Dynamics
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Microsoft Dynamics is a line of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software applications.
Microsoft Dataverse is the cloud-based database engine on which Dynamics and other solutions are based.
Dataverse and Dynamics can benefit from tight integration with Resco platform, gaining access to powerful and fully customizable mobile applications that can work with your organization's data, even offline.
| Note | Microsoft product names are changing rapidly. On this wiki and possibly elsewhere in Resco communication, when talking about "Dynamics," we are referring to:
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Integration schemas
Getting started
To start using Resco for Dynamics, you have to add Resco Suite (Woodford) to your Dynamics server. See Installing Woodford on Dynamics for further instructions.
To verify that the Resco solution was installed successfully, and to manage the solution, go to Settings > Solutions and search for "Woodford".
Resco functions on Dynamics
By installing Woodford, you can now access additional tools from your Dynamics server. In the list of published apps, search for Resco Suite:
You can then access the different Resco features:
- Designer tools
- Woodford: Customization and configuration of Resco mobile application directly from your web browser.
- Reports: Create and manage your custom mobile reports.
- Questionnaire Designer: Questionnaire building and customization tool.
- Manager tools
- Location Monitor: View and analyze the position of mobile users.
- Schedule Board: Assign appointments to users.
- Questionnaires
- Answered questionnaires
- Results Viewer
- Audit
- Mobile Audit: View a chronological list of transactions across records and users.
- Mobile Audit Map: View transactions across records and users on a map.
- Sync Dashboard: Monitor synchronization details of your users and devices.
Woodford registration and first publish
- When you start Woodford for the first time, you have to register. The information provided is later used for licensing.
- When you publish an app project for the first time, this is when your Resco trial actually starts.
App projects
App projects are customized versions of Resco mobile application dedicated to a particular set of users. Or more precisely, the application remains the same, but each project may have a different set of data and functions available. For example, your mobile sales team may need easy access for showcasing products and creating up new orders, field technicians may need instructions that guide them through the process of a maintenance inspection, and their managers can be interested in seeing the aggregated data or monitor the location of their staff on a map in real time.
Resco on Dynamics comes with a set of default project templates designed for concrete scenarios (for example, mobile sales or inspections) and these can be further customized using the Woodford tool, or you can design your own app project from scratch.
Microsoft Dataverse
Resco is fully compatible with Microsoft Dataverse, formerly known as Common Data Service (CDS). Most of the default app projects shipped with Woodford are tailor-made for Dynamics Sales or Field Service. However, the Inspector app project is fully compatible with a plain Dataverse organization without any Dynamics extras.
Mobile apps
Resco offers several mobile apps that understand app projects and allow you to work with your Dynamics data. To get started, download any of the app and connect to Dynamics. If you're not sure which app to download, get the classic Resco Mobile CRM.
Users log in to the Resco app using their Azure AD account. The app connects to Dataverse via standard web services. Depending on the user and the user's role within the organization, the app downloads a customized version of the app project along with a subset of CRM data. No middleware is used.
OAuth2 authentication
To increase security, Microsoft has deprecated older authentication methods in favor of multi-factor authentication (the final deadline was April 2022).[1] This impacts how app users sign in to Resco mobile apps and also external projects and location tracking.
Resco mobile apps
Before you can use the OAuth2 authentication method to connect Resco Mobile CRM with Dynamics 365/CRM Online, the app must first be added to the Microsoft Azure Active Directory. Azure Active Directory is used to verify that the application is permitted to access the business data stored in the Dynamics 365/CRM Online tenant. To grant global consent for all users to access the data, use the following link. However, you need to be a Global Administrator of your tenant to issue a global consent. It’s not enough to have only a System Administrator role in Dynamics 365/CRM Online.
Additionally, all app users that connect to their Resco mobile apps as Standard User must switch to OAuth2 instead.
See this blog post for more information. Blog
External projects, location tracking
The deprecations of Microsoft impact how external projects and location tracking authenticate. Instead of legacy login using WS-Trust, all customers must switch to OAuth using ROPC flow. [1] (Multi-factor authentication is not suitable for this use case.)
However, in order to use OAuth, users must grant their consent. There are two types of consent:
- individual consent for a particular user
- admin consent (organization-wide)
For external projects and location services, individual user consent is sufficient.
- For external projects, consent is required for the common user account used for authentication and licensing.
- For location tracking, consent is required for the account used when you register your organization for location tracking.
Consents can be further limited by scopes. In these cases, consent is only required to access Dynamics. The scope is https://{hostname}/user_impersonation, for example, https://resco.crm4.dynamics.com/user_impersonation. As {hostname}, use the hostname of your Dynamics instance.
There are several ways how consent can be granted:
- You can synchronize your Resco Mobile CRM app with this account. However, this will grant consent with more scopes than required for the external users or location tracking scenarios.
- A simpler way is to open the following link in a web browser, log in, and grant consent in that way. Go to
https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/authorize?client_id=a116bf70-75fe-41c2-9f9f-7f3d0faff4bb&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Flogin.microsoftonline.com%2Fcommon%2Foauth2%2Fnativeclient&scope=https%3A%2F%2F{hostname}%2Fuser_impersonation&prompt=consent. Make sure to replace the {hostname} with your Dynamics hostname. Some organizations don't allow individual user consent; in that case, you must log in as a global admin and grant consent on behalf of your organization.
- There's also a direct link for admin consent. In this case, you have to log in as a global admin. As your tenant ID, use either domain name or GUID; and also use the correct Dynamics hostname:
https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenantID}/v2.0/adminconsent?client_id=a116bf70-75fe-41c2-9f9f-7f3d0faff4bb&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Flogin.microsoftonline.com%2Fcommon%2Foauth2%2Fnativeclient&scope=https%3A%2F%2F{hostname}%2Fuser_impersonation.
- It is also possible to grant consent using Microsoft Graph web API. If you are curious about this method, contact Resco support.
Fallback
As a fallback solution, when other forms of Azure user consent inexplicably fail, some customers have reported success when manually assigning user accounts to enterprise application. See Azure documentation for more information.
Virtual tables
Virtual tables enable the integration of data residing in external systems by seamlessly representing that data as tables in Microsoft Dataverse. Since release 16.0, virtual entities can also be used in Resco mobile apps. See Virtual table for details.
File columns
In release 16.0, we have added basic support for File columns. See File column for more information.
OData v2.0 deprecation
No action is needed.
The 2023 deprecation of the OData v2.0 services affects the REST endpoint. Resco makes use of the SOAP endpoint. At this time, no date has been announced for removing that endpoint.
See also
- Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics: Resco-specific instructions for upgrading to a newer version of Dynamics
- Resco CRM sync: Connect an organization on Resco Cloud and with a Dynamics organization. Synchronize data and metadata.
- List of app permissions
- Resco for Dynamics 365: Official product page