Category: Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM)

Form Designing and Screen Resolution in Model-Driven Power Apps

When building model-driven Power Apps, one useful feature in the Power Apps form designer is the ability to view the form being designed in various different resolutions. To use this, open a form in design mode. Below we are viewing the Account Main form. You can see at the bottom of the designer, we are displaying Desktop (1920 x 1080): Clicking on this, we see there are other options: Desktop … Continue reading Form Designing and Screen Resolution in Model-Driven Power Apps

How Patching of Solutions Works in the Power Platform

In the Microsoft Power Platform, there is a concept of patching solutions. Patches are useful when you want to deploy code from one environment to another. With patches, you would have already released a solution from one environment to another, and then be in a situation where you need to deploy a fix or enhancement to that solution. Instead of updating the original solution and deploying that full solution again, … Continue reading How Patching of Solutions Works in the Power Platform

How to Save Your Dynamics 365 Code from Cloud to to Disk

In this post, we will go over how to save the code in your Dynamics 365 instance back down to disk on your machine. You may want to do this if you want to take a backup of your customizations, though in a better scenario you would have the latest code in source control. To do this, we can use the Webresources Manager plugin for the XrmToolBox, developed by MscrmTools. … Continue reading How to Save Your Dynamics 365 Code from Cloud to to Disk

Custom Actions in JavaScript with Output Parameters in D365 and PowerApps

In this post, we will look at how to retrieve output parameters from custom actions in the Dynamics 365 and Power Apps from JavaScript. Firstly, I blogged previously about how to run custom actions in Dynamics 365 / Power Apps using Xrm.WebApi.online.execute. It appears in some conditions, this functionality does not return output parameters from an action. Issues I have found specifically include using this with Unified Interface / UCI … Continue reading Custom Actions in JavaScript with Output Parameters in D365 and PowerApps

Update Dynamics 365 Developer Tools to Latest Version

In this post, we will look at how to update the Dynamics 365 Developer Tools to the latest version. These tools include the CrmSvcUtil, Configuration Migration Tool, Package Deployer, Plugin Registration Tool, and Solution Packager. First, let’s look at how to see what version of the tools you are running. To get the version of the Plugin Registration Tool, click on the top right question mark: This opens the version: … Continue reading Update Dynamics 365 Developer Tools to Latest Version

Using Configuration Pages in Dynamics 365 Power Apps Solutions

Configuration pages are used in Dynamics 365 / Power Apps solutions so developers can provide some light documentation on what a solution contains. This might be useful for tracking what is deployed between environments, or what functionality a solution contains. To use configuration pages, first set up a new solution. Note the Configuration Page only has the option “None”. Let’s click Create to save the solution: Next, let’s create a new … Continue reading Using Configuration Pages in Dynamics 365 Power Apps Solutions

New Features – Common Data Service, SQL and Power BI !!!

One of the cool recent announcements by Microsoft is the ability to write T-SQL queries against a Common Data Service database using SQL Server Management Studio. This also includes the ability to connect to the Common Data Service using Direct Query in Power BI. Let’s look at how to enable this preview feature and how to use it. Note this is a preview feature from Microsoft, so expect things to … Continue reading New Features – Common Data Service, SQL and Power BI !!!

Get Alerted When a Common Data Service Database Version Changes

In this post, we will look at how to create a Power Automate Flow that alerts someone when a Power Platform Common Data Service version changes. This can be very useful if you’re waiting for new features to come out, for example the T-SQL access to the Common Data Service. We can also use this to connect to any of the D365 / Power Apps Web API methods from Power … Continue reading Get Alerted When a Common Data Service Database Version Changes

Find Out When a Dynamics 365 Version Update is Scheduled for Installation

Microsoft releases Dynamics 365 updates periodically. You may want to see which is the current and next version for your region. To do this, go to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/dynamics/released-versions/dynamics-365ce#latest-version-availability. For example, below we see a list of updates per region: In this case, North America Station 5 is on version 9.1.0.16845 Service Update 168, with the next version 9.1.0.17154 Service Update 171 being rolled out on 5/22. Clicking into one of these release … Continue reading Find Out When a Dynamics 365 Version Update is Scheduled for Installation

How to Use FormContext in a Web Resource in Dynamics 365 Power Apps

When working with web resources in Dynamics 365 / Power Apps in the past, we were able to access form elements by using Xrm.Page. This has now been deprecated in Dynamics 365 v9.x, so we need a way to access these controls from an HTML web resource. Microsoft documentation has stated that calling parent.Xrm.Page from web resources is still a way to access the form context. However, there is also … Continue reading How to Use FormContext in a Web Resource in Dynamics 365 Power Apps