Why I love Kingswaysoft

Why I love Kingswaysoft

by | Aug 11, 2020

The reason I often recommend Kingswaysoft over other methods of data migration or even sometime data integration is rather simple, it can do what others can’t. Not even Microsoft. And it can do it fast.

So have I been payed by Kingswaysoft to write this? No, not a penny, I havn’t even been given a free license even though they might if I asked. I think it is just fair that I explain why I am such a strong proponent for this product and if anyone disagrees, please feel free to drop a comment below.

API knowledge

Kingswaysoft both know how the API:s of the Power Platform/CDS/Dataf??x (called CDS below) work, sometimes even better than Microsoft themselves as I have seen feedbacks given in such detail from them on what is missing from specific API:s to reach feature parity, that it is scary. Kingswaysoft also has a blog which has details recommendations and built in recommendations in the product on how to maximize performance with the Dataflex API. They have also built in handling for throttling, multi-threading, batching and more to just make it transparent. When looking at other integration products and connectors. I have never seen anything that is close to this depth.

Datamodel and Dynamics knowledge

Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service and other first party apps have some very peculiar oddities that need to be taken into consideration. These oddities range from for example:

  • How to delete Marketing List members – by using the party member and list as key
  • How audit logs are handled
  • How Activities work, with activity pointer and activity parties
  • Setting CreatedOn/CreatedBy/ModifiedOn/ModifiedBy
  • Reading/Writing personal views (saved advanced finds)
  • Setting statusvalues of some fringe entities

Even though many tools, like Power Automate, Data Flows, Azure Data Factory, etc. all seem to handle common tasks like creating or reading a contact or account rather well, it soon becomes a problem when you start looking at some of the areas above. And you often need to in a migration.

It can use the power of SSIS

SQL Server Integration Services is a very powerful framework once you start getting your head around it. Yes, it has some quirks to it but in general it can do some rather cool things and is good when you want to sequence many different tasks in order to reduce overall runtime. Using built in features like Cache Transforms with memory storage, you can make filters using memory based lookups with millions of records super fast, once everything is loaded.

…and extend it

And of course Kingswaysoft didn’t settle for just building connectors to Dynamics 365. They have a pack called “Productivity Pack” that adds a lot of nice features to SSIS that makes your day a lot easier.

And if you have problems – great support

And if you ever run into problems, their support is great. We have identified buggs and they have fixed the bug and sent us a special deploy just a day or two after.

Flip side

There is always a flip side. I think one is that SSIS isn’t always your most stable product. For this I don’t think Kingswaysoft are to blame but it affects their product experience none the less.

Another obvious flip side is that this requires a skillset that is a bit “off the tracks” even though it isn’t super hard to learn the basics, becoming really proficient with SSIS takes time.

Finally

So, a product as good as this is probably super expensive, right? No. It isn’t. If you are running things from within Visual Studio, then you don’t even need a license, but if you plan to run a migration or so, I certainly recommend one anyway, to get access to support. And buy the Ultimate license to get access to the productivity pack and all the other connectors while you’re at it. It is worth it.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that the other products are bad. I am just saying that once you choose a product, you will start to decend the rabitts hole. If the product isn’t up to speed you will have a couple of options:

  • Back up and redo with another technology
  • Patch with another technology
  • Create some kind of workaround

Neither of these solutions is rather palatable. Hence it is often tempting to choose a product that you know can do the job. And apart from coding, SSIS with Kingswaysoft will very seldom have any issues.

Hybrid NTLM Server Side Sync and Exchange 2013 Cert secrets

Hybrid NTLM Server Side Sync and Exchange 2013 Cert secrets

by | Sep 5, 2018

The server side sync is a technology for connecting Dynamics 365 CE to an Exchange server. When connecting an Online Dynamics 365 to an onprem Exchange there are some requirement that need to be met. These can be found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/sv-se/library/mt622059.aspx

Piping data to and from Exchange and Dynamics
By Quartl [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

However, I just had a meeting with Microsoft and based on the version shown 2018-09-05, they have now added some new features that they haven’t had time to get into the documentation yet.

Some of the most interesting parts of the integration is that the it requires Basic Authentication for EWS (Exchange Web Service). Of the three types of authentication available Kerberos, NTLM and Basic, Basic Authentication is, as the name might hint, the least secure. Hence it is also not very well liked by many Exchange admins and may be a blocker for enabling Server Side Sync in Dynamics 365.

In the meeting I just had with Microsoft, they mentioned that they now support NTLM as well! That is great news as that will enable more organizations to enable Server Side Sync.

There is still a requirement on using a user with Application Impersonation rights which might be an issue as that can be viewed as having too high rights within the Exchange server. For this there is currently no good alternative solution. I guess making sure that the Dynamics Admins are trustworthy and knowing that the password is encrypted in Dynamics might ease some of that. But if the impersonation user is compromised, then a haxxor with the right tool or dev skills could compromise the entire Exchange server.

Microsoft also mentioned another common issue that can arise with the Outlook App when using SSS and hybrid connection to an Exchange 2013 onprem. It will show a quick alert saying “Can’t connect to Exchange” but it will be able to load the entire Dynamics parts.

This might be caused by the fact, according to Microsoft, that Exchange 2013, doesn’t automatically create a self-signed certificate that it can use for communication. Hence this has to be done.

This can be fixed by first creating a self signed certificate and then modify the authorization configuration using instruction found here . Lastly publish the certificate. It can also be a good idea to check that the certificate is still valid and hasn’t expired.

I will see if I can create a more detailed instruction on this later.

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, Founder and Principal Consultant at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se