I get that a lot:
Hi Lovro,
A quick one, can you change this and that? Should not take you that long…
Every email ever.
Well….
In this post, I’ll cover 5 types of support requests, which seem fairly trivial and easy to resolve, but in reality, they can take enormous effort to tackle.
“Here’s a screenshot of the error message the system is showing me. Can you help?”

Dear users. While it seems that we can understand this issue, we would like to inform you that it’s as cryptic for you as it is for us. Please send us more information starting with what you were trying to achieve in the system before this error message appeared.
“Can you stop just this user from deleting these types of records if this and that applies?”
A common request from managers trying to enforce security and bring order to the chaotic world. There are two issues with this request:
- Restricting a single user or multiple users takes exactly the same amount of time to implement. I’ll save no time if I apply the rule to a single employee or a whole team.
- Not all conditions are equal. Restricting a user from deleting ANY record is easy. Restricting a user from deleting a record based on some field within the same record is fairly easy too. Restricting a user from deleting a record based on values from some other unrelated table is hard, sometimes even close to impossible.
“Can’t you just add a button to this menu?”
No, anything to do with the command bar was and still is a demanding task in Dynamics. Except for some really trivial operations, implementing a button to perform any meaningful operation is hard and will take a lot of time to implement.
Microsoft made this easier in the recent versions of PowerApps, but for most of the buttons you might still need to use the RibbonWorkbench (which is unfortunately very slow).
“Why is this record duplicated?”
Analysing data issues is demanding as well. There are many factors to consider – here are just some of the options to check:
- Misconfigured or missing record duplication rules. This one is actually the least common option.
- Workflow issue, plugin issue, Microsoft Flow issue, Logic Apps, Azure Functions, other automation systems… There are many ways of implementing automation in Dynamics. With so many moving parts, it can be really time-consuming to find the true cause, particularly especially if you were not the one responsible for the initial implementation.
- Customised processes. In certain systems, standard processes may undergo customization. For instance, creating an order might require utilising a custom button that triggers a WebResource to execute additional logic. Uninformed administrators might face difficulties in identifying such issues. That’s why it’s important to include additional screenshots that illustrate the steps leading up to the problem. Moreover, administrators should prioritize consulting with users and, ideally, arranging screen-sharing sessions for better understanding and troubleshooting.
- Integration. In addition to the complexities of automation implementation in Dynamics CRM, third-party integration solutions can also contribute to potential issues. These integrations may involve impersonating a regular system user to perform actions and create records on their behalf. As a result, when questioned, the actual user may be unaware of these activities since they were not directly responsible for creating the records.
In many cases, the issue originates from a user error, which is often not easy to prove. Audit logs can help, but they are often not available.
Users also tend to change the names of parts of Dynamics – “Quotations” are sometimes actually “Invoices” and
“Here’s an spreadsheet with a list of quotes I’d like to delete”
Spreadsheets can be really painful to process, especially if they don’t include the actual system IDs of records. If there are less than 50 records to delete, it may be quicker to delete them by hand. Otherwise, the process goes as follows:
- Create a View in Dynamics containing exactly these records. This can be done using XrmToolbox’ FetchXML Builder or manually. This step is the most time consuming.
- Open the view in Dynamics
- Select all records and delete them
This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the type of records.
Conclusion
These are just a couple of requests I could think of today.
You can make your Dynamics Administrator very happy by providing more than one screenshot in your next request. 🙂
This post focused on the hard things. In my next post, I’ll show you some useful features, which you can use on your own without asking your administrator.