Launch (Self) – Check App permissions in Power Apps
On the Twitterverse yesterday, it was announced that you now have the ability to Launch an application to replace itself. Formulas: Launch to self and Self operator Some long awaited features for Power Apps canvas formulas! When run in a web browser, a canvas app can now replace itself with another canvas app or a web page. This has been a long running community ask and also came up when we were created the COVID-19 Hospital Emergency...
Mockaroo and Flow: Perfect Demo data
As a consultant, architect or just a blogger, you have to do a lot of demos. Recently, with my look at Sales Insights, the amount of data I needed was increasing. I had used Flow in the past to automate data entry, and it worked well, so I thought I would create some data for my environment using Flow, but first sourcing the data in Mockaroo. Mockaroo Mockaroo is a free data generator… Continue Reading ‘s Article on their...
Sales Insights: Connection Insights
This is the fourth in a series walking through the Sales Insights add-on application. The series list is below for your reference. Basic (Free) Setup – The “free” AI capabilities that can be added to any Sales Instance Assistant Studio – Full capabilities – The full suite of options for Insight Cards Productivity Intelligence – Activity and Contact suggestions as well as Notes… Continue...
Sales Insights: Productivity Intelligence
This is the third instalment of my review/walkthrough of the Dynamics 365 Sales Insights application. Part 1 detailed the free features, with Part 2 detail the first of the premium features, Assistant Studio, including custom Insight cards and how to prioritise them. This time, the blog is about Productivity Intelligence. This encompasses Auto capture (automatically bringing in content… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Sales Insights: Assistant (full capabilities)
In my previous post, I walked through the configuration of the standard, “free” features of the Sales Insights offering for D365 Sales. This time, I am going to start on the premium features covered by the £37.70 per month license fee. If you look at the Sales Insights administration screen, the list of the capabilities is quite hefty. For this post, I will concentrate on the Assistant,… Continue Reading...
Sales Insights: Basic set up
I have been working for quite a while on Customer Insights, running workshops and generally getting to know it, but I realised that there is a multitude of products in the Insights suite, Customer Insights, Customer Service Insights, Product Insights, Marketing Insights and Sales Insights. These tools each have their own niche, and I don’t know them at all well. So I thought I would educate… Continue Reading...
MB-400: Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Developer Associate Exam
This week, I am on holiday, meant to be in Egypt watching the kids swim in the Red Sea, drinking as much beer as I can & getting pink. As this didn’t happen, I decided to fit in an exam instead. Why not get another qualification instead? MB-400, the new developer exam, was the one I was dreading, more so than MB-600 I did a couple of weeks back, as my hands-on development has really ground… Continue Reading...
Changing working habits – WFH isn’t easy
As a departure from my usual posts, I wanted to share my thoughts on coping during the biggest change to our professional life: COVID-19. Social distancing rules have meant that a lot more of us are having less social contact with our colleagues, family and friends. This leads to stress and anxiety, exhibited in numerous ways, and if not tackled, depression. Further, our professional… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
3 Minute Features: Episode 10: Keys
When I started this series, my intention was to create a series of videos to guide a user in the fundamentals of the Power Platform, starting with Entities and working my way through each of the parts. The trouble with video is that it takes a long while to edit and prepare. Each video was taking 4-6 hours to produce. This, I am well aware, is most likely down to my lack of skill, but it… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
MB-600 : Microsoft Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Solution Architect (beta)
Last week I sat the MB-600 exam, which for any aspiring Solution Architect in our world is the pinnacle qualification. Still in beta, so not sure how I got on, but thought I would share my thoughts while I still remember. As part of my learning, I create mindmaps, it helps me focus my understanding and is quicker for me to review later for last-minute cramming sessions. With the rest of… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Quick Approvals – Send with Options
As I digitally transform the club I am involved with, stardiving.org I come across ways in Power Automate that are pretty useful. I have previously talked about Adaptive Cards for approvals and this works great, but only for internal use. Same with Approvals, they are perfect for what I wanted to achieve, but limited to internal users. Send Email with options is a great way of getting… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s Article...
Incident App (Part 2)
In the first part of this series, here I established an application I wrote to improve incident management at the club I am proud to chair. Requirements Centralised, secure list of incidents – (Part 1)Ability to add divers to list for trials or competitions (Part 1)Data entry must be easy and not time-consuming (Part 1)Weekly notification of all incidents to the welfare officerEmail to… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 5) – Using Azure Service Bus
In my previous post I walked through swapping out Power Automate with Azure Functions for responding to Alexa in our Field Service scenario. This post is about finalising the code by using Service Bus function to create the Work Order. In the Power Automate version I used a child flow call to allow the response to happen quickly, without waiting for the numerous calls to establish data… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 4) – Using Azure Funtions
I was lucky enough to be given a speaking slot at Summit Europe in Barcelona on this Alex subject. Unfortunately this event is now postponed until June, but I set myself the challenge to replace the Flow in this solution with a more capable (quicker) response time. Power Automate is great, don’t get me wrong. I love that a low code alternative to connecting applications is available. I… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 4) – Using Azure Functions
I was lucky enough to be given a speaking slot at Summit Europe in Barcelona on this Alex subject. Unfortunately this event is now postponed until June, but I set myself the challenge to replace the Flow in this solution with a more capable (quicker) response time. Power Automate is great, don’t get me wrong. I love that a low code alternative to connecting applications is available. I… Continue Reading LinkeD365’s...
Scottish Summit – A Review
The extra day a year only comes around every 4 years and it seemed appropriate that a lot of the Power Platform community came together to celebrate in Glasgow. Scottish Summit 2020 was sponsored by Avanade and myself and several colleagues went along to enjoy the event, cement Avanade in the community, share our knowledge and learn from others. With over 1000 people descending on the… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
3 Minute Feature : Episode 9 : Dashboards
A common staple of the Model driven app experience, my 9th video runs you through creating single and multi stream dashboards Episode 9 : Dashboards Transcript Dashboards have 2 variants, those that are connected to an entity and those that are not. An entity dashboard, called Single Stream previouly, are designed for support desk users or similarly focused indviduals. The… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
3 Minute Feature : Episode 8 : Charts
Charts in a model app are a great tool for customisers to visualise data Episode 8 : Charts Transcript Charts in D365 allow a visualisation of the data from a view. We discussed views earlier in the series so won’t go into that. Starting at the Entity in your solution, you navigate to charts, select Add Chart The new chart display comes up We will begin with a simple… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog 3...
Incident App (Part 1)
Most of you won’t know this, but to keep me busy (as if work, blogging, presenting & community isn’t enough) I am the chair of my local platform diving club, Star Diving. Give them a look at http://stardiving.org/ if you or your son or daughter want to learn a great sport that pushes you to control your body & keep fit. My youngest son is part of the Skills squad (very proud parent) and he… Continue Reading...
3 Minute Features : Episode 7 : Forms Pt2
This is the second part of the Forms feature, highlighting some useful tips & where to start when Business rules is not enough. Episode 7: Forms Pt2 Transcript With forms, if business rules don’t meet your requirements, you may have to resort to Javascript. These little code snippets allow you to do pretty much anything on a form that is not possible in business rules, but be… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
2020 Release Wave 1: Improved Email
Part of the 2020 Wave 1 were some changes to the Email functionality, namely contextual email communication & Easier selection of email templates. I have already been through enabling the Wave 1 release here, so won’t do that again. Easier selection of Email templates Previously, in an email, you can select the Template box, and it just gives you a selection of the templates. < div...
2020 Release Wave 1 : Kanban board
On 3rd February, early access to the Kanban board for Opportunities was made available, and as an avid user of Kanban like boards, I thought I would give it a spin. Kanban is a method of visualising and planning activities by their status. In the standard model app you can apply a process to any record, having a step by step guide to your business process. < h2>Enabling the Wave 1 Early… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article...
3 Minute Features : Episode 6 : Forms Pt1
There is a lot you can do with forms in the Modal driven app, so this topic is split into two Episode 6: Forms Pt 1 Transcript In the solution, select our entity, then forms Select the main form. Once the form opens, you can see the fields I have already added. I am going to a new tab, then add sections. Sections allow you to add controls linked to the primary record. Each… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog 3...
3 Minute Features : Episode 5 : Views
In the fifth installment of this series, I look at views. How to design them and where they are used. Episode 5: Views Transcript Starting on the entity, go to Views This lists all the system views that are associated with our entity. These are generated when you create an entity. Some of them are normal, views that represent data to the user when they view lists. Some have… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog...
3 Minute Features : Episode 4 : Business Rules
Wearing ties is a rule that is just bonkers, and not allowing working from home. Thankfully those in CDS are a little more understandable. Welcome to the 4th video in the 3 minute feature series, on Business Rules Episode 3 : Business Rules Transcript Starting from the Entity, select Business Rules, Add Business Rule At the top is some tools which we will use later The… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog 3...
3 Minute Features : Episode 3: Relationships
Relationships are difficult, will she go out with you? Are you good enough? Does he want to propose? Those in CDS are a little less complicated, but only just. My next 3 minute feature tries to give you an understanding of relationships Episode 3: Relationships Transcript First, lets explain a relationship The simpliest relationship there is in the Common data service… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog 3...
3 Minute Features : Episode 2 : Fields
This is the 2nd installment of my 3 minute feature videos, going into detail about the different field types, how they appear on the interface and some other useful stuff. Episode 2: Fields Transcript Starting with the new entity I created last time, select new then field. This pops up a form to the right, which has a display name and field name for you to enter the detail…. Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their blog 3...
3 Minute Features : Episode 1 : Entities
My hiatus from blogging is due to my lack of creativity around thinking about problems and how to solve them and this got me thinking about a ready source of material that which would give me a infinite number of things to write about. As I always want to learn, and envy those that do these things, rather than a blog, I have started a video series which does a show and tell on a subject, in… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
D365 Org DB Settings – Other
This is the second of a series where I try to document all the rarely used settings available to your Dynamics organisation to tweak the standard behaviour. If you want to tweak your settings, see my previous post, or if you want to use a canvas app, see this post. ActivityConvertDlgCampaignUnchecked Default ValueTrueTypeBooleanDescription Controls the default value of the Record… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
D365 Org DB Settings – Canvas App
On the back of one of my other posts on the D365 Org DB Settings I thought it would be good to re-imagine the method to update these settings in a Canvas app. The solution from Sean McNellis is great and has been a big influence on my design, including the settings xml is pretty much a copy. I am hoping that I give users a more visual experience and this is a starter for a bunch of D365 CE… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article...
IFTTT – Stopping Freezer melt
I have a problem, well my family has a problem. We can’t shut the freezer door. Regularly (once a month) our freezer would be left open just enough to defrost but not enough to sound the audible alarm, resulting in squishy food. Annoying. To combat this, I bought myself a Sonoff TH10 temperature sensor and configured this to send me an alert when it reached a certain temperature. The… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article...
D365 Org DB Settings – Email
On a client recently I helped deploy Microsoft D365 App for Outlook. Unfortunately, the behaviour requested by the client and the default behaviour of the Server Side synchronisation was not aligned. This led to long discussions with Microsoft about some of the DB Org Settings we could utilise to tweak the way SSS works. As I researched these settings and discussed with my colleagues and… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article...
MS Certifications – Sharing my Mind Maps
Over the last 15 months, I have completed 5 Microsoft certifications and have used various sources on the internet to get me through. My method of remembering facts relies on completing a mind map. This way, I note down the key points (key to me anyway) for a subject and link them together, serving as a quick refresher on the day but forces me to fill out my knowledge as I research the… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
Cloning Flows: Location triggers for everyone
Sometimes ideas don’t work out. This is one of these times. But the reason I blog is to learn, expand my knowledge of the PowerPlatform, expand my knowledge of components outside of it. So, I figured I would blog about my failure, learning is learning. As I started testing the flow again, moving environments etc, it started working. I guess this is down to the location trigger being a work… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
AI Builder – Text AI
My blogging journey started with using LUIS, one of Microsoft’s Cognitive Services to automate case assignment. This blog goes into detail about how this all hung together, using a model defined in LUIS, calling the LUIS endpoint when a new cases are created and classifying the case, by the subject, with the result from the call. After my summer break (sorry, but family etc comes first) I… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
User Admin – Published App
After being asked on LinkedIn to publish both the apps that I built for the User Security Admin walk-through I have done so on Dynamics Communities Power Platform Bank Stand-Alone Security / User App The first one, which if you remember is a stand-alone application detailed here can be downloaded here
User Admin PowerApp (Part 4)
As putting a canvas app on a model driven form is now out of preview I thought that my PowerApp to add security roles and teams might be a suitable candidate to be migrated to an embedded canvas app. Not going to repeat There are lots of videos and blog posts out there which detail how to embed a canvas app into model, so there is no point repeating that, just stand on their shoulders…. Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
Adaptive Cards – Improved Approvals (Part 2)
Continuing on a walkthrough of creating a more effective adaptive card for approvals, this part will describe the flow I created to generate the card as well as complete the action in D365 depending on the response Objectives The Scenario (Part 1)Preventing progress of an Opportunity ( Part 1 ) Using Flow to create a basic Approval ( Part 1 )Creating an Adaptive Card ( Part 1 )Using Flow… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article...
Adaptive Cards – Improved Approvals (Part 1)
Adaptive cards are relatively new to the stack of tools available to PowerPlatform users, emerging from Message Cards. They are a great way of interacting with users who are not a typical D365 user, those on the periphery who are interested in the data but not the detail. Objectives The Scenario (This Part)Preventing progress of an Opportunity (This Part)Using Flow to create a basic… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
User Admin PowerApp (Part 3)
The user has been notified that they have a new report, the manager has updated some fields on their user record, they now want to add some roles and teams to allow them to start work. Objectives The Scenario (Part 1)Notifying the manager of a new Employee (Part 1) PowerApp to display and update User Data (Part 2)Update Roles and Teams (This Part) Listing Roles that user hasn’t… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
User Admin PowerApp (Part 2)
So, after notifying the user that there is a new employee in their team, the manager needs to be able to update the data. Objectives The Scenario (Part 1)Notifying the manager of a new Employee (Part 1) PowerApp to display and update User Data (This Part)Update Roles and Teams My Reports I am not going to go through how to create a PowerApp, there are numerous blogs and pages that… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
User Admin PowerApp (Part 1)
Sorry it has been a while since my last blog post, this scenario has taken a while to get it to the state where I was happy to show it off. Mainly due to my own lack of understanding of the intricacies of the D365 API, but also been busy external to the blog, you know real life. Objectives The Scenario (This part)Notifying the manager of a new EmployeePowerApp to display and update User… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
Creating Attachments in D365
This isn’t one of my usual posts as I always like to start with a business case. I intend to create a blog about the business case / solution that created this issue once all the other pieces fall into place, so watch out for that (keep them keen by teasing they say) The Problem You might not know there is a problem, but there is. Squirrels are a problem, but not my field of expertise,
IFTTT / Flow / D365
This will be a quick post, as the connector doesn’t take a lot of configuration. The Business Scenario Big Energy has a lot of sales people, all over the country, which make a lot of calls, usually on their mobiles, to potential or current customers, arranging opportunities and resolving any issues. The Sales Director at Big Energy is concerned about the number of calls that the sales… Continue Reading Cooky’s...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 3) – Creating Work Orders
This is a continuation of my series on a proof of concept to allow Alexa to interact with D365 Field Service Objectives The Business scenario (Part 1)Create an Alexa Skill (Part 1) Connect the Skill to D365 (Part 2)Use Field Service to book an appointment (This Part)Return the information to Alexa (Part 2) In this final (unless I need to expand on the scenarios) part of the story,… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 2) – Linking to Flow
This is a continuation of my series on a proof of concept to allow Alexa to interact with D365 Field Service Objectives The Business scenario (Part 1)Create an Alexa Skill (Part 1) Connect the Skill to D365 (This part)Use Field Service to book an appointment (Part 3)Return the information to Alexa (This part) In this post I will be linking Alexa to D365 and returning some… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
Alexa, Field Service and Me (Part 1)
As we all now have smart devices in our home, linking them to business applications could be a key differentiator between winners and the also rans. This series of posts will demonstrate how I connected Alexa to D365 Field service. Objectives The Business scenario (this part)Create an Alexa Skill (this part)Connect the Skill to D365 (Part 2)Use Field Service to book an… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on their...
Connecting LUIS & D365 (part 4) – Custom Connector
In my previous post, the fact that I had to “fudge” the routing and closure of the case irked me. Whilst at D365 EU Summit in Amsterdam, I spent an hour listening to Serge Luca (his excellent blog is here). He inspired me to think that we could close this loop using a Custom Connector in Flow connected to our D365 instance, allowing an API call directly to the closure action. Back in the… Continue Reading...
Connecting LUIS to D365 (part 3)
In this 3rd installment of the series devoted to using Language Understanding (LUIS) to categorise emails via Flow, I will describe some of the parts of the D365 solution and walk through a final version of the Flow to extend its capabilities. This blog has at least 3 parts, but overall the posts objectives are Give you an understanding of a real-life scenario where we could implement… Continue Reading Cooky’s Article on...
Connecting LUIS to D365 (Part 2)
In the first part of this blog post I explained our scenario for Big Energy Co and it’s desire to improve efficiency in the support desk, introduced LUIS and the core concepts around utterances and intents, configured LUIS to allow it to understand the intents we need and published the application. Now I need to connect LUIS and D365 to allow automatic classification and routing of cases… Continue Reading Cooky’s...