Tag: powerplatform

Managed Solutions, & replacing a field

Well to start with, I’m sure that I’m going to get pulled up by some people for my use of the word ‘field’ in the title. After all, officially it’s now a ‘column’! But I (still) can’t let go of calling them as I’ve done so for over a decade, so field it is.

Now to the actual topic of this blog post, which is centred around Managed Solutions. Leaving aside the whole debate about whether we should be using managed or unmanaged solutions (& when/where to do each), there is one definitive benefit of using a managed solution.

See, unmanaged solutions are additive in nature. Work is done in the development environment, then deployed. Further work is done (additional items added, etc), and deployed, and they then appear in the downstream environments. However, if you delete an item in the development environment, it’s not removed when the solution is deployed downstream.

Managed solutions, on the other hand, are both additive & detractive. As with unmanaged solutions, items added in the development environment are also added downstream when deployed. However, if an item is removed from the solution in the development environment, it will also be removed when the solution is deployed downstream. It’s one of the useful ways to ensure that you don’t end up with random unused items just lying around in Production (which have a habit then of popping up in the Advanced Find window, for example). So it’s really quite handy for a lot of reasons to go down this route.

Well, I found myself going down this route recently, but with slightly unexpected results, I’ll freely admit…

The scenario was that we had deployed a managed solution to the UAT (test) environment on a client project. Then the client changed their mind (shock & horror!!) as to a specific item, and we needed to change it from a text item to a lookup item. Obviously (as per best practise, of course) this would need to be done in the development environment, and then released downstream. Given that this is a managed solution, I’d expect this to work, without any issues. Well, it didn’t…

The change in the development environment (deleted the old item, ‘re-created’ it as a lookup with the same system name) was done, we exported it as managed, and then went to import it in the UAT environment. It took the solution file, thought about it for a while (it’s somewhat of a large solution), & then errored:

Exception type: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault] Message: Attribute mdm_field is a String, but a Lookup type was specified.

Now I was somewhat confused by this message occurring. It’s not been the first time I’ve seen it over the years, but in my previous experience I’ve seen it when handling unmanaged solutions. It’s when you delete an item in the development environment, re-create it as a different item type (with the same underlying system name), and then deploy it as unmanaged. The solution import in the second environment fails due to the different in the type (as it sees the same name). This, of course, is to be expected.

But here we’ve been using managed solutions for deployment, and as mentioned above, they’re detractive as well. The expected behaviour (at least from my side of things) would be that the system would note that the item type has changed, remove the old item, & import the new item. In my mind, that’s logical, but apparently not?

See, even managed solutions have their limitations, of which this is one of them. Having checked with several other people who I reached out to around this, I’ve discovered that it can’t work in the way that I was expecting it to. Instead, a specific process has to be followed

  1. In the development environment, remove the item, & export the solution as managed
  2. In the downstream environment(s), deploy this (interim) managed solution. This will remove the item from the environments
  3. In the development environment, re-create the item with the different system type. Then export it as managed
  4. In the downstream environments, deploy this solution. This will then add the item (with the new system type) into the environment.

This means that development & deployment teams (if separate ones) need to co-ordinate around this, to ensure it’s done in the right way. It could also be developed/exported in succession, and then imported in succession as well (either manually, or through an Azure DevOps Pipeline, for example).

This worked wonderfully for us, and to be honest, I was quite relieved after several hours of frustration with things. Even better, it was a Friday, so meant that the week could end well!

Have you ever come across this, and been frustrated as well? Have you got a similar story with something else that happened to you around solutions? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!

Customising Case Resolutions

Well, the title is a bit of a mouthful, I’ll admit. Hopefully though this brings some good information, and can help people out.

Cases are wonderful things, and can be used for tracking client interactions, compliments/complaints, and so many other things. What cases do have is the ability to resolve them, and provide information around the resolution.

Now, the standard way of doing this provides the following screen:

There’s the ability to set the Resolution Type (being a dropdown, aka Choice, field), & putting in free text for the Resolution itself (allowing us to track information around it). There are also time fields, which can be used for working out the time spent, as well as any time that’s going to be chargeable.

Now when going in to modify these, we’d think to open up the Case Resolution table. However, this isn’t actually the right place to do it. Instead, we’re needing to update the Case table itself, as the Care Resolution items comes from the Case Status field!

Somewhat annoyingly, it’s not possible to do this through the new ‘Maker’ interface:

In order to actually handle this, we need to switch across to the Classis editor to set this up. This could be because it’s actually a situation of having both parent & child entries. What I mean by this is that there’s the actual status (being Active, Resolved or Cancelled), and then a reason under each one. Hopefully at some point it’ll be updated into the new UI, so that we can do it from there.

We’ll need to change the Status item to ‘Resolved’, & can then add in the options that we want:

After adding them, we need to save & publish, and then they’ll show up for us, and are able to be selected:

So that’s great – we’re able to customise it. But what if we’re wanting to customise the actual ‘Resolve Case’ form itself? Not everyone wants to show Time/Billable Time on it (quite a few of our clients ask us to remove it), and perhaps they want to add additional custom fields.

So from the usual perspective of doing this, we’d open up the Case Resolution table, create new fields as required, and modify the existing form (we’re not able to create any other forms for this specific table). After all, this is how we’d do it for any table in the system (whether a standard one, or a custom one). This is going to be the Main form, rather than the QuickCreate one:

We save & publish it, and then would open up a Case record, click ‘Resolve Case’, and expect to see it. However, that doesn’t happen, which has been most puzzlingly to me!

It turns out that there are two things needed to be done in order to get to see our ‘custom’ form (though it’s not really custom, as it’s modifying the default form, but whatever).

  1. We need to modify security permissions for users, and is a critical requirement. An example of this is shown below:
Security Role: Customer Service Representative

2. We need to enable customisable dialogues. Yes, it’s a setting that needs to be updated in order for users to see the custom layout of the form. If we don’t do this, they’re shown the default form, even though we’ve modified it! Seems a little strange that the system seems to have this concept of a ‘shadow’ form, but I guess that’s how it is.

To do this, we need to go into the Service Management settings area. I usually launch this through the Customer Service Hub app, though it’s available through several of the other standard apps as well:

Once there, we need to click into the Service Configuration menu item, and then change the ‘Resolve Case Dialogue’ option as shown below:

Remember to click the ‘Save’ button to save this.

Finally we can go back to our Case record, click ‘Resolve Case’, and look what appears!

So in summary, it’s definitely possible to modify & change the way that Case resolutions works in the system. It does take a little bit of fiddling around with settings in different areas, which can be confusing if we’re not used to this, but can give a great result in the end.

Have you ever come across this, and wondered how to do it? Have you developed Case Resolutions any further? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!

PL-200 Microsoft Power Platform Functional Consultant

Well, the last week has been quite busy, on many fronts! One of those is having a few new exams come out in Beta. I’ve already taken the PL-400 (see PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer Exam for my review of it). Last Friday, the new PL-200 exam was released as well, so I scheduled it in for as soon as I could sit it.

Now the PL-200 is scheduled to be replacing the MB-200 exam at the end of this year (2020), assuming it comes out of beta by then of course. I remember sitting my MB-200, though I didn’t write up about it at the time. Compared to some of the other exams I’ve taken, it was hefty. I’ll freely admit that I didn’t pass on first go of it – it took me 3 tries to gain it! People will be required to take this as a pre-requisite for attaining the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate badge.

So I’ve been expecting this new PL-200 to be quite similar, but with more of a Power Platform focus. It’s still heavy on Dynamics 365, and I wasn’t expecting that part to change. The existing MB-2xx series are also staying in place (for the moment, anyhow).

According to the official description for the exam:

Candidates for this exam perform discovery, capture requirements, engage subject matter experts and stakeholders, translate requirements, and configure Power Platform solutions and apps. They create application enhancements, custom user experiences, system integrations, data conversions, custom process automation, and custom visualizations.

Candidates implement the design provided by and in collaboration with a solution architect and the standards, branding, and artifacts established by User Experience Designers. They design integrations to provide seamless integration with third party applications and services.

Candidates actively collaborate with quality assurance team members to ensure that solutions meet functional and non-functional requirements. They identify, generate, and deliver artifacts for packaging and deployment to DevOps engineers, and provide operations and maintenance training to Power Platform administrators.

The official Microsoft Learn page for the exam is at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/pl-200, and I’d highly recommend people to go check it out. I didn’t use it that much, but felt that I was on reasonable grounds with existing knowledge. It’s mostly there, but (at least in my exam) there were some sneaky extras that I was NOT really expecting. Hopefully I managed to get them (mostly) accurate!

Once again, I sat the exam through the proctored option (ie from home). The experience went without issues for once – sign in was fine, no issues with my headset during check-in, exam loaded & worked without problems at all.

So, as before, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). I’ve tried to group things together as best as possible for the different subject areas.

  • Environments
    • Different types of environments, what each one is used for, how to set/switch them between the different types
    • How to handle security/restrict access as necessary
  • Field types. All of the available field types, what are the benefits of each, and when each type should be used
  • Data storage types. Differences between Office documents (eg Excel), CDS, SQL Server, Azure SQL. When to use each one best
  • Charts. How they’re set up, how they can be shared with other users.
  • System views. What these are, who can access them, how to set them up
  • Entity forms. The different types of forms available, how to set them up, limitations of each. When each one should be used for a given scenarios
  • Model apps. Site map. What this is, how it’s used. Implementing/customising it, the different controls available & what each one does
  • Entity editable grids
    • What these are, how they can be used, how to enable & set them up
    • Limitations that they have within the system
  • Entity/record ownership. The different types of ownerships available, benefits of each, when each should be used for a given scenario
  • Data management
    • Data importing from different sources, different methods to import data
    • What is data mapping for import, and how it’s used
  • Duplicate detection. What it is, what it does, how it works. How to implement & configure it
  • Microsoft Word templates. How they can interact with Dynamics 365, how to set them up/adjust them, what they can be used for
  • Canvas Apps
    • Expression/function types, what they are, how they’re used
    • Handling data (eg collections)
    • Offline usage & data storage
    • Controls that can be used, navigating around, loading/saving data.
  • Power Virtual Agent/Chatbots.
    • Setting them up, deploying them onto websites, deploying them into Teams
    • Configuring topics, routing, handling unknown questions
    • Bot model data, including being able to access across multiple chatbots
    • Reporting on their usage, & how customer engagements have been processed
  • Power App portals
    • Registering users, registration code process
    • Validating/confirming user accounts
    • Forms security, displaying/hiding forms & data
  • AI capabilities. AI models available. Pre-built models vs custom training, capabilities (eg text scanning), and when to use each one.
  • Omnichannel
    • What it is, when it’s used
    • How to implement, deploy & configure customers being able to be sent through to it
  • Automation
    • Workflows, Power Automate, Business Process Flows
    • What each one is, benefits/use cases for each one, when to use each for specific scenarios
  • Power Automate
    • What are triggers, & how do they work
    • What are actions, and how do they work
    • What are connectors, and how do they work
    • Prebuilt vs custom connectors, capabilities, and when to use each one
    • How to set up each type & configure them
    • Instant vs Scheduled vs Triggered
    • Security – how to enable/disable their use by users
  • Business Process Flows
    • What they are, how they’re used, limitations that they have
    • How to handle security for them
  • Business rules
    • What they are, how they’re used, how to set up/configure
    • How to use them in different parts of the system (eg forms, apps, etc)
    • Actions vs Conditions vs Recommendations
  • UI Flows (RPA)
    • What these are, how they are used
    • Requirements in order to use them
    • Desktop vs Cloud
    • Implementation, customisation, configuration & deployment
    • Limitations of them
    • Data extraction from runs
  • Security & Compliance
    • Security roles, security teams, security groups
    • What each one is, how it’s used
    • System auditing, what it is, how it’s used, how to implement & configure
    • How to access & run user audit log reports
  • PowerBI. Setting up & sharing dashboards, setting up & configuring alerts, security options/roles & how they work with data
  • Dynamics 365 integrations. What other systems can integrate directly with Dynamics 365, & any limitations that they may have

The main surprise for me was mostly around the UI flows, and the various questions I had on them. I’ve not played around with them (yet!), but they are really cool!

If you’re going to take this, I’d love to hear how your experience of it went. Drop a comment below for me to see!

PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer Exam

I’ve been continuing with taking new exams as they come out. Having recently taken the MB-400 exam (see MB-400 Power Apps & Dynamics 365 Developer Exam), I was slightly surprised to see the announcement that it was going to be replaced!

Admittedly, I was also surprised (in a good way) that I passed the MB-400, not being a developer! It’s been quite amusing to tell people that I’m a certified Microsoft Dynamics Developer. It definitely puts a certain look on their faces, which always cracks me up.

Then again, the general approach seems to be to move all of the ‘traditional’ Dynamics 365 exams to the new Power Platform (PL) format. This includes obviously re-doing the exams to be more Power Platform centric, covering the different parts of the platform than just the ‘first party apps’. It’s going to be interesting to see how this landscape extends & matures over time.

The learning path came out in the summer, and is located at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/pl-400. It’s actually quite good. There’s quite a lot that overlaps with the MB-400 exam material, as well as the information that’s recently been covered by Julian Sharp & Joe Griffin.

The official description of the exam is:

Candidates for this exam design, develop, secure, and troubleshoot Power Platform solutions. Candidates implement components of a solution, including application enhancements, custom user experience, system integrations, data conversions, custom process automation, and custom visualizations.

Candidates must have strong applied knowledge of Power Platform services, including in-depth understanding of capabilities, boundaries, and constraints. Candidates should have a basic understanding of DevOps practices for Power Platform.

Candidates should have development experience that includes Power Platform services, JavaScript, JSON, TypeScript, C#, HTML, .NET, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, RESTful web services, ASP.NET, and Microsoft Power BI.

So the PL-400 was announced on the Wednesday of Ignite this year (at least in my timezone). Waking up to hear of the announcement, I went right ahead to book it! Unfortunately, there seemed to be some issues with the Pearson Vue booking system. It took around 12 hours to be sorted out, & I then managed to get it booked Wednesday evening, to take it Thursday.

So, as before, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change.

There were a few glitches during the actual exam. One or two questions with answers that didn’t make sense (eg line 30 does X, but the code sample finished at line 18), and question numbers that seemed to jump back & forth (first time it’s happened to me). I guess that I’ve gotten used to at least ONE glitch happening somewhere, so this was par for the course.

I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

  • Model Apps.
    • Charts. How they work, what drives them, what they need in order to actually work, configuring them
    • Visualisation components for forms. What they are, examples of them, what each one does, when to use each one
    • Custom ribbon buttons. What these are, different tools able to be used to create/set them up, troubleshooting them
    • Entity alternate keys. What these are, when they should be used, how to set them up & configure them
    • Business Process Flows. What these are, how they can be used across different scenarios, limitations of them
    • Business Rules. What these are, how they can be used across different scenarios, limitations of them
  • Canvas apps
    • Different code types, expressions, how to use them & when to use them
    • Network connectivity, & how to handle this correctly within the app for data capture (this was an interesting one, which I’ve actually been looking at for a client project!)
    • Power Apps solution checker. How to run it, how to handle issues identified in it
  • Power Automates
    • Connectors – what these are, how to use them, security around them, querying/returning results in the correct way
    • Triggers. What is a trigger, how do they work, when to use/not use them
    • Actions. What these are, how they can be used, examples of them
    • Conditions. What these are, how to use them, types of conditions/expressions/data
    • Timeouts. How to use them, when to use them, how to configure
  • Power Virtual Agents. How to set them up, how to configure them, how to deploy them, how to connect them to other systems
  • Power App Portals. Different types, how to set them up, how to configure them, how they can work with underlying data & users
  • Solutions
    • Managed, unmanaged, differences between them, how to use each one.
    • Deploying solutions. Different methods that can be used to do it, best practise for each, when to use each one
    • Package Deployer & how to use it correctly
  • Security.
    • All of the different security types within Dynamics 365/Power Platform. Roles/Teams/Environment/Field level. How to set up, configure, use in the right way.
    • Hierarchy security
    • Wider platform security. How to use Azure Active Directory for authentication methods, what to know around this, how to set it up correctly to interact with CDS/Dynamics 365
    • What authentication methods are allowed, when/how they can be used, how to configure them
  • ‘Development type stuff’
    • API’s. The different API’s that can be used, methods that are valid with each one, the Organisation service
    • Discovery URL’s. What these are, which ones are able to be used, how they’d be used/queried
    • Plugins. How to set up, how to register, how to deploy. Steps needed for each
    • Plugin debugging/troubleshooting. Synchronous vs asynchronous
    • Component types. Actions/conditions/expressions/data operations. What these are, when each is used
    • Custom ribbon buttons. What these are, different tools able to be used to create/set them up, troubleshooting them
    • Javascript web resources. How to use these correctly, how to set them up on entities/forms/fields
    • Powerapps Component Framework (PCF). What these are, how to develop them, how to use them in the right way
  • System Design
    • Entity relationship types. What they are, what each one does, how they work, when to use them appropriately. Tools that can be used to display them for system design purposes
    • Storage considerations across different types, including CDS & Azure options
  • Azure items
    • Azure Consumption API. How to monitor, how to handle, how to change/update
    • Azure Event Grid. What it is, the different ways in which it can be used, when each source should be used
  • Dynamics 365 for Finance. Native functionality included in it

The biggest surprise that I had really when thinking back to things was the inclusion of Dynamics 365 for Finance in it. Generally the world is split into ‘front of house’ (being Dynamics 365/Power Platform), and ‘back of house’ (Dynamics 365 for Finance & Supply Chain Management). The two don’t really overlap, though they’re supposed to be coming more together over time. Being that this is going to happen, I guess it’s only natural that exam questions around each other will come up!

Overall it was quite a good exam. Some of the more ‘code-style’ questions were somewhat out of my comfort zone, and I’ll freely admit to guessing some of the answers around them! Time will tell, as they say, to see how I’ve done in it.

I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it!

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Good news for Power Automate Flows!

As a starter for 10, this wasn’t actually the blog post that I was going to write today. In fact, the subject of the post wasn’t even going to be about Power Automate! However, there was some really amazing news that dropped today from Microsoft, which I just couldn’t pass up being able to talk about.

You’ve guessed it – it’s about Power Automate! Well, I suppose that the post title was somewhat of a giveaway, wasn’t it…ah well. So let’s go ahead and find out what this is all about then!

To date, we’ve been able to put Power Automate flows into a solution. Well, it wasn’t there exactly at the beginning of things, but it happened somewhere along the way. This was very convenient, as we didn’t then need to deploy each one individually to different environments. Some solutions can contain dozens & dozens of flows, and we really do love to package them all up together for ease of movement.

So that was good. But there was still a (major) ‘bugbear’ (as I like to refer to them as). This is the fact that after we deploy a Power Automate flow, we then need to go into it & (re)authenticate it. This is due to the fact that the connector/s that it uses contains what is referred to as a ‘secret’, and these can’t be moved across environments. As a result, we need to essentially recreate the ‘secret’ in the connector (ie authentication details) every time we move it. This is an annoyance (if you have one or two flows), and an absolute bloody nightmare if you have lots.

For the technical minded – every action in a flow is bound to a specific instance of a connection that it will use to “execute” that action. This is why when moving flows across environments, users are required to rebind every operation to a connection.

For example, I’ve been working with COVID-19 triage solutions. These contain lots of flows within them, connecting to multiple different sources, and doing different things. Every time we’ve performed a release (even if it’s just a simple update), we’ve needed to manually go through each flow, (re)authenticate them, and turn them on. If you forgot one, then everything can come crashing down & not work! But there’s been no other way to do it. To represent this visually, we have the following diagram

For each & every Power Automate, the connection line gets ‘broken’ when it’s deployed, and needs to be re-made.

Until now, that is. For today, Microsoft has announced the Public Preview for ‘Connection References’. Now when something is put into Preview, I usually caveat the usage of it with saying things like ‘it might go away, or not be released for a while’. But I’m going to be quietly confident about this particular piece of functionality, as I really don’t think it’s going to be pulled!

So what exactly are these? Well, in (mostly) simple terms, Connection References provide an ‘in-between’ or ‘abstraction’ layer for the connections that use them. Let’s show this visually as well

We still need to re-authenticate the Connection Reference once we deploy things. But let’s now see how we can save ourselves a massive headache, and LOTS of time:

Oooo…now this is looking better. Instead of having to update three Power Automate flows, we only have to update the SINGLE Connection Reference that’s sitting in the middle. Now multiple that by however many flows you have (eg sending emails out, etc), and start calculating how much time you’ll now be able to spend on coffee breaks, rather than doing this manually one at a time…

We can create Connection References directly from within the solution:

We then give it a name & description, choose which connector we’re going to be using, and either select an existing connection or set a new one up:

Once we’re finished, we click ‘Create’ at the bottom. Voila – we can now see it within our solution!

Note: Interestingly enough I couldn’t actually see this within the solution after I created it, even with the component selector set to show ‘All’. How I actually got them to display was changing the component selector to ‘Connection Reference’, and they then showed up. I’m thinking that this is due to it being new today/in the process of rolling out, and am expecting it to display without any issues in the near future

Let’s take a look at a Power Automate flow itself now to see how it’s referenced. When we open an item with a connector, we can now see the following:

We’re able to select the Connection Reference that we’re wanting to use. Simple, yet so powerful.

When importing a solution containing a Connection Reference, we will be prompted during the import process to set the actual connection that should be used with it:

If you don’t have any connections set up already in the environment, you’ll be able to create a new one from the dropdown.

Some things to note around this:

  • During the preview phase, Microsoft has specified that a single Connection Reference can only be used by up to 16 flows. This limitation will be removed once it goes GA
  • Existing flows will not be automatically upgraded. What you can do though is export the unmanaged solution, re-import it to the same environment, and then they will be automatically created for you. The flow/s can then be edited to update them to the correct connection reference record
  • The connection name and connection reference name are not currently synchronised. They can be different. Therefore it’s best to keep the naming conventions the same. Don’t set different names for connections and their associated connection references.

In summary – this is an awesome step forward with Power Automate functionality. I’m already tasking some of the developers on the team to re-do existing solutions to use it for ease of use. How do you think it’ll best benefit you? Drop a comment below!

Handling ‘Out of Hours’

Let’s face it – we can be quite spoiled at times. As a customer, we can sometimes expect that companies be available 24/7 to service our requests, needs, issues, etc. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it! Imagine that you have a mobile phone issue at 2am – you could call up your provider, and have it handled (or a new handset sent out) immediately. That would be quite nice!

Unfortunately the real world doesn’t (always) quite work like that. Of course there are companies that operate on a multi-national or even global scale, and there’s always customer service available (Amazon – I’m thinking of you right now!).

Previously I’ve gone into how we can set operating hours for a company, so that the ability to contact a customer support agent is only shown during these times. Take a look at Handling Company Hours for a refresher on this.

But sometimes not showing the ability to contact support could potentially be counter-productive. Customers may think that our website isn’t working properly, and possibly attempt to try to reach us through other means. This could quite well frustrate them.

Due to this, we have a nice little piece of functionality that’s now come out in Omnichannel. It’s small, simple, but yet quite brilliant in my humble opinion. This is the ability to have a chat widget available, but let customers know that that it’s currently out of company hours.

To activate this, we need to open the Chat record in the Omnichannel Administration Hub, and go to the Design tab:

Quite helpfully, the section is labelled ‘Offline’! How much better could we get.

We do need to understand that (at the time of writing this post) it’s currently in Preview, with all of the usual caveats around how that works.

We have several items available here:

  • Show widget during offline hours. This is what actually activates the setting – leaving this to false won’t do anything for us!
  • Theme colour. This allows us to set the specific theme to be used during ‘offline’ hours. It’s actually really helpful, as it serves/gives a very visual aspect to the customer to display that it’s out of hours
  • Title. The title of the chat widget, which will be displayed to the user
  • Subtitle. This allows us to place a subtitle as well, for the user to be able to see

So what does this then look like? Well, let’s take a look:

Personally I think that being able to set a theme colour for offline access gives it that little edge. Customers will become aware of this (subconsciously) when visiting the website, and come to the point of not even trying to start a chat when they see that it’s out of hours.

One MAJOR thing to bear in mind. We’re only going to be given the option to set this when we have a value set for Operating Hours. Without this being set, we won’t be shown this option. Go try it for yourself and see!

There’s not really much else to this, to be honest. But I’m liking it. I know that from a personal perspective I’ve been on various websites, and have no idea if the support chat is actually working or not. With this in place, I’m able to see that it is available for use at the correct time, and not have to wonder about it.

Have you ever thought about implementing something like this? Have you actually done so? I’d be really interested to hear from you about how you went about it – please drop a comment below!

Dynamics 365 Admin Centre for Omnichannel

I’ll freely admit that the title for this post is a bit of a mouthful! I’ll also admit that I used the British spelling of ‘centre’, rather than what it actually is. You’ll have to excuse my grammar 😉

This post is about something that we all knew was coming. The old Admin Centre is no longer – and we shall miss it! It was inevitable that it would be moved over to the new Power Platform interface, as so many other things have already. Therefore I thought it would be good to do a quick article about where it is now, how to access it, etc.

After all, it is vitally important when needing to carry out the initial configuration for Omnichannel, or to check for upgrades to the Omnichannel installed solution!

Let us, however, cast our mind back to the very familiar layout shown below. We’ve spent so many years here that it seems quite sudden. But though you may be gone, you will not be forgotten!

Manage Omnichannel application

Right – now onto the new version of it! So this actually took me a few minutes of digging around as to how to find it & get to it.

The first thing I tried was looking in the environment settings, but alas, I didn’t find it there. So I continued digging around.

Wishing you spare you the exact itinerary of everywhere that I looked into, I’ve decided just to show you it! I can hear the sighs of relief at this point…

What we need to do is navigate to the Power Platform Admin Centre, at https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/. Once there, we expand Resources on the left hand side, and select ‘Dynamics 365 apps’. Note that you do NOT have to select a specific environment first to be able to do this./

Now we can see a list of all apps installed. Nicely we’re able to scroll, which we couldn’t do in the old interface! That’s actually really helpful, and avoids needing to navigate to a different page. If we scroll down, we can see the entry for Omnichannel:

Click on ‘Manage’, and we get the following lovely popup:

Click OK to this, and we get taken to the (familiar) interface for configuring the initial items for Omnichannel:

Here we can go about the usual items, such as checking each environment to see if there are any updates available, or configure the main channels.

Nicely, Microsoft has actually updated (some of) their documentation, which is obviously very good. I’m now going to have to go and check through previous articles of mine, and update as necessary!

Lookup fields & Power Automate

This is an interesting post, for several reasons. Firstly, it’s the first one in 3 weeks – I was off on holiday, and decided to take an (almost) absolute break from all things digital, which included this blog. It was actually quite refreshing, though now coming back & starting to write again does seem a bit daunting, I’ll admit!

Thankfully, whilst wondering what exactly to start with, a scenario came up that I was working on. It seemed quite simple at first, but then actually got someone complicated. I therefore thought it would be helpful to others if I wrote about it, so here it is.

The scenario was as follows. We had records being auto-created in the system, and needed to create child records for them. This, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is really quite simple to do with Power Automate. We also needed to set lookup values on the child record, that were already populated on the parent record (for reference purposes).

So for example, the parent record has a lookup to Country (being a separate entity), and the child record also has a lookup to Country. These need to be the same.

Being both lookup fields, I figured that I’d be able to take the value from the parent record, and simply plop it into the corresponding field on the child record in Power Automate:

So I did that – and immediately hit an error. Not just any error, but the fabled ‘Resource not found for the segment’ error!

Obviously, I did what anyone would do at first – I put it into Google & Twitter, and took a look at what came up.

The ‘problem’ was coming from using the ‘CDS Current Environment’ connector, which is the latest version available (the old one is no longer available to use). It’s really great for a lot of things, but unfortunately not so great in a few areas. See, in the old CDS Connector, you could just drop the lookup field value into the field you were wanting to populate. Power Automate had no issues with that, & it would run just fine.

However in the ‘new’ CDS Connector, you can’t just do that. Instead, you need to use an OData reference (which I haven’t done much of before, to tell the truth). So based on the blogs I had come across, I went to work to try to get this working.

Part of the challenge was that there didn’t seem to be a unified consensus in how to do it. I came across the following variations:

  • /entityname(Lookup Field Value)
  • /entityname/(Lookup Field Value)
  • /pluralentityname(Lookup Field Value)
  • /pluralentityname/(Lookup Field Value)

Somewhat confusing, as I’m sure you’d agree. Nevertheless, I ploughed through all of the different possibilities. But nothing was working – every single time, I still got the ‘segment not found’ error message. This, as you can image, was extremely frustrating!

Thankfully, one of my good friends was around & able to help out. Namely, Tricia Sinclair came to the rescue!

We took a look at the code I was using, and she took a look at some of her own use cases (where it had worked for her). I was starting to think down the path of needing a capital letter in the entity name (some systems can be REALLY finicky around things like that), but thankfully it wasn’t.

Instead, it was the following. See, this was a custom entity. It turns out that for a custom entity (& heck, for all I know system entities as well) the syntax needed is ‘publisherprefix_pluralentityname(lookupfieldvalue)’. Now that’s not something that I had come across ANYWHERE at all!

Looking at it, I guess it makes sense. After all it would technically be possible to have multiple entities with the same name, though with different publishers. As a result, the system needs to know WHICH exact entity is being needed for the Power Automate, so uses this. Somewhat complicated (and hey – it worked without all of this in the OLD CDS Connector), but we got it to work!

Testing it out, everything worked smoothly. The Power Automates fired off without any issues, the data got created & populated, and everyone was happy.

So there you go. Another interesting little twist in syntax needed, which hopefully will NOT change in the (near) future!

Have you come across anything like this? I’d love to hear – drop a comment below around it!

PL-100: Microsoft Power Platform App Maker Exam

As many people are aware, Microsoft is changing the certification landscape somewhat. With the emergence of the Power Platform, there’s a need to test skills other than the traditional Dynamics 365 ones.

To this end, a new series (the PL-XXX) has been created. The first (main) one of these exams is the PL-100, which is the entry level exam.

You can take a look at the exam requirements & learning paths by going to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/pl-100.

Now, when I say ‘entry level’, I’m not referring to basics. This isn’t a Fundamentals exam – for that, you’ll be wanting to take a look at the PL-900 exam (which came out a while ago). To put it into perspective, the PL-200 (which is aimed to launch in September 2020) will replace the MB-200 exam!

So, the exam went live (in Beta) just over a week ago (July 17th). I’ve been waiting for this for a while, as I’ve really been wanting to see how the new exams are structured. Taking it in Beta means I’m going to have to wait (a little while) for my results to come through, but it gives me the opportunity to see the new landscape upfront.

I booked it as soon as it was available, for Wednesday July 22nd. Nicely (as mentioned above), there were already learning paths in place, so I eagerly went through them (again) in preparation. I was feeling pretty much quite prepared, but then….

See, I had signed up to attend the Power Platform Virtual Happy Hour (PPPVHH) on the same day as I had booked the exam for. Incidentally, if you haven’t come across this before, take a look. It’s hosted every month, and has some AMAZING speakers. Clarissa Gillingham presented on the ‘Infinity Form’, and it was a joy to behold. But I’m digressing.

After the event had finished, some of us remained chatting in the virtual room. Amongst them was none other than Chris Huntingford, who we all love and adore!. I mentioned that I had to sign off soon to get ready for the exam. No sooner had I mentioned this than Chris said to me something along the lines of ‘BRO….WATCH OUT!! It’s REALLY HARD!!’.

I might mention here that I have a slight (friendly) rivalry with Chris, in seeing who can take newly released exams first. I had figured that he’d be so busy with everything going on that I’d get this one before he did. Little did I know that he had ALREADY taken it.

Here I was, about to go sit down for the exam, and he got me TOTALLY freaked out. I’m not sure how much of it he did on purpose, but I’m sure that when I get him into a corner, I’ll find out…one day!

Anyhow – I sat the exam, took most of the time available (pretty sure I hit the 2 hour mark), and found it quite good overall. One or two things that seemed to be totally random/in the wrong place, but otherwise it was fine. Definitely much better that the MB-600 (MB-600 Solution Architect Exam), and I felt much more comfortable than I did with the MB-400 (MB-400 Power Apps & Dynamics 365 Developer Exam).

It really is very cleared aimed at app developers (both model & canvas), as well as other Power Platform skills. According to the exam description:

The app maker builds solutions to simplify, automate, and transform tasks and processes for themselves and their team where they have deep expertise in the solution domain. They are skilled in key technical business analyst tasks such as data modeling, basic UX design, requirements analysis, process analysis, etc.

The app maker creates and enforces business processes, structures digital collection of information, improves efficiency of repeatable tasks, and automates business processes.

The app maker uses the maker tools of Power Platform to solve business problems. They may have experience with Visual Basic for Applications, Excel pivot tables, Teams, and other tools. They should have a basic understanding of data models, user interface, and processes. The app maker is aware of the capabilities and limitations of available tools and understands how to apply them.

The app maker is self-directed, and solution focused. They may not have formal IT training but are comfortable using technology to solve business problems with a personal growth mindset. They understand the operational need and have a vision of the desired outcome. They approach problems with phased and iterative strategies.

So, as before, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!).

  • Canvas App Test Studio. What it does, how to carry out tests in it, how to set up Test Suites, etc
  • Developing Power Automate Flows. Different types of connectors, different types of steps/actions. How to deploy properly between environments using solutions
  • Field Level Security. What it is, what it does, what it can/can’t be used for
  • Canvas Apps:
    • Publishing rights
    • Access rights
    • Versioning
    • Editing vs using
    • Sharing & security
    • Saving changes, & deploying them to users
    • Collections. What they are, what they do, how they work
    • Galleries. What they are, what they can do, how to configure them in different way
    • Navigation around screens. How to set this up, how to pass information from one screen to the next
    • New vs Display vs Edit forms. What each one is, how each one is used
    • Charts. Which ones are available, how they’re configured
    • Using AI features, such as text/data recognition. What’s able to be used, how are they configured, what the benefits of each are
    • Versioning. How to handle this, what the benefits are
    • Accessibility for less-abled users. What options are available to facilitate this, how are they configured
  • Data Security. Different types of security available (roles/teams/access teams/business units) etc. Configuring security roles with different levels of permissions
  • Power BI Security. Showing/hiding information for specific users/teams, and how to configure this
  • Solution publishers. How these are set up, what you can modify after they’ve been set, considerations between default & other solutions
  • Business Logic. Differences between Business Process Flows, Business Rules & Power Automate. What each one can/can’t do, and is best suited for
  • Creating environments. Where to do this, how to do this, what steps are needed
  • Connecting to data sources. Different types of data connections, what each one is suited for
  • Model Apps:
    • Forms & Views. What these are, how to set up & configure them
    • Navigation, Sitemap etc.
  • Business Rules. How they work, what the different levels of scope are, how they affect functionality
  • Automation. Workflows vs Power Automate Flows. The different types (eg On Demand, Instant, Scheduled)
  • Arrays. What they are, what they do, how they work
  • DLP (Data Loss Prevention). How this works, how to set it up, different options available
  • Data field types. What each one is, how each one is used & able to be configured
  • Calculated/Rollup vs Autonumber. What each is, when to use each one

That’s quite a lot of stuff, with an emphasis on canvas app functionality & solutions. It definitely is important to ensure that you’re really on top of these. Thankfully not too much mention of Power BI (at least not in my exam), and for that I’m quite grateful!

I do have to say that in one respect, I found something quite amusing. See, on the same day as I took the exam, Microsoft Ignite was taking place. One of the major announcements was the ‘rename/rebrand’ of CDS to Dateflex (Pro). I therefore kept laughing when questions would refer to CDS again & again! Obviously I’m expecting this to change in the exam (at some point?).

In summary, I think that this is a good start for the new range of exams, and look forward to the other ones in the series coming out!

Have you taken this? What was your experience like? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!

Keeping belief in oneself

Although I usually post around technical matters & such, occasionally I digress into personal reflection. After all, this is my personal blog, & I feel it’s sometimes good/relevant to share certain personal things. Today’s post is along those lines, though it does relate to a technical matter.

Let’s set the scene. As many of you know (either from knowing me personally, or from reading my blog posts), I’m from the ‘model-driven app’ background. Canvas apps are really cool, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a very advanced creator of them. I’m learning the whole time about them (well, when I have a free minute here & there). There are many people in the community who are extremely more advanced than I am, and I love being able to learn from them.

I’m also considered to be in ‘Delivery’, This is the fancy word for those who run/are involved in projects, rather than selling concepts to clients. I’d run a mile if someone tried to put me in a Sales role (though I do admire the power suits that Sales have, occasionally). I’ve done a bit of Pre-Sales (where I’m helping out from a technical perspective), but haven’t been heavily involved. It’s actually something that I’m trying to work on, with being a tech evangelist. After all, if people already know/rave about the tech, how can you evangelise about it to them!!

Account Managers vs Sales People - davidmarkshaw

So last week I get a call from our Sales team. They’re really nice, and know their stuff. However they’re not ‘techies’. They had a situation – we’d been talking to a client about a potential project, and the client told us to pitch for it. Brilliant, right? Well…

The client told us that we had 4 days until the pitch deadline. Not only were we needing to pitch with the usual presentation pack (however would Sales operate without PowerPoint…?), we also had to do a live demo. Not for a completed product, but rather a Proof of Concept (PoC).

The only person available was….yes, you guess it…me. There wasn’t anyone else around with the necessary knowledge/skills to create the PoC in the time-frame needed. I’ll freely admit that I was absolutely slammed with existing projects, but wanted to be able to help out.

However, things then got ‘better’. And by ‘better’, I meant ‘interesting’. I got told who else was pitching to the client. Obviously I’m not going to mention any specific details here, but I knew who they are. More importantly, I figured that I had a very good idea of who from their side would be creating the tech, & doing the pitch.

Now as I’m not mentioning any identifiable details, I’m feeling free to say this. They’re not at my level of tech skills. They’re nowhere NEAR my level of tech skills. This is NOT because I’m better than they are. Totally the opposite – they’re SO far ahead of me with their knowledge of things, I can barely see the dust that they kick up in a race.

Knowing this, I knew that I couldn’t build a model-driven app (though it would have worked perfectly for the scenario/s we were given). I HAD to do a canvas app. But even with doing that, it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as good as what the other side would be able to put on.

The phrase ‘gibbering in fear’ does come to mind with my reaction to finding all of this out. I did feel slightly like a deer caught in the headlights. I wanted to do well, both for myself & my company, but I honestly had no idea how we could stack up.

Deer in the Headlights: By Generation Success – Generation Success
How I felt I looked like!

Thankfully, my company has an extremely open culture, and I was therefore able to talk to my manager about it. He understood where I was coming from, but encouraged me to go for it & do what I would be able to create.

My wife also encouraged me to go for it. Well, actually her words were ‘it’s not sexy when a husband says that he can’t do it, so man up and go for it!’. Ha…after that I couldn’t very well NOT do it.

So I applied myself, and with some VERY late nights (I did have other projects on, as I mentioned above), managed to get something in place. Not only did I create it, I think it looked really good. There was some really nice (canvas app) functionality, and it all came together pretty well.

Everything was in place in time (including some last minute tweaks). I even decided to spice up the demo a bit, and borrowed some dinosaurs from the kids to use for personas. We were using live camera feeds for part of the demo, and suddenly the demo was joined by ‘Rexy’, the ‘Customer Service Representative’ T-Rex! They were quite amused by it (thankfully!), and our team thought it was absolutely hilarious.

Hire A Dinosaur - Creature Events
‘Good afternoon, how may I be of assistance?’

I have no idea how the other partner pitched to the client, or what the decision will be from the client. It’s way too early for that.

What I do know is that sometimes we can lose track of ourselves. I’m not going to go into the subject of ‘Imposter Syndrome’ (check out Em D’Arcy if you want to read up about that). Rather that having others around to encourage us, even though others may be more skilled, can really make the difference.

In life, we can often face challenges. How we handle them, and how we decide to move forward, can define who we are. When dealing with technology items such as the Power Platform, where there’s constant change, it can sometimes feel very daunting, but we still need to push ahead.

Yesterday I was listening to Lisa Crosbie talking about her journey into technology (and canvas apps). As she put it – ‘there is no comfort zone here – you need to find a place to feel comfortable with this level of discomfort, and ride it to be successful’. It’s really so true. It’s not just needing to push ourselves in the traditional way, but to keep up our own confidence in our skills & abilities. With this, we can continue to drive forward, keep on learning, and continue our journey of greatness!

I’m really glad that I was able to do this, and hope that I can keep this with me. By doing so, I’ll be able to continue along my own journey.

Have you ever had a time when a challenge seemed insurmountable? How did you cope with it? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!