October 2024 - D365 Demystified

Getting Power Platform Tools in Visual Studio

Here’s how you can configure Power Platform Tools in Visual Studio from the Marketplace –

In your Visual Studio, under Extensions, click on Manage Extensions.

Then, search for Power Platform Tools and you’ll find on in the top few results itself which you will be able to identify as highlighted below.
Click to install the “Power Platform Tools for VS 2022“

You’ll need to close Visual Studio for the installation to be proceed.

Then, it’ll continue as a VSIX Installer and continue to install this extension for your VS.

And this will be completed in a few moments.

Once done, when you open Visual Studio back again, you’ll find “Connect to Dataverse” under Tools section in Visual Studio

It’ll ask you to authenticate into your Dataverse environment. This doesn’t work with accounts using MFA – so for this demonstration, I turned off MFA temporarily for my trial environment.

Then, I was asked to select the environment within the tenant.

Now, I was asked to choose the Solution within the selected environment.

Now, I could see all the Tables expanded in the Power Platform Explorer view.

When you minimize, this is what you’ll see. You’ll see all items available to work with.

Next, I’ll demonstrate on registering a Plugin Assembly from Visual Studio Tools and registering a plugin. Watch this space!

Hope this was useful!

Thank you!

Cards in Power Apps can get you to send Adaptive Cards in Teams chats or channels without having to leave Power Platform to make your card!

Yes, till recently I was having a hard time to make an Adaptive Card in the Adaptive Cards Designer which is outside of the context of Dynamics/Dataverse and then embed it into Flow to be sent to a User – until Cards in Power Apps came along!

Let’s see how we can get started with the same and create our first Card and send in a Teams Chat!

Create a Card in Power Apps Maker Portal

Given you have appropriate access to create and view Cards, here’s how you can create your Card in Power Apps Maker portal –

Navigate to Power Apps Maker Portal (https://make.powerapps.com/) and select the right environment with Dataverse in which you want to create your Cards.
When you click on + New Card, Cards will ask you to name it and add a description.
And once you create – you’ll be taken to the Card Studio.
One the left hand side, you can see the menu which you can identify what the Card can be configured to do.
To keep the function of the Card example, simple – I’m only displaying the logged in user name on click of a button.
Notice that on the right hand side, you have different ways to deploy this Card – like in a Teams Chat.
When in Play Mode, you’ll get to use the Card as it would work when deployed (or sent to a User, in this case), notice on the right hand side, you get a way to deploy the Card whether in a Chat as a link or through a Flow.

In this example, I’ll choose a Flow.
Now, it’ll initialize a Flow template with necessary steps.
When ready, it’ll give this template for me to complete the Flow.

Now, in the next section, let’s continue to finish the Flow and send it to an actual user. (Myself 😊)

Sending a Power Apps Card to Teams Chat

Now, let’s work on our Flow to be ready to run –

First step is to Initialize the Card itself with an instance of the Card. Here, we’ll select the Card we just created.
In the second step, you can actually choose who should the Card go out as.
Then, it as ask what should should it post into. I’ve selected Chat with Power Apps since I wanted it to as a personal chat.
Finally, it also needs a recipient – I’ve selected myself here to test it out.
Now, when I run the Flow, I receive a chat message from Power Apps like below –
And it then runs the Card itself! When I click the button as configured, it’ll read the user and display the name.

Here’s the result!