Dynamics 365 Application Development

Deepesh Somani, Nishant Rana

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781788399142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Web Services & APIs
• Index: Computer Science

Learn, develop, and design applications using the new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Key Features

• Implement business logic using processes, plugins, and client-side scripts with MS Dynamics 365
• Develop custom CRM solutions to improve your business applications
• A comprehensive guide that covers the new features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and increasingly advanced topics.

Book Description

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is the most trusted name in enterprise-level customer relationship management. Thelatest version of Dynamics CRM comes with the important addition of exciting features guaranteed to make your life easier. It comes straight off the shelf with a whole new frontier of updated business rules, process enhancements, SDK methods, and other enhancements.

This book will introduce you to the components of the new designer tools, such as SiteMap, App Module, and Visual Designer for Business Processes. Going deeper, this book teaches you how to develop custom SaaS applications leveraging the features of PowerApps available in Dynamics 365.Further, you will learn how to automate business processes using Microsoft Flow, and then we explore Web API, the most important platform update in Dynamics 365 CRM. Here, you'll also learn how to implement Web API in custom applications. You will learn how to write an Azure-aware plugin to design and integrate cloud-aware solutions. The book concludes with configuring services using newly released features such as Editable grids, Data Export Service, LinkedIn Integration, Relationship Insights, and Live Assist.

What you will learn

• Develop apps using the platform-agnostic Web API
• Leverage Azure Extensions to design cloud-aware applications
• Learn how to implement CRUD operation
• Create integrated real-world apps using Microsoft PowerApps and Flow by combining services such as Twitter, Facebook, and SharePoint
• Configure and use Artificial Intelligence Azure Cognitive Services for Recommendation and Text Analytic services

Who this book is for

This book targets skilled developers who are looking to build business-solution software and are new to application development in Microsoft Dynamics 365, especially for CRM.

Creating Custom Business Apps

PowerApps is a service that allows you to create, manage, and use custom business apps across the platform. It connects to the existing system and data source of customer securely allows customizer to build apps without writing a code. It is possible to make those apps available for web and mobile users instantly by publishing them.

In this chapter, we will be covering the following points:

• Overview of PowerApps
• Privileges required to configure and create PowerApps
• Connectors in PowerApps
• Understanding the PowerApps design interface
• Creating a PowerApps using data from Dynamics 365
• Running PowerApps on mobile and tablet devices
• Data connection service in PowerApps
• Creating an app using a data connection service
• Creating an entity in a data connection service
• Customizing the PowerApps

Overview of PowerApps in Dynamics 365

PowerApps is a service that securely makes a connection with the data source, such as Azure, Dynamics 365, or Office 365, and minimizes the security concern of the organization about the data. Any user can design in PowerApps without writing a code. It is very convenient to publish these PowerApps.

From an employee's perspective, PowerApps provides agility to work in the following ways:

• Provides the ability to create an app quickly
• Provides the ability to create an app that works on every device
• Provides Microsoft Office's experience on the app
• Provides use of built-in Connection to make a connection with PowerApps for a cloud service such as Dynamic 365 or Office 365

From a developer's perspective, PowerApps provides the following features:

• Inclusion of Azure service into PowerApps, increasing performance and speed at user end
• Ease of creating additional data connection and API of any existing business system
• Reliability and robustness in management of organization data security

PowerApps accelerates working and takes less time to build apps. This is very effective and efficient for those users who are beginners to designing apps. It allows you to deliver content of cloud-to-mobile devices directly.

PowerApps saves a tremendous amount of development time, and also allows connection of cloud data sources...