Monday 24 April 2017

Dynamics CRM 365 Service End Point Changes and You

There has been a lot of confusion about the changes Microsoft has made to its Dynamics crm odata crm 2011 end point, the are even rumors that the endpoint has been removed completely!!

As far as I can tell from check here and here, its not so bad, these are the following things to note.

  1. Microsoft is trying to make the Dynamics CRM API more interoperable to allow for more access by mobile devices and other non Microsoft service consumers.
  2. In order to achieve the above, a new endpoint has been created called the WEB API end point, it appears in Dynamics 365 in place of the old ODATA end point
  3. The new web API end point still uses the ODATA format but with slight modifications to the syntax.
  4. The crm 2011 end point has been deprecated, meaning its advised to NOT be used anymore, however is still available to consumers.
  5. The old endpoint will be available for while, probably to give consumers time to make any necessary updates.
  6. The end game by Microsoft is for the retirement of the other endpoints (CRM 2011 SOAP and REST) endpoints in favour of the new WEB API endpoint.
so what should you do?
  1. If you are using the SDK or some other Library for REST or SOAP calls to CRM then getting the latest version of the library should solve the problem. 
  2. However it is important to confirm that the library above has been updated to use the WEB API end point and your code also has any necessary changes recommended by the library author.
  3. if you made direct calls to the CRM 2011 REST or SOAP endpoints then you should update them asap. 

CCHub disapora challenge - part 1


CCHUB is doing an event christened the diaspora challenge which is designed to start the process of the exploitation of the vast economic potential that the Nigerian diaspora (me and my ilk) have to offer the country.

Its happening on may the 5th 2017 at Facebook London, 10 Brock street, Kings Cross, London, NW13FG, it promises to be fun.

I expect to be there so I may put some of my thoughts in a blog post, probably the part 2 of this post.

Badass Api's released by Microsoft

Amazing news, Microsoft just announced the general availability of some awesome APIs, its called microsoft cognitive services.

Its essentially a service that can be passed queries on the content of images, it can recognize land marks, celebrity faces, emotion on faces and even understand hand writing and convert to text.

Its scary easy to use (see code examples here) and kinda worrying that such power is now available to the masses.

The above just points to the ever speedier move towards full A.I, scary but awesome at the same time..

Tuesday 4 April 2017

Great Article on Unified Service Desk or USD

I struggled with figuring out what Unified Service Desk was, this blog post cleared it all up for me.

Turns out its actually an iteration of customer service accelerator (CCA) and customer care desktop (CCD), a set of tools I sparred with a few years ago on a project which took me to Krakow in Poland and Frankfurt in Germany.

Anyways it was nice to see it again and be reminded of the (kind of Frankenstein's monster) product we created from CCA and CCD and the good times I had in Poland and Germany.

Read the article and enjoy