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Dynamics online – Internet accessible URLs and IP Address Ranges

February 15, 2019 Leave a comment

Recently we were asked by our client to share the Dynamics Online IP address range and list of URL’s to be added to their firewall settings so that Dynamics online application is accessible.

Why we need to care about IP’s and URL’s?

  • Sometimes in servers, a proxy or firewall may be configured to prevent Microsoft Dynamics CRM URLs from accessing server resources.
  • If certain IP address ranges or Individual IP addresses are blocked in your servers, users may not be able to reach the IP addresses used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

List of IP’s and URL’s:

  • Refer this KB article for the IP Address Ranges
  • Refer this KB article for the list of internet accessible URL’s

🙂

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Categories: CRM Tags: ,

[Step by step] Postman tool to test Dynamics 365 online Web API

February 13, 2019 Leave a comment

In this article, lets see how to connect and test Dynamics 365 Web API requests using Postman tool, step by step along with troubleshooting steps.

Those who are not familiar with Postman tool, it is a request composer tool, which allows you to authenticate to your Dynamics 365 instance,  compose Web API requests, send them, and view response. Link to download

Prerequisites:

  • Download Postman tool
  • Dynamics 365 online instance. (Subscribe to 30 days trial, if you have not one)
  • Azure Active Directory Portal (You need to login with your Office 365 Credentials)

Register App in Azure Active Directory:

As a first step, you need to register an App in Azure Active Directory (i.e., oAuth) by following below steps

  • Connect to the Azure Active Directory (AD) Portal with your Office 365 credentials.
  • Register a new Dynamics 365 App by following steps mentioned here
  • Once you are done with App registration, copy ‘Application ID’ and ‘Home page’ values, which you need to use next steps.

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Setup your Postman tool:

Create ‘Environment’

  • Create a new Postman ‘Environment’ with below variables. This is one time activity for a single D365 instance.
    • url : Your Dynamics 365 URL
    • clientid : ‘Application ID’ from Azure AD,  generated in above section.
    • version : Dynamics version
    • webapiurl : Set this to {{url}}/api/data/v{{version}}/
    • callback : ‘Home page’ value from Azure AD,  generated in above section.
    • authurl : Set this to https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/authorize?resource={{url}}
  • I created a new ‘Environment’ with name ‘DynamicsCRM’ and it looks as below

PostMan_13

Generate oAuth Access Token:

Post ‘Environment’ creation, we need to generate oAuth Access Token. This is one time activity for a single D365 instance.

  • Make sure you select ‘Environment’ created in previous section. In my case its ‘DynamicsCRM’.
  • Under ‘Authorization’ tab, set ‘Type’ to ‘oAuth 2.0’ and click on ‘Get New Access Token’.

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  • In the ‘GET NEW ACCESS TOKEN SCREEN’ make sure you set values as below.

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  • Click ‘Request Token’ and system will prompt you for credentials, pass your O365 credentials.

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  • When you click ‘Next’, you may encounter “response_type ‘token’ is not enabled for the application” exception.
    • To fix this, make sure in your Azure AD Application’s manifest “oauth2AllowImplicitFlow” property is set to ‘true’

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  • You may also encounter “The reply url specified in the request does not match the reply urls configured for the application“.
    • To fix this, make sure you set the Postman’s ‘Environment’ -> ‘callback’ variable set correctly.
  • Click ‘Continue’ to complete the ‘Access Token’ generation process.
  • On successful ‘Access Token’ generation, you would get the screen as below.

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  • Click ‘Use Token’.

That’s it! we are done with settings and its time to test the Dynamics API’s with Postman

Test by executing ‘WhoAmI’ request:

  • Make sure you select the right ‘Environment’ and generated your ‘Access Token’.
  • Select ‘GET’ operation and set the URL as {{webapiurl}}WhoAmI
  • Click ‘Send’
  • You should get “200 OK” response up on success.

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  • You may get “401 Unauthorized” response.

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  • To fix this, make sure you set “Add authorization data to” to “Request Headers”.

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🙂

 

Categories: CRM, Dynamics 365 Tags: , , ,

Unable to install ‘Windows Service’ using installutil.exe

February 4, 2019 Leave a comment

The other day, I was using Installutil.exe from Command Prompt (refer below command), to install my Windows Service.

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>InstallUtil.exe -i “X:\XX\XXX.exe”

Although the tool was giving success response, Windows Service was not getting installed and not being listed in ‘Service Manager’ console.

Alternate Option:

  • While troubleshooting the issue, we came across another option to install the Windows Service using “SC Create“

Using SC Create:

To install Windows Service,

  • Open the Command Prompt in ‘Run as administrator’ mode.
  • Below is the syntax using ‘SC Create’ to install the service.

C:\Windows\system32>SC Create “{Your WinService exe name}” binpath=”{Your WinService exe path}” displayname=”{Your desired name}“

SCCreate_1

Using SC Delete:

To Uninstall the ‘Windows Service’,

  • Open the Command Prompt in ‘Run as administrator’ mode.
  • Below is the syntax using ‘SC Delete’ to Uninstall the service.

C:\Windows\system32>SC Delete “{Your WinService exe name}“

🙂

Categories: Misc Tags: , , ,

Dynamics 365 – Configure Custom ‘Help Page’

February 4, 2019 Leave a comment

‘Help’ feature in Dynamics 365 is a useful and an intuitive way to provide guidance to the end users.

Sometimes we may get a requirement from customer to configure ‘Custom Help’ page.

Its simple to configure the custom help screen from Dynamics 365 ‘Admin Center’ Settings screen.

Steps to configure custom Help URL:

  • Connect to your Office 365 Admin Center
  • In the ‘Environments’ tab, select the instance  and click on ‘Settings’

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  • In the ‘Settings’ screen, click on ‘Products -> Features’

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  • Under ‘Help features’, turn ON the “Custom help for customizable entities”.
  • In the ‘Global custom help URL’, provide your custom web link.
    • I provided my blog URL in this case.
  • Select ‘Append parameters to URL’ option, if you want to pass the “typename”, “formid” etc.. parameters to your custom URL.

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  • Alternatively, you can also configure the same from ‘Administration -> System Settings’

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Steps to test the Help URL:

  • Connect to your dynamics instance.
  • Click on Help(?) icon

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  • You will be redirected to the configured URL

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🙂

Categories: CRM, Dynamics 365 Tags: ,

Dynamics 365 – Get ‘April 2019’ update

February 4, 2019 Leave a comment

Last weekend, I subscribed to a Dynamics 365 30 days trail and noticed that now we can upgrade to ‘April 2019’ update and start exploring the features.

Below are the steps to update your instance to ‘April 2019’.

  • Connect to your Office 365 Admin Center
  • In the ‘Environments’ tab, select your environment and navigate to ‘Settings’ page by clicking on Instance name hyperlink.

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  • In the ‘Settings’ screen, under the ‘Updates’ tab, click on ‘Manage’ link

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  • In the ‘Updates’ slider window, click on ‘Active now’ to get the ‘April 2019’ update

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  • Confirm by providing your instance name in the text box, as below.

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  • That’s all we need and enjoy your ‘April 2019’ update.

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Note:

  • You cannot revert once you activate the ‘April 2019’ update.

Refer the link for what’s included in ‘April 2019’ update

🙂

Categories: CRM, Dynamics 365 Tags: ,

Dynamics – Troubleshooting Server Side Sync exceptions

January 22, 2019 Leave a comment

Server-side synchronization is used to synchronize your email system with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement apps at the server level.

Now coming to the issue, I was configuring Server side sync on my CRM on-premise instance with ‘Gmail’ as host and got the below error while testing the mail delivery of a ‘Mailbox’ using ‘Test & Enable Mailbox’ option.

ss_1

Reason:

  • In my case, its CRM on-premise installation and were having below 3 servers
    • Front End Server – Contain CRM WebApp
    • Application Server – Contain Services (Async, Sandbox, etc..)
    • Back End Server – Contain SQL Server and SSRS
  • Issue was ‘Incoming Port’ and ‘Outgoing Port’ were not opened on my ‘Application server’ which caused the issue

Now lets see few sanity steps and how to troubleshoot issues.

[Sanity Step] Make sure Ports and Mailbox settings are correct:

  • Test the settings provided in ‘Email Server Profile’ using console application

ss_3

  • Create a simple C# console application with below code and pass the settings (i.e., Port, host names etc) mentioned in ‘Email Server Profile’

using (MailMessage mail = new MailMessage()){
int portNumber = Convert.ToInt32(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[“port”].ToString());
var smtpAddress = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[“smtpAddress”].ToString();
var emailFromAddress = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[“emailFromAddress”].ToString();
var password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[“password”].ToString();
var emailToAddress = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[“emailToAddress”].ToString();

mail.From = new MailAddress(emailFromAddress);
mail.To.Add(emailToAddress);
mail.Subject = “Set mail subject”;
mail.Body = “Set mail body”;
mail.IsBodyHtml = true;
using (SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient(smtpAddress, portNumber)){
smtp.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(emailFromAddress, password);
smtp.EnableSsl = enableSSL;
Console.WriteLine(“Sending mail…”);
smtp.Send(mail);
Console.WriteLine(“Mail has been sent…”);
}
}

App Settings:

<appSettings>
<add key=”port” value=”587″/>
<add key=”smtpAddress” value=”smtp.gmail.com”/>
<add key=”emailFromAddress” value=”rajeevpentyala@gmail.com”/>
<add key=”password” value=”*******”/>
<add key=”emailToAddress” value=”rajeevpentyala@live.com”/>
</appSettings>

[Sanity Step] Make sure your Incoming and Outgoing server locations are reachable:

  • From command prompt, ping the locations with below command and make sure you are getting response
    • Ping -t {location}   (Ex- Ping -t smtp.gmail.com)

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[Issue] If failed with “The SMTP server requires a secure connection” exception

  • Connect to your Gmail account. Link
  • Turn on the “Less secure app access” option
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Turn on ‘Less secure app access’

Refer this article for more exhaustive list of troubleshooting options

🙂

Categories: CRM, Dynamics 365 Tags: ,

C# – Configuration section cannot be used at this path

January 22, 2019 Leave a comment

Other day , while accessing my WCF service (i.e., .svc) from IIS server, I was getting below error:

iis_3

Reason:

  • In my case, Issue is with missing ‘Write’ privilege for ‘Windows Authentication’ in IIS server.

Fix:

To fix the issue follow below steps

  • Connect to your IIS server
  • Select the ‘Server node’ (i.e., Your machine name) from left ‘Connections’ pane
  • On the right ‘Features View’ pane, select ‘Feature Delegation’ option

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  • From the list, select ‘Authentication – Windows’ option and make sure the delegation set to ‘Read\Write’
    • If its only ‘Read’, click on ‘Read/Write’ link from right side ‘Set Feature Delegation’ pane.

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  • Restart your web app
  • Try to browse the files and they should work now.

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🙂

 

Categories: Dotnet Tags: , , ,