Before we start the blog, let me tell you that In-App Notifications feature is now in GA (for details, refer this MSFT Announcement (Apr 22)).

In Dynamics 365 / Model Driven Apps, you can generate In-App Notification for Single User only (by using the documented approach as per MSFT KB article). There isn’t any supported way to generate Notifications for multiple users / teams. (Besides no easy way to dynamically add values from record in to the message… for example adding user-name, case field values, opportunity field values etc within the message)

Zap Notifications Generator App allows bulk generation of In-App Notifications: onDemand, based on Triggers Or based on Recurring pattern + Form Notifications + Email Notifications!

This app takes the basic in-app notifications feature that Dynamics provides to Next Level…making it very easy for admin or super users to easily generate In-App Notifications!!!

Let’s see the steps required to generate In-App Notifications for multiple users:

Use-Case: Creating In-App Notifications for all users regarding a company Announcement for Scheduled Network Down-time

Step 1: Open Zap Notifications Generator App and browse to “General Notification” form and click  New:

Here fill-in the various Notifications settings like: Icon Type, Toast Type, Priority, Expiry Time (as shown in screenshot above)

Step 2: Create the In-App Notification Message

As can be seen in above screenshot that the JSON data has got generated automatically. Another point to note here is that you can use tokens to insert User Name within the notification message.

Step 3: Select the Users to Include, Users to Exclude, Teams to Include

Once above fields have been filled-in… Next Save the record and Click “Publish”!

The selected Users would be notified as shown in below screenshot:

This blog is part of our series “Introducing Zap Notifications Generator App for Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service & Power Apps”.

Below are links for all blogs in this series:

Blog 1: Enable/Disable In-App Notifications feature (link)
Blog 2: Generate In-App Notifications in Bulk for multiple users / teams (link)
Blog 3: Some common user-scenarios for using In-App Notifications (link)
Blog 4: Generate In-App Notifications automatically as per Recurring Schedule (link)
Blog 5: How to insert record field values within the In-App Notification message (e.g. use-case: Notifying Case Owner on Case Assignment) (link)
Blog 6: How to generate In-App Notification from Power Automate / Flow (link)

Zap Recent Updates (Jun 2022)

1. New App Released: Zap Time Entry App (Track Time against Cases + Timesheet): Track and log time spent by support agents on cases directly from Case form (either using built in Timer functionality or manually add Start & End Times or duration)!

2. New Version Released: Zap Helpdesk App (v44.1.1.9) :A super major version of Zap Helpdesk has now been released. Some of the new features are: Case History, Email Reply – with ability to include full email and portal history in all new responses to customer, dedicated notifications module with all standard set of notifications built-in, Email Commands, and many more!

3. New Version Released: Zap Report Scheduler App (v 32.1.1.9):
1. When scheduling Excel or Word Template…user can now select even “Shared” personal excel template and “Shared” personal View
2. Automatic Retry for Report Generation using “Schedule Report” option: If due to any reason (eg report server busy), report generation fails… then we provide the option to retry report execution again after 1 minute… and then again if it fails then after 10 minutes. This retry mechanism would guarantee 99.99% delivery.