“A picture can tell more than a 1000 words.” But a video can tell even more.(Unless it is fake AI generated).

When implementing Dynamics 365 we often use DevOps to document requirements, tasks and bugs. But did you know there is a very quick and easy way to attach a small video to you work items ?

I use the “Snipping Tool” a lot to take screenshots, but this can also record video’s within a specified area.

Start the process by clicking: Windows logokey + Shift + S

Then select the video tool:

The select the area you want to record, and start/stop recording. Also use Zoomit to make marks.

So far so good… But here are the super trick. In the Snipping Tool that pops up click on “GIF”:

And then select “Copy”:

This allows you to paste(CTRL-V) a video into DevOps, documents, emails etc. And even into blogs:

Small things matter also 🙂

If you look into where your DB is going, then in some cases the following two views pop’s up as occupying quite a lot of space:

PERF_INVENTDIM_INVENTSUM, and PERF_INVENTDIM_WHSINVENTRESERVE

At one customer they took :
AXDB.PERF_INVENTDIM_INVENTSUM 106.74 GB
AXDB.PERF_INVENTDIM_WHSINVENTRESERVE 96.33 GB

In 2021 -> 2022 Dynamics 365 went trough some major inventory performance redesign introduced around version 10.0.25–10.0.27. Eliminating the need to join InventSum ↔ InventDim for most queries Improved on-hand calculation performance, especially for:

• Reservation hierarchy queries (WHSInventReserve)
• Recalculation jobs (InventSumRecalcItem)
• On-hand queries via InventOnHand* views
• Simplified indexes: Each denormalized InventSum row now carries its own dimension attributes.

But in the process of improvements, there where some workflows that created these tables. But they are of no use any more.

Just create a support case, and Microsoft will remove them, and you regain your Gig’s 🙂

Hopefully Microsoft will also flush out these views in a future update.

In many projects, we lose momentum not because people resist change — but because we wait too long for consensus. We keep discussing until everyone agrees. And then time flies by, costs accelerate and we fail on success criteria’s. Chasing the perfect decision means often results in winning the fight, but loosing the war. Project resources are not endless and most often have constrains we commercially must respect.

But real progress often starts when we shift our goal from consensus to consent, where we move from “everyone says yes” to “no-one says no“.

In any projects, there are a lot to clarify, but we cannot wait for everybody to agree. We need to speed up, and on some cases take a chance on direction. Things get more clear as we move on one direction. Doing something is most often better (and cheaper), than doing nothing. (playing the costly waiting game)

So how do we implement a consent model ?

1. Start with a proposal
2. Establish ownership
3. Set a due date
4. Ask for input
5. Resolve objections
6. Decide and document
7. Revisit if necessary

What you will experience is that decisions accelerate, and the projects starts getting momentum and speed. Try it 🙂

If you use D365 Commerce, then you are most likely also have some CSU (Commerce Scale Units). Sending and receiving data frequently can quickly take a lot of preciouses GB of storage, that you want to use for other purposed.

To see if you need to clean up, go into download sessions in the “Retail and Commerce” module, and see if you have a lot of old stuff like this:

If you do, then setup go into Commerce Scheduler parameters, and specify your retention period and then click on the “Purge history data”:

This will purge upload session, download sessions and a few other elements. You do not need to run his on a high frequency, and typically set it up for weekly or monthly.

Every ‘bit’ removed becomes savings down the road.

Microsoft has now published a new FastTrack use case for the Sales Order Agent in D365 . This shows how AI is becoming an integrated part of ERP—automating order intake and reducing manual effort.

What is the Sales Order Agent?

The Sales Order Agent acts as a virtual assistant. It can read customer emails, create sales quotes, check stock availability, and convert quotes to sales orders. The agent can also handle follow-up questions if the request is unclear.

The goal is simple: reduce repetitive data entry, speed up processing, and let people spend more time on value-adding tasks.

See the use case here

If you are working with D365, the Sales Order Agent is worth exploring. It shows where ERP is going—towards more automation, more intelligence, and less manual work.

(Chatty helped with writing these complex sentences, but the Sales Order Agent does still seem cool)

In my chase for millisecounds, here are a small one. If you are not using the TMS – Transportation Management module, but are using the WMS, then there are some costly validations on the sales order header. There is a hardcoded x++ parameter you can extend to prevent some heavy queries. The effect is that the following menu items is “deactivated”:

The query code you are skipping is a quite heavy 100 ms select with a join between WHSLoadTable and WHSWorkTable. In my world, 100ms is a lot for a query, and it is executed each time you select a sales order.

As seen, you need to create a small extension to the class TMSGlobal::skipTMS(). The forms/tables using this check is the following:

I would hope that instead of a hard-coded extension, Microsoft could make a parameter instead.

As others have written, the 10.0.44 preview is now made available, and it gives a glimpse of what is to come in June. A lot have already been shared in blogs and LinkedIn feeds. But I like to go deeper, and this time I found a jewel that I think will have a noticeable performance impact. See https://fix.lcs.dynamics.com/Issue/Details/?bugId=976894&dbType=3

What is issue are explaining is that when a record is inserted on another AOS, then the cache is flushed on the table in question. In essence, this means that each AOS have to recache the data. Two tables that are quite recognizable that have Cache Lookup = found is SalesTable and SalesLine.

So one of the issue I have seen, when looking for performance, is that data that should be cached, the kernel are performing queries towards the DB, while the expectation is that the data should be fetched from cache.

I don’t have any clear measurements on what the actual impact will be, but I know for sure that caching is one of the main mechanisms for improved performance and user experience.

Good catch Microsoft! We need more of these generic performance improvements.

Some time ago, the export to datalake and was deprecated, and the it’s time to do some more house cleaning.  Also, the Power BI embedded reports seams to struggle keeping up in the latest version. Especially if you have played with the Entity store available as a Data Lake.

In our own PROD, the BIINCREMENTALTABLEMODIFICATIONS was 326 Gb.  Dataverse Database Capacity at 40 $ / GB would mean an additional cost of 156.480 $ per year for us, so we had to clean up.

More specifically on the table BIINCREMENTALTABLEMODIFICATIONS, in contains 3 fields, and keeps track of incremental updates to entity store.

To see if you have a lot of data you may open in in F&O by using this URL: &mi=SysTableBrowser&Tablename=BIINCREMENTALTABLEMODIFICATIONS.

Or checkout your Capacity here, and see it your installation is affected https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/resources/capacity#summary

If you see that the you are consuming a lot of DB capacity towards the table BIINCREMENTALTABLEMODIFICATIONS, I would suggest that you create a support ticked to get it flushed out. 

Keep your PROD “trimmed” and healthy, and you are rewarded with performance and reduced licensing costs.

EventCUD is a table normally used for handling change based and due dates alerts in Dynamics 365 F&O.  The details of this process is available here : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/fin-ops/get-started/alerts-managing

But up until 10.0.38, there was a bug, that could led to orphan “triggers”

The fix from Microsoft does not fix orphan triggers originating from before this fix, so you have to open a support ticket to get it fixed, and also to get the EventCUD table truncated

The way you can identify if you are affected by orphan triggers is to open the D365 with the following URL parameters &mi=SysTableBrowser&Tablename=EventCUD. Then look for lines with old created dates:

You should also look for CUDTableId’s not matching your table ID’s on the alerts and database logging.

If you have a “full “ EventCUD and “orphan triggers”, and clean them up, you should experience some performance gains.

And last comment.  Please avoid logging and alerting on high frequency transaction tables.  Take care 😊

You often hear phrases like:

• “The system is slower today.”
• “Nothing is working!”

Performance in Dynamics 365 is a critical aspect for both users and system owners. For end users, poor performance can lead to frustration, while system owners face challenges in identifying and resolving performance issues. To help streamline this process, I’ve created a practical checklist that outlines steps to quickly diagnose and discuss sudden performance issues.

Below is a step-by-step guide to find the root cause of performance issues and take appropriate action.

Step 1: Check Azure Status

Even if you don’t fully understand what’s causing the slowdown, there are some quick first checks you can do:

1. Microsoft health status: https://status.cloud.microsoft/ give a short summary status of Microsoft Cloud
2. Azure speed test: https://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/ let’s you see the current ping times to Microsoft data centers.
3. Azure Status: Visit the Azure Status page to see if there are any global issues that affect performance.
4. DownDetector: Use DownDetector for real-time reports of problems from users globally.
5. Twitter: Check Azure Support on Twitter for any recent announcements of issues.
6. Power Platform: Visit Power Platform Help and Support for service health reports and known issues.

If these resources show global issues, it’s likely that the problem is already being addressed. Inform your users and take a short break, knowing Microsoft engineers are working to resolve the issue.

Step 2: Use Lifecycle Services (LCS) for Telemetry Data

Once you’ve ruled out Azure-wide issues, the next step is to analyze your environment’s performance data.

1. Environment Monitoring: In LCS, navigate to environment monitoring to get an overview of your system’s status.
2. Check SQL Utilization: Look for any long-lasting peaks in SQL utilization that show performance bottlenecks.
3. Analyze AOS Performance: Check if any of the Application Object Servers (AOS) are struggling.

If no clear issues are identified, proceed to:

4. SQL Insights: Look for any heavy queries or blocks in the system. This will help you spot any ongoing processes causing delays.
5. Review Activity Logs: Check for long-running queries or errors in the telemetry data.

At this stage, you’re looking for general indicators of system stress or inefficiency.

Step 3: Collect Detailed Information from Users

If telemetry doesn’t reveal the problem, gather more specific details from the user experiencing the issue.

Key questions to ask:

• What were you doing when the performance issue occurred?
• Are other users facing the same issue?
• Is it related to a specific form or process?
• Is the problem consistent or does it happen randomly?
• Can you record a short video to demonstrate the issue?
• Can you provide a copy/paste of session information (Activity ID, Session ID, AOS name)?
  

This information will allow you to zero in on the problem and cross-check it with LCS environment monitoring.

Step 4: Reproduce the Issue

Once you’ve gathered preliminary information and checked system telemetry, it’s essential to try to reproduce the issue yourself. This is a critical step, as it lets you confirm the problem and analyze it in a controlled environment.

Why Reproducing the Issue is Important:

• Validation: Verifying that the issue can be recreated helps make sure that it’s not an isolated user-specific problem, but rather something systematic that can be investigated further.
• Visibility: Being able to see the performance issue firsthand will give your insight into how the system behaves under the problematic conditions, enabling a deeper analysis.
• Communication: If you plan to escalate the issue to developers or support, showing that the issue can be replicated provides a solid starting point for others to troubleshoot.

Steps to Reproduce the Issue:

1. Ask Access to the User’s System or Environment: If you don’t already have access, ask permission to log into the affected user’s environment. Make sure you are using the same permissions and roles as the user to avoid discrepancies.
2. Follow the User’s Steps: Once logged in, replicate the exact actions the user took when the issue occurred. This include:
   • Navigating through specific forms.
   • Running reports or transactions.
   • Performing specific searches or filtering data.
3. Use Telemetry for Assistance: If the user provided session information (e.g., Activity ID, Session ID, AOS name), use that to find the timeframe of the issue and see if any telemetry logs or queries can help in reproducing it.
4. Consider Different Scenarios: Sometimes, performance issues only occur under certain conditions. Test a variety of scenarios to see if the problem persists:
   • Load Variation: Does the issue only occur when multiple users are logged in and performing heavy tasks at the same time?
   • Data-Specific Issues: Does the issue happen when working with certain records or larger datasets?
   • Time-Sensitive Issues: Are there specific times of day when the issue occurs (e.g., during peak hours)?
5. Simulate a Clean Environment: If you’re can’t reproduce the issue directly, try testing the same functionality in a non-production (e.g., test or sandbox) environment to see if it still occurs. Differences in performance between production and non-production environments can often point to configuration or data issues.

What to Do If You Can’t Reproduce the Issue:

• Ask for More Details: If you still can’t replicate the problem, circle back with the user and ask for more context or detailed steps. They may have missed providing key details that could help pinpoint the problem.
• Collaborate with Other Users: Ask other users if they are experiencing the same issue. If the problem is user-specific, it could be related to personalization, permissions, network connections, or local device configurations.

Document Your Findings:

Whether you successfully reproduce the issue or not, it’s essential to document your findings. This documentation will be useful if you escalate the issue to another team, like:

• A support ticket with Microsoft.
• An internal report to the development or IT teams.
• Communication with the affected user to manage expectations.

By attempting to reproduce the issue yourself, you not only confirm the problem but also narrow down potential causes, making it easier to do with troubleshooting or escalate the issue with confidence.

Step 5: Do a simple F12 Network analysis

Using Chrome or Edge’s developer tools (F12), do a network analysis:

1. Track Load Times: Analyze how long various UI elements take to load.
2. Find Cryptic Delays: Look for traces that are taking an unusually long time.

You can save the network data (like the header, payload, and response times) for deeper analysis or support cases with Microsoft.

You can then record/save the header, payload and response times.  It will give hints and deeper insights.

If you can “pinpoint” the exact menu item when the performance issue occur, also save a HAR-file, as this may be needed later if you need to create support case with Microsoft.

Step 6: Perform a small Performance timer in D365 F&O

After attempting to reproduce the issue and gathering more information, the next step is to utilize the Performance Timer in D365 F&O. This will help you pinpoint where performance bottlenecks may be occurring in the user interface.

What is the Performance Timer?

The Performance Timer tool lets you monitor the duration of specific actions within the system. This is a valuable tool for isolating whether performance issues are related to particular tasks, forms, or processes.

Steps to Run the Performance Timer:

1. Enable the Performance Timer: In D365 F&O, simply append &debug=develop to the URL you’re using. This will activate developer mode, which includes the Performance Timer. There should be an icon you can click on to see the timers.
2. Run the Process: Now that the Performance Timer is enabled, carry out the process that is causing performance issues (e.g., navigating through forms, running reports, or completing a transaction).
3. Analyze the Results: The Performance Timer will display detailed information about the time each step takes. Focus on processes that show unusually high times, as these may indicate where the issue lies.
4. Save the Data: Save the timer output, which may include SQL query timings, network delays, and any computational lags. This data will be valuable if the issue needs to be escalated to developers or support teams.

Why Use the Performance Timer?

By using the Performance Timer, you can gain a clear understanding of the system’s behavior and identify specific steps or components that are underperforming. This allows you to target your troubleshooting efforts and avoid a “needle in a haystack” approach.

Step 7: Trace Parsing for Deeper Analysis

Once you have exhausted surface-level checks, it’s time to delve deeper using trace parsing. This step will give you a granular view of what is happening behind the scenes, such as which SQL queries or X++ code is contributing to performance degradation.

What is Trace Parsing?

Trace parsing involves generating and analyzing detailed logs of system activity, focusing on SQL execution times, compute times, and overall process flows. This is typically a task for experienced developers familiar with X++ and SQL.

Steps for Effective Trace Parsing:

1. Activate Tracing: Enable tracing within the specific environment where the performance issue occurs. Be mindful to limit the tracing to just a few seconds around the time when the issue happens, as traces can quickly become very large and difficult to manage.
   
2. Analyze the Trace File: Once tracing is complete, you’ll receive a detailed log of system events, including:
   • SQL Execution Times: Pinpoint how long individual SQL calls are taking.
   • Compute Times: Understand how much CPU time is being consumed during specific processes.
   • Call Stack: See the entire process flow, showing which methods and queries are running.

Example: A healthy SQL query might take less than 25 milliseconds, but a problematic query could take several seconds, indicating where optimization is needed.

3. Identify Bottlenecks: Look at the Top 5 X++ Calls and Queries—these can often be related to the main contributors to performance issues. Look for patterns such as repeated heavy queries or inefficient code paths that might be slowing the system down.

What to Do if the Trace is Inconclusive:

If no obvious bottleneck is detected, you may be dealing with an aggregated performance issue caused by the cumulative effect of many small, efficient processes. This type of issue can be particularly challenging to resolve, as it requires rethinking broader architectural elements.

For example, if performance issues arise from standard code, extensions or customizations, it could take weeks or even months to resolve fully, especially if multiple layers of custom code are involved.

Step 8: Fixing the Issue

Once you have identified the root cause of the performance issue through telemetry, reproduction, and trace parsing, the next step is to involve the appropriate resources to fix it.

1. Determine Responsibility:
   • If the issue stems from Microsoft code, open a support case with Microsoft.
   • If the problem lies within an ISV solution, contact the ISV for support.
   • If custom partner extensions are responsible, reach out to the team that developed those extensions.
2. Check Version and Patches:
   Ensure that your environment is running the latest version of the software, as many performance issues are resolved in later patches or hotfixes. Check LCS Hotfixes and the Release Planner for any upcoming features or fixes that could address the issue.
3. Evaluate Parameters and Configurations:
   Performance can often be tied to configurations. Check the system’s parameters, as enabling too many features or processes can bog down performance. Disable unnecessary options to streamline the system’s operation.
4. Optimize Data Management:
   Check if transactional or outdated data (such as completed sales orders or old inventor/WMS transactions) is accumulating in the system. Regularly archiving old data and keeping the system clean can significantly improve performance. Also take a look at the F&O capacity is some data is “exloding”.
5. Community Support:
   Don’t hesitate to reach out to the broader Dynamics 365 community. Platforms such as Yammer, community forums, and even tools like CoPilot or ChatGPT often provide valuable insights and workarounds shared by other users who have encountered similar issues.
6. Hire a 10X developer to fix it?  Sorry, but they are myths.  Just like unicorns and Bigfoot.

Step 9: The blame game

Hopefully you have now a deep insight into root cause if the performance issue, and now there is a feeling someone must “pay” because of the pain inflicted on the end-users.  A customer may start with their implementation partner, ISV’s and Microsoft.  But I’m not sure how advisable this would be, as the fundamental issue is not the bug/code/data that caused the performance problems. No developer, partner or Microsoft can deliver flawless code that handles every combination of complexity.  I’m arguing that in the project there should be more investments of quality procedures and customer testing of their used combinations of system, people and data. The implementation guide chapter 14 gives a very good overview of how to run the testing strategy. My recommendation is to allocate +50% of the implementation effort to testing and training

• Unit testing and integration testing: 10-15%
• User acceptance testing (UAT): 5-10%
• Performance and security testing: 5% and 15% to training
• End-user training: 5-10%
• Administrator and power-user training: 3-5%
• Training materials development: 2-3%

Step 10: Reflections and adjusted expectations

As I hope this blogpost reflects, is that the path of performance issues is complex, and does involve a lot of knowledge from many parties.  But the good thing is that we do have access to a lot of tools, processes and telemetry to pinpoint root case.  It may take time, but the more exact and detailed we are, the faster an issue can be resolved.

Also keep in mind that ERP systems are complex. As Michael P posted in Linked in it is estimated that Dynamics 365 X++ codebase (Application Suite consists of 27,7 M code lines and 430K methods).  But if you take the entire codebase of all customers, we have crossed more than 1 billion lines of code.   That is a lot of complexity, and the result is that performance issues will be popping up now and then.

Last comments:

1. Sales Order processes and Price calculations are slow.  Get used to it!
2. Dual Write can be a pain. Do you really need it ?
3. Customizations are most likely the reason. Did you push the developers to be done by Monday?
4. Scaling of the PROD-environment is tightly related to licensing. Lots of heavy transactional integrations and automations combined with a small 20 users licenses is a recipe for performance issues.
5. Dynamics 365 is just making sure you enjoy some well-deserved coffee breaks. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature—designed to give you more time to reflect.
6. Dynamics 365 is also teaching you the virtues of mindfulness and patience. It’s not slow, it’s just showing its respect for all the data you’re processing.

If you have looked into your D365 F&O capacity, you sometimes see a lot of data being stored in the tables EventEntitySyncTables and BIIncrementalTableModifications.

I see in the code, that there are things in place to clean them up, but there be situations where this code for some reason is not executed.

The contents of the EventEntitySyncTables are basically just a table that stores CRUD changes for incremental power BI/datalake updates. It is basically just storing change type, table and recid reference

If you see that this table is exploding it would be worth to check and see if you have a batch job named Purge Incremental Changes History (Class BIIncrementalChangesHistoryPurgeJob) and if you don’t, you create it manually in the batch job screen. (I have not found a menu item for it)

It deletes records in EventEntitySyncTables that is more than 3 days old in chunks of 1.000.000 records. (See class BIIncrementalChangesHistoryPurgeJob)

About BIIncrementalTableModifications, I actually don’t see any clear code that cleans up this table. But there are some code in the class EventActionEntitySyncRefresh that cleans up. Maybe it is on the Microsoft backlog? But there are indications that a full refresh may clean things up, when you go to the entity store menu-item. (You have to do it for all)

What is very important is that Export to Data Lake is announced deprecated, and you should transition to Synapse Link. So checkout this documentation : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/data-entities/finance-data-azure-data-lake

The transition from LCS to Power Platform admin center is steaming ahead, and I would like to put a spotlight into the “known issues” that is available in PPAC.  If you go into the support menu in LCS, you are now directed to PPAC:

Then you now have a known issues tab, where you can filter, search and look for status on known issues.

This can help a lot, as running a support case can be time consuming. You can also click on the known issue to see if there are any workarounds:

The known issues cover the entire D365 stack, and it is a highly welcomed new feature to further strengthen the support to our customers.

Have you ever wondered about the versioning numbering in the Dynamics 365 Commerce? Here is a small explanation.

If you have a version like 9.49.24030.9, this means

9 – Main release number
.49 – This is the number that increments for each service release. Like 10.0.39, 10.0.40 etc.
.24 – This is the year of the release
030 – This is day number. 030 means 30 January
.1 – Just an incremental counter

So now you can understand the versioning of the CSU/Commerce 🙂

PS! This also means that a quality update on the previous release can be further than a service release, and then the systems will complain about “downgrading not allowed”, even when selecting a newer Service update.

Have you explored the Dynamics 365 implementation portal (https://experience.dynamics.com/FTimplementationportal )? You should! Lot’s of value and checklists available there.

The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal is designed to assist both customers and partners in guiding their Dynamics 365 projects to a successful completion. This portal offers detailed implementation advice and strategies to mitigate risks, tailored to various workloads and applications within a project. Initially, it was a key resource for the FastTrack for Dynamics 365 program, aimed at customer implementations. However, it has since expanded to offer a comprehensive, self-service experience for all users.

When customers onboard their project with the Implementation Portal, they gain access to specialized guidance that is in line with the Success by Design framework. This approach is endorsed by both the FastTrack and the Dynamics 365 product engineering teams, ensuring that the advice provided is both relevant and effective.

I just learned that Microsoft launched the Implementation CoPilot Public Preview.

In the portal, check out the icon on the bottom right of the page, and feel free to ask the CoPilot for assistance.

It will look for all the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Documentation, as well as Success By Design and Implementation Guides.

Happy DAX’ing

Dynamics 365 Commerce utilizes cloud-powered search to enhance product discoverability. This feature is crucial for customer interaction across various channels like e-commerce and point of sale (POS), ensuring customers can quickly find products. This search experience includes advanced capabilities like faceted navigation, immersive autosuggest, and sorting options for better product discovery and scalability required for e-commerce traffic​​.

BM25 ranking

It is not always easy to understand exactly how the current search is working, and I will try to explain. The core center of the search is based on the ranking system BM25, where ‘BM’ means “Best Match”. BM25 is a popular ranking function used by search engines to estimate the relevance of documents to a given search query. In simpler terms, it’s a formula that helps determine how well a document (like a webpage, article, or product description) matches a search query. Here’s a basic explanation of how it works, using a simple example:

1. Term Frequency (TF): This refers to how many times a search term appears in a document. For instance, if you’re searching for “chocolate cake” and a recipe mentions “chocolate” 10 times and “cake” 5 times, these numbers contribute to the term frequency part of the BM25 calculation.
2. Inverse Document Frequency (IDF): This measures how common or rare a term is across all documents. If every recipe on a site mentions “cake,” then “cake” is a common term and has a lower IDF. However, if only a few recipes mention “chocolate,” then “chocolate” is rarer and has a higher IDF.
3. Document Length: This part of the formula adjusts for the length of the document. A longer document might naturally use a search term more often, so BM25 compensates for this. For instance, a long article that mentions “chocolate” 10 times might not be as relevant as a short article that mentions “chocolate” 5 times.
4. Query Length: BM25 also considers the length of the search query. The relevance of each term in the query to the document is considered to determine the overall relevance of the document to the query.

Example:

Suppose you have two recipes on a cooking website:

• Recipe A: A short recipe for “Chocolate Lava Cake” that mentions “chocolate” 3 times.
• Recipe B: A long article about the history of cakes that mentions “chocolate” 10 times.

If you search for “chocolate cake,” BM25 would calculate the relevance of both documents based on how often “chocolate” and “cake” appear in each (TF), how common these words are across all recipes (IDF), and the length of each document. Despite having fewer mentions of “chocolate,” Recipe A might be rated more relevant than Recipe B because it’s more focused and shorter, making its use of the term “chocolate” more significant.

In essence, BM25 helps search engines prioritize documents that are more likely to be what the user is looking for, based on how terms are used within them and how those terms are distributed across all documents.

Azure Search

In D365 eCommerce Azure search ranking is determined by underlying search engine algorithm BM25. You can refer to this document to understand how it works https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/index-similarity-and-scoring . It is basically a variant of the TF/IDF algorithm. The algorithm also takes corresponding language index (Like for nb-no locale is using “nb.microsoft” – Norwegian language analyzer) for all language fields like Name, Description, Keywords, Attributes etc. I asked Microsoft to explain one specific scenario we have been struggling on, and that is when searching for lemons (Sitron in Norwegian), and why we could not make this the highest ranking on the list. Instead, it came ranked as number 2. It is important to mention that the product name in this case is “SITRON KG”. If I rename the product is “SITRON” it will be ranked as number 1.

The reason why product sitrongele is returned as highest ranked product is because, with nb.microsoft analyzer, the word sitrongele is split into below tokens in search engine inverted index:

 “tokens”: [

       {

           “token”: “sitrongelé”,

           “startOffset”: 0,

           “endOffset”: 10,

           “position”: 0

       },

       {

           “token”: “sitrongele”,

           “startOffset”: 0,

           “endOffset”: 10,

           “position”: 0

       },

       {

           “token”: “sitron”,

           “startOffset”: 0,

           “endOffset”: 6,

           “position”: 0

       },

       {

           “token”: “gelé”,

           “startOffset”: 6,

           “endOffset”: 10,

           “position”: 0

       },

       {

           “token”: “gele”,

           “startOffset”: 6,

           “endOffset”: 10,

           “position”: 0

       }

   ]

 The SITRONGELE is compound word in Norwegian which combined by sitron and gele, so that it is split into tokens including both sitron and gele. That is why sitrongele is also returned when searching for “SITRON“.

Although both “SITRONGELE” and “SITRON KG” contains the token SITRON, the document for SITRONGELE product contains more matched token than document for “SITRON KG“:

From the above table, we can see that there are 6 matched tokens in “SITRONGELE” document, but 4 matched tokens in “SITRON KG” document. The more matched tokens, the higher rank of the document. That is why SITRONGELE product is in front of SITRON KG product in search results.

The BM25 algorithm adjusts its rankings based on term distribution within the available data. It tends to perform well with longer queries due to its handling of term saturation and information length consideration. Despite its effectiveness, BM25 has some limitations. It does not understand the semantic meaning of query terms or documents, which means it might not fully capture the search context. Additionally, BM25 treats all user queries equally, lacking a personalized approach to search results. Moreover, BM25 is subject to the limitations of the terms and data it is applied to, and its effectiveness can be influenced by the nature of the available information and the queries.

Based on this understanding we can see the importance of having the right searchable product name, search name, description, and attributes. What I further would like to have is a way to better control the ranking by having the ability to boost certain products based on campaigns, pricing, availability, and also to easier control with per site/legal entity. I also in the future hope to see search features that are self-improving and learn what customers are searching for and improve the search results accordingly.

There are extensibility options that developers can do to adjust the search algorithms, and it is advisable to involve Microsoft if there are specific needs, and there are also ISV solutions available in the marked place, and one of them being recommended are the unbxd.com. I have not yet talked to them or understood their offering, but it is a path to investigate if even more advanced search capabilities are required.

I would also like to thank the community for 2023. It has been a very productive year with lots of learning and new features. 2024 will be the year we see more F&O/eCommerce deliverables in the AI/CoPilot area, and that will be super interesting.

Happy Dax’ing

Hey there, eCommerce enthusiasts! Get ready for some exciting news from the Dynamics 365 universe. Microsoft’s hitting pause on Product recommendations for newbies, but hey, who says we can’t have a little fun in the meantime?

Enter the world of ChatGPT for Excel – think of it as your personal eCommerce wizard! This nifty tool is like having a magic wand to conjure up snazzy search terms for products on your eCommerce site. Just line up your products, wave the formula wand, and voila – five awesome search terms for each item, in as many languages as you need. Abracadabra!

Here’s the secret sauce:

• List your products (the more, the merrier!).
• Apply this cool formula for instant, catchy search terms.
• Mix these into your search attributes and watch the magic happen.

The great thing is that the AI understands the product and will result in better search terms.

And because we love to experiment – I played around with ChatGPT for Excel to juggle the product display order. Check out this spell:

=AI.ASK(“Rank between 1 and 1000 on expected popularity. Only reply with the number. No text. It’s OK to randomly choose a number. Low number is a popular product, and 1000 is less popular”;B2)

A little more tweaking and we could be onto something epic. And guess what? This is just the tip of the AI iceberg in Excel! Just imagine the fun when Microsoft CoPilot jumps into Excel – it’s going to be like having your own AI sidekick! So, stay tuned, keep experimenting, and happy DAX’ing! Let’s make your eCommerce journey an adventure to remember.

The following blogpost is 100% meaningless and can in no circumstances be used for anything other than better understanding Dynamics 365 code and playing around. What I’m about to show will NOT help you in any way, or make you more happy.

When developing in Visual Studio you are restricted to make overrides to any Microsoft code. We are currently ONLY using extensions. You can read more about the concept here.

But in rare occasions when working with analyzing standard code, it could be interesting to make a change to the standard code, compile and execute to see the effect. It could be scenario’s where we want to inform Microsoft of improvements or issues. It could also be related to cooperation with Microsoft on the CDE (Community Driven Development).

When trying to make changes to an existing (SYS) object you will get the following error informing you that you are not allowed to make any changes to the ‘Application Suite model.

But there is a way to “hack” your way around it. You can change the Layer in the model descriptor file. For the application suite you can find the model here:

In the descriptor file you can make changes to the Layer, moving it from SYS and upwards, like into the ISV layer:

If I select “8” as layer, then the model is moved to the ISV layer.(You also need to do this to some more descriptor files)

Then the code can overridden, and you can play, test and learn.

And before you pump me full of “We don’t do this” replies, remember I titled this as 100% meaningless

Now, do this the RIGHT way and build your solutions using extensions, and come to terms with the fact that the application is sealed, and we have a “One-Version” approach!

Happy DAX’ing

Scheduled for release on Monday, October 23, 2023, Microsoft’s Omnichannel Media Management feature promises significant performance gains, particularly in eCommerce and POS. Beyond merely optimizing digital asset performance, this feature offers a range of functionalities:

Key Features:

1. Integrated Product Image Management: Dynamics 365 now includes an iframe that links directly to the site builder. This seamless integration offers granular control over the presentation of product images.
2. Optimized Load Times and Caching: The new feature ensures quicker image loading and more effective caching. Upcoming support for the webp image format is expected to further accelerate load times.
3. Reusable Media Assets: No longer are unique filenames required for each product. Media assets can be reused across different products. Several layers of fallback.
4. Dimension-Specific Assignment: Media can be allocated to particular product dimensions, allowing for the omission of irrelevant dimensions.
5. Bulk Media Management: Tab-separated .tsv manifest files facilitate the bulk export and import of media assignments and metadata.

Performance benefits

The Omnichannel Media Management significantly enhances user experience. For instance, where the previous approach took over 400ms to load an uncached image, the new feature reduces this time to just 21ms.

Current way of loading pictures was a “search” with a 401ms server response time and only a 15 minutes cache.

New way of loading pictures is fetching the pictures directly with a 21 ms server response time and is also adding 120 hours of caching.

Additionally, with effective caching, content download time is virtually eliminated, leaving only a 19ms server response time. This is close to the theoretical minimum, constrained only by datacenter latency.

Given these advantages, there’s a compelling case for starting to use the new Omnichannel Media Management solution. It adds a new dimension of performance and usability to the Dynamics 365 Commerce suite, making it a crucial update for those invested in performance optimization.

So, try it out if you are using eCommerce or POS, and want pictures to become lightning fast!

The setting of the correct time zone for service accounts in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is crucial for accurate business logic execution, particularly when dealing with time-sensitive functionalities like order deadlines. Given your interest in Dynamics 365, eCommerce, and Supply Chain, this topic is indeed pertinent.

Hidden within the user accounts in Dynamics 365, you’ll find service accounts like RetailServiceAccount, which is vital for real-time calls between the Cloud Scale Unit (CSU) and Finance & Operations (F&O). To locate these accounts, navigate to the user section and apply the isMicrosoftAccount = true filter.

Then you get the following list:

Each service account has a default preferred time zone, sometimes set to GMT-8 for RetailServiceAccount. This becomes crucial when you’re building features that rely on date and time calculations. For example, order deadlines for same-day or next-day deliveries are often determined based on the time zone. Within the code, you may encounter instances where DateTimeUtil::getUserPreferredTimeZone() is used, as in the SalesCalcAvailableDlvDate class. This function fetches the time zone from the user executing the code, which for retail calls is typically RetailServiceAccount.

If the time zone isn’t set correctly for service accounts, time-sensitive calculations like order deadlines could be inaccurate. This method appears 430 times in the standard codebase, making its impact substantial. To modify these settings, you can simply add the preferred time zone column to the user account, click ‘Edit,’ and make the necessary adjustments. This is also applicable to other settings like language and number format.

It’s imperative to set the correct time zone for service accounts executing system jobs or batches in Dynamics 365. This ensures that your business logic related to date and time operates as intended. Given the relevance of this topic to your work in eCommerce, Supply Chain, and management consulting, it’s a detail that warrants careful attention.

And then to a question: What should we do if we operate in multiple time zones? Then I think there are more improvements to be made to ensure that time zone calculations are better handled, and is not originating from the preferred time zone on a service account.

In the Dynamics 365 eCommerce project we where implementing a pricing logic that was quite complex and required many steps to calculate a price. The prices are unique for each customer, product, and other aspects, and the prices had to be calculated each time and in real-time. But calculating prices are a time- and compute intensive operation and is not always aligned with how today’s customers expect eCommerce sites to work. The expectation is that when browsing a site, the prices are there instantly, and that it is easy to search, filter, refine and ‘order by’. In traditional eCommerce sites, the prices are most often a flat table of precalculated prices, and often in the millions of records. But we did not want this. We wanted a pricing logic that was dynamic and real-time contextualized, but still fast.

The way we then first designed it was to create a price caching logic in the CSU (Cloud-Scale-Unit), where the prices were stored in a memory cache for up to 24 hours. We tested this approach in a Tier-2 environment, and we were amazed by the performance we archived. Then we decided to deploy to production, and quite soon we realized that we did not get the expected performance. Somehow it seemed like the cache we built was sometimes hit and sometimes not. The production systems behaved differently than what we tested in test/UAT systems. In essence it was sometimes fast, and sometimes slow.

I then went deeper into telemetry of the CSU, that have become very good in later releases, and where Samuel Ardila Carreño have also have provided some excellent CSU/Azure Data Explorer dashboard as exemplified under. Here we can see the exact timing of each API call, frequency, and average. A very nice way to understand performance of API’s.

But back to the story, where the caching failed. In this case we had one CSU for eCommerce, and we see that caching results is not what we expected. By deeper analyzing through the Azure Data Explorer, we realized that One CSU is NOT one machine. Is it multiple stateless services. In the environment we have, we could trace it down to 15 CSU microservices that seem to be load balanced. This is why our new memory cache is failing. The load was under the hood shifting from one microservice to another. The probable reason for this is scalability. We have also realized we can update CSU’s and eCommerce packages in prod without seeing any downtime. This is probably because updates and traffic are just being switched from one stateless microservice to another. And this was the main reason why our memory caching was not working.

When we learned this, we decided to not only have cache in memory, but also to create a shared cache table in the CSU. So, when a price was calculated we stored the price in both the memory cache, but also on a cache table that all 15 microservices read from. This gave us a much better performance that is closer to eCommerce customers’ expectations.

I have always wondered why the eCommerce SCU’s come in Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3 levels, and it have never been clearly explained to me the technical differences. But I think I see it now. It is probably the number of stateless micro services under each CSU.

So the lessons are; 1. Understanding the underlying architecture is essential for achieving the expected outcome. 2. Cache is king, when done correctly.

At the inspirit365 Vision Summit in Paris, I got to present details from the latest Gartner report, Hype Cycle for Retail Technologies, 2023. There are 4 areas I would like to relate to the Dynamics 365 Commerce offerings, where I think Microsoft have a very strong offering. I cannot share the Gartner report, but I highly recommend you to seek it to get the full report.

I will try to link these 4 technologies towards what we have in Dynamics 365, and what Microsoft have in their short upcoming roadmap.

1. Retail Media Technology Platforms

The definition of this hype is technology platforms for retail that supports media networks. This allows stores to display products from third parties, such as brands, while the customer is shopping. Most often used online, it can also be used in physical stores for a comprehensive retail strategy. The upcoming Omni-channel media management features fit’s into this this hype.

In the complex ecosystem of retail, efficiency and simplicity are paramount. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce addresses this by offering native media management features that are seamlessly integrated between the Commerce headquarters and site builder. This integration streamlines the media asset management workflow by centralizing it in the Commerce headquarters, the very locus where merchandising decisions are made. This strategic enhancement reduces complexity and operational friction for both system integrators and merchandisers. By offering an omnichannel media management solution that is immediately functional ‘out-of-the-box’, Dynamics 365 Commerce substantially elevates the efficacy of retail operations. You can see the solution in action on YouTube.

2. Unified Commerce Platform

Dynamics 365 have been fortunate to be in this space for a long time. The definition of this hype is having a comprehensive trading platform simplifies commerce across all touchpoints, allowing customers to see, purchase, and engage. It connects stores, kiosks, websites, mobile, social media, and smart devices, regardless of how they are used. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of have a out-of-the-box architecture to support this. I know that more is wanted, but I also see ongoing investments like micro services for Inventory Visibility, and more coming. It may be a hype for Gartner, but for Dynamics 365 it is an reality.

3. Contextualized Real-Time Pricing

The definition of this hype is having real-time pricing based on attributes and relationships allows for immediate price adjustments across all touchpoints. Prices can be influenced by factors such as competitor pricing, special offers, customer loyalty, and immediate demand. This dynamic pricing model enables businesses to respond swiftly to market changes, optimizing revenue and enhancing customer satisfaction. It’s a modern approach that aligns perfectly with the imperatives of omnichannel retail.

The feature from Microsoft that supports this, is the Manage attribute-based omnichannel sales pricing. The full documentation is available here, but I wanted to show my interpretation of this solution. Prices are a sequence of steps, and triggers/attributes explaining when the different components should be active.

Attributes are properties that can be placed on not only customers and products, but also on more transactional properties like sales order header and line. When a price component is activated are the union of them.

As each component can be activated it means we can have a price tree, that controls the sequence and enablement of the components according to attributes. Microsoft uses the following diagram to show how different calculations approaches can be built.

Performing real time calculations are a compute intensive achievement, and if you have been in the field of combinatoric and permutation complexity we know that calculating the best and perfect price is difficult. And I know that this have a special focus at Microsoft. The solution is still in preview, and I expect that we will see performance improvements in the near future.

4. AI in retail

The definition of AI in commerce is about technology that adapts without specific programming, based on data and usage. These systems recognize patterns, predict events, and operate autonomously. AI is critical for algorithmic trading and is often a part of business applications provided by vendors. Indeed, the integration of AI capabilities can transform retail operations by automating complex tasks, offering predictive analytics, and personalizing the customer experience. In a marketplace increasingly driven by data, AI’s role in enabling intelligent decision-making is invaluable. The first step on this journey are Co-Pilots, that we gradually see is lighting up in the Dynamics 365 stack. Most merchandisers with large product catalogs want a more efficient way to enrich products, and one of the area I look forward to is the use of CoPilots to generate product enrichment content for e-commerce sites/sitebuilder. To see it in action, take a look at the following YouTube video.

Conclusion

The future of commerce is not a distant horizon; it’s unfolding right here, right now. The latest advancements captured in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Retail Technologies, 2023, echo strikingly well with the functionalities and roadmaps of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Commerce. From leveraging omnipresent media platforms and unifying commerce across various touchpoints to real-time, attribute-based pricing, and the game-changing role of AI, Dynamics 365 is not merely keeping pace—it’s setting the pace. These aren’t just technological ‘hypes’; they are tangible solutions shaping the next chapter of retail. I invite you to not just read the report but to experience these innovations firsthand. Remember, we’re not talking about the future in abstract terms; with Dynamics 365 Commerce, the future is an executable file. Stay tuned for more insights, and as always, let’s continue to bridge the gap between technology and real-world retail solutions.

As I sit down to pen this message today, my heart brims with a sense of joy and humility. Why, you may wonder? I’ve just crossed an incredible milestone that I scarcely dared to dream of when we embarked on this journey. My blog, my shared space of learning and exchange, is right now surpassing the monumental mark of 1 million hits! A figure so vast, it’s almost daunting. Yet, each digit in this number represents a moment of connection, a spark of learning, a shared slice of life. It’s a testament to the power of the Dynamics 365 community we’ve built together – a community that pulsates with vibrancy and engagement. To you, my cherished community, I owe an ocean of gratitude. 🙏

A heartfelt thank you to my community friends, inspirit365 colleagues, and our cherished customers. Your unwavering support, creativity, and dedication are the pillars on which this blog stands. Your commitment to preserving the quality and integrity of our content is why we have been successful in nurturing such a robust and engaged readership. This journey is as much yours as it is mine, and I’m profoundly grateful to be traversing this path with you.

I would be remiss if I didn’t extend a special word of thanks to my fellow Dynamics 365 bloggers and other community sites. Your work is a constant source of inspiration, and together, we’re making this community stronger and more vibrant. Looking to the future, I pledge to keep pushing the boundaries, to continue to evolve and strive for better. In this Dynamics 365 community, we grow, learn, and form lasting friendships together, united by our shared Dynamics 365 passion and curiosity.

From the deepest recesses of my heart, I say once again, thank you. Here’s to the next million!

//Kurt

I’ve received several inquiries about implementing Dynamics 365 eCommerce in a B2B context, with a recurring concern being the associated costs and efforts. In this post, I will share my experiences and recommendations for creating a B2B eCommerce site catering to both local and regional markets. The example presented here represents a medium-sized eCommerce implementation. Keep in mind that there are possibilities for smaller B2B implementations with fewer requirements and greater reliance on “out-of-the-box” solutions based on Adventureworks or Fabricam.

Super-duper executive summary:

Under many assumptions, and with an eCommerce site handling 5,500 orders/month and eCommerce revenue of $2,750,000/month, you should budget approximately $14,500/month for licenses and an implementation cost of around $500,000 over six months. Averaging this cost per month across 36 months results in approximately $35,000/month. While the price may seem steep, it is essential to consider the alternatives and the additional efforts required to integrate third-party eCommerce sites with F&O. Dynamics 365 pricing aligns with what is commonly observed in the market. Integrating with third-party eCommerce systems might appear attractive in a PowerPoint presentation, but often leads to a complicated web of integrations, workarounds, and issues entirely detached from Microsoft’s innovation. Don’t deceive yourself. It is also crucial to maintain a close relationship with your implementation partner, as they can offer valuable insights on how to keep licensing costs within a reasonable range.

Licenses

The go-to resource for licensing questions is the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, which is updated regularly. In a nutshell, here’s what you need:

1. Dynamics 365 Commerce HQ users (usually attach licenses to other F&O users).
2. Select a Tier level, which determines the scalability and boundaries regarding the number of orders per month you can have.
3. Add overage Tiers if your order count exceeds the limits of Tier SKU.

Additionally, Microsoft has introduced the concept of “bands” that regulate the number of transactions allowed based on average order value. A sweet spot for B2B is typically Band 3/4, which grants the following number of orders per month:

For example, a B2B customer with 5,500 eCommerce orders and an average value of $500/order would generate $2,750,000 in monthly revenue. The expected eCommerce licensing cost for such a scenario would be around $14,500/month. In this example, it would correspond to 0.51% of the sales basket value or $2.6/order in eCommerce licensing costs.

Implementing Dynamics 365 eCommerce offers a seamless and integrated online shopping experience for your customers. While there may be cheaper solutions available, they will require you to tackle integration challenges yourself, often leading to limitations, issues, and a siloed approach. The implementation process involves planning, design, configuration, customization, testing, deployment, staff training, and support. For B2B, specific requirements may necessitate extensions, as they are often not covered by the standard solution.

Resource plan

A minimum of 6 months project is my recommendation, and the following resource plan:

1. Project Manager (1 FTE)
   Responsible for overall project management, communication, and coordination.
2. Business Analyst/Functional architect (1 FTE)
   Responsible for gathering requirements, analyzing business processes, and developing functional specifications.
3. Commerce/eCommerce Technical Architect (1 FTE)
   Responsible for designing and configuring the Dynamics 365 eCommerce solution, Site builder and setup in Azure B2C.
4. Senior/Expert Developer(s) (4 FTEs)
   (X++) Responsible for customizing and integrating further and to handle extensions in F&O
   (C#) Back-end developer that deeply understands the Commerce SDK and CRT(Commerce runtime), and can create B2B extensions packages.
   (JavaScript/TypeScript) Back-end developer that can create and clone eCommerce modules.
   (CSS) Front-end developer that works in the front-end design
5. Quality Assurance Specialist (1 FTE)
   Responsible for testing and ensuring the quality of the solution.
6. Training Specialist (0.5 FTE)
   Responsible for staff training and creating user guides and documentation.
7. Support Staff (1 FTEs)
   Responsible for ongoing support and maintenance.

Project Phases:

• Define project objectives, scope, and requirements.
• Assemble project team.
• Develop project schedule and milestones.
• Identify key stakeholders and establish communication plan.
• Perform risk assessment and develop risk mitigation strategies.

Solution modeling (1.5 months)

• Analyze current business processes and identify areas for improvement.
• Design eCommerce site layout, navigation, and user interface.
• Configure Dynamics 365 eCommerce modules and settings.
• Set up product catalog, pricing, promotions, and inventory management.
• Configure payment gateways and shipping options.

• Develop custom functionality and extensions as needed.
• Further integrate Dynamics 365 eCommerce with existing extensions.
• Configure customer segmentation and personalization features.
• Implement advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.

• Perform unit, integration, and system testing.
• Conduct user acceptance testing (UAT).
• Address and resolve any identified issues or bugs.
• Perform performance and security testing.

Deploy/Go-Live (1 month)

• Plan and execute data migration strategy.
• Deploy Dynamics 365 eCommerce solution to production environment.
• Train staff on using and managing the eCommerce platform.
• Create user guides and documentation.

• Monitor system performance and address any issues.
• Gather user feedback and implement continuous improvements.
• Provide ongoing support and maintenance for the eCommerce solution.

Scope of an eCommerce site

Dynamics 365 eCommerce consists of several modules and components that need to be included in the scope. To keep track of this, I recommend building a WBS structure in DevOps that allows for following of each aspect of the implementation. The main aspects I recommend are:

1. Processes
   Create a list of all processes associated with eCommerce, that includes steps of what is needed to be done in Dynamics 365 F&O/HQ. Like creating products, prices, customers on hand etc. In a typical implementation you will have 50+ processes, that also cover processes that your customers will do in the eCommerce site.
2. Azure B2C and Azure frontend
   Authentication and access control are essential elements and expect to have 20+ work items related to this topic.
3. Modules
   Create a list of all D365 eCommerce modules. In total there are 71 main modules, and several sub-modules. The reason why you want to create a WBS on these, is because you will have to evaluate if you should clone some of them, and if you should create a theme/design around them. You also need to be ready to create subtasks to handle languages/translations and to further create local regulatory features. The developers will mainly work on these.
4. Fragments
   Create DevOps work items on components that can be reused across the site. These are fragments like headers, footers, breadcrumbs, common metatags, and internal/external scripts. Also keep in mind that you may need to create channel and language specific versions of each fragment. In the projects I have been with there will be 16+ fragments multiplied with number of channels and languages.
5. Templates
   Create work items on templates that will be reused. In a normal project there will be 12+ fragments.
6. Pages
   Create a work item per page. Normally this will be approx. 40 pages multiplied with the number of channels and languages. The pages you should invest in are PDP (Product Details Page), Search and Category pages, Cart and Checkout pages. They need to be flawless!
7. Theme
   You may start out with cloning the standard Adventureworks/Fabricam theme, and then extend from there. We often see that we want elements from both the themes, and we then need to do a lot of work on the themes to get the right look and feel. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the work required on design and theme and be prepared to invest heavily in this area. This is more than selecting colors but is directly linked to how eCommerce users will interact with the site. Expect to have 50+ work items in this, and you must go deep to the design you require.
8. Media library
   eCommerce is a very visual delivery. Good pictures are essential. Not only for products, but also to create visual elements in the site.
9. Microsoft support cases
   In the project you need a very tight relationship with Microsoft Support for clarifications. Not everything is available as documentation, and sometimes you need to have expert help to push things forward. Especially since there are new features and improvements quite frequently. I recommend adding all communications and SR numbers in your DevOps, so that you bring visibility and tractability of all support. Also, very often you may have feature requirements that is not part of standard, and you may need to find workarounds to ensure progress. Waiting for the next release may not always be an option. It is not uncommon to have 50+ support cases through implementation.

Conclusion

Implementing Dynamics 365 eCommerce in a B2B context may seem like a Herculean task, but with the right planning, resources, and a sprinkle of determination, you can make your eCommerce platform the talk of the town. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your eCommerce site, but if you follow the steps laid out in this guide, you’ll have a platform that even Julius Caesar would approve of. So, gear up and embark on this eCommerce odyssey, and who knows – you might just become the “Amazon” of B2B commerce. Good luck, and may the Dynamics be with you!

This blogpost is meant for myself as a copy-paste of stuff I often use when working with Dynamics 365 eCommerce. If others can benefit from it just makes me happy.

URL’s when working with D365 eCommerce sites:

Depending on the URL, you need to add the prefix ‘?’ for the first parameter, and ‘&’ for the next etc.

To sign-out

[URL]/_msdyn365/signout

Also when looking for page source code, search for “SDK” to see version of the site.

Robot.txt

When working with eCommerce sites, I don’t want the search indexer to pick-up development stuff. Here are the Robots.txt that prevents search engine to crawl the site. As realized in practice, search engines REALLY want to sell our stuff, and you may get unwanted traffic into your development site.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

Yarn commands

When working in visual studio code the following commands are used a lot.

Yarn

yarn --force

yarn cache clean

yarn start

yarn msdyn365 pack

yarn msdyn365 pack --preview

yarn msdyn365 update-versions module-library

yarn msdyn365 update-versions retail-proxy

yarn msdyn365 update-versions sdk

remove-item .\yarn.lock

CSU URL’s:

URL’s when working with D365 F&O:

Depending on the URL, you need to add the prefix ‘?’ for the first parameter, and ‘&’ for the next etc:
https://site.domain.com/page.format?parameter1=value&parameter2=value…

As we know, the Dynamics 365 portfolio of apps and functionally is extremely rich and have vertical features for most industries. We also know that driving the Microsoft R&D with a tight coordination between the apps is difficult, and I also understand Microsoft want to provide new highly requested features and innovation quickly to the market. In the highly agile and innovative domain we are in, this can be seen as an accelerated delivery of MVP’s (Minimum Viable Products). The nature of MVP is more quickly get feedback from the marked to better understanding on where the next innovation cycle/wave should take the feature.

Understandable this can result in release of features that have limitations and workarounds. Microsoft is quite good in documenting limitations, but I would say we see an increase in limitations where apps and feature combinations that are not supported, colliding or limiting each other. I did a small search in learn.microsoft.com, and there are more than 186 documentation pages describing limitations that you should be aware out. Click
here for the a list of limitations. Also be aware that there are also many undocumented limitations when you try to combine features from different areas like SCM, Commerce, Process industry, Dual Write++.

Understanding limitations can save you for a lot of time in project and prevent implementing scenarios that is not working or supported. My recommendation is to search for limitations as an important step in any implementation, to ensure that you don’t hit into a hard documented limitation. Very often you realized the consequences of the limitations until you actual test.

Here is just a very small example subset of some limitations Microsoft have described to give you an idea:

If I’m not limited on time, I can try to add more limitations later. Take care, and remember the future have no limitations

In March 2023 the public preview of integrated omnichannel media management features are planned, and I’m really looking forward implementing this feature at customers. In simpler terms, the new feature makes it easier for you to manage all the media assets (like product images, videos, and other documents) related to your online and in-store sales. You can now upload, organize, and keep track of all these assets directly from within Dynamics 365. This way, you don’t have to worry about any complicated setup or struggling with separate systems. With these improvements, managing your media assets will be much smoother and more efficient.

But while we wait for this, we must use what we got. I want to share a small experience that was resolved together with Microsoft support. In essence I was expecting that when using the Adventure Works theme, that I should be able to see 4 pictures of a product like this:

But when trying things out on my own environment I only got the eCommerce to show 1 picture. I double checked that I really had multiple pictures in the, and also checked that the naming of products was set up correctly. Basically, product images should be named “/Products/{ProductNumber}_000_001.png”. 001 is the sequence of the image and it can be 001, 002, 003, 004 or 005.

But what as strange, is that I could not even see that the eCommerce site even did a call to fetch picture 002 .. 005 from the media library. After some deeper analysis, it was clear that the main reason why eCommerce was not fetching pictures was that we need to generate picture URLs from the following screens:

Here you can work more specifically assigning the filenames towards the products. You can also edit the list in excel and use different formats. Like using jpeg instead of PNG. I also think it could be possible to add URL’s towards pdf or any other filetypes.

So the essence here is that the link between products and media assets can be maintained and controlled from within Dynamics 365. It also means that if you don’t have multiple pictures of a product, you can delete those media URL’s you are not using. This can improve eCommerce performance, as it then will not try look for media assets that don’t exists.

I would also recommend to take a look at the Youtube video (How to upload images to Point of Sale using Media Library in Dynamics 365 Commerce) from Eugene Shamshurin for additional details.

Take care friends

I have played with ChatGPT, and when looking through social media, blogpost and videos, it seems we have now entered the early ages of AI and we can ask ChatGPT to generate almost anything we are asking for. I have started to start ask myself philosophical questions and what will be replaced by these systems. There seems to be no limitations, and the entire community is in the “hype”. We get the feeling that ‘This would change everything’.

But, when I do a deeper reflection and get a deeper understanding of what this could bring, I see that we are still in the very early stages. My impression is that there will take long time before we see drastic changes to the Dynamics 365 community and ecosystem.

• We will still go to work.
• Customer will continue to purchase our services.
• Competence and experience are not easily replaced.

In short; the hype is here, and keep in mind that we have had chatbots since the 1966, and the first was Eliza. Through the 90’s there was also countless others that made us think that ‘the future is here’. Also there are also alternatives like Chatsonic and the google LaMDA that is trying to do the same.

After playing around, I see is:

• Facts are very often just wrong. I would say the correctness to be like a highschooler with a ‘B-‘ grade.
• There is no accountability.
• Missing references to the results.
• There is a lot of text-predictions, but there is limited creativity.

It is fantastic fun to play around with, and I will use it going forward. This most significant change is that there will be a few new billionaires in the industry. But ChatGPT will not ‘Change everything’ currently, and I hope this blogpost will age well the next 5-10 years.

PS! I asked ChatGPT to grade this blog post, and it gave me a B

Do you feel that the of printing labels in Dynamics 365 is a bit difficult? The options we have in standard D365 is to learn Wave label printing. Or you can look into ISV’s as ISV Docentric.

Labeling connects the transactional world with the physical world. We meet customer labels requirements for identifying products, pricing labels, locations, receiving labels, shipping labels, units, boxes, pallets/license plates. In addition to just labeling, there are also the requirements for RFID marking products, and some cases to print out plastic badges or tickets. The possibilities are enormous for automating and improving data quality and process automation.

From my personal experience I have preferred the BarTender solution from Seagull Scientific, and they have now also launched a cloud edition of their labeling system. In Wave 2020 Wave 1, there was in the roadmap an integration to BarTender, but this was moved to a future release. Since then, it has been silent. In short, I have not found a good BarTender integration for Dynamics 365.

So, I decided to just create a new one . But this time using a REST based cloud-integration, that could be generic, and that could also be used for all kinds of integrations. My first step was to deeply understand how such a integration should be working. Then I found the following video on how to set it up by accessing a web service where I just had to post a JSON towards a URL. I will try to explain how I did this in Dynamics 365, and exemplifying it by creating an customer address label.

Step 1: Create the label design in BarTender

My first step is to use the BarTender and design the label. I create the Named Data Sources and populate it with data. Here I have 3 data elements like AccountNum as a QR code, CustomerName and CustomerAddress, and have just added some sample data to each of the named data sources.

Now I have a label design, and I next need to populate this design with some data through a web-service.

Step 2. Use the BarTender integration builder to create a WEB-Service.

The BarTender integration builder is a fantastic tool, that makes building a REST-based integration service easy to build. Just import the already created label design, and create a variable for each named data source as demonstrated in the following video. Here you see that I have created a variable for each named data source.

Step 3. Test the WEB-Service.

For testing the label printing, my preferred tool is insomnia. Here I very easily can test my new web-service. I create a Post where a JSON looks like the following: Here I add value to the variables.

I then click “Send”, and in the insomnia, it is reporting back that the label is printed. I did specify that I wanted a PDF version of the label, and here is what I got:

Step 4. Deploy the WEB-Service

The next step is to deploy the service, and how to do this is available in the BarTender documentation.

Preliminary Summary:

At this time, we have a working REST service that will send labels to a printer, by posting a JSON file towards a URL. Our next step is to have Dynamics 365 F&O to generate such a JSON from data and to send it to the webservice.

Chapter 2 : Collect and send data from Dynamics 365 to the webservice

To make this happen, I decided to create a very small extension with the purpose to build the JSON from any data within Dynamics 365. I will show this extension from a user perspective.

Screen 1: Label Types

The first screen created was a place where you could define label types. Each label type have a ID and a name. You can also choose to connect the label towards a Main table identifier or a source class for special cases. In addition, you may further connect to joined tables through a query relation. Then the user us adding named data sources, and each can be a field, display method, class method or a free text. You may also add default values.

In the header you will also have the option to log the label and to create some notes about the label.

Screen 2: Enable the ability to print label from any screen.

The next thing I did was to create an extension to SysSystemDefinedButtons. This allowed me to dynamically add a generic menu on ALL forms, and only if there was a label defined on any of the data sources in the form, a View and print menu will show. I can multiselect records and send them to be printed or logged.

Screen 3: Printed labels

As each print can be logged, each label generated will get a unique label ID, and where all named data source values will be filled based on the label type

If I look at the “header” view I will also see the JSON created.

And this gives me the following label.

Final Summary:

This very small extension gives us the ability to generate the necessary data that can be sent to the label printing webservice. It can also be a candidate to completely replace the standard label printing made available in in WMS module, and further enhance the ability to generate labels all over Dynamics 365. There is also a very simplified API, that allows for label printing to be automatically executed at certain steps. Like in WMS Wave Steps, so that when an action in the WMS mobile is performed, then the label is printed. This way of dealing with labels could also easily to extended to other scenario’s like commerce/POS. Or to generate customer return labels in eCommerce. The possibilities are endless. And as the F&O code basically just are building a JSON to be sent to a web-service the tool can also be used for other labeling software or other 3’rd party tools.

Will the ideas and X++ code be shared with the community?

There is only one way that this would be shared with the community, and that is if Microsoft takes ownership to the solution and makes sure that we in standard very easily can design and create new labeling concepts in external tools like BarTender. If you as a reader have reached to this section in the blogpost, then you can influence this by voting on a Microsoft idea made available here. If accepted by Microsoft they will get the code for free and must ensure that we as a community get a long-lasting best-of-breed solution for label printing.

Your have surely heard about Sturgeon’s law that “90% of everything is crap”. Dynamics 365 is one of the most comprehensive and feature rich business application in the marked and trying to learn or use all the features would be lifelong study effort beyond the capacity of any person. I can say with 100% certainty that nobody in the world deeply knows about all the available features and functions. When implementing Dynamics 365 at a customer, we often see that only a fraction (10%?) of the available features is being implemented. Does this mean that 90% of what we have in Dynamics 365 is “crap”?

The definition of “crap” is subjective and sometimes controversial, so it’s not always obvious whether something should be viewed as “crap”. But for one person involved and looking at the entirety it could get this impression. The other element is that “crap” is a retrospective experience. You don’t know if something is “crap” unless you understand what is not “crap”. Like Thomas Edison had to evaluate 10.000 prototypes for a lightbulb before he cracked the solution(myth). Did he have 9999 crap’s and one success?

To identify the “crap”, there are one VERY important activity in any implementation that becomes a critical prerequisite to succeed within a constrained availability of resources (time, money, people).

Scoping!

I wanted to share with you some of my best practices on how to address scoping on a very early stage in an implementation project, to identify more quickly what to spend time and focus on. For this there are 3 major pillars of focus in any implementation project: Processes and Responsibilities, People and Planning, Systems and Data

When we are running projects, we therefore always start with a discovery phase where we try to find the right direction and what the implementation project should focus on. The main deliverables are a Project Blueprint/SOW, Process Scope Definition and a Draft Solution Design. This allows the main project to be focused on the 3 pillars from a strategic perspective. Too often I have seen projects jumping into actions and details too early, and skipped scoping (aka “Cut the crap”)

Processes and responsibilities

Doing things in a new way with some degree of business process reengineering can have a positive effect on organization. New cloud technology and new ways of handling responsibilities are key enablers. At inspirit365 we have a process library that consists of 850 processes that is organized into 3 levels and are End-to-End focused. The processes describe responsibilities and are tailored towards how out-of-the-box Dynamics 365 functionality and features are supporting the most common processes. The Level 1 and level 2 processes are for classification, while level 3 is how to perform the processes in the system. As the processes organized around standard features there is a very good way of understanding the end-to-end flow.

To ensure we end up with a relevant list of processes we are running a MoSCoW process, to scope out “the crap”, and will classify the processes in scope according to the following classifications

In an implementation project we will prioritize the “Must have” processes and define the implementation of these processes as the critical path. The other classifications are improvements. What we also try to scope is we should aim for creating a “test script” that will be typically used in UAT and for training purposes.

In essence, we quite quickly get an actionable WBS structure we can divide among the project team, and that can better ensure that the processes are successfully implemented. When we run this scoping classification, we often see that we and up with a fraction of the 850 processes we have in our model. But the important takeaway is that processes vary for each customer based on what they need.

System and Data

To support the processes, we want to quite quickly setup a “baseline” of Dynamics 365. A baseline is a system that is not empty but is populated with as much fundamental setup as possible. Here I like to use what already exists in Dynamics 365; Data Management Templates and build a DevOps hierarchy list of all essential elements that needs to be considered and in what sequence you should set them up on. You can find these standard templates here:

Then you just “load default templates” to create lists of what you should consider and in what sequence you should set them up in.

After you have created this, then just copy the lines into excel and import them into DevOps. We then have a WBS “checklist” of most of the elements that we should consider setting up in the baseline system. When working on this list, we can very quickly see the status of setting up and for scoping what needs to be set up. I also suggest adding the URL to the setup and taking a screenshot of the setup as a documentation of the setup.

This gives a fantastic transparency, and we very quickly can identify what have been setup, and what is identified as “crap”. We also get a fantastic insight of the status of the implementation project. We know exactly what have been done, and what remains to be concluded. Processing through these work items does not take too long, and after a few days of setting up the baseline we are ready to model the processes in Dynamics 365.

People and planning

We have a model that guides the project successfully through an implementation from Discovery/Strategy, Initiation, Implement, Prepare and Operate and as a reference I recommend to use the Microsoft Implementation guide “Succeess by Design”. What we have done is to create our own WBS structure based on main deliverables, that allows to create a clear visibility of the scope, estimates and effort from a commercial perspective. To give a peek into how this looks from a DevOps WBS perspective we have codified all deliverables. And in DevOps we can then follow up the progress all through the project. As we have structures, we can also assign and scope the deliverables down to the essential elements. This allow us to be focused and scope down as much as possible.

Summary

Scoping is an essential. It sets more realistic project objectives and straighten the priorities. The more “crap” you can remove from the initial scope the higher chance you will have to have a successful go-live. My experience is that “scoping down” give a more controllable implementation than “scoping up”. If you have not created your own process-model a good starting point would be to collect as much as possible from Microsoft Learn or from Microsoft docs. From there you can build WBS structures that allows for repeatable scoping with customers. And remember that 90% of everything is crap.

I often work in an WYSIWYG pattern, where I do a change, and then look at the change when working with D365 eCommerce. I’m changing products, attributes, categories, customer hierarchies, forms. One thing that had me irritated, is the extensive caching being done in D365 eCommerce, and you can read more about data action cache settings here. OOB some cache settings have a TTL(Time to Live) of 43200s (That is 12 hours). Also take into consideration that D365 Commerce Distribution jobs needs to be executed. So in worst case scenario’s you have to wait for some time to see some of the changes.

But here is a tip of what I do to speed things up. In sitebuilder, change the cache key suffix.

This invalidates the cache, and in most cases the site is updated.

But!!! It is not recommended to do this extensively in a production environment.

If you also have some additional information or tips, please share