program manager, including frequent posters Denise Moran , Greg Lindhorst , Kartik Kanakasabesan , and Adrian Orth . This is the place to go for product announcements, updates and technical how-to for a broad range of Power Apps topics. April Dunnam April Dunnam was formerly focused on SharePoint and now devoting herself to Power Platform. April offers highly understandable explanations of Power Platform, Dataverse and other top Power Apps topics. She joined Microsoft in late 2019 and has a thriving YouTube channel . Carl De Souza Power Apps Blog and eBook This is one of the most extensive and best organized blo

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