New platform BizApps.Wiki has just started. On the first sight it looks like as well know Wikipedia, but there is ‘but’…
In comparison with Wikipedia there is highly focused content only with business applications (solutions/software) and other related topics. By the business application topics you can find information about almost all possible business application solutions as well as vendors (global and local). Also you can find information about partners or about the most impactful experts (MVPs or similar).
OK it is obviously that topics are not related only with Dynamics solutions as this is Wiki about all business solutions, but there are for sure a few dozens of articles (maybe even more) related only with Microsoft solutions.
And on the end, there is one really good idea about building the digital business applications museum. Even if its history is not so big, it is very interesting how these applications looked like 20-30 years ago. And this is not finished project… as you can see on the first page, this is an ongoing project (always work-in-progress) where it is expected that community will take a part in building or editing this library of articles.
I’ll not write about the project in more details as you can easily go there and check. Definitely good for developers, consultants, project managers, but also for future experts such as students…
The last days of the previous year, I’ve started with blog series how to integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Talent (now Dynamic 365 Human Resources). I wanted to show how to integrate these two solutions without code, using only available services.
Generally, you can use Flow (Power Automation) or Azure Logic Apps. Personally, for this purpose I prefer Logic Apps. There are many reasons for this, and I’ll show the basic comparison between these two solutions:
I don’t want to say Flow is not good solution as I enjoy in using it, but for this purpose (integration) I think Logic Apps is much better choice.
To use Logic Apps, first you must have an Azure subscription. When you open an Azure portal, you can easily find Logic Apps using a search feature. Create a new Logic Apps using Add command.
If you already used Microsoft Flow, you will find that Logic Apps are very similar, but as this is on the first place Azure service, you have to make some basic configuration as a choosing a service Name, what Subscription you want to use, Resource Group and Location for your service.
Then you just need to click on Create and wait a few seconds. If you still don’t see new service, probably you need to hit Refresh and new service will appear. When a new service is created, you need to open it and start creating a flow. System will open Logic Apps Designer and you can start with a Blank Logic App button scrolling little bit down (if this is your first time with Logic Apps, I can recommend to look the introducing video before you start). Do not forget that you need to have already deployed Business Central and Talent and created Talend entities in CDS (check in PowerApps with Data tab).
On the first sight you will see it obviously look like very similar as Microsoft Flow (Power Automation). First you need to start with a trigger, and as there is not trigger for Talent, you need to find ‘Common Data Service’ trigger – ‘When a record is created’. Yes, the first Logic App will be for inserting new data, but to complete this process, minimum necessary will be to make a Logic App for update as well.
Now you need to sign in to create a connection to Common Data Service. You will use credentials you used for Talent and CDS. When you finish with signing in, choose an environment where you have installed Talent and Workers as an entity name. On the end, add Organization as a Scope.
In a new step, you need to make an action. For this purpose, you need to choose Business Central and find ‘Create record’ action. When you sign in, first you need to choose if you want to use Production or some other environment and after that you need to choose a company name and as a Table name choose Employees (this is an API from Business Central).
On the end you just need to connect fields. To do this you need to click on Add new parameter and to choose Business Central fields you want to use for integration. Minimum you have to use are number, givenName and surname. Now you need to connect BC with Talent data i.e. Given Name (from Talent) to First_name, Surname to Last_name…
Click Save and as this is a service, do not forget to click Run. Only now, your Logic App is ready for using.
Be careful here with choosing fields for integration… you can try to integrate more fields here, but it cannot be useful. The answer on your question is when you create new record to the Worker entity in Talent, only a few field will be treated as an insert and the most of them will be treated as an update. Look at the last image where I’ll create new record… only these field you see are treated as an insert.
When you click Hire and add details, all other values you will add will be treated as an update. Because of that, you will see that created new Logic App for updating is absolutely necessary. But I’ll explain more about this in my next post.
But right now, you can create new Worker in Talent and you will see that system created new Employee in Business Central immediately.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Effective July 1st, Microsoft will announce new Dynamics 365 family member. This is new HRM app – Dynamics 365 for Talent. Of course, this will not be only one news, but I want to say a few words about this product. First, we can run and test technical preview and I want to share some first experiences. We still cannot find all features here, but we can make the first sight. For example, we will still wait integration with LinkedIn. It will be very important integration, especially in recruitment process. But we still don’t know all areas where integration will be done. But again, lets see what we have here.
This will be standard SaaS solution with web client, very similar with D365 for Operations. And of course, it will be integrated with this solution. And I would like if we can get integration not only with this enterprise solution, but also with D365 for Financials. Minimum, I’m expecting some App for this.
If you try to run a few basic features in demo database, you can notice that it works fast enough and very smoothly. When we open app for the first time, we can see a menu as default dashboard and in the left side in the same moment. If icons are not clear enough on the left side, we just need to click on three-lines, and it will be expanded so you can see the names of these commands. Also, when you run system for the first time, you will find very good “Get Started” with very good prepared videos and with a lot of step-by-step manuals. And if this manuals are not enough, you have a awesome tool where you can create task saving; you just need to choose this tool, run it and do everything what you want to do; when you click on stop, system will create nice manual step-by-step and you can choose how and where you want to deploy it.
In this first text, I didn’t plan to speak about features, just to make some basic overview. In my next texts, I will write more about features.
More details about this technical preview, you can find here:
Totovic Dynamics 365 Blog 