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

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

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

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

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 with getContentWindow

Users Not Seeing Model-Driven App? Check These 2 Things

When you create a model-driven app and deploy it to another environment such as from Dev to your Test or Production environments, your users may not see the app. For example, in https://home.dynamics.com (soon to be located in https://www.office.com/apps) we have an app called UciApp1: Our salesperson. Jeff, does not see the app – “We can’t find any apps for your role. To check for recently-added apps, select Refresh”: Note, Jeff has … Continue reading Users Not Seeing Model-Driven App? Check These 2 Things

Business Process Flows and Troubelshooting Security Roles

In this post, we will look at how forms with Business Process Flows can be affected by the saving of records or moving stages in a BPF, which may occur before or after you deploy your code to a new environment. We will take a look at how to troubleshoot these errors in general as well. Let’s create a new business process flow at https://flow.microsoft.com/: We will call it Carl’s Flow, … Continue reading Business Process Flows and Troubelshooting Security Roles

Autogenerate Field Values with Auto-Number Attributes in Power Apps D365

In this post, we will take a look at how to create a field in Power Apps Dynamics 365 that auto-generates a value. This is useful if you would like records to have unique values that are automatically generated. You can add these fields to out of the box entities and also custom entities. Let’s create on in the Account entity. Go to https://make.powerapps.com and select Account: Then add field: Change … Continue reading Autogenerate Field Values with Auto-Number Attributes in Power Apps D365