Author: Carl

Creating a Power BI Chart Comparing Each Year vs Previous Year

In this post, we will go through how to create a Power BI chart that compares numbers each year vs each previous year. We will use sales data as an example. First, let’s connect to our data from Power BI Desktop. We will use the sample data from here and connect as in the example. This data holds 3 years of Orders data. Once connected, create a simple date table … Continue reading Creating a Power BI Chart Comparing Each Year vs Previous Year

Connecting Power BI to a Website to Import Data

In this post, we will connect Power BI Desktop to a website to pull down data from the website into Power BI so we can use it for analysis. Open Power BI Desktop and select Get Data->Web: Enter a website URL. For example, I have a page that contains a table of Orders sample data. This is located at https://carldesouza.com/sample-date-orders-table-2019/: Copy the URL and paste it into the Power BI URL … Continue reading Connecting Power BI to a Website to Import Data

Using, Loading and Creating Report Themes in Power BI

In Power BI, report authors can use themes in reports to keep the color palette consistent across visualizations. Let’s look at how to use themes. Below is a pretty simple report. Note in the navigation bar there is the Switch Themes button: Clicking it, we see there are several themes available, including: Default City park Classroom Colorblind safe Electric High contrast Sunset Twilight We are currently set to the default … Continue reading Using, Loading and Creating Report Themes in Power BI

Unified Interface Transition Portal Helps with Move to UCI

As part of the transition to Unified Interface, we can use the Unified Interface Transition Portal to help us. Go to https://runone.powerappsportals.com/. You will be prompted to log in and accept the permissions: Then confirm your details: Select My Environments: From here, you can see the current transition status, and the target date: Selecting an org will show details on the Rescheduling Requests: And you can also click on My Requests … Continue reading Unified Interface Transition Portal Helps with Move to UCI

Workaround for Retreiving the COM Class Factory Issue with USD

In Unified Service Desk, when you launch the application, or on some pages, you may run into the issue “Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 } failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG))”: Looking in the registry for this class id, we see: The workaround to resolve this was running USD as an Administrator, which is not ideal … Continue reading Workaround for Retreiving the COM Class Factory Issue with USD

Display Preview Contents using a Monospaced Font in Power BI

In Power BI Desktop, there is the option to display contents using a monospaced font, where each character has the same space. To do this, open your report and go to the Power Query Editor. Click the View tab, and you will see Monospaced: With this unchecked, we can see that our Id field is not aligned in our grid: On checking it, we can see that the field is … Continue reading Display Preview Contents using a Monospaced Font in Power BI

How Managed Properties in Power Platform Solutions Work

In this post, we will look at how Managed Properties in manged solutions in the Power Platform work. These can be useful if you want control over how much a user can customize a managed solution component once it has been deployed in a target environment. First, let’s create a new solution: And add a new entity called People: We see the entity is part of our solution: Let’s go … Continue reading How Managed Properties in Power Platform Solutions Work

Accessing Advanced Customizations in PowerApps

In PowerApps, we can access Advanced Customization features. This will look familiar to Dynamics 365 developers and administrators who go into Settings in the Dynamics 365 app. To do this in PowerApps, log into https://powerapps.microsoft.com: and select Settings -> Advanced Customizations: This will open the Advanced Customizations pane: From here, we can manage Users, Security Roles, Themes, Publishers and Developer Resources. Users takes us to: Roles: Publishers: Developer Resources: Note … Continue reading Accessing Advanced Customizations in PowerApps

Convert FetchXML to QueryExpression in Dynamics 365 with Web API Example

In this post, we will go through an example of converting FetchXML to a QueryExpression. We will do this by debugging a Web API call in a plugin. To debug Web API calls using the Plugin Registration Tool, do the following. First, create a Web API query, e.g. select the name and revenue fields in the accounts entity filtered by name. E.g. https://yourorg.api.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.1/accounts?$select=name,revenue&$filter=name eq ‘3M’ In Visual Studio, create a new … Continue reading Convert FetchXML to QueryExpression in Dynamics 365 with Web API Example

Calling the RetrieveEntity WebAPI Function with Enum Types

In Dynamics 365, there are several functions that we can call from the Web API. You can see a list of these functions here. When calling these functions, we can use Xrm.WebApi.execute and specify an action as the operationType: In some cases, this doesn’t appear to work as expected, and you may need to revert to sending through the request using XMLHttpRequest. Let’s look at the example of using the … Continue reading Calling the RetrieveEntity WebAPI Function with Enum Types