Portal Records Mover Console updates (finally!)

It’s been a while since I released the Portal Records Mover Console application based on the invaluable Portal Records Mover XrmToolBox Tool by Tanguy Touzard. This console application is a port of the Tool code that would allow us to include this functionality to our DevOps pipelines. Since the first post, Tanguy has released significant updates that address issues that he’d been… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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Inline Instructions with Power Apps Portals – Part 1

I’ve worked on Power Apps Portals over the last few years and a common requirement involves adding inline instructions within Entity or Web Forms. Fortunately, Power Apps Portals offers some out of the box for tools for managing labels and extended content: Attribute label: The CDS Entity Attribute label is the default used by the Portal when rendering forms. We can update the Attribute… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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Tool Update – Power Apps Portal Dependencies!

About a month ago, I released the first version of the Power Apps Portal Dependencies Checker XrmToolBox Tool. The initial release allows you to search for CDS component references in your Portal Configuration. This actually helped me out a bit shortly after releasing the tool. I needed to check for references to a CDS Entity Form before I renamed it, so this saved me some time in debugging…. Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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XrmToolBox – WorkAsync and the Message Panel

My initial plan was a quick post with snippet on how to manually display the Message Panel in your XrmToolBox tool. As I started writing, I thought it would help to provide some background on why we might break from the standard methods offered by the XrmToolBox. When creating XrmToolBox Tools, it’s important to ensure tools are responsive, meaning our user interface should not lock up or… Continue Reading Jim...

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Liquid Templates in Power Apps Portals – Part 4

Name change! I started this series of posts quite a few months ago and realized that I really should be calling things Power Apps Portals. So… welcome to Liquid Templates in Power Apps Portals! In the last post, Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals – Part 3, we covered working with lists of data in Liquid Templates such as Arrays and Dictionaries. Now let’s take at code reuse in Liquid… Continue Reading Jim...

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New XrmToolBox Tool – Power Apps Portal Dependencies!

If you’ve worked with Power Apps Portals, you may have changed up a Common Data Service (CDS) object and broke your Portal. For example, you change the display name of the CDS Form to which an Portals Entity Form is bound and the Entity Form will no longer load on the Portal. That can be a bit frustrating, especially since you have no warning on the dependencies for that object. For many… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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365 Power Up Event Series

Over the last few years, I have had the good fortune to attend and present at several community events: online webinars, community driven learning events, and even a global hackathon. I’ve been part of the organizing team for several of these events. These are amazing experiences and I’ve benefited both personally and professionally by meeting new people, sharing ideas and experiences, and… Continue Reading Jim...

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Trial Environments for Power Apps Training

Want to get hands on with the Power Platform but don’t have access to an environment? Well, you can sign up for a free trial instance that provides 30 days access to various Power Platform platform components. Once set up, you can build Canvas or Model Driven Power Apps, Power Automate Flows, or a Power Apps Portal. If you want guided training, Microsoft offers a series of events called

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Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals – Part 3

It’s been a while since the last post in this series Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals – Part 2. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to deliver a presentation on Liquid Templates a few times and receive some great feedback. You can check out a recording of my Power Platform 24 virtual session titled Working with Liquid Templates in Power Portals hosted by xrmVirtual. This was an… Continue Reading Jim...

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Power Platform 24 Live!

We recently completed the first ever 24 hour event exclusively focused on the Power Platform – Power Platform 24. The Dynamics and Power Platform community has fantastic events literally across the globe. As amazing as these in person events are, not everyone can attend as either a speaker or attendee. We wanted to remove geography as an obstacle! Moving to a virtual format allows the… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals – Part 2

Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals – Part 1 is a high level overview and a bit of history of Liquid Templates. Now we can take a closer look at Liquid Templates support in Dynamics Portals. While this capability offers flexibility to Portal developers, it can be overwhelming when getting started. The Microsoft Documentation on Liquid is fairly solid but I think it skips many Liquid… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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New XrmToolBox Tool – Portal Site Settings Manager

I’ve been working on Dynamics Portals consistently over the past few years and one frustrating bit is the implementation of Website Site Settings. Each Website that you configure within Portals has a series of Site Setting records that are essentially string key/value pairs, each record having a Name and Value, and an additional description.  For example, a simple true/false flag… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article...

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PowerApp Admin Tools

I’ve been working on XrmToolBox Tools for a bit now, both speaking and posting on the huge number of cool tools and how we can build our own. I’m still working on a few XrmToolBox related projects, but when I started diving into Power Apps, I immediately wondered if I could replicate some Tools in Canvas or Model Driven Apps. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could build out a suite of some… Continue Reading Jim...

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Liquid Templates in Dynamics Portals – Part 1

I’ve been working on Dynamics Portals projects over the last few years.  My first project involved heavy use of Web Forms and Web Form Steps and customizing forms using JavaScript. On my current project, I’ve had the opportunity to dive into Liquid Templates. In this series of posts, I hope shed some light on one question that I had when first diving into Portals: What the heck are Liquid… Continue Reading Jim...

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Hello world!

Welcome to Webify Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing! Continue Reading user’s Article on their blog https://www.futurezconsulting.com/2019/05/31/hello-world-2/ Blog Syndicated with user’s Permission

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Flow, HTTP Actions, and Files

I am working on a new presentation sample project and I wanted to test invoking an HTTP request from a Flow. Specifically, I want to invoke a Function App from a Flow using an HTTP Flow Action. In my sample, I will kick this off when a new Note is created with an Attachment. To quickly test calling the HTTP Action, I uses an existing Function App sample that I had worked on a few… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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Solution Layering | FutureZ Consulting

I’ve recently noticed the Solution Layers button but knew next to nothing about its functionality.  It was added to my ever growing list of, “Ok, I need to check that out when I have some time!”  While on a call this past week, the Solution Layers feature came up. After a brief overview on the call and some poking around afterwards, it looks to be a useful feature for… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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Solution Layering

I’ve recently noticed the Solution Layers button but knew next to nothing about its functionality.  It was added to my ever growing list of, “Ok, I need to check that out when I have some time!”  While on a call this past week, the Solution Layers feature came up. After a brief overview on the call and some poking around afterwards, it looks to be a useful feature for developers, business… Continue Reading Jim...

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Documenting TypeScript | FutureZ Consulting

I recently posted Dynamics Portals Script Libraries that outlines a new GitHub repository for Portals TypeScript libraries. I’ve added a few pages to the repository Wiki with instructions on how to setup, but I wanted to include information on the modules and methods themselves as well. Luckily, we have TypeDoc! TypeDoc “A documentation generator for TypeScript projects”… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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Documenting TypeScript

I recently posted Dynamics Portals Script Libraries that outlines a new GitHub repository for Portals TypeScript libraries. I’ve added a few pages to the repository Wiki with instructions on how to setup, but I wanted to include information on the modules and methods themselves as well. Luckily, we have TypeDoc! TypeDoc “A documentation generator for TypeScript projects” For… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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Dynamics Portals Script Libraries | FutureZ Consulting

Last year, I built out a simple approach for script management in Dynamics Portals, including a model for managing shared script modules and building common reusable validators across Portal components. I posted about some of this work in prior posts: Dynamics Portals Field Validation and Dynamics Portals Script Management. That project began as an Adxstudio v7 project that we later… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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Dynamics Portals Script Libraries

Last year, I built out a simple approach for script management in Dynamics Portals, including a model for managing shared script modules and building common reusable validators across Portal components. I posted about some of this work in prior posts: Dynamics Portals Field Validation and Dynamics Portals Script Management. That project began as an Adxstudio v7 project that we later… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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New XmlViewer Shared Controls

Jonas Rapp has a fantastic XrmToolBox Tool called the FetchXml Builder. I think I might have mentioned it once, or maybe twice, in past discussions. (If you have not used it, you should!) One cool component of the FetchXml Builder is the color coded XML viewer. This component would be great for a lot of other Tools, but if you check out the code, it’s a bit tough to implement. Luckily,… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s...

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Referenced Assemblies and XrmToolBox Tools

In my recent post Major update to XrmToolBox Shared Controls, I mentioned an outstanding issue with ILMerge with the shared controls library. I use a sample Tool creatively named Control Tester Tool, for testing that references the Shared Controls. This allows me to test each user control user interface, including public interfaces, properties, methods, and events. I had hoped that… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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Major update to XrmToolBox Shared Controls

I’ve published several posts about shared XrmToolBox controls, starting with this post several months ago: Shared XrmToolbox Controls: Entities List View. Since then, I’ve made updates and added new controls to the repository, such as updates to the EntitiesListView and an additional EntitiesDropdown control. So far, I’ve received some great feedback. Michael Ochs released his own… Continue Reading Jim...

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Building XrmToolBox Tools, Part 2

Finally getting a chance to finish up my Part 2 post! This post is a bit long as we discuss tools and templates used to build XrmToolBox Tools, how to get started with debugging, a review of the sample code, and step through constructing our own Tool. Note that for this post, I am assuming that you have some development background and are familiar with Visual Studio and C#. In our… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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My first XrmToolBox Portal contribution!

Tanguy Touzard and the esteemed XrmToolBox Team maintain an excellent portal for both developer and end user documentation and have recently asked for some help in updating the documentation. So I answered the recruiting call and I have posted my first contribution to the developer documentation section of the XrmToolBox Portal!  As anyone who reads my posts from the last year or… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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Building XrmToolBox Tools

I have some catching up to do!  I am finally posting about my recent presentation at the DC CRMUG Chapter Meeting.  In this post, I provide a quick overview of the presentation and cover some of the base concepts in building an XrmToolBox tool. You can download a copy of my slides from the presentation here: Building XrmToolBox Tools But first, some cool stuff has been happening in the… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article...

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Alternate Key Manager XrmToolBox Tool posted and some lessons learned…

Just a quick update to note that the Alternate Key Manager XrmToolBox tool is published and available for download! Why a full post?  Well, I just wanted to post a few notes about deploying XrmToolBox plugins because I had a few issues with this plugin… all issues attributed to user error. Publishing a plugin The XrmToolBox Plugin Store is pretty cool as it leverages 

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New XrmToolbox Tool – Alternate Key Manager

I am publishing a new XrmToolBox plugin in a few days called the Alternate Key Manager. This plugin is pretty self explanatory: administrators can manage their Alternate Keys across Entities in one place. I pulled this plugin together over a few days for a deployment but I took this as an opportunity to test my approach to reusable toolbox components and refine my overall XrmToolBox… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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New XrmToolbox Plugin – Alternate Key Manager

I am publishing a new XrmToolbox plugin in a few days called the Alternate Key Manager. This plugin is pretty self explanatory: administrators can manage their Alternate Keys across Entities in one place. I pulled this plugin together over a few days for a deployment but I took this as an opportunity to test my approach to reusable toolbox components and refine my overall XrmToolbox… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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Shared XrmToolbox Controls NuGet Package

Just a quick update… Thanks to Jonas Rapp‘s excellent suggestion, I’ve deployed the controls Futurez.XrmToolbox.Controls as a NuGet package. I feel silly that I had not considered this before, but hey, that’s a great example why we post this kind of thing as open source! Why NuGet? The benefit of a NuGet package is that I can package up the controls and you don’t need to… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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New and Updated Shared XrmToolbox Controls

A few months ago, I posted Code posted! Entities List View Control for XrmToolbox, the first iteration of some shared components for building XrmToolbox plugins. Since then, I’ve been working on a new plugin or two that provided some incentive to clean up some minor issues and add a few features to the Entities List View control.  While I was at it, I took a bit of time and created… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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365 Saturday Thanks! | Futurez Consulting

I wanted to post some notes and thank yous to everyone that made our first 365 Saturday DC a fun and memorable event! We kicked off the Hackathon on Friday with a group of excited and incredibly smart attendees throwing around a variety of interesting ideas. We rolled into Saturday with a group of insanely talented speakers. Starting with Julie Strauss’ keynote, we had one excellent… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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365 Saturday Thanks!

I wanted to post some notes and thank yous to everyone that made our first 365 Saturday DC a fun and memorable event! We kicked off the Hackathon on Friday with a group of excited and incredibly smart attendees throwing around a variety of interesting ideas. We rolled into Saturday with a group of insanely talented speakers. Starting with Julie Strauss’ keynote, we had one excellent session… Continue Reading Jim...

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Document Template Manager Console Application

In my last post, XrmToolbox plugin update – Document Template Manager, I provided some updates to my plugin to allow moving documents into downstream environments. This was a missing feature that I was happy to finally add to the plugin. I’m sure it’s clear from my posts that I see the XrmToolbox as a powerful tool for managing your Dynamics CRM environments and… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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XrmToolbox plugin update – Document Template Manager

My first XrmToolbox plugin is the Document Template Manager, a plugin that allows users to create and update Microsoft Word and Excel templates. It has has come in handy over the last year since I first published. Just this past week, I was able to share the plugin with a new customer. This is a new contract and the solution includes over 60 Word Templates! Finally adding this… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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Introduction to Fake Xrm Easy

At the Dallas 365 Saturday event this past March, I attended the Unit Testing for Dynamics 365 Workshop by Jordi Montaña Vázquez.  His Fake Xrm Easy unit testing framework provides a collection of pre-built mock objects for Dynamics CRM SDK objects that greatly simplifies Dynamics CRM unit tests. Jordi’s framework had been on my radar for some time but this was a perfect… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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Flow Examples: Note attachment to SharePoint

In a recent post, we looked at leveraging Dynamics 365 to build Line of Business (LOB) applications: Dynamics 365 Line of Business Applications, specifically focused on what we previously called Dynamics CRM and XRM development. The post highlights Dynamics 365 platform capabilities for building customized applications to suit specific business needs. With each major release, Microsoft… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article...

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Dynamics 365 Line of Business Applications

A few years ago while working at Celedon Partners, I wrote a blog post titled Dynamics CRM as an xRM Development Platform.  In the post, we discussed the leveraging the Dynamics CRM platform to build Line of Business (LOB) applications. At the time, this was broadly called XRM development and essentially meant building relational systems that meet a particular business need. These… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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And even MORE Useful XrmToolbox plugins!

So, this is my third post on the topic and I guess it’s now officially a series. In recent posts, Some Useful XrmToolbox Plugins and More Useful XrmToolbox Plugins, we discussed XrmToolbox plugins that help Dynamics 365 developers, administrators, and business analysts handle their daily workload. So here are a few more plugins to add to our list! Ribbon Workbench by Scott Durow (

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Code posted! Entities List View Control for XrmToolbox

In my previous post Shared XrmToolbox Controls: Entities List View, I discussed building reusable User Controls intended to help myself and other developers build XrmToolbox plugins.  Basically, with all the time I saved by using Tanguy Touzard’s XrmToolbox, I hope to save myself and other developers time, allowing them develop new cool tools that help the community! My first… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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Shared XrmToolbox Controls: Entities List View

I’ve had an active interest in XrmToolbox plugins for a while now, as evidenced by my recent posts. It’s a powerful toolkit for developers and admins and a great way for those unfamiliar to learn a bit about the platform. I use the XrmToolbox regularly on multiple projects, I’ve dug into the code for several plugins, and I’ve built a few of my own plugins. As a developer, I can… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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XrmToolbox Portal Records Mover as a Console Application

The Portal Records Mover is an excellent XrmToolbox plugin by Tanguy Touzard for anyone working on a Dynamics 365 Portals project.  If have not used this tool as part of your Portals deployment process, I suggest checking it out here: MscrmTools.PortalRecordsMover Deploying Portals Configuration With a Portals project comes the need to migrate your portal specific records to… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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There’s a mini web server in CRM!

Back in December, I attended a seminar at Microsoft titled Building Government Business Applications with Dynamics 365 and presented by Prosoft Systems Intl.  Frank Grimberg was speaking on Actions in Dynamics 365 CE.  I worked with Actions on a few projects, though not extensively, and I found them to be very useful. They were pretty handy for work that is a bit annoying in… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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More Useful XrmToolbox Plugins

In my recent post Some Useful XrmToolbox Plugins, we discussed a few plugins for XrmToolbox that might be helpful for Dynamics 365 developers, administrators, or business analysts.  The toolbox includes over a hundred plugins to date, so I wanted to highlight even more plugins that I find helpful during build and management of a Dynamics 365 solution. User Roles Manager by MscrmTools (

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More Useful XrmToolbox Plugins | Futurez Consulting

In my recent post Some Useful XrmToolbox Plugins, we discussed a few plugins for XrmToolbox that might be helpful for Dynamics 365 developers, administrators, or business analysts.  The toolbox includes over a hundred plugins to date, so I wanted to highlight even more plugins that I find helpful during build and management of a Dynamics 365 solution. User Roles Manager by MscrmTools… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article...

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Dynamics Portals Script Management

In my previous post, Dynamics Portals Field Validation, we discussed adding custom validation to your Portal solution using JavaScript.  We took the snippet right from Microsoft documentation, wrapped things up in some nice helper functions, and then applied the new validation methods to Web Form Steps form fields. In the script example from the post, our… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their blog...

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Dynamics Portals Script Management | Futurez Consulting

In my previous post, Dynamics Portals Field Validation, we discussed adding custom validation to your Portal solution using JavaScript.  We took the snippet right from Microsoft documentation, wrapped things up in some nice helper functions, and then applied the new validation methods to Web Form Steps form fields. In the script example from the post, our… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on their...

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Dynamics Portals Field Validation | Futurez Consulting

I’ve been working on a project for the last year or so using Adxstudio Portals which is being upgraded to Dynamics Portals. The Portal definition includes some fairly complex Web Forms and Web Form Steps to capture data for a customized Case Entity. The data being collected ranges includes simple text values, dates, Option Sets, and related child records. The result is a multi step… Continue Reading Jim Novak’s Article on...

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