Thursday, November 30, 2023

Thoughts on LinkedIn 'Read with AI' feature

 I recently created a post for LinkedIn promoting a friends post. I decided to use the 'Rewrite with AI' feature of LinkedIn and wanted to give my before and after feelings. There are a lot of people posting using AI and using AI pictures. I've been hesitant, but experimental, to use it in in my day to day and here is why. 

Clearly in my post I'm trying to plug my friend's post. It really was good but I didn't need to 'sell' it. Its good content. But when I converted my 'I'm plugging my friends post' via AI, it came across using logic I'd expect from a college academic with zero real world experience in this space. It was very inauthentic. Its hard to tell why its inauthentic but it doesn't sound like me. 

I think if I was a company trying to sell something new or made a lazy post, I think this feature is good. But when it comes to staying on brand, using AI makes you stand out like a sore thumb. Its missing the 'me' in how I speak. Much like if I talked in person, I would sound wildly different than someone else saying the same sentence in a different way with a different accent with different inflections. 

I'd say use this feature with caution. I like it and I will continue to play with it for almost every post. But the fact its not taking previous posts I make as part of algorithm (that i can tell), I'll likely never post with it. 





Thursday, September 28, 2023

Simulate and test D365 Commerce email layouts for multiple mobile devices with only Chrome and no need for installing addins

 I had a customer that needed to preview a Dynamics 365 email receipt and see what their HTML receipt will look like in multiple browsers, mobile devices, etc. 

Here is my suggestion on how to test it without buying a ton of different devices. I noticed there really wasn't any documentation on this associated with D365 so I'm doing this so I can just refer to this URL when teaching this to others. 

I recommend Chrome for this, but not saying another can't be used. Its just what I use. And I'm using Gmail as its what I had an example receipt for. 

Its important to note that no addins are needed and just Chrome, so most everyone can use this even when security locks down the Chrome store. 

  1. Open Chrome
  2. You'll want to see the webpage in mobile mode, not desktop mode, so navigate to m.gmail.com, not just gmail.com so you'll see the mobile layout. 
  3. Select the email example you want to test against
  4. Open the developer tools in Chrome (Figure 1) 
  5. Click on the 'toggle device toolbar' (Figure 2)
  6. Select the device to emulate (Figure 3)
  7. Test the website in portrait and landscape mode (Figure 4)
  8. If you dont see the device to emulate, you can select many more or create your own (Figure 5)

Figure 1 - Developer Tools in chrome


Figure 2 - Toggle Device Toolbar

Figure 3 - select what device to simulate

Figure 4 - View the website on the target device emulation in portrait or landscape mode

Figure 5 - Simulate all sorts of devices

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Dynamics 365 Commerce Credit Card Decline receipt printing

 For those that may have used D365 Commerce and credit cards, you've likely noticed the card decline receipts that print from the printer. Likely when you are testing a payment processor and its chewing through your thermal paper like a baseball team and big league chew. 

You can turn this feature on or off through the use the Print Card Decline Receipt boolean on the Dynamics 365 Commerce Functionality profiles. See below. 




Monday, January 23, 2023

Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations field missing after update

Occasionally, a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations user may report missing a field after an upgrade was applied to production. The field could be named anything, such as 'Hold' or similar. Everything is working completely fine but that field they had is no longer on a grid or form they use daily. The user may state they have not used the Personalization feature and it has been in the system this way since they went live.

Upon further investigation, it was found that there was a field called 'Do Not Process' on the sales order header that was added to the primary sales order grid and renamed to 'Hold'. 

Most people don't realize you can rename a field in Personalization but you absolutely can. Personalizations can be imported into the user profiles so users do not need to interact with Personalizations to have them applied. This is often to streamline processes for a group of people while avoiding customizations. 

Mystery solved!