At the end of June, Microsoft announced that Dynamics 365 for Outlook (“Outlook add-in”) will be deprecated with the July 2017 update for Dynamics 365. When a Dynamics 365 feature is “deprecated,” it means the feature will be removed from future major releases. The Outlook add-in will continue to work and is fully supported until it is officially removed. However, no new functionality will be invested in the add-in. After removal, the Outlook add-in will no longer work.

The add-in is deprecated with the upcoming July 2017 update for Dynamics 365 (online), which is a major release (version 9.0). The add-in will be removed with version 10.0, which will be the major release after the July 2017 release. The removal applies for versions 10.0 and onwards. Microsoft will continue to support the add-in for versions earlier than 10.0 until the Dynamics 365 version itself is no longer supported.

The following diagram outlines the plan to support the add-in for existing and future versions of Dynamics 365:

Review this post for more information on why the Dynamics 365 for Outlook (“Outlook add-in”) is being deprecated and what’s next.

Bing Maps AJAX Upgrade for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016

Microsoft has released a Bing Maps AJAX upgrade for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Server. This update replaces the Bing Maps AJAX Control Version 7, which has reached its end-of-life. To continue to use Bing Maps with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, customers must apply this update. This is a cumulative update meaning it includes the Bing Maps update and all the hotfixes since the last on premise update customers have applied. Update Rollup 2 is coming soon, but customers can get several of the fixes today by applying this update and upgrading to version 8.2.1.342. The complete list of fixes coming in Update Rollup 2 will be in the Update Rollup 2 Knowledge Base article when it’s available, but customers can reference the Dynamics 365 8.2 Online update article to see fixes included since their current on premise build version: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2925359/microsoft-dynamics-crm-online-releases.

For more information about the Bing Maps release, see Bing Maps AJAX Upgrade for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service will be discontinued

Last year, Microsoft announced it will no long sell the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service to new customers starting November 2016.

Microsoft has made the decision that Microsoft Dynamics Marketing will be discontinued on May 15, 2018.

With the discontinuation of service, Microsoft suggests customers explore a few options that may serve their on-going marketing needs, such as: Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and other partner solutions.

A new online service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing, is expected to release in Spring 2018 and will be available for preview. Customers can sign up for the preview here: https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicscustomerengagement.

In the meantime, enterprise customers or customers with more advanced marketing needs should consider the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Please visit this site for more information.

The AppSource is also a great resource to help find additional applications built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 that may align to your business or department needs.

For more information on what’s next and some frequently asked questions, review this post on the Dynamics 365 Team blog.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Releases

The following updates and releases are available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 8.2.1 Service Update 5
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4038096/service-update-5-for-microsoft-dynamics-365-8-2-1
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 8.1.1 Service Update 7
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4037858/service-update-7-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-8-1-1
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Update 0.3
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4018584/update-0-3-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2015

To see all the available releases, review the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online release page.

Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.7

Update 1.7 for Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 is now available.

New and updated features:

• Get in touch with your audience on YouTube directly from within Social Engagement. Users with at least a Responder interaction role can now rate and reply to videos and comments on YouTube.
• Social Engagement extended the listening capabilities and is now capable of acquiring video posts and comments on YouTube channels.

Improvements:

• Fixed an issue in the Social Engagement content pack for Power BI that was causing the content pack installation to fail when the Social Engagement solution has no name set.
• Fixed an issue in Social Profiles displaying the wrong icons regarding acquisition usage.
• Fixed an issue for Surface Hub devices where the on-screen keyboard wasn’t shown when defining keyword filters.

For more information, review What’s new in Social Engagement.

Dynamics 365 Portals Update Process

Since the first launch of Dynamics 365 Portals in May 2016, there have been multiple updates and new capabilities with the latest update launching in July 2017, the 8.3 release. There has been some confusion around the release process so in order to help prepare customers and reduce impact, the following blog post is available, Demystifying Dynamics 365 Portals Update Process, which outlines the release types and frequency and how to get notified.

Portal Capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Version 8.3.1.48 Release

Portal capabilities version 8.3.1.48 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is now available.

Some of the issues resolved include:

• Entity List filters do not provide tooltips.
• Error messages are displayed on the portal management page in English, even if the portal being managed is configured to use another language.
• Portal provisioning is allowed for a user with the appropriate administrative roles, but if that user does not also have read-write access in the associated instance, the solution package installation will fail.
• Grids and forms with lookups to other entities show stale values when the related entity records are changed.

For more information on the this update, review this support post. For a full list of all portal updates released to date and their corresponding KB articles, please reference this KB article.

Unified Service Desk 3.0.0 Release

Unified Service Desk version 3.0.0 has many enhancements focusing on reliability, performance and accessibility.

Below is a quick snapshot of what is available:

For more information on the enhancements and where to download the release, take a look at this post on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Unified Service Desk blog.

New Azure AD Sign in Experience now in Public Preview

Microsoft is continuing to make progress on converging the Azure AD and Microsoft account identity systems. One of the biggest initiatives is to redesign the sign-in UI so both systems look consistent. This updated design is now available in public preview. What’s changing:

1. The Azure AD & Microsoft account sign-in pages will both change to have a consistent look and feel.
2. The new design prompts users to enter their username on the first screen followed by a credential (typically a password) on a second screen. It also allows for new forms of authentication like phone sign-in and certificate-based authentication.

For more information on the new experience check out this post on the Enterprise Mobility and Security Blog.

Relationship Insights email engagement preview support

Email engagement is an exciting feature that helps salespeople gain visibility into their email outreach. Customers have been previewing and providing their feedback on this feature in the December 2016 Update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) and the December 2016 Service Pack for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) (version 8.2). The preview will stop updating statics on May 3, 2018 and email engagement will be released for general availability starting with the July update for Dynamics 365 (online), version 9.0.

Customers wishing to continue using email engagement after May 3, 2018 will need to upgrade their Dynamics 365 organization to 9.0. For more information on email engagement, see Preview feature: Email engagement.

Analyzing Customer Insights data with Power BI

The Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights (DCI) July 2017 update will introduce a new Power BI connector that allows aggregated and enriched data in DCI to be analyzed in Power BI. The analytic power of DCI can be combined with the data visualization and exploration capabilities of Power BI. KPIs and profiles data can now be easily extracted into Power BI Desktop to build Power BI reports. Customers can also build advanced data visualizations over Profile or KPI data using Power BI visualizations such as geo-maps or treemaps with interactive drill-down and filtering capabilities.

Note: The Power BI connector like Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights is a preview feature.

For more information on this new preview feature, take a look at the Analyzing Customer Insights data with Power BI post.

KPI enhancements with Customer Insights July 2017 update

The Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights (DCI) July 2017 update includes enhancements to help customers implement new scenarios to drive intelligent customer engagements across all channels of interaction. KPIs form the core of analytics capabilities of DCI and Microsoft continues to improve the KPI engine to define various metrics to capture behavioral, engagement and transactional patterns with customers, partners, and employees. This blog post, highlights some of the notable new enhancements with the KPI engine along with some real-world examples on how to define the corresponding KPIs to help model your scenarios.

Power BI solution template for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service

Microsoft is pleased to announce the release of the Power BI solution template for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service. The solution template offers a fast guided experience to create compelling reports on an extensible, scalable, and secure architecture and can be customized as needed. Spend less time on the “plumbing”, and spend more time extending and customizing the solution template to meet your organization’s needs.

For information, see the solution template page on Microsoft AppSource to interact with a sample report and watch a short video.

Training Sites & eLearning

Get the most up to date training and eLearning information for Dynamics 365 from the Help Center. The highly anticipated Training & Adoption Kit for Dynamics 365 is also available for download which includes user guides, quick reference cards, eBooks for end users and admins. Feel free to modify the content and distribute to your customers.

Want to know what new features are available for both online and on-prem customers? Then check out What’s new in Dynamics 365 Help and Training.

Upcoming Workshops for CRM and CRM Online

Microsoft offers open remote and onsite workshops for Premier Support Customers for Dynamics 365 and CRM. All are welcome to attend the open workshops, but seats are limited. Customers interested in attending or scheduling a workshop should contact their Technical Account Manager (TAM) for more information.

Here are some of the upcoming workshops around the globe:

Migrate Knowledge base articles from CRM 2011 to Dynamics 365

Knowledge Management (KM) has always been a core of any Customer Service organization in helping achieve better customer satisfaction and consistency in solving customer issues. Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) has included Knowledge Management capabilities starting with the first KM module in Dynamics CRM 2011. To consolidate the KM offering and move customers to better KM capabilities, Microsoft announced the deprecation of the Dynamics CRM 2011 Knowledge Management module with the Dynamics 365 launch. To assist with the transition to the new Knowledge Base capabilities, a new tool is now available on Github to convert existing CRM 2011 Knowledge Base articles to new Dynamics 365 capabilities.

Please note the tool is not officially supported by Microsoft and is not covered under standard Microsoft support plans. However, the Dynamics 365 Team is providing the source code for the tool and will be supporting it as part of their community initiatives.

Achieving Greater Business Productivity with PowerApps (Free Webinar)

The advances in productivity that modern enterprise software has brought to business users has always been tempered by the limits of standard software to meet industry-specific, geographically-specific, or individual company-specific requirements. Historically, the solution taken by most organizations is a high degree of customization. While customization can fill in the gaps, custom apps are typically expensive to develop and expensive to maintain.

Join us on September 14, 2017 for a free webinar and hear from Enterprise Application Analyst, Joshua Greenbaum, as he looks at how Dynamics 365 customers are leveraging PowerApps to achieve success in:

· filling the “last mile” gap in productivity

· enabling greater business user empowerment

· increasing speed and ease of development

· leveraging existing data and applications resources

· gathering more data and delivering faster analysis to make better decisions

In addition, you’ll also see PowerApps in action with a demo from Luis Camino, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft.

For customers and partners looking to achieve greater productivity in the enterprise, this webinar is for you.

Register Now.

Unified Service Desk Best Practices

There is so much information available on Unified Service Desk, yet it does not cover many aspects of the product. The Unified Service Desk (USD) Team constantly gets valuable feedback from the USD community, customers, and internal teams. One thing that has been consistent is the need for best practices to consider while developing Unified Service Desk solutions.

As part of the USD Team’s quest to help customers get the most out of their products, a new blog series is now available with the intention of helping customers understand and apply the best practices the team has identified. Everyone is encouraged to leave your feedback and suggestions for future blog posts in the comments section.