Dynamics 365 - ariste.info

In Dynamics 365

ISVLicenseGenerator v0.9: a farewell?

18 September, 2024 5 Mins Read

I’ve been working on the ISVLicenseGenerator open source tool for some years now, almost five. It all started when I ordered a code-signing certificate to sign ISV solutions, and I got a USB token instead of a software certificate.

After many years of Microsoft not offering support for these devices to sign the license files, it looks like with the changes introduced to AXUtil in the version 10.0.37, ISVLicenseGenerator will not be needed anymore…

If you want to learn more about ISVLicenseGenerator you can read:

In Dynamics 365

Error querying Synapse Link

19 March, 2024 3 Mins Read

A short one for today! I stumbled upon this while configuring the new Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse feature for an environment.

Most of the time, when I’m configuring resources on Azure, I do it as a subscription or resource group owner. This means I’m working in god-mode all the time, and I won’t be finding out some issues that users with less access rights do.

In Dynamics 365

Azure Key Vault support in ISVLicenseGenerator v0.7

22 February, 2024 5 Mins Read

I’m once again back with a new version of the ISVLicenseGenerator tool, the piece of software I created with a modified version of the standard AXUtil.dll library that lets us sign license files using a cryptographic USB token.

In the new version (v0.7) I’ve added the possibility of signing the license file using a certificate stored on an Azure Key Vault.

And this time I come with a request from anyone reading this post. If you have an HSM-protected key for your code-signing certificate, and are storing it in a Key Vault, I’d love you to try this new version out!

Why am I asking this? Well, I swear there are no hidden intentions here! The main reason is that I don’t have access to HSM keys, and I can’t test the new functionality with one of those. So if your certificate provider has a cloud HSM, and provides some sort of Azure Key Vault integration to store the keys in it, and you want to try it… I’ll be very happy to try to fix things if they don’t work!

In Dynamics 365

I wrote a book! Extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps with Power Platform

15 January, 2024 4 Mins Read

I guess that most of my readers will already be aware of this, as I’ve been spamming LinkedIn with the news: I wrote a book!

The book is called like this post’s title: “Extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps with Power Platform”. It covers some practical scenarios where I show how to use Power Apps, Power Automate or AI Builder with F&O data.

It also offers an introduction and overview into the Power Platform integration and F&O: linked environments, Dual-write, Virtual tables, Dataverse, PPAC, etc.

In Dynamics 365

F&O alert emails in Power Automate

10 July, 2023 7 Mins Read

There’s a nice feature in Dynamics 365 F&O that lets us emit notifications when data is changed, created or deleted: the alert framework.

In this post, I will show you how to send the alerts as Business events and send emails notifying the users using a Power Automate flow.

When I was almost done writing this blog post, I found this blog post and video from Scott Gaines where he showed this scenario. Take a look at it for a clearer step-by-step guide: Using Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Alerts to Trigger Power Automate Flows.

In Dynamics 365

ISV License Generator v0.6 released

16 March, 2023 2 Mins Read

Yesterday I released a new version of ISV License Generator with full support for the SHA-256 hash function after fixing an issue with it.

What’s new in ISV License Generator?

In this new version the support to generate Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations licenses using the SHA-1 hash has been removed, and it will use SHA-256 by default as the AXUtil tool does.

In Dynamics 365

2023 Release Wave 1 plans: what’s new?

25 January, 2023 5 Mins Read

It’s already that time of the year again, the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2023 Release Wave 1 plans have just been released!

The 2023 release wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is focused on improving the development, administration, and user experiences by removing barriers, tightening integrations, and enhancing cross-platform capabilities. This release will bring a range of new features and capabilities that will help improve the performance of the platform and enhance the overall experience for developers, administrators, and end-users.

The features described here are planned to be delivered from April to September 2023.

In Azure

Configure Azure Bastion for Dynamics 365 F&O VMs

17 January, 2023 8 Mins Read

We’ve been working with the F&O development VMs for a long time, specially Microsoft partners that need to be able to quickly and easily change between different customer environments, and using the VHD is a bit more complicated in that scenario.

And of course, we use Remote Desktop Protocol to connect to these VMs. RDP is insecure due to its weak encryption, widespread use, and the lack of security features built-in to the protocol. So hackers often target RDP to gain unauthorized access to systems. You can learn more about securing your VMs in Best practices for defending Azure Virtual Machines.

Today, we will walk through the steps of configuring Azure Bastion for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations development VMs.

In Azure

Azure API Management for your integrations

6 September, 2022 8 Mins Read

I’m back with additional information about Azure API Management! More Azure content, and I’ll probably continue to produce posts regarding Azure in the future.

I believe there are numerous ways to learn new things, and for me, two of them are writing blog posts and using new technologies to solve problems at work. Of course, my goal is to attempt to apply the Azure themes I write about to Dynamics 365.

Today, I’m presenting an architecture approach for integrations, leveraging API Management and various other Azure components, for Dynamics 365 or anything else that has an endpoint.

You can read the second part of this post: IaC with Bicep: deploy Azure API Management Architecture.

In Dynamics 365

Priority-based batch scheduling in Dynamics 365

29 July, 2022 4 Mins Read

We’ve seen a lot of improvements to the product since it was released as AX7, and some name changes too 😝 And one of the areas where we’ve seen more enhancements is the batch framework.

And since the currently live last version of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, 10.0.28, we have a new feature that will be enabled by default for all new instances, and it will be enabled for all existing instances in 10.0.29: the priority-based batch scheduling.