I have a requirement with two level approval work flow, where i need to collect data from user forms Form1.aspx(First Approval) and Form2.aspx(Second Approval).
How do i carry the details of workflow initiator details to First Approval form and First Approval details to the second approval form.
I am using SPD Workflows collect data from user
Thanks in advance
Save the values into a variable and then use them in the other form.
Related
I am looking in to creating a notification function in Dynamics 365, and to find the best solution, I have began with searching for the possibilities (Javascript/C#/All others). Example: Sending a user a notification that a new lead is created.
Edit:It should be generic and easy to add a new notification. So maybe it should be a workflow step, or connected to an entity.
Email notification is already integrated in Dynamics 365
Microsoft Graph has a Notification possibility (Only in Beta)
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer#
Create a custom entity which. And on dashboard add a Web Resource (Javascript) that looks through the entity to find if there are any Records on the current user. If so make a popup.
Use Chrome extension to notify user.
(Example: https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/bruce365usingdynamics/archive/2017/11/02/announcing-365-notify)
Is there any other possibility you know of?
Or do you have any experience with any of these. What one should go for or not.
Your best bet is Dashboard with Posts in Timeline/social pane. This just need couple of configurations like Post rule, Timeline embedding in Dashboard & user training.
Activity feeds
Activity Timeline
If not, timely workflow or MS Flow to send a digest notification.
I would say if you wish to go code less solution then use Workflow
and place trigger as you wish. Send an Email to Either team or
particular user from this workflow. Just set regarding in Email as
Account or Contact or any entity from which you have an Trigger. By
this way You can see all these notification in your Social pane
timeline as well.
If you need some custom logic, Use plugin but in turn call a
workflow which will be onDemand workflow and this will only be used
to send Email.
There can be different Ideas as well. But we have this in place on one of our productive system and it fulfilles requirement of Notification very well.
Since you specifically want to interact with users within the CRM system, there are a number of simple approaches:
Task Queue (Passive) -
Create task records within CRM (these can also sync to Outlook if you want to get fancy). Users review a queue containing all of their tasks. You can similarly assign tasks to teams of users. I recommend this approach for CRM oriented users who have a number of different tasks.
View/Report/Dashboard (Passive) -
Create views of records requiring action. Users then review these views on a regular basis. I recommend this approach for non-time sensitive tasks, and tasks executed in bulk across many records.
Email (Active) -
Create a workflow with a Send Email step. This is easy to do but could generate a lot of emails which the users may then ignore. I only recommend this approach for rare notifications, or those requiring urgent action.
Emailed Reports (Active) -
A hybrid of the second and third approaches, there are third party solutions that will email view results to users on a scheduled basis. This would be my recommendation if you want an active approach without spamming users constantly. These are easy to install and configure and entail a small cost.
In addition to the many viable options offered above (a few of which I was unaware), if the user's daily responsibilities include working with Leads, you might want to keep it super simple - create a My New Leads view and instruct them to check it throughout the day. You could even place this view on a dashboard, making your option 3 redundant.
If the user rarely needs to concern themselves with Leads, the need for a notification strengthens. Assuming that the Lead volume will not flood their inbox, in the interest of simplicity you could start with a workflow email notification.
I read through this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/dotnet/bot-builder-dotnet-state about saving state data. I have some questions regarding the same:-
Lets take a bot exposed through the browser channel as an example here:-
What is the lifetime of the data stored? For instance when the bot saves data using context.ConversationData.SetValue(..) Is the data purged when the session is over(when the user refreshes the page)?
The From object from Activity has Id and Name. Are these generated by the channel each time a chat session begins? For instance, if I was chatting with bot then refresh the web page, now will my Id and Name have changed?
Same question about conversation. If I refresh the page and begin the conversation again, do I get a new conversation ID?
I read in some blog that if you use dialogs, the dialog stack state is automatically saved in whichever storage you have configured. Is this correct? If so, why? Say I refresh the page, will I be able to retrieve the state of the dialog stack and resume the conversation from there?
If you are giving code samples, request you to give C# samples if possible
Thanks very much in advance!
Hi, I hope below answer will find useful to you :
1.
What is the lifetime of the data stored? For instance when the bot saves data using context.ConversationData.SetValue(..) Is the data
purged when the session is over(when the user refreshes the page)?
ANS:->
As per the guidelines by Bot Framework, State API is in the state of depreciation. you will have to use your own state management service to maintain the state of your Bot. Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/dotnet/bot-builder-dotnet-state
So assuming you are using Table Storage or SQL Database for storing your bot in this case the data will persist as long as your storage account and database available.
2.
The From object from Activity has Id and Name. Are these generated
by the channel each time a chat session begins? For instance, if I
was chatting with bot then refresh the web page, now will my Id and
Name have changed?
ANS:->
This depends on how you initialize the chat. for instance, if you are using
Web chat : It will be empty id.
Skype : It will be skype id and user name
DirectLine : you can define your own id and name as per your need.
3.
Same question about the conversation. If I refresh the page and begin the conversation again, do I get a new conversation ID?
ANS:->
Yes. Every time you refresh your webpage you will be assigned new conversationId but in case of DirectLine you can use the previous conversation id to maintain the history of your conversation. you can store the conversation id in local storage or in browser's cookies and read whenever you feel to load the chat history. If you don't need history to be preserved then I suggest let webchannel handle its own ids.
4.
I read in some blog that if you use dialogs, the dialog stack state is automatically saved in whichever storage you have configured. Is this correct?
ANS:->
Yes.
5.
If so, why? Say I refresh the page, will I be able to retrieve the state of the dialog stack and resume the conversation from there?
ANS:->
As hinted earlier, you will need to migrate your bot to use DirectLine API instead of webchat channel. As webchat doesn't support history so DirectLine.
Please refer the guidelines provided by Microsoft and Samples provided on GitHub.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/rest-api/bot-framework-rest-direct-line-3-0-concepts
Quick answers:
As far as I know, there is no purge. And you can check the implementations of Azure DocumentDbBotDataStore or TableBotDataStore here. Based on my implementations, I saw there is a Timestamp column in the stored data so you could do cleanup based in that.
Generation of Id and Name fields (for From, but also for Recipient given the message origin / destination): yes they depend on the channel. I made a detailed answer about on SO: Bot Framework User Identification
Yes in the webchat's case
Yes, the dialog stack state is saved so that you can continue your conversation. "Say I refresh the page, will I be able to retrieve the state of the dialog stack and resume the conversation from there?": if you have the same details (channelId + conversationId, userId) you should yes. The exception is the webchat / directLine where you have to implement the fact that you keep the same IDs. For other channels like Slack, Facebook Messenger etc, these items remains the same and the dialog can continue where it stops on the previous messages exchange
Goal:
Show total sum of Activity entities related to Project entity in a form field named Total Activities in Dynamics CRM 365
Following these guys, for our Project entity's form edtior, we've created a normal Whole Number field named Total Activities.
As suggested in the blog, we've Created a workflow process to run on Activity entry entity:
with a name Activity counter:
which will be activated as a process when
Record is created
Record status changes
Record is deleted
We've reached to Step Properties:
The blog says the following:
In the Update Event step, increment the attendee count by 1, and the Total Revenue (Event) field by the Fee field from the Registration record.
We're not able to see that Event step thing anywhere in the process editor.
How to get to the following screen?
Use rollup fields
In Microsoft Dynamics 365, rollup fields are designed to help users obtain insights into data by monitoring key business metrics. A rollup field contains an aggregate value computed over the records related to a specified record, such as open opportunities of an account. Also, you’ll be able to aggregate data from the activities directly related to a record, such as emails and appointments, and activities indirectly related to a record via the Activity Party entity. In more complex scenarios, you can aggregate data over the hierarchy of records. As an administrator or customizer, you can define rollup fields by using the customization tools in the Dynamics 365 Web application, without needing a developer to write code.
The steps you are following are for Real-Time Workflows. You should UNCHECK the "Run this workflow in the background (recommended)" checkbox in order to see the the Update Event Steps. The items in the red square box are the Update Event Steps
Need help in implementing email based approval system. Ex: Manager gets an auto triggered mail for his/her approval with a approval link in email body, when the manager clicks on the the link, it should validate the manager and then approve it. I tried searching on the internet but didn't find relevant resource.
Request you to Please help me with your ideas, suggestions or how I should proceed, or any plugin or jar is available??? It would be very helpful to me... Thanking you...
EDIT: Thanking you for replying. We have a java web app build using spring framework (MVC) where in employees can apply leaves which has to be approved by his/her manager. If an employee applies leave then a mail is triggered for approval to his/her manager with the leave details. After looking the mail, the manager logs-in to the application to approve or reject the leaves. So request you to Please help me in how to give a direct link in the mail to approve or reject the leaves.
For one of our applications we had the same requirements - employees can submit vacation requests and supervisors will be notified via mail. We have written an article about the exact way we did it - available here.
So in a nutshell, we are using Spring Integration and GMail. Each new vacation request yields an email send to all supervisors. Supervisors can reply with either approve or reject. We only accept email addresses from our domain, but since these can be faked we introduced a shared secret - a UUID added to the mail's subject which then relates to the id of the vacation request.
Once an email comes in we run the business logic to figure out whether a request shall be approved or rejected.
As I stated in my comment, I used Velocity to template my email message. You don't have to use it, but it made my job easier. You should be able to read up on it.
Java itself has the ability to send emails in it's Java EE framework using JavaMail, or you can use Spring's wrappers. You will need access to a mail server of some sorts, and would highly recommend that you setup an email box specifically for this process. I actually used my gmail account during testing, but I wouldn't recommend that for a long-term solution. I assume your company would have an email server setup somewhere you can use.
The process flow would be:
Employee fills out request
System generates an email to employee's manager(s) with a link to approve
Manager clicks on link, taken to approval page
Manager approves/denies request
The next question is how to build the URL. I would suggest using something like a UUID or something like that, or the request ID if that makes it easier. You can generate a UUID from any seed String or set of bytes. I like UUID because it obviscates the data being sent.
Anyway, the URL will basically point to a Spring form that will allow the user to approve that request. So, thinking about what you would need, I would expect some DB record that relates the information in the incoming request to the time off request that was filled out. Read in the record, load the page and display it. Simple enough.
The next issue is locking it down so only the authorized people can approve. Again, making a huge assumption here, but I am guessing you are using Spring Security? If you are, you should be able to add a condition to the Controller's handler for this approval form that requires the user to be authenticated (read here) and add a java.security.Principal to the handler methods arguments (read 15.3.2.3 here for what you can pass into a Controller's handler). With the Principal object in-hand, you should be able to compare that to a list of approvers associated with the request record in the DB. I would then have the system generate approval/denial emails that code to all concerned parties.
Let me reiterate that this is NOT the only solution, only one possible solution. This is why I feel this is not a good question for StackOverflow, as it asks a very broad question that doesn't really have a single right answer.
I would like to have a field automatically be populated with something I define in a workflow. Currently I have the workflow running upon record creation, however the field is only populated AFTER the user saves the record for the first time.
How can I use a workflow to populate that field before the user saves the form?
You can't. Workflows function on the server-side, but you're asking about populating a client-side field before the server is contacted. Moreover, workflows are triggered asynchronously, which by definition means the record has to be created in advance.
You'll need to either attach a JavaScript function to the OnSave event, or trigger the population of the field in a pre-validation or pre-operation .NET plugin. I suppose you could use a Dialog as well, but that would require user input. See the below links for more detail on the differences between plugins, workflows, and dialogs.
Options: Plugin, Workflow or Dialog
Automate Business Processes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM