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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

IaC with Bicep: deploy Azure API Management Architecture

13 September, 2022 11 Mins Read

In the previous post, we learned about my proposal of an architecture for Azure API Management for integrations. And I closed the post with a pending thing, which was details on how to deploy and configure all the Azure resources the solution uses.

And in today’s post we’re going to see how all the resources are created, linked together and configured to have a fully working API logging solution, and how we can deploy everything using Bicep.

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.

In Azure

Logs in Dynamics 365: not anymore!

30 June, 2022 5 Mins Read

Let’s talk about logs in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. And I don’t mean the built-in database logs we’ve had since the old Axapta days. I’m talking about plain logs, a table and a form to see how/why data is changing, or logging external calls to OData or custom web services endpoints in the ERP.

It’s something that I’m sure almost all developers at some point have had to do. The customer wants to record CRUD events, you suggest enabling the DB log, but the customer wants a new form to see the data. Or maybe you’re monitoring all the calls to your custom web services.

In Azure

Azure API Management for Dynamics 365 F&O

9 February, 2022 7 Mins Read

In today’s post, I want to talk about using Azure API Management (APIM) along Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

Azure API Management is a hybrid, multi-cloud management platform for APIs across all environments. This means that, after deploying an APIM account, you can create an API that can serve services from one system or multiple.

In X++

My take on the X++ custom scripts feature

3 February, 2022 5 Mins Read

So three days ago I took a look at the new 10.0.25 features currently in the PEAP program, calmly scrolling through until I saw something about custom scripts on prod, something that read:

Run custom X++ scripts with zero downtime

You can imagine my face when I read this. At the beginning I was confused, then surprised and then confused again. After reading the description, the situation wouldn’t get better:

This feature lets you upload and run deployable packages that contain custom X++ scripts without having to go through Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) or suspend your system. Therefore, you can correct minor data inconsistences without causing any disruptive downtime.

Are we getting a way to run custom code in production without having to deploy it? Yes we are. As many people have said these past two days: “X++ jobs are back!”. And there are a lot of discussions going on about the custom scripts feature.

In Dynamics 365

New features for Dynamics 365 in 2021: my year-in-review

15 December, 2021 4 Mins Read

The year 2021 has almost come to an end, and it’s time to review the changes we’ve had this past year.

So in case you’ve missed something, I hope you can find it here, although I won’t include all new or changed Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations features, only some of them, the ones I’ve found more interesting.

In Azure DevOps

New Azure DevOps release tasks: MSAL authentication and ADAL deprecation

25 November, 2021 3 Mins Read

There’s a new version and a new task for our release pipelines that use the Azure-hosted agents. These changes have been introduced recently to support the new MSAL authentication libraries for the LCS service connection used to upload and deploy the deployable packages.

The current service connections use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Authentication Library (ADAL), and support for ADAL will end in June 2022.

This means that if we don’t update the Asset Upload and Asset Deployment to their new versions (1.* and 2.* respectively) the release pipelines could stop working after 30th June 2022.

In X++

Add a QR code to Dynamics 365 forms and reports

15 November, 2021 4 Mins Read

QR codes are very present in our daily lives as a way to share information, URLs, or other data quickly.

In this post, we’ll learn how to display one in a Dynamics 365 form or a SSRS report using a library which is included in our development VMs: QRCoder.