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A First Look at the Dynamics 365 Higher Education Accelerator

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Introduction I’m excited to share that Microsoft is delivering a Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Accelerator for Higher Education for the first time. The solution design is a culmination of conversations...(read more)

Connecting a 2nd PC as a second monitor

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Today’s #TipTuesday is yet another non-Dynamics GP post… I’m on a bit of a roll of finding oddball new things that are worth sharing. I’ll get back to more GP content soon, I promise!

Background

In a previous post, I had written about some health issues my Dad had. I’ve been hanging out with him and his wife at their home a couple of hours out of town from me, helping them get into a post-surgery routine. When I’m not doing things around the house for them, I’m trying to get some work done but am limited to an island in the kitchen as a desk and my laptop as the work device. But wait! I have my Surface Go with me too. I had initially set both up and independently logged into 2 different things so I could have something up on my Surface Go to reference while I worked on my laptop. The problem was the Surface Go would go to sleep mode. That’s when I looked into options to connect to it wirelessly as a second monitor. It turns out that’s a feature built into Windows 10! Sweet!

“Connecting to this PC” setup

The first thing you have to do is on the destination computer, the one you want to use as a 2nd monitor. In my case, that is my Surface Go. Get started by clicking on the Notification icon in the bottom right hand corner of your toolbar (if you use the toolbar at the bottom of your screen).

Click on the Connect widget. If you already have connected to something, it will show that already but if it’s the first time, you won’t see another PC listed like I do.

Click on “Projecting to this PC” next. There are a few options you have and I’m displaying below what I’ve chosen.

1. Where should this option be available? I chose Available Everywhere but could have chosen an option to only have it available on secure networks. I will likely be turning this off entirely if I don’t plan on using this often so the PC isn’t always “looking” for opportunities to be a projection device.

2. Ask to project: options are First Time or every time. If I forget to turn this off, I’d rather be prompted every time.

3. Require a PIN. I’ve marked this option on. When you connect, the PC will display a PIN and the source PC will have an input box to type that PIN in.

4. Power option – this is on by default, to only allow connecting when the device is plugged in.

After you’ve saved those setting on the destination PC, now you want to click on the Connect widget on the primary computer. Select the device to project to.

As mentioned above, with the PIN option turned on, the destination device will show a blue screen with a PIN, and that PIN would be typed into here, on the source machine. After that, click Connect.

Now that the 2nd PC is connected, you can change the projection mode. In my case, I wanted to Extend my monitors as I want to reference other things on the 2nd PC. If you’re truly “projecting” to share a presentation or something like that, you may choose Duplicate.

Last item, when you are done, you simply click back on the Connect widget and click Disconnect to stop the 2nd display.

How does it perform?

I’d say it performs poorly from a true graphics quality perspective so I wouldn’t be expecting super high performance, at least if you are on a wireless network. It may perform a lot better if you were using two LAN-connected PCs, I don’t know. The WiFi I’m using is not super fast so I might be seeing the side effect of that.

For what I want to use it for – referencing materials on another monitor – it works perfectly fine. I am noticing every few minutes the screen appears to “refresh” but that could also be my WiFi connection. The mouse lags a bit when moving to the second screen for me and I suspect most of that is simply the quality of my internet connection.

This will be quite handy in a pinch for scenarios like this, where I may be travelling with both my laptop and the Surface Go, and need to do some “real” work. Having two monitors is quite the bonus when you aren’t expecting to have that!

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2 - Email Purchase Order Other Form from PO Entry

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The Purchase Order Entry and Purchase Order Inquiry Zoom windows will now allow for the user to choose if they want to E-mail the Blank Paper or the Other form. This can be useful if you are using different...(read more)

What’s New in Dynamics 365 Business Central Fall Release – Latest Updates from Microsoft at Directions EMEA 2018

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The Day 2 of Directions EMEA 2018  has started this morning with the Keynote 2 from Microsoft team. It is great to be a part of the best Dynamics Partner network. If you are here, in The Hague, in World...(read more)

GP Controller Series: Improving Fixed Asset Month End

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Dynamics GP’s Fixed Asset module is both flexible and robust. It’s more than capable of dealing with fixed asset management for most organizations. However, it does have a few idiosyncracies. Once those have been mastered, working with assets in GP is much easier.  Here are things you need to understand of to really master Fixed Assets:

  • The fixed asset module has its own calendar in Tools-Setup-FixedAssets-Quarter. This drives depreciation settings and it usually only has to be set up once. Still, it’s important to review the setup to ensure that it matches the fiscal calendar. If they don’t match, depreciation ends up in all the wrong periods.
  • Fixed Asset Account setup doesn’t work like other subledgers in GP. In GP Fixed Assets, accounts are assigned to classes, just like other subledgers. New assets are assigned a class and that assigns accounts, just like other subledgers. Where it changes is that these are one-time assignments. The class is used to set the account but is not retained with the asset.  There is a separate account window to change or set accounts manually for each asset. If an asset is posting in the wrong place, the account needs to be correct on the asset, regardless of the class that was used to set it up.
  • Separate posting depreciation from posting asset additions/changes/retirements. This is a best practice that dramatically improves asset subledger to GL reconciliation. By separating these processes, asset additions, changes, and retirements don’t get lost in a sea of depreciation. In my experience, most reconciliation issues are found outside of depreciation. Depreciation posting issues are usually fixed once with an account change so they shouldn’t contribute to regularly to reconciliation issues. In older versions of GP, this is managed with ordering the process. In newer versions, the source type (FADEP = Depreciation, FAADD = Additions, etc.) can be used to segregate the GL posting.
  • When someone is stuck troubleshooting a fixed asset reconciliation, the Financial Detail window found via Inquiry-Fixed Asset-Financial Detail shows everything that happens to an asset and is key to finding and fixing issues.

There are additional details in the resources below.

Weekly Review: Putting the Fix in Fixed Assets

Weekly Review: Fixed Asset/GL Best Practices

Links to all the posts in this series can be found at http://mpolino.com/gp/gp-controller-series-index/

Debug POS using .NET Reflector

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Respect to all those POS developers. It really requires some dedication and focus to be a POS developer. This is an example of something I would have not figured out without my colleagues.


We were working on a development project and we struggled to make sense out of the error.

The error we got was complaining about the a method to validate the Unit of measure and Quantity. I was sure the object was not null and I had passed the right thing to it. Unit of measure and quantity fields were populated correctly. The modification was overriding the price.

System.NullReferenceException was unhandled by user code
   HResult=-2147467261
   Message=Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   Source=Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.Workflow
   StackTrace:
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.Workflow.CartWorkflowHelper.ValidateCartLineUnitOfMeasureAndQuantity(RequestContext context, Cart newCart, SalesTransaction salesTransaction, Dictionary`2 salesLineByLineId, CartLineValidationResults cartLineValidationResults)
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.Workflow.CartWorkflowHelper.ValidateUpdateCartRequest(RequestContext context, SalesTransaction salesTransaction, SalesTransaction returnedSalesTransaction, Cart newCart, Boolean isGiftCardOperation, IDictionary`2 productByRecordId)
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.Workflow.SaveCartRequestHandler.Process(SaveCartRequest request)
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.SingleRequestHandler`2.Execute(Request request)
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.CommerceRuntime.Execute[TResponse](Request request, RequestContext context, IRequestHandler handler, Boolean skipRequestTriggers)
        at ECL.Commerce.Runtime.Donation.TriggerHandlers.SaveCartRequestHandler.Process(SaveCartRequest request)
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.SingleRequestHandler`2.Execute(Request request)
        at Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Runtime.CommerceRuntime.Execute[TResponse](Request request, RequestContext context, IRequestHandler handler, Boolean skipRequestTriggers)
   InnerException

After many hours over the course a few days we struggled. A colleague suggested to use .NET reflector (this is where you need an experienced retail developer). Using this tool, I was able to make sense of the problem.


Below are the steps to use .NET reflector.

1. Download .NET reflector

https://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflector/

2. Install following wizard. You can use the trial for 14 days or just active it with your serial number

When you install – I would recommend both the desktop and the visual studio extension

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3. Select the assembly to debug. There are a couple of ways you can do that.

Select using the .NET Reflector > Generate PDBs (this will pop up a dialog to select the assembly)

image

Alternatively, from your solution explorer. Select the dll that is referenced and click on Enable Debugging.
image

4. This will launch the object browser.

Navigate to the method that caused the error. Then right click, Go to Decompiled Definition

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5. I put a breakpoint and run through the process.

What I found was that it code used the salesTransaction object rather than the cartLine to get the unit of measure. Causing a cryptic error about unit of measure/quantity. In other words, I needed to create the cart line and save it to commit it to the salesTransaction first. Then after that process is finished, I can then override the price. i.e. 2 steps rather than trying to it all in one process.

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I hope I don’t get in trouble of advising people to use .NET reflector by blogging here. I just don’t see how else I would have figure this thing out.

New XrmToolbox Plugin – Alternate Key Manager

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I am publishing a new XrmToolbox plugin in a few days called the Alternate Key Manager. This plugin is pretty self explanatory: administrators can manage their Alternate Keys across Entities in one place...(read more)

D365 PSA v3 – Resource Assignment and Booking

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Now, since PSA v3 is a major shift from it’s previous version, ways to do certain things have changed. Let’s quickly look at one of the many ways to book a resource by Assigning them and then Booking them...(read more)

Where is my Data Located?

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Did you ever wonder where your Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, Customer Service, Field Service or Project Service Automation is being stored?

There is any easy way to find out the locations of the datacenters throughout the world for these Dynamics 365 services. No it won’t give you the exact location so that you can bring them up on Bing Maps and go take your kids to see it. But it will give you a general geo location.

Dynamics 365 Data Centers

The post Where is my Data Located? appeared first on CRM Innovation - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Consulting and Marketing Solutions.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2: Display Vendor Hold Status When Entering Transactions and in Inquiry Windows

Enter and Edit Information – Business Central

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View and Edit Mode In general, you can only edit information from card pages, not from list pages (with some exceptions like the Chart Of Accounts lists). When you open the card page from the list...(read more)

Dynamics 365 – The Price of Currentcy

Custom Development for Microsoft Dynamics GP: Is It Worth It?

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With the holiday season just around the corner, you might be asking yourself, is it time to invest in custom development? Stock-outs, fulfillment problems, or delayed orders not only hurt customer relationships, but your revenue takes a significant hit. Every business operates differently, and as powerful as Microsoft Dynamics GP is out-of-the-box, the solution to your holiday headaches just might be custom development. Not sold on the idea of custom development for your ERP system? There are a few things to take into consideration before completely writing it off.

 

ERP workarounds eat away at time and money

When you consider custom development, is your first objection cost? The ticket price on custom might spark some initial shock, but if you’re running a system that can’t keep up with your growth, your loss of revenue due to human errors and time wasted on lengthy processes will likely surpass the upfront cost of custom development.
When you’re working with Dynamics GP, it’s easy to develop the bad habit of piling up workaround tactics when you can’t fix the root of the problem. Over time, these band-aid solutions make it more and more difficult to dig yourself out of those inefficient processes.
It’s also important to take into account how many hours your employees spend on meticulous tasks that could easily be automated with some customization work. Redundant tasks eat up time that could be spent more strategically.

Custom software implementation can be pain-free

It's not uncommon to be wary of custom software out of fear of a lengthy implementation process. The truth is, if you really need customization, it will be worth the wait. That being said, it’s important that you work with an experienced team that understands your company and your unique needs. For a smooth process, it’s best to find a custom software team that works with iterative development, deploying pieces of your custom project to you in multiple "iterations." This way, you have a chance to test each piece, or iteration, and provide feedback to your custom developers. This kind of collaboration passes the mic back to you for the final say on exactly what you need for custom-fit software. Iterative development also allows you to see the ROI of your customization as soon as each new piece is deployed.

Finding the right team is key

Maybe your hesitation when it comes to customization is because you tried it once and were let down, to say the least. Maybe you spent a significant amount only to receive a solution that didn’t improve efficiency or fix broken operations. A good implementation process can’t come out of a bad partnership. Working with creative thinkers who are willing to develop tailored solutions to meet your needs is key to finding the perfect customization job for your company.

You want to work with an intuitive custom software team — a team that will know what questions to ask in order to get the core of your problem. If you find the right team, they might even modify your original request after evaluating your needs. It’s easy to adapt around inefficient processes on Dynamics GP and not even realize it. The right team will help you streamline your processes -- even the ones in your blind spots.
Ultimately, implementation will go faster and smoother if you choose a custom team that roots for you, understands your company, and is willing to communicate a clear plan of how they’ll deploy your software to you.

Software that will grow with you

If you’ve considered customized software for your ERP, you’ve probably thought about the level of difficulty that goes into upgrading your software after customization. The truth is, you can find custom software that isn’t difficult to upgrade and has the capability to grow with your business. Not all products are built for customization, but Microsoft Dynamics GP is, and when you implement add-on software that was built to customize, you can build a dynamic duo that will yield better days for your ERP system.

Ultimately, if your business has a clear need to adopt custom software to make your processes work, then you're better off saving time and money in the long run by trimming those inefficiencies sooner with a custom solution.

At SalesPad, we take the time to evaluate the specific business needs of every customer — regardless of whether they're going with our out-of-the-box Dynamics GP solution, or doing custom development with us. Learn more about how we helped one company with customizable workflows and minimized clicks through EDI in this case study.

Tips for doing custom software right

Now that we've clarified some common misconceptions and debunked a couple myths, to recap, here are a few tips to keep in mind with looking for a good custom software team:

  • Find a custom team that exhibits a desire to understand your business and its processes.
  • Try to find a software team that tends to specialize in certain industry areas, rather than a one-stop shop of all kinds of solutions.
  • Look for companies that are capable of or open to iterative software developments, so you can test your custom solution as its developed.
  • Find a company that shows you a plan for the different steps of a project, how they plan to provide maintenance, and how they plan to deploy your application to you.
  • Look for a company that's established and reputable, and is larger than just a few people.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2: Option Not to Show Inactive Checkbooks in Lookup Windows

Implementing Jet Reports: Management Reporter vs. Jet Reports


Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2 – Repurposing Intelligent Clouds Insights

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But what if you don’t want all that cloudy stuff? David Musgrave explains how to turn it off. Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2 – Repurposing Intelligent Clouds Insights

Normally, I’m not a big fan of turning off stuff like this, but there are some idiosyncrasies in Microsoft’s implementation. Chief among these is that the intelligent cloud starts with a trial option for D365 Business Central. Companies that aren’t ready might want to make sure that an employee doesn’t accidentally activate their trial and use up free time.

PowerApps – New Functions Introduced – GUID, Concurrent & Notify

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Microsoft has released many new features and enhancements for PowerApps since June 2018, part of this blog we will cover three new functions introduced which I believe would be mostly used. GUID Function...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2 – Email Purchase Order Other Form from PO Entry

New Azure Government Services for partners

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With Microsoft’s announcement of new Azure Government services, fresh mission scenarios for government agencies have opened up that were not possible before. For partners with a focus on public-sector industry and who have an interest in expanding public sector business through areas like data platform modernization and cloud infrastructure & management, they may find value in the following services and resources:

Azure Reservations

Azure Reservations can help save money by pre-paying for one-year or three-years of virtual machine, SQL Database compute capacity, Azure Cosmos DB throughput, or other Azure resources.

Azure Hybrid Benefit

Azure Hybrid Benefit allows for more value from Windows Server licenses and results in savings of up to 40 percent on virtual machines. Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server is an Azure-based benefit that enables the use of SQL Server licenses with active Software Assurance to pay a reduced rate.

Azure Data Box Family

Azure Data Box products provide both offline and online solutions for moving data to the cloud.

    • Data Box, Data Box Disk, and Data Box Heavy devices help transfer large amounts of data to Azure when the network isn’t an option.
    • Data Box Edge and Data Box Gateway are online data transfer products that act as network storage gateways to manage data between on-premises and Azure.

Azure Data Box Edge

Azure Data Box Edge is a storage solution that will process data and send it over network to Azure. Data Box Edge uses a physical device supplied by Microsoft to accelerate the secure data transfer. The physical device resides on-premises and you write data via the NFS and SMB protocols.

Azure FastTrack for Government

FastTrack for Azure Government provides direct assistance from Azure engineers, working together with customers & partners, to help build Azure solutions quickly and confidently.

Expanded FedRAMP

Microsoft announced the expansion of FedRAMP Moderate coverage to Azure public cloud regions. A total of 50 services are now available, creating new partner practice opportunities across various federal agencies. Here is the list of Azure and Azure Gov authorizations

You can find additional details about these new capabilities here.

Join our Community call to learn more

Excited about these announcements or simply want to hear more? Register for the Public Sector community call on Thursday November 8, 2018. We’ll have a conversational dialogue and bring you up to speed about these new Azure Government services.

Useful Links

Public Sector Technical Community

Announcing: Dynamics 365 for Marketing October 2018 update

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The October 2018 update of Dynamics 365 for Marketing is released and available for customers to install and update starting now! This is the first major update to the product since its release earlier this year. It includes many new features, plus plenty of performance and stability improvements.

Keep reading to learn how to get this update and which new features it includes. For more information about this update, including known and recently fixed issues, see the Dynamics 365 for Marketing readme page.

How to get the update

To benefit from this update, you must manually apply it to each of your Dynamics 365 for Marketing instances as described in Keep Marketing up to date.

Account-based marketing

With account-based marketing, business-to-business (B2B) marketers can target each business account as a single unit, thus increasing integration and alignment between the sales and marketing departments. Generate demand and close more sales by targeting specific accounts and tailoring your messaging for those accounts to ensure relevance and value.

Account-based marketing can help organizations to:

  • Align sales and marketing departments by mapping marketing activity to account strategies.
  • Increase return on investment by removing waste and focusing on targeted, high-value accounts.
  • Increase account relevance by providing personalized and compelling content.
  • Generate efficiency by identifying specific contacts at specific companies within a specific market.

Account-based marketing can:

  • Identify and create segments of high-value accounts.
  • Identify key stakeholders to reach within each account.
  • Create personalized content, such as emails, based on account.
  • Generate account-level leads and nurture them through the demand-generation funnel.
  • Continuously measure account engagement and optimize your messaging.

An account-based customer journey

For more information, see Account-based marketing in the online help.

Reusable content blocks

Reusable content blocks let you define and store reusable blocks of content that are easy to add to email and page designs. You can even include dynamic values from Dynamics 365. For example, if you've created a beautiful header for a marketing page, you can make it a standard design element by saving it as a reusable block. Because you can choose to restrict other users' ability to edit the content of a content block, you can improve compliance with your brand identity and organizational design standards.

Use the new content-block designer to define the content, design, and rules for each content block. Users can then drag and drop these elements into their email and landing page designs. Each block could be as simple as a call-to-action button, or as complex as an event countdown timer.

Add a content block to a design

For more information, see Create content blocks in the online help.

Social listening for campaigns

Social listening analyzes social-media channels to find relevant posts and evaluate user sentiment related to any topic you choose. Then you can place relevant social-media analytics right next to the other insights you've collected for any customer journey, account, contact, or other relevant record in Dynamics 365 for Marketing.

Establish a collection of specific phrases that relate to a customer journey or event, and then monitor social media posts for mentions of those phrases. Social listening gathers data from all the major social networks and populates the various widgets on the social tab with relevant analytics that reveal how often each phrase is mentioned over time, the sentiment associated with each mention, potential influencers that mention the phrases, and much more.

A social-listening dashboard

For more information, see Set up social listening and add it to any record in the online help.

Marketing calendar for planning

The marketing calendar provides a visual overview of any marketing activity that has a start and end date. For example, you can view many elements of a campaign (such as events, event sessions, customer journeys, appointments, and more) on the same calendar to get an easy overview. Event planners can view or create sessions straight from the calendar while accounting for room and speaker availability—all without leaving the page.

Marketing calendar in month view

For more information, see Work with marketing calendars in the online help.

Deep LinkedIn integration

Deep LinkedIn integration makes you better able to generate leads from professional networks and relationships. New integration features let you run journeys that specify targeting on LinkedIn and leverage resulting interactions for orchestration, scoring and segmentation.

Deep LinkedIn integration brings:

  • Optimized and high-quality engagement on LinkedIn
  • High-quality leads, ready to be nurtured in Dynamics 365 for Marketing to increase marketing return on investment

Dynamics 365 for Marketing can already sync leads captured using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. We are expanding on this capability by adding the following functionality:

  • Integrate Dynamics 365 for Marketing segments with LinkedIn Matched Audiences.
  • Orchestrate journeys that includes triggers that react to submissions from LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.
  • Evaluate the success of your LinkedIn campaigns with engagement statistics in Dynamics 365 for Marketing.
  • Generate leads at the account or contact level when retrieving form submissions from LinkedIn.
  • Nurture leads with lead scoring based on LinkedIn form submissions.

Create a LinkedIn Matched Audience

For more information, see these topics in the online help:

Richer segmentation experience

The improved segment designer enables marketers and business analysts to create segments more easily and efficiently. A host of new business-centric operators will make it simpler for business users to create complex, business-centric marketing segments, allowing them to easily create segments for targeted marketing.

The improved segment designer provides:

  • More operators
  • Improved user interface performance

The segment designer

For more information, see these topics in the online help:

Custom analytics (public preview)

Dynamics 365 for Marketing collects wide-ranging and detailed information about how contacts interact with your marketing initiatives. Use custom analytics to organize and present this data within the Marketing app.

Custom analytics can help deliver actionable insights based on data from Marketing and other business applications. View reports that are fine-tuned to your business processes and use them to identify ways to run more efficient and effective campaigns. In the future, we'll also deliver insights based on machine learning to help you get even more out of your business data, acquired data, and unique Microsoft data sets.

Use Dynamics 365 for Marketing to build custom analytics that support your organization's specific business processes, drive good decision making, and deliver results. Design charts, graphs, and KPIs that you can embed right into the app, where marketers need them most.

Email analyzer Power BI template

Setup required:

  • You must bring you own Azure Blob Storage to use this feature. The Marketing app must be able to connect to this resource and store marketing data there.
  • You can choose to build Power BI reporting on top of this data store by using the Power BI dataflows connector. This feature is still in preview. More information: Self-service data prep with dataflows (Public Preview)
  • Alternatively, you can build Power BI reporting leveraging custom mapping for the marketing data stored on Azure Blob Storage.

For more information, see Create custom analytics with Power BI in the online help.

Videos in marketing content (public preview)

Online videos are an essential part of marketing, and the fastest-growing medium for reaching newer and wider audiences. Dynamics 365 for Marketing now provides native support for embedding videos in marketing communications.

The new videos feature adds a video design element to the content designer. To add a video to any marketing page, just drag a video element from the toolbox, drop it into place on your design, and choose which video to include.

Add a video element to your design

For more information, see Create a video library and add videos to your designs in the online help.

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