Dynamics 365 integration projects can be diffcult. In this multipart series of blog posts, we are going to discuss on how to connect the NodeJS application to Microsoft Dynamics 365 application.

Problem Statement

IMPULZ team was doing a master data and sales integration between the third-party cloud POS solution and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply chain management application. There were discrepancies in the sales numbers between the two systems which needs further investigation. Third-party system was on cloud and D365 data needs to be verified from the UAT instance.

 Solution

Fetch the data from both the systems using the REST APIs and dump the data in a single analytical relational database which was a local SQL Server Express database in our case. Our team can now use the standard SQL queries to analyse the sales numbers mismatch.

Our Technology Stack

For this we have to develop a small command-line utility to fetch the data through API using a standard technologies like .Net, Python etc. Being a Microsoft partner, .Net should be the very obvious choice but instead we opted for NodeJS. Why? A simple reason is the simplicity of JavaScript when compared to C# and its ability to handle JSON objects seamlessly (for an obvious reason – after all JSON is JavaScript Object Notation).

To dump the database into a SQL Server database we have used the Sequelize as an ORM, again it is a simple, lightweight tool with excellent command-line tooling.

So this was our tech stack:

1. Node – latest version as a JavaScript runtime outside the browser context.
2. JavaScript
3. AXIOS – Node popular package for the API calling.
4. SQL Server – for storage.
5. Sequelize – an ORM to dump the data into the local SQL Server Database.

My Two Cents!

One of the task was to do in this utility was to do an Azure authentication and when I compared the code to do this in C#, it was a like an hell of an object hierarchy we need to deal with. Yes same old ‘using’ and object encapsulation in multi-layer hierarchies.

In JS it was literally a single endpoint calling to generate the Azure token.

First you need to register an Azure client application

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply chain app being an Azure resource requires a client application to be registered first. Registering a client application is simple and requires similar steps like we did in one of our earlier blog post. The only steps which differ are:

1. You don’t have to specify callback URL because we are using the Azure client credentials flow here.
2. The API permissions required differs from our previous blog post. You have to search for ‘Dynamics ERP’ from the permissions list and then select one of the appropriate permission from the list under ‘Delegated permissions’. We had selected ‘AX.FullAccess’ in our case. It should be as restricted as possible due to security constraints.

3. Since it is a app-to-app calling that’s why you also need to create the client secret by clicking the following link as shown below. Copy the generated secret securely. This secret is needed to generate token from the Azure Active Directory.

Registering a user in Dynamics 365

In your Dynamics client, go to System AdministrationàSetupàAzure Active Directory applications. Add a new record and paste the client id/application id copied from the Azure portal. Give it a meaningful name and assign the user who is going to impersonate the calls coming from the app. More restrictive, the better it will be.

What’s Next?

You need to develop a Node app on your own – . Just kidding! In the next blog post we are going to explain the code main components and optionally we are going to publish the code in a GitHub public repo. Until then, stay tuned!

Now some marketing stuff – if you in need of any help in your integration projects, struggling with the on-going implementation project, you are a Microsoft partner and looking for an experienced Dynamics 365 consultants or you just want to say ‘Hi’, reach us at info@impulztech.com or 630-540-6302 Mon-Fri between 9 am – 4 pm central time.

The post NodeJS + Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain – A great combo? appeared first on Impulz Technologies LLC.

Postman, has been in use by the web development community for more than a decade now. When it comes to the Microsoft Dynamics community, more specifically, Microsoft Dynamics Finance and Supply Chain consultants, it can be a comparatively new tool. The majority of Microsoft Dynamics professionals (including myself) have a background in Microsoft Dynamics AX. In Dynamics AX, very limited tooling was available apart from the AOT and the only kind of web services supported were SOAP endpoints.

I am personally a great advocate of developers’ productivity and more use of the open-source and community tools in the typical Dynamics development flows. Fortunately, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain provides a richer and more modern infrastructure to support data migration and application integration scenarios than its predecessor, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Postman, becomes handy while you are testing the custom APIs or just want to check the call to an OData APIs. Since, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain, is now actually an Azure cloud application, this adds some complexity in different kind of pre-reqs in setting up the Postman. The purpose of this blog post is not to discuss the steps required to setup a Postman for Dynamics 365, as this is already well covered by Microsoft. You can read more about it here. Here, I am just going to focus on some of the best practices that are going to make the use of Postman even more effective.

Always create a collection

Always consider creating a new collection. With collections, you can:

• Organize your requests.
• help you make use of the variables, which improve maintenance and increase reusability.

Make effective use of Postman variables

Postman is quite flexible when it comes to the variable definition, and you can define it at various levels, depending upon your needs. Think about defining because:

• It helps with reusability.
• Improves maintenance.

Consider defining the following as environment variables or collection variables in the case of Dynamics:

• Tenant id.
• Application id.
• Authorization end point.
• Authorization token, which you are going to receive from Azure AD.
• Client secret.
• Base API URL of your Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain environment.

Consider checking in the file into your Azure DevOps repository

Export the Postman and periodically check-in to your Azure DevOps TFS repository. Alternatively, you can also consider the share feature within the Postman.

Test your APIs using test scripts in Postman

As a solution architect, I have been required to test the APIs. In most of the times, it all works without a need of a test scripts. Test scripts become handy for me while testing custom APIs, especially when the development is still ongoing. You can find a complete reference on how to write test scripts in Postman here.

Please note that writing a test script requires basic knowledge of JavaScript.

About Impulz Technologies LLC

Impulz Technologies, is a Silver Certified Microsoft Partner company. We specialize in the implementation, consulting and development of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Power Platform. Impulz Technologies also provide staff augmentation services all across the US. For more information please contact us at 630-540-6302 or email us at info@impulztech.com. You can also contact us through our website.

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In my previous blog posts, I have discussed how to connect the custom Angular application to the Microsoft Dataverse through a web API. Today, I am going to compare Microsoft Dataverse to a traditional database management system like MySQL and discuss the main motivations behind using one technology over the other.

About Impulz Technologies LLC

Impulz Technologies, is a Silver Certified Microsoft Partner company. We specialize in the implementation, consulting and development of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Power Platform. Impulz Technologies also provide staff augmentation services all across the US. For more information please contact us at 630-540-6302 or email us at info@impulztech.com

The post Microsoft Dataverse is not a database appeared first on Impulz Technologies LLC.

Hi, welcome to the Impulz Technologies LLC blog. In this third and final part of the three parts blog post series, I am going to explain the JS code to interact with the Microsoft Dataverse REST API to fetch the accounts table data.

Before going forward let’s quickly recap what we have discussed so far.

Recap

In the first two parts of the blog post we have covered:

1. How to register an application in Microsoft Azure.
2. How to extract different data elements like tenant Id, application id etc. from the Azure portal. These values are required to successfully execute the code within your environment.
3. Theoretical background of how the Azure Active Directory actually works.

If you have not read the previous blog posts, it is highly recommended to read them first from part-1 and part-2.

What we are going to cover today?

Today, we are going to going to consolidate what we have covered so far and apply those concepts in the actual code. This is the scenario we are going to cover in the code today.

• Try to login the user through a silent login API. That is single sign-on (SSO).
• If SSO failed then show the popup to the user to enter the credentials.
• Upon successful login fetch the data from the Dataverse system table ‘Accounts’.

Assumptions

• You are familiar with Angular and specifically the concepts like components, dependency injection and how it works in Angular, services, routes and http client.
• You already know Angular CLI and some of the basic commands.
• JavaScript and HTML concepts like async programming, local storage etc.
• The user going to sign in has an access the accounts table in the Dataverse environment.

From where to download the code?

The code used in this blog post has been published in the GitHub public repository. You can download or clone the code from this repo https://github.com/RealAhmadH/ng-dataverse

You can setup the code by reading the readme file of the repo.

Let’s now review the code.

src/constants.ts

This file is used to store configuration information of the Azure AD and the Microsoft Dataverse environment. You have to fill in the following in order to successfully connect the Dataverse environment:

• AZURE_APP_ID: this is the application identifier which you have configured on your Azure portal.
• AZURE_TENANT_ID: this is the tenant identifier of the Azure AD.
• DATAVERSE_BASE_URL: this is the URL of yours Dataverse environment. You can get this information from the Microsoft Power Apps admin centre.

Within the same file there exists a configuration JSON object required to connect to the Azure environment using the MSAL package. The only required configuration is the client identifier. Rest of the details are optional.

src/app/services/microsoftad.service.ts

In this file the code exists which actually interacts with the Microsoft Azure AD for Single Sign-on (SSO).

Following is the brief description of the code:

Class constructor

• In the constructor of the class, constant object is been passed as a dependency. Constant object contains important configuration information like configuration JSON object, application id, tenant id etc. required to successfully establish a connection with the Azure AD.

Confidential vs Public Client Application

• In the class constructor we initialized an object PublicClientApplication. Microsoft MSAL supports two types of clients: confidential and public. Confidential clients include secure clients like web server applications whereas public client includes desktop, mobile or browser clients. Since, we are using a browser to connect the Azure, that’s why PublicClientApplication object is used to connect to Azure.

ssoSignIn method

• The class instance method ssoSignIn is defined to try to connect the Azure AD first silently (Microsoft account Single Sign-on typically used in every Microsoft apps). If the single sign-on gets failed then it tries to launch the Microsoft login popup and ask the user to enter the credentials.

Scopes and Microsoft Azure AD

Microsoft also issues the authentication token within a single call in response. Azure AD issues token on based of scopes. It is important to understand that you can merge more than one scope within a single call but all the scopes has to be of the same resource we are trying to access. During the sign-in process, we are actually interacting with Microsoft Graph to allow us the access to the user’s profile. Within the same call we can’t ask to issue the access token for the Dataverse because Dataverse is a different Azure resource or API and it is required to repeat the same process to acquire the access token for the Dataverse scope.

Conluding remarks!

This concludes the three parts blog post series. You can apply the same knowledge and ideally the code to other JavaScript frameworks or even the plain JavaScript appkications. Similarly, authentication and authorization works more or less the same for every Azure resource. Ideally, you can extend the same code to other services like Power BI for example.

About Impulz Technologies LLC

Impulz Technologies, is a Silver Certified Microsoft Partner company. We specialize in the implementation, consulting and development of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Power Platform. Impulz Technologies also provide staff augmentation services all across the US. For more information please contact us at 630-540-6302 or email us at info@impulztech.com

The post Connect the Angular with Microsoft Dataverse – Part 3 of 3 appeared first on Impulz Technologies LLC.

Hi, you are welcome to another informative blog post of Impulz Technologies LLC. This is the second part of the series of blog posts in which I am going to explain how to fetch the data from the Dataverse in a single page application (Angular application in our case).

Quick Recap

In the previous blog post I have explained the following:

1. How to register an application in Microsoft Azure.
2. How to setup API permissions in Microsoft Azure.

You can read the previous blog post from this link.

What you expect from this blog post?

In this second part of the blog posts series, I am going to explain how the Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication and authorization works and what are the available library/package options available from the Microsoft.

Accessing the resource like Dataverse web API from Azure, involves two steps – Authentication and Authorization.

Authentication vs Authorization

Authentication is the process of proving that you are who you say you are. This is achieved by verification of the identity of a person or device. Microsoft Azure AD uses OpenID Connect Protocol to authenticate the user or the device identity. Upon successful authentication the identity provider, which is Azure AD, is going to issue the identity token. The format of the identity token is JSON Web Token or simply JWT.

Authorization is the act of granting an authenticated party permission to do something. It specifies what data you’re allowed to access and what you can do with that data. The Microsoft Identity Platform uses OAuth 2.0 Protocol for the authorization. Upon successful authorization completion, Microsoft Azure AD issues the access token. The format of the access token is not standard.

There is a good tutorial exists on YouTube which explains the difference between Authentication and Authorization in the context of Azure as an identity platform.

The good is that Microsoft has developed and published a Microsoft Authentication Library which does the hard-work for you and the app developers don’t need to spend time in understanding the underlying protocols.

App types and Authentication Flows

There can be multiple types of application requiring authentication through Azure AD. Apps can be web applications hosted under a secure server environment, browser based app just like ours, mobile apps, desktop apps etc. Authentication and authorization can be performed using different flows for different application types.

In case of an Angular app, our browser is going to create a secure session with Azure AD and authenticate and authorized the Microsoft identity (corporate or school accounts in our case) to gain access to the Dataverse database.

MSAL-JS

MSAL-JS is a library available on JS package manager such as NPM. Through MSAL-JS we are going to perform the single sign-on of the user and fetch the ‘Accounts’ data from the Dataverse. First you need to install the MSAL-JS. You can install it through NPM by using the following command:

npm i @azure/msal-browser

In the next part and final part of this blog post series, I am going to explain the code layout and various configurations within the code. I am going to publish the final code on GitHub.

About Impulz Technologies LLC

Impulz Technologies, is a Silver Certified Microsoft Partner company. We specialize in the implementation, consulting and development of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Power Platform. Impulz Technologies also provide staff augmentation services all across the US. For more information please contact us at 630-540-6302 or email us at info@impulztech.com

The post Connect the Angular with a Microsoft Dataverse using Web API – Part 2 of 3 appeared first on Impulz Technologies LLC.

Hi, welcome to the Impulz Technologies blog. In this multi-series blog post we are going to discuss how web developers can connect the JavaScript Single Page Application or simply SPA to a Microsoft Dataverse as back-end storage service using the standard REST APIs.

We will be discussing the following scenario:

1. User is going to sign-in or authenticate through Single Sign on (SSO) using the Microsoft organization account.
2. Once authenticated by the Microsoft Identity Management (Azure AD in our case) the web app is going to call the Dataverse Web API to display records from the Accounts table.

In this blog post we will be using the following technology stack:

1. Angular as a SPA framework.
2. Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) to authenticate the user’s identity and generate the access token from the Microsoft cloud. You can read more information about MSAL from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/msal-overview

For simplicity we assume the following:

1. You already have an access to the Azure portal which can be accessed from https://portal.azure.com/.
2. You already have a Dataverse setup and a database has been initialized.
3. You are familiar with Node Package Manager (NPM) CLI. NodeJS and NPM can be downloaded and installed from https://nodejs.org/en/download/.
4. You are familiar with JavaScript and TypeScript.
5. You are also familiar with Angular and its associated concepts like components, templates and dependency injections in particular. You can find more information about Angular by visiting https://angular.io/.

Installation of NodeJS and Angular is also out of scope of this blog post.

The first step which we need to take is the app registration in the Microsoft Azure. Once the app (Angular SPA in our case) is registered within the Azure then the app can participate in Single Sign on (SSO) using the Microsoft accounts. In the section below we are going to discuss step-by-step with screen shots how the app can be registered within Azure.

App Registration in Microsoft Azure

1. In your browser login to the Azure admin portal https://portal.azure.com/. Once signed in successfully it is going to look like below:

2. From the Azure postal click on the App registrations and then click on the New registration as shown below:

3. On the new app registration form enter any name you like. Also, on the same form under the redirect URL, select Single Page Application (SPA) in the drop-down and enter the redirect URL. Since, we will be using and by default Angular works on port 4200 that’s why we have mentioned http://localhost:4200 as a redirect URL. This is the same URL to which Microsoft Azure will be redirected upon the successful user authentication.

And then click on Register button to complete the registration process.

4. Copy the application id and store it somewhere like in a Notepad for later use.

5. Click on API permissions on the left hand menu and then click on the Add permission button as shown below:

6. On the Add permission form search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the application list and click on it.

7. On the Dynamics CRM application form, please make sure that Delegated permissions is selected and then select user_impersonation from the permissions list and then click Add permissions button.

This completes the registration and the configuration of the app registration in Microsoft Azure. Now, you have to complete one additional step on Azure portal – make a note of the tenant id and copy it somewhere like Notepad. If you have multiple Azure subscriptions then you need to ensure you have already selected the correct subscription from the list. Then click on the tenant properties and copy the tenant id for later use.

This completes the first part of the two parts blog series. In our next blog post same day next week, we are going to discuss how an Angular app can connect to the Dataverse to consume the data.

About Impulz Technologies LLC

Impulz Technologies, is a Silver Certified Microsoft Partner company. We specialize in the implementation, consulting and development of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Power Platform. Impulz Technologies also provide staff augmentation services all across the US. For more information please contact us at 630-540-6302 or email us at info@impulztech.com

The post Connect the Angular App with a Microsoft Dataverse through Web API – Part I of 3 appeared first on Impulz Technologies LLC.

Recently, our engineering team has upgraded the Positive Pay (sometime refer as Safe Pay) Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 add-on to a latest version of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain. In our previous blog post we have summarized the challenges with the existing out-of-the-box solution. Impulz Positive Pay is a user freindly tool and allows you to configure the file output using the standard Dynamics 365 user interface. Even the non-admin a business user can configure the file format using the standard user interface of the Dynamics 365.

The tool is trial and tested and been used by number of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 customers already in the US. Impulz Positive Pay virtually supports all kind of bank formats and it comes pre-configured with all the major bank formats including the Chase Bank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

It supports both the fixed-lenght and delimated file outputs. Various date formats are also pre-shipped and user can also configure the date format of their own need using the standard Dynamics 365 user interface.

Below is the screen shot of the file format configurator:

User can now generate the file also in the batch mod and it also keep track of the complete log information of the previously generated file.

If you are in the US and struggling with the out-of-the-box Positive Pay solution then please feel free to contact us for more information or a product demo. Or simply contact us at info@impulztech.com. Similarly, a Microsoft Partner can also contact us for the re-seller option.

The post Impulz Positive Pay appeared first on Impulz Technologies LLC.

• Check number.
• Beneficiary name.
• Check issue date.
• Check amount.

This seems to be a fairly straight forward process? Actually this is not a straight forward process as we think. Every bank has its own unique file formats requiring data in a specific file format. Printing a check is a widely used feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain. Microsoft has provided multiple ways to extract the positive pay file out of Dynamics and it is always improving since AX 2012. Youcan read here about how to configure the positive pay file export in Dynamics 365. The only downside which I found is that it still requires some knowledge of the XML (Extensible Markup Language) and XSLT (Extensible Style Sheet Language Transformation) which business users lack.

Identifying this as a product gap, Impulz Technologies has recently upgraded its flagship Microsoft Dynamics 365 add-on for the US market, Impulz SafePay. With Impulz SafePay, an end-user can configure the entire bank file format using the familiar and user friendly screens. Impulz SafePay, also ships with pre-configured formats which further reduces the configuration time required.

We will be publishing the further details about our Impulz SafePay tool in coming weeks. If you like to schedule a product demo or just want to talk more about services then please free to contact us.

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By default the export button in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain report viewer export button is disabled in the development VM as shown below:

To enable the export function, you have to login as System Administrator and then browse to the module ‘System Administration’ and click the workspace ‘Feature Management’ as shown below:

Search for the feature named ‘Enable Export on Report PDF viewer’ and then enable this feature.

This will enable the export feature on report viewer. If you like to learn more about our services then please feel to contact us by filling in a simple form.

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