Power Automate: watch your (white)space!
Well, as per the title. Watch your whitespace. For example, I was getting this error on the checker and tried to figure out what is wrong with the reference name. Flow Checker error When you use expressions you have to type things in. This is where you have to extra careful. Typing in expressions may cause errors It seams to look OK but in reality it’s a bit not OK, we just… Continue Reading Olena Grischenko’s...
Monitoring Model Driven App
Until now , there is no easy way to monitor model driven app flow,network events and performance other than using fiddler or browser developer tools. For Canvas Apps , we have Monitor tool to debug or identify performance issues. Fortunately, Microsoft has recently announced that Monitor now supports model-driven apps. It provides a way to … Continue reading “Monitoring Model Driven App” The… Continue Reading...
Power Apps Portals: where do I find my portal current version?!
It’s a very simple question indeed. If you think you can just go to the Admin portal and check… If you think you can find it in the portal Overview or settings … It’s a very simple thing, indeed. So why it’s so not easy to find this information?! As you probably know we are getting Web API available for the portals which enables lots of new possibilities and options for developers and… Continue...
What is Delegation in Canvas Apps?
In order to minimize the data movement over the network, Power Apps uses the concept of delegation in canvas apps to delegate the job of data processing to data source rather than bringing the data to the app and processing locally. If your data source has less than 500 records, you can use any data … Continue reading “What is Delegation in Canvas Apps?” The post What is Delegation in Canvas… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 CE/model-driven app: the form script unexpected discovery
Something I won’t expect to discover. Yet, here I am! It’s all started with a very “simple” requirement to populate a read-only form field on change of another form field, Method. The fancy way it set up is when you select the field to change it pops up the window asking you if it was a client decision or not to change the field. If you answer Yes it sets the MethodSetBy field to a “Client”…...
Column comparison using FetchXml/Web API is now possible in Common Data Service
Recently , Microsoft added column comparison feature to common data service. It allows us to compare two different columns from the same entity using FetchXml , Web API and SDK API in . Using FetchXml: At the time of writing this blog, this feature is not available yet in advanced find. So tried using “FetchXml … Continue reading “Column comparison using FetchXml/Web API is now possible in… Continue Reading...
SharePoint Online & MS Graph API Metadata service document
I have recently received a request from a customer to break the inherited permissions of a SharePoint document library folder, as of now there is no Power Automate action to break the permission of a folder but with the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint you can call any SP REST API endpoint. Then I started exploring the Rest API endpoint to break the permission, have found the API… Continue Reading Mohamed Ashiq...
Control who can create environments in the Power Platform admin center
Before going to who can create environment part , let’s understand what is an environment ? An environment is a space to store, manage, and share your organization’s business data, apps, and flows. It also serves as a container to separate apps that may have different roles, security requirements, or target audiences. Power Apps automatically … Continue reading “Control who can create… Continue Reading...
2020 release wave 2 timeline and release notes for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
Recently , Microsoft announced the key dates for the second release wave of updates planned for 2020 Starting October 2020. Customers and partners can reference these dates to plan and prepare for the upcoming release wave with confidence. Key Dates : July 8, 2020: Release plans available https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2020wave2/… Continue Reading Nagaraja Emmadisetty’s Article on their blog 2020...
Create Tile view card for custom List item image attachments using PowerAutomate & JSON row view formatting
In Modern SharePoint lists you can display list item content in a more modern way using the Tiles view layout. If you have very big list with multiple columns along with picture columns you get a horizontal scroll bar on the list view, the Tiles view can solve this issue since the content will be displayed on the tile card where you can design the layout of the tile card to display the… Continue Reading Mohamed Ashiq...
Power Automate: PARSE JSON action with value or null
Power automate is endless fun! Today we are going to explore a very “simple” issue which are 2 issues actually: how to define “allow null” in a schema to avoid annoying errorshow to get away with the 1. without the painful consequences Let’s start from the beginning! PARSE JSON is a very useful action and we use it a lot in Power Automate.In my case I parse the response from a… Continue Reading...
Power Apps Portal Maintenance: The curious incident of the naughty user.
In the last article here I proposed the design for the custom Maintenance functionality: Power Apps Portal: Summon the Custom Error Page to test a custom layout There is an article in Microsoft docs on how to set up the Custom Error page for the Power Apps portal. You can read about enabling here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/admin/view-portal-error-log#enable-custom-error And about setting up your custom...
Power Apps Portal: Summon the Custom Error Page to test a custom layout
There is an article in Microsoft docs on how to set up the Custom Error page for the Power Apps portal. You can read about enabling here: Viewing portal error logs and storing them in Azure Blob storage – Power Apps As a portal administrator or developer, you can use Power Apps portals to create a website for your customers. One common task for a developer is to debug issues while developing the portal. To help debug, you can...
Convert Outlook Email with embedded images to PDF using PowerAutomate
Recently I’ve came across a business case with need to automate the conversion of Outlook email messages with embedded images to PDF document. This could be done manually on Outlook client using Microsoft Print to PDF or browser Print if opened using Outlook on the Web. This process can be automated with the help of PowerAutomate trigger When a new email arrives and actions Export Email,… Continue Reading ashiqf’s Article...
Power Automate for CDS: “what was it before we run the update?” or “bye,bye, no-code!”
The requirement: for Account(Property in our case) if related Contact(Tenant) is “un-linked”, create a Note. No-code solution: none. Why? These are triggers available for CDS(current environment): CDS current environment triggers We choose Update trigger for Contact filtering by parentcustomerid … and this is it. This is where our no-code journey ends. When Update… Continue Reading Olena Grischenko’s...
Batch SharePoint requests [GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE] in PowerAutomate and MS Graph
Batching helps you in optimizing the performance of your application by combining multiple requests into a single request. SharePoint Online & MS Graph APIs supports the OData batch query option. Batch requests MUST be submitted as a single HTTP POST request to the batch endpoint of a service as below for SharePoint REST API: POST https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/… Continue Reading ashiqf’s Article on their...
Create/Delete a SharePoint custom theme using PowerAutomate
In a modern SharePoint site you can create custom themes using PowerShell, REST API & CSOM. In this blogpost I will show you how to create themes using PowerAutomate. The following REST endpoints are available http://<site url>/_api/thememanager/AddTenantThemehttp://<site url>/_api/thememanager/DeleteTenantThemehttp://<site url>/_api/thememanager/GetTenantThemingOptionshttp://<site… Continue Reading...
Power Portal: a custom maintenance page
Well, there is one: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/admin/enable-maintenance-mode If OOB one works for you don’t bother reading any further. Didn’t work for us because we wanted some flexibility for the dev team and testers to be able to login, check, clear cache etc So the requirement was to display a maintenance page to portal users and make the whole portal look… Continue Reading Olena...
Multiple ways to access your On-premise data in Microsoft 365 and Azure
If your organization is using a hybrid cloud environment, this post will shed some light to integrate on-premise resources with Microsoft 365 & Azure services. Hybrid integration platforms allows enterprises to better integrate services and applications in hybrid environments (on-premise and cloud). In this blog post, I will write about the different services & tools available with in… Continue Reading ashiqf’s...
Sync Master Data on Dynamics NAV / Dynamics 365 BC
As a Business Consultant, you might have received a business requirement to sync Master Data between different fiscal companies. It is common when we are implementing an ERP on a Group of companies. If the ERP to implement is Dynamics NAV / Dynamics 365 BC it is frequent as a first approach, to follow one of the three options: • Create a customization to enable this automation (Extension on D 365 BC) • Adopt an ISV solution that...
Copy & Apply Site Template to a SharePoint site using Power Automate
If you have a requirement to copy a site template (Site Pages including images & webpart, site column, site content type, navigation etc) from an existing SharePoint site & apply it to a recently created SharePoint site, this blog post would be helpful. Pre-requisites: SharePoint site collection administratorSharePoint site with a custom list associated to a FlowAccess to Premium… Continue Reading ashiqf’s Article...
Creating Power Apps Visual for Power BI
If you see the visualization tab in Power BI service/app, there is a visual called Power Apps for Power BI. Ever wondered why and how that can be used? Power Apps for Power BI visual can be used to pass context aware data to canvas app. It gets updated real time as we make changes … Continue reading “Creating Power Apps Visual for Power BI” The post Creating Power Apps Visual for Power BI… Continue Reading...
Automated trigger recurrence frequency – Power Automate
Have you ever noticed on your Automated flow with trigger for e.g Item created or modified on a SharePoint list will not run immediately as & when there was an item either created or modified in the list? The reason is all the automated triggers has a recurrent frequency schedule which is set to 3 mins, it means it looks for the changes in the SharePoint list every 3 mins. To check this, go to… Continue Reading...
CDS current connector: Filter expression. My Flow doesn’t trigger!”
I thought you will love this one. It’s that type of “Help! My Flow hasn’t get triggered” thing which we all love. How to reproduce For the CDS entity which has some existing records then a new optionset field has got created. As a result some records may not have this field populated. If you use Filter expression “[your_attribute] ne [some_value]” it won’t trigger for records where…...
Embedding Power BI as a first-class component in portal designer
Embedding a Power BI report or a dashboard tile in a web page in our Power App Portal is a supported feature. PowerApps Portal has a liquid tag called powerbi, with this simple tag we can embed reports and dashboards in a single line of liquid any where on the portal. For example: {% powerbi authentication_type:”powerbiembedded” … Continue reading “Embedding Power BI as a first-class… Continue Reading...
Automate the provision of On-Premise AD Account – Part 2
This post is in continuation to my previous post Automate the provision of Azure AD Account & License assignment – Part 1 for creating account in Azure active directory using Power Automate. On this post I will highlight the feature available in Azure Automation account which can be leveraged to create an On-premise AD account. Refer to this post for the usage of Azure automation account to… Continue Reading...
Execute SharePoint Online PowerShell scripts using Power Automate
Most of us would have used PowerShell for SharePoint to manage SharePoint settings at the organization level and site collection level. SharePoint Online PowerShell commands are very efficient for batch operations for e.g creating multiple sites, list items etc. To use the SharePoint Online PowerShell commands You must have the SharePoint Admin role or Global Administrator role in Office… Continue Reading ashiqf’s Article...
Access Active Directory user profile attributes using Graph API
Using graph API you can access all the Active directory attributes. The me endpoint gives your profile information https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me. To get a specific user’s information the endpoint should be https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/useremailaddress For getting any specific AD attribute you can pass the required attribute as a query string
CDS current environment connector : “The following filtering attributes are not valid:…”
Life is pain… “The following filtering attributes are not valid:…” { “error”: { “code”: “0x80040203”, “message”: “The following filtering attributes are not valid: lastname” }} Fix the trigger …error Remove the white space between the comma and the next attribute! A white space between filtering attributes causing the error. No white...
Pass “reference” data from a parent Flow to a child Flow
If you ever wonder how to do this is the exact time to figure it out together. These are types of user inputs you can pass to a child flow: Child Flow user input types: Text, Yes/No, File, Number, Date. What I was doing previously is passing a record ID as a Text input parameter then I was querying data using this ID. Like this: Query record in a child Flow to workaround a pass… Continue Reading Olena Grischenko’s Article...
Change the original Owner of a Power App & Flow
Has there been a requirement or a need to change the owner/creator of the PowerApps or a Flow built by your organizational users? There could be various reasons for this request App/flow creator would have left the organizationApp/flow creator would have changed role within the organizationHanding over the app to the operations team… By the time I am writing this post there are no… Continue Reading ashiqf’s Article...
Integrating Power BI Reports on Power Apps Screen
This post will explain how to bring the whole Power Bi report which is not in a Power BI dashboard on to a Power Apps’ screen. And also to enable all the Power BI Interactions on the screen itself without having to make the users go to Power BI app or service. Start by adding … Continue reading “Integrating Power BI Reports on Power Apps Screen” The post Integrating Power BI Reports on Power… Continue...
Automate the provision of Azure AD Account & License assignment – Part 1
A decade back I was part of a team to automate the On & Offboarding process of employees for a customer using .NET framework, it had a module to provision user accounts in an on-premise environment. I still remember having used couple of dll’s for Active directory 2003 & exchange 2007 to create AD & Email account. It was not easy but nowadays with the Office 365 in place its so easy to… Continue Reading...
Populating Word template with the CDS image field content via Flow (Power Automate)
This is a great video which helped me on a way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1jsBllmr-w However, in this video it takes image from OneDrive but I want to populate it from CDS image field. Add image control to a Word template. Watch video I referred above showing how to add controls step by step then come back for the image adding part. Image control inside Word template. 2…. Continue Reading Olena Grischenko’s Article...
CDS current environment connector: Filtering attributes for the record created
Let’s say I want trigger some logic when the particular field has been modified on a record. In this example, I modify a contact Email field and create a Note when it’s been modified. I picked up a trigger for Create or Update because you can enter Email for a new record or you can just update. It’s obvious if you’ve ever created any plug-in in your previous life that Filtering… Continue Reading Olena...
Braintree payments PCF component (Power Apps)
(The below has been described and tested for Canvas Power Apps. This has not yet been tested and adapted for Model-driven apps. As for the Power App Portal app, another integration pattern is appropriate, to be discussed later) This package for import in your CDS environment and source code of the control are packaged here: https://github.com/andrew-grischenko/BraintreePaymentsPCF This is a… Continue Reading Olena...
Setting up Office 365 E3 trial (video)
I started my YouTube channel last week. This particular video I am going to leave here. If you want to explore new features, test how things work or just do training setting up your playground environment would be a very good idea. If you don’t know where to start, watch this video: Continue Reading Olena Grischenko’s Article on their blog Setting up Office 365 E3 trial (video) I started my YouTube channel last week. This...
SharePoint Search REST API query not returning all results
Have you ever faced a scenario where you have built search customization using Rest API with SPFx or custom display template in SharePoint 2013 etc which did not return all search results. I was facing this today while trying to get data based on a content type, it was returning only few results. The reason is because Search API by default removes duplicates as documented by Microsoft…. Continue Reading ashiqf’s Article on...
Renaming Child Flow: the magic didn’t happen
Oops, I did it again! I renamed my child Flow action from “Run Child Flow” into “Generate Code”. I was counting on the intelligence of the engine to figure things out for me. Wouldn’t it expect me to re-add all my references to the Flow? Or would it? I was pleasantly surprised seeing the “Generate_Code” reference instead of “Run_Child_Flow” but it was too soon. After the first run...
Implementing Try,Catch and Finally in Power Automate
No matter how great we are in programming , sometimes our code has errors. They may occur because of our mistakes, an unexpected user input, an erroneous server response, and for a thousand other reasons. So handling these exceptions is very important . Anyone who has even a little experience with programming knows the “try … Continue reading “Implementing Try,Catch and Finally in Power… Continue Reading Nagaraja...
Multi-Filter with multiple values in Canvas App
Did your work ever require you to create a multi-level filter that lets you choose multiple values in each one? Something like this and you had to settle with single filter or multi filter with single value selected? Then, here is the solution for you. Below is the step by step process for multi- level … Continue reading “Multi-Filter with multiple values in Canvas App” The post Multi-Filter… Continue Reading...
Locking Out setting for Power Apps Portal for confused developers
It came back to me from PROD saying it didn’t pass some last minute tests. After 5 attempts to login to the system user account was locked as it was expected but remained locked for much longer which was an unpleasant surprise to me. I remember setting login attempts to 1000 on the request from business on UAT and accidentally moving it to PROD like this. Our portal isn’t live yet so I… Continue Reading Olena...
Tip : Using Trigger Conditions in Power Automate
I have come across a requirement to trigger flow when a record is updated and one of the fields contains data. We can achieve this using condition action . But there is a better way to do it using Trigger Condition setting in Power Automate and functions provided by the Workflow Definition Language. Here are the steps. … Continue reading “Tip : Using Trigger Conditions in Power… Continue Reading Nagaraja...
“Stripe” payments PCF component (Power Apps)
There is an article my partner published on our company website. We’ve spent some time working with custom connectors and experimenting with different types of integrations with Dynamics 365, CDS and Power Platform. If you are interested to learn more about PCF controls and how to combine all above together in a working solution it will be a good reading for you. (The below has been… Continue Reading Olena...
Issue with custom ribbon buttons ? Here is the command checker tool by Microsoft
If you are experiencing an issue in a Dynamics 365 or Power Apps model-driven application with a ribbon command bar button, Here is the way to find and solve the problem easily. Microsoft use an in-app tool called the Command Checker to inspect the ribbon component definitions to help us determine what might be causing problems. Now this … Continue reading “Issue with custom ribbon buttons… Continue Reading Nagaraja...
Tip : Finding the inactive users in Dynamics 365 CE
Recently , I have come across a requirement to get the list of users who are not active in Dynamics 365 CE for past 3 months. It means that these people never logged in to the application in the past 3 months. There is no OOB solution for this. But we have a plugin in … Continue reading “Tip : Finding the inactive users in Dynamics 365 CE” Continue Reading Nagaraja Emmadisetty’s Article on their blog Tip :...
Batch Operation in Power Automate
If we want to perform multiple actions Common Data Service at once , like creating/ updating 100 different records, Flow will make many different calls to CDS. Although it works fine, but it takes lot of time and keeping limitations on number of requests , this might not be a good approach. But, no worries … Continue reading “Batch Operation in Power Automate” Continue Reading Nagaraja Emmadisetty’s Article on...
Issue with npm install command : PowerApps Component Framework
Recently , I have come across an issue while building a custom control. I had experience of developing custom controls before. But , I never faced this issue before. Issue : The component project would require lots of external files to build successfully. To install project dependencies, we need to run command ‘npm install’ in … Continue reading “Issue with npm install command : PowerApps… Continue...
Kanban view for Opportunities : D365 2020 release wave 1
As part of Dynamics 365 2020 wave 1 release, We can have a Kanban view on opportunities. We have early access to this feature from Feb 3rd and it will be part of general availability in Apr 2020. Feature details : To enable this feature, Add Kanban control for opportunity entity and publish. Note : … Continue reading “Kanban view for Opportunities : D365 2020 release wave 1” Continue Reading Nagaraja...
@ mention user & channel in Teams using MS Graph API
There are ways to @mention a user while posting a conversation in Teams channel using flow action but as far as I know its not possible as of now to @mention a Teams channel using Flow actions. In this post, I will show you how to @mention a channel & user using a POST call to a MS Graph beta endpoint. To construct the endpoint URL you will need to know the TeamID & ChannelID, to get the… Continue Reading ashiqf’s...