Trigger Power Automate from the Marketing Journeys

17/02/202317/02/2023 Marko Totovic CRM, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Flow, Power Platform D365 for Marketing, D365 for Talent, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Marketing, Power Automate, Power Platform, Real-Time Journey, Real-Time MArketing

If you are a Dynamics 365 Marketing user, you may have already seen that you can trigger Power Automate in your Marketing Journey (Real-Time Marketing). And why is this a good thing? Power Automate allows users to create, update and delete records and can assign records or complex pass-through processes.

There are several actions you have to do before you can trigger Power Automate through Marketing App.

Let’s see all steps necessary to perform before you start using Power Automate together with Dynamics 365 Marketing app.

First, you must create a Customer Journey in Real-Time Marketing.

I have created a simple Journey that starts with a Segment and has only one stage, after which Power Automate will be triggered. But you can create as many stages before initiating Power Automate.

You need to take care of time when you want to start this Journey. Of course, you are not obligated to use Segment as I did. Still, this was the easiest way to show you how to start using Power Automate in your day-to-day Marketing Journeys.

After choosing the Segment, we will continue with the Journey creation.

What we have to do next is to add a new action to our Journey, which will activate a Custom Trigger.

The system will give you one lookup file where you can choose some of the previously created triggers, and then you can use one trigger for multiple Journeys.

But now we will choose to create a new one. When you choose New Trigger, the popup window will open, and you will start defining your trigger.

Here you define some of the usual things like Name and Description, but the critical part for Power Automate is where you define Attributes.

Suppose you have been creating Manually Triggered Flow or Power Automate from the Canvas app for example, or just triggered based on Power Automate. In that case, this is how we get values and proceed them through Power Automate.

This is where you will define key attributes you need to use from this Journey in your Power Automate.

I have created one attribute named First Name for this purpose, but be free and create as much as you need for your Journey.

After defining attributes, finish through the wizard, and you will be able to come back to Journey Form.

Now when you are on the Journey, you must do some mapping.

This is one of the most critical parts because you map your attributes to the fields on Entity/Table.

This is too last step before we go to Power Automate.

Because we had only First Name and Table is Contact, and I have found just my Field in the list of Fields. Just be aware that you must map all attributes you have defined.

And this is the end of the Marketing part.

Now we are going to create one Power Automate.

First, go to the Power Automate page, Name your Flow as you like, and choose Datavesr – When Action is Performed as Trigger.

So in the following screenshot, you will have to be careful what you are choosing.

Catalog > Cxp

Category > Custom

Table name > (none)

Action Name > Choose your action

And the next thing is to continue with Power Automate creation.

I will add a new step where I will use data from our attribute definition. But you can, from now on, create new records, update records, send an email notification, send approvals, work with all connectors in Power Automate, and make the best possible Journey and the best possible steps which have to be automated after your Journey pass.

When you finish with Power Automate creation, Save it and Close it, and return to your Customer Journey Page in Marketing, where you can Publish your Journey and wait for the magic to happen.

I hope that this feature in Dynamics 365 Marketing will allow you to create more complex and more customer-oriented Marketing Jounies, which will allow you to deliver better content to your clients. After all, Power Automate is a really powerful tool that can bring a lot of new ideas, which now can be achieved together with Dynamics 365 Marketing Real-Time Jounies in day-to-day use for Marketing experts.

How to integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Talent – part 1 (Introduction)

10/12/201912/12/2019 atotovic Azure, Business Central, Dynamics 365 Azure, Business Central, CDM, CDS, D365, D365 Business Central, D365 for Talent, D365BC, D365HR, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, ERP, Flow, HRM, Integration, LogicApps, Microsoft, Power Platform, PowerApp

When I think about new Business Central features, the first thing in my mind is openness for integrations. As a part of Dynamics 365 family, the main power of this solution is when it can work simultaneously with other. Because of that, I showed these capabilities in a few conferences. As I got lot of requirement to explain it in more details, I’ll write about good example of BC integrations with one other Dynamics 365 solution – with ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’.

‘Dynamics 365 Talent’ is a new Microsoft Dynamics HCM solution (new name ‘Dynamics 365 Human Resources‘). This solution was initially based on AX HRM, but now it is separated solution. As we can use it independently and this solution is really amazing HCM system, I think it can be interesting how we can integrate this solution with Business Central and make them as the powerful tool together… and with no code.

If you are thinking how to make it and how to make it with no code, the answer is using one of the Azure services – Logic Apps. As ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’ has entities on CDS and Logic Apps has connectors for CDS and for ‘Business Central’, only what we need to do is to map entities and fields in both systems and of course, to think abut business logic on the first place. Depends what is the primary reason for integration, we can choose some of the options:

integrate HRM core system with HR in Business Central
integrate Attract or Onboard apps in Talent with Business Central.

In second option, we will use HR module in Business Central and use only one or two parts from ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’. On the other side, in first option we will use core HR in ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’. In this text, I chose to explain the first option.

In this first text, I’ll just explain some basic concepts and you will find more details in the following texts with this topic.

Basic setup in Business Central

First, as we don’t need all HR capabilities in Business Central (we already have all of them in dedicated HR solution – ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’), we will move only data necessary for other areas in Business Central. In this example I’ll show how to move data to Employee table as this table can be used for example in a Payroll system or you can use this information in Fixed Assets card.

Locate information in Talent

Now when we have the basic configurations, we can continue with integration. First, we need to find where an employee’s data are saved in Talent. To find this we need to open list of CDS entities and we can do it using PowerApps platform.

When we have these basic information, we can continue with technical parts how to do it in a practice.

My Sessions on Directions North America 2019

11/04/201912/04/2019 atotovic Business Central, Conference, Dynamics 365 Business Central, CRM, D365, D365 for Talent, D365BC, Directions, Directions NA, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, ERP, Las Vegas, Model-driven, PowerApp

Directions Asia has just finished, and we will continue with spring conference season in Dynamics. The next Directions will be in North America in Las Vegas in period May 5-8 in Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa. Registration is still available.

This year I want to show you about benefits of integration with different Dynamics 365 solutions. Why? Generally, I think we have great features in Business Central, but possibility to integrate this solution with other solutions using Azure tools or using different UI are the amazing possibilities. These options are why it is important to have Business Central in Dynamics 365 family.

Because of these reasons, you can find my sessions in agenda. From today (April 12th, the full agenda is available):

How and Why You Should Combine Dynamics 365 for Talent with D365 Business Central (May 7 2019, 8:00am, Room: Veranda B)

‘Dynamics 365 for Talent’ is a new Microsoft Dynamics HCM solution. This solution is available independently or through Unified Operations plan. Because we can use it independently, it is interesting if we can integrate this solution with Business central. You will see how to integrate Talent with Business Central and very important thing – without coding. And of course, you will see different integration options based on different user scenarios.

Using Model-Driven PowerApps with Business Central (May 5 2019, 3:15pm, Room: Red Rock A)

Although on the first sight, there is no so common things between Business Central model driven PowerApps, it can be very useful if we could use it with Business Central. Generally, model driven PowerApps is a tool for CRM development, but there are many reasons why to use it with Business Central. If you want to know why, come to this session to see why to do it and how to do it… and maybe even more. As we expect more and more CRM and ERP solutions in simultaneously work, it can be very interesting.

OK, I will not write more, but if you think these topics are interesting for you, you are welcome on my sessions and see you in Las Vegas.

And of course, my sessions are not only reason to come on Directions 😊. You will find great sessions there… you will see details about Business Central Spring release ’19 as well as amazing sessions by MVP’s and other experts.

eXtreme 365 in Austin and Business Central

04/11/2018 atotovic Business Central, Conference, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Conference, D365 for Talent, D365BC, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, events, eXtreme 365, lecture, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, NAV

After amazing conference in The Hague this fall – Directions EMEA, we have two another great events until the end of this year. First in Europe, NAV TechDays will come in November 22-23 and after that we will go to US on eXtreme 365, December 2-6, Austin Texas.

This event was dominantly Dynamics CRM conference for a years, but in a last few years, we have more and more topics in ERP area as well. And now it is Dynamic 365 conference and it is very important because we have more and more partners from CRM world who want to start ERP practice as well.

This time we will have a lot of interesting content there and I’ll provide six sessions about Dynamics 365 Business Central, each in 75 minutes (7,5 hours in total – not so bad).

For beginning, I’ll have session in two parts: BC02/BC03 – An Introduction to Business Central. It will be workshop for all newbies in NAV/Business Central.

After that, you can find the following sessions (two of them will be provided together with my friend and colleague Dejan Pervulov, PTA in Microsoft):

If you are in Austin in the beginning of December, come to see this great conference.

My Dynamics Events Sessions – Fall 2018

14/08/201818/09/2018 atotovic Business Central, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV BCUG Summit, Business Central, D365, D365 for Talent, D365BC, Directions, Directions EMEA, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Microsoft, NAV, NAVUG, NAVUG Summit, Summit, Talent

For all of you who want to see what I prepared for this year conference season, I can share that I’ll have sessions on two conferences this fall.

First, I’ll be on BCUG/NAVUG Summit at Phoenix, AZ, US and after that I’ll be on Directions EMEA in the Hague. On both of these conferences, I’ll have the similar sessions – How and Why You Should Combine ‘Dynamics 365 for Talent’ with ‘Dynamics 365 Business Central’ / ‘Dynamics NAV’. But the first one will be more how you can do it if you are user, a the second one how you can do it as partner and how you can make this as a model for the future implementations.

I already know terms, and it will be Wednesday, October 17 at 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM at BCUG/NAVUG Summit and Wednesday, October 31 at 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM at Directions EMEA. If you like this topic or think this topic can be interesting, join me there.

Dynamics 365 for Talent availability per countries

01/02/201831/01/2018 atotovic Dynamics 365, HRM D365, D365 for Talent, Dynamics, HCM, HRM, Languages, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Talent

In my previous blog post, I hope I make a licensing process closer to you, but now when you know how to calculate price for licenses and you can start with selling process, question is where you can do it. In what countries?

Regarding this question, I can prepare two different answers. One is answer about officially availability per countries where it is possible to sell product and second answer is a new question; can we sell if we don’t have localization (in this case translation).

Product is available in 138 countries in this moment: Americas 30, EMEA 88 and Asia Pacific 20. This is the mast full list I have (but this list will be updated):

If you have a demo environment, you can go there: System administration > System settings and check all available languages in System language field. In this moment, we have available the following 42 languages: Arabic, Czech, Danish, German (DE, AT, CH), English (AU, CA, GB, IE, IN, MY, NZ, SG, US, ZA), Spanish (ES, MX), Estonian, Finnish, French (FR, BE, CA, CH), Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian (IT, CH), Japanese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Norwegian, Dutch (NL, BE), Polish, Portuguese (BR), Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Chinese (Simplified). This is not small number of languages, but we still need more, and I hope we will get them soon. On the other side, if you are going to Attract or Onboard apps, you can find, these apps have much more languages; if I count well, there are 61 languages. It would me nice if we have minimum all these languages in HR core.

I hope this amazing product will be available in more and more languages.

Licensing in Dynamics 365 for Talent

31/01/201830/01/2018 atotovic Dynamics 365, HRM App, Attract, CDS, D365, D365 for Talent, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Flow, HRM, License, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Onboard, Power BI, PowerApp, user

In a last period, I’ve got a lot of questions about how to make a proper licensing for Dynamics 365 for Talent. As it is a new solution, it is understandable. As I’ve already wrote a few articles about this product, I think I can help with some answers.

The first and very important, all users in this solution are named users. And if we speak about HR core part, we have two different user types and you can buy them on two separate ways. We have Full Users with total access to all HR core application and we have Team Members with very limited access (mostly, but not only for read tasks).

As I mentioned Full Users (Talent Users) can be bought on the following ways:

as a regular Talent User (you must take minimum 5 users) for 40 USD
buying Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, i.e. you will get full Talent Users buying Unified Operation (for 190 USD) or full Dynamics 365 Plan (for 210 USD); in both cases you will get much much more than just Talent, but Talent will be part of your completely system.

If we are speaking about Team Members, you can buy them for 8 USD, but again you will not get only access to Talent with them, but also to all other Apps in Dynamics 365 package. As I mentioned, Team Member are not limited only with read rights, because you can use them for example as employee for Employee Self Service.

OK, but this is not the end. Recently, Microsoft announce two additional AI Apps for Talent (Attract and Onboard) and that means if you want to use them, you first must be a regular Talent User. Then, you can subscribe them. Price is 8 USD for each of them separately or if you want both, price will be 12 USD in total.

And again, this is not the end. Actually, it doesn’t mean it must be the end. Why? Because if you want to customize something. As you already know (I hope), this App is full SaaS and you cannot just open a code and change it. If you want to change something on forms and similar, you can do it using PowerApps. In this case person who will make these customizations must have PowerApps Plan 2 (40 USD) license, but other users who will use these forms, have to have minimum PowerApps Plan 1 (7 USD) license. That means, not all users, only these who will use these new features. And just to know, if you are buying some Dynamics Plan, you will get PowerApps for free.

And again, it is similar situation if you want to use PowerBI for additional reports or Flow for additional workflows.

I hope I covered all models of licensing here. But just keep in mind, it is possible to be some changed, because it is a new App in Dynamics 365 family and with new releases, it is possible to be some changes. And I didn’t mentioned, but just to be sure: all pries are on monthly basis.

D365 for Talent new Apps: Attract and Onboard

29/09/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, HRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV AI, App, Attract, D365, D365 for Talent, Dynamics, HCM, HRM, Ignite, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Onboard, SaaS, Talent

Microsoft recently announced new Dynamics 365 member for Human Capital Management – Dynamics 365 for Talent. I’ve already wrote about this new solution in my previous posts. On Directions NA in Orlando, we’ve seen that this SaaS App will still have an important role in new Dynamics 365 package. But now on Microsoft Ignite conference we got some new announcements related with this SaaS App.

We already knew that Talent will be integrated with LinkedIn, but now we know how. It will work using new Dynamics 365 AI solutions. This is not the first time we gave AI in Dynamics products, but this one will be really good. Based on this solution, we will have new SaaS Apps for Talent expanding:

Dynamics 365 for Talent: Attract
Dynamics 365 for Talent: Onboard

Both of them are designed for different phases of recruiting and hiring process.

The first, Attract is designed to help users to assess candidates and receive their insights and find the right candidates. With this App, as its name suggests, they can attract the right and the most qualified candidates more efficiently.

Onboard, as the name says, will make new employee onboarding process more easy, with different help in getting new hires, setting up in onboarding processes and preparing trainings for teams.

As we heard, these two SaaS Apps will be available through Dynamics 365 for Talent later this year.

My Dynamics lectures in Serbia this fall

15/09/201721/09/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, HRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017, Belgrade, Beograd, D365, D365 for Talent, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Tenerife, October, Serbia, Sinergija, Srbija, What is

Just before I go on a trip to Orlando (Directions NA 2017), I want to announce something to my countrymen in Serbia. I’ll have two sessions on Sinergija 2017 conference in Belgrade. Sinergija will be held at October 25th – 27th and detailed agenda is still not known.

But my sessions will be the following:

Is the new NAV actually Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’?
What is Dynamics 365 for Talent?

You can register with early bird until the end of this day. If you want to attend, it is a good opportunity to register.

Dynamics 365 for Talent – Integrations

14/06/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, HRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV CDS, D365, D365 for Talent, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, flowchart, HCM, HRM, Integration, NAV, PowerApp, Talent

Few days ago, I’ve started with a story about new product (still Technical Preview) – Dynamics 365 for Talent. I want to spend a few words about possible integrations.

When you look at the official announcement, you can find that key integrations will support the overall business and the following integrations will be created, but they will be available at or shortly after general availability:

LinkedIn
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise Edition
Background screening
Global payroll providers
ATS providers

As you can see, there are not planed integration with Dynamics 365 for Financials or with Dynamics NAV. But think it will be necessary because these products don’t have a real HRM solution. But I’ve also found that it will be possible to use Common Data Services platform with built-in extension points for Power Apps, Flow and Power BI.

But, when I tried to make connection via Flow and Power App, I’ve found that it is still not available as a connection. Of course, it is probably because it is only technical preview and I’m sure it will be available with a general availability. I’m waiting this moment and I want to make some kind of integration. I’ll write about it, I hope soon.