Enable Early Access Wave 1 2023 | Power Platform

February 6, 2023 priyeshwagh777 Power Platform Admin Center early access, enable early access, power apps, Power Platform

Like every 6 months, enabling Early Access is one of the best things to look forward to as Microsoft announces Release Plans! So, here’s how you can enable Early Access for Wave 1 2023 if you are new to managing Power Platform environments!

It is recommended to enable Early Access features only for Sandbox environments as it is not GA [General Availability] yet.

Power Platform Admin Center

Given that you are a Power Platform Administrator / Dynamics 365 Administrator, here’s how you can enable Wave 1 2023 access for your Sandbox environment –

Select the Sandbox environment
Then, see the Updates section where you’ll now see 2021 Wave 1 updates available in Off mode.
On the right hand side, you can select the U
Then, enter the Display Name of the environment correctly in order to ensure you are enabling this on the correct environment.
Once you confirm, you’ll see that the Updates have started applying in the background.
And when you click or refresh, you’ll see what’s being Activated in the background based on how your environment is set up.
It takes a few hours based on the environment for the Wave 1 2023 Updates to be applied.

And you’re set! Here’s Microsoft Learn Documentation for Wave 1 2023 for Power Platform / Dynamics 365: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plans/?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911

Hope this helps!

Here are some Power Automate posts you want to check out –

Thank you!

Do Until action in Power Automate

May 24, 2022 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate control connector in power automate, do until, do until action in power automate, Power Automate, Power Platform

Let’s look at what Do Until Action does in Control connector in Power Automate. In case you are a newbie or have used Power Automate till now to some extent, hopefully you find this post useful and easy to understand.

Explanation

Do Until will run iterations till the condition value is False. Once the value becomes True, it will break out of the loop.

Do Until

Here’s what the Do Until action will do –

If you search for Control connector or the Do Until action itself, you’ll see this.
Now, let’s see what the control parameters are and how we can use the condition to define how the Do Until will run.
Explanation: We have a variable Text Input with value “A“.
And, we want to run the Loop in Do Until till the value of Text Input becomes “A“.

However, if the first iteration of the Do Until itself has Text Input = A, it will still run 1 iteration and then break out of the loop and not skip the loop right away.
Now, in the body of the loop, I’m setting the value of the same variable “Text Input” = “B”.

Here, the result will be the loop will outrun the maximum no. of iterations because the condition of Text Input = “A” was never true except for the first iteration as mentioned in #2 above.

I’ll explain in the next section why it ran for 60 iterations.
And, if we set the Text Input = “A” in the body of the loop, the first iteration will run and in the next iteration, it Text Input = “A” will be true and hence, break out of the loop and not execute any further.

So as mentioned above, the 1st iteration will run and the next iteration will detect the true value and exit out of the loop since the loop was supposed to Run till the value of Text Input = “A“

Now, let’s look at why the iteration ran a certain number of times.

Change Limits

As you noticed by now, there’s a section called as Change Limits in the Do Until connector, let’s see what parameters can be set.

Once you expand the Change limits section, you’ll see 2 parameters – Count and Timeout.
Count will be the maximum count the iterations should run in case the value never becomes true.
Timeout will take the time duration of how much time the loop should continue to run mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 (ISO 8601 format).
At least 1 property is mandatory for you to execute Do Until.

Hope this helps!

Here are some Power Automate posts you want to check out –

Thank you!

Create a Dataverse for Teams environment and add a Canvas App in a Channel

May 22, 2022 priyeshwagh777 CRM with .NET Web Applications Dataverse for Teams, Power Apps in Teams, Power Platform

If you are used to creating environments in your Power Platform Admin Center (https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/) and wondering how you can create a Dataverse for Teams environment, you can check this post –

So by default, you cannot create a Dataverse for Teams or (Microsoft Teams) environment in your Power Platform Admin Center and it looks like this

Go to Teams

Navigate to the Teams itself and we will take it from there –

When in Teams, click on the three ellipses and search Power Apps in the App Store within Teams to install Power Apps.
Now, click on Add.
Once this is Added, you can start creating your first App. This will create the Dataverse for Teams environment which you will later see in Power Platform Admin Center.
Once you start, you need to select at least 1 Channel from the list – without which you cannot proceed to creating your first App in the Power Apps for Teams.
Then, I select one of the channel I want the App to be in and click on Create.
Then, it takes a few moments to provision the same. Meanwhile, the Microsoft Teams environment is created in you Power Platform Admin Center of type Microsoft Teams.
The Org looks like this when you click on it as shown above. (We’ll come to this later)
While in Teams, you’ll probably see this – Ignore it or hit Retry.
Once you click on Retry, you’ll see the same Power Apps main page.
Now, do the below till #13 only if you want to create a new Canvas App in your Dataverse For Teams Environment. Else, you can directly go to the Channel itself to add the app which I’ll show in the next section.
To create Canvas App – Click on Create an App again and this will open the new Power Apps Studio Editor
And because I see the error in #8 above, I again had to select the channel I want to create my App in.
Now this time, I’m given this Editor where I can mention the name of the App.
App will be created and you’ll see it in Recent Apps in your Power Apps in Teams. It may take a few moments for the Recent Apps section to appear for you.
Click on Publish to Teams to make the App live to use.
Here’s how the Recent Apps section will display the App you just created.

Adding an App to a Channel

Now, here’s what you do when you want to add an existing App to the channel in Teams –

Now, let’s say that you have worked on your App and that you want to show it on the Tab in a Teams channel, click on Publish button once you are done with Editing the App.

You’ll see this, click Next if you don’t want to Edit any other details.
Clicking on that, you’ll be asked the channel you want to make this available to.

You’ll see the Dataverse for Teams environments, then click on the + sign. It’ll then show the Tab on which the App will be shown.
App will be published on that Channel.
In the Power Platform Admin Center, under the Environment, you’ll see the App listed as well.

Hope this was useful! Here are some Power Platform posts you want to check out –

Thank you!

Access Customer Insights in your Office 365 tenant

January 30, 2022 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365, Office 365 Administration customer insights, dynamics 365 admin center, Power Platform

As a newbie to Customer Insights myself, I struggled to find where from Office 365 or Dynamics itself do I access Customer Insights!

I tried looking in the Office 365 under All Apps, I couldn’t find it as any other App

Here’s a direct link for the same –

Direct Link

Use this link in the O365 Logged In browser to access Customer Insights – https://home.ci.ai.dynamics.com/ (Bookmark this 😊)

And you’ll be taken to the Home Page which appears like this –

Alternatively

You can also search for Customer Insights and it’ll give you the Log In page as below from which you can click on Sign In –

And the first result will open the Sign In page for Customer Insights if you are already logged in the browser with the O365 account already.

From Admin Portal

Here’s how you access it from the Office 365 Admin Portal.

Go to Admin Center area in M365 Admin Center and click on All admin Centers. It’ll show the list of all Admin Centers in your tenant.
Clicking on Customer Insights there will then open up the Customer Insights and will help you navigate from choosing between Audience Insights / Engagement Insights (preview at the time of this post)

Hope this was helpful! Here are some more Dynamics 365 posts which you might be interested in –

Thank you!!

Call Flow from Webhooks in Dynamics 365 CRM | Power Automate

November 23, 2021 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365, Power Automate call flow from webhooks, flow, Power Automate, Power Platform, webhooks, webhooks in dynamics 365

In case you are wondering if there are other ways to call a Flow apart from just Dataverse connectors, well – There are ways! 😊

Here’s how you can use Webhooks registered on Dynamics 365 CRM to call a Flow in Power Automate using HTTP Request trigger

Pre-Requisites

Given that you already have Admin Access to create Flows with HTTP Request Triggers, you’ll need to have Plugin Registration Tool in case you are not familiar – Download Plugin Registration Tool for Dynamics 365 CRM using PowerShell

Initiate a Flow

Here’s how you start building your Flow –

You must select the HTTP Trigger when you start a new flow. This will be your Flow trigger.
Now, in order to be able to get the URL of the HTTP Trigger which you’ll need, you’ll need to save the Flow first.
And for that, Flow needs to have more than 1 step. So just go ahead and add a variable, maybe. 😊
Once you save the Flow, the URL will be generated which you can copy
Copy this URL and paste it in the Notepad. We’ll come to it later.
It should look like this –

So we’ll come to this later. Let’s keep this handy in clipboard since you’ve copied it anyway and let’s move towards registering the Webhook itself.

Register Webhook in Dynamics 365 CRM

Given that you have Plugin Registration Tool and you are logged in, you can proceed with registering a Webhook in the environment –

In the menu, select Register a Webhook option.
Now, you can start by giving it a name.
Then, in Endpoint URL – copy only till the work invoke
https://prod-131.westus.logic.azure.com:443/workflows/6092c774224e498ebe413f3d7c05a45e/triggers/manual/paths/invoke?api-version=2016-06-01&sp=%2Ftriggers%2Fmanual%2Frun&sv=1.0&sig=gvfm52Mpnhsz4Ew4ufRllNM_VhfC6a-GkCpM7AigPU0

Also, select the Authentication as HttpQueryString
Now, coming the next part, you can start add properties to this –
Green are the Properties, Pink are the Values

https://prod-131.westus.logic.azure.com:443/workflows/6092c774224e498ebe413f3d7c05a45e/triggers/manual/paths/invoke?api-version=2016-06-01&sp=%2Ftriggers%2Fmanual%2Frun&sv=1.0&sig=gvfm52Mpnhsz4Ew4ufRllNM_VhfC6a-GkCpM7AigPU0

Also, in case you are wondering what does the %2F mean – It’s the HTML encoding for a slash symbol “/“
Ref Link: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.ASP

And, the properties should look like below –
Now, you can go ahead and add a Step just like you would do in a Plugin assembly

And then, for example, register a step on Associate. It could be any message.
And, when you Associate a record, example – Assigning a security role to a User –
The Webhook will call the HTTP Request Flow

And if you open the Flow, you can expand the first step and see the Detailed outputs
You can copy the above Outputs and use this to generate Schema for the HTTP Trigger so that you can use it further in the Flow

And this is how it will be generated

Hope this helps!

Here are some Power Automate posts you want to check out –

Thank you!

Install On-Premise Gateway from Power Automate or Power Apps | Power Platform

October 31, 2021 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft PowerApps, Power Automate on premise gateway, on-prem gateway, power apps, Power Automate, Power Platform

Here’s your summary to understand what are On-Prem Gateways in Power Automate and how you can set them up.
The same can be done from Power Apps as well (https://make.powerapps.com/)

So let’s see how you can set it up and get started. This post is for beginners who are looking to install an on-premise gateway. So this should be fairly simple process! 😊

Create an On-Prem Gateway in Power Automate

Here’s how you can create an On-Prem Gateway in Power Automate

Expand the Data section and look for Gateways. Then, when you go in Gateways, you will see + New gateway button.
Then, you’ll be taken to a new webpage (https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-gb/downloads/). Here’s you’ll be able to Download an on-prem Gateway
Once you click on Download, it’ll start downloading the Installer on your machine.

It’ll complete, then you can simply open it to start installing.
Once you begin the installation, choose where the Gateway folder path should be.
Then, click Install.

And it’ll install and will take a few moments.
Once completed, it’ll ask for the email address (or rather username needed to install the Gateway)
Further, authentication will take place as below (in case you have MFA enabled, that will be occur too)
And, it’ll Sign you in.
Once in, it’ll ask if this is a migration or the first time setup.
Since I’m installing it for the first time, I’ll choose the first option as this is a fresh install.
Upon clicking Next, I’ll be asked to set Properties for the gateway.
So, to identify the machine, I’ll select a name with which I can identify and then enter a Recovery Key which I will store safely with me.
Then, click Configure.
It’ll take a few moments to configure.
And now, you’re done in a few moments. Finally, the Gateway is now installed.

Configuration & Info

Given that your Gateway is now installed, you can always go in the File Explorer where you set it up and open the below app

If you wish to check the configurations in detail, you’ll need to Sign In again

And in Power Automate, you’ll see the Gateway is listed.

And if you open it up, you’ll see the high-level details and status of it.

Here are some Power Automate posts you want to check out –

Thank you!

Admin Center URLs under M365 – Power Platform, Teams, SharePoint, Power BI

June 17, 2021 priyeshwagh777 D365 Admin Center, Office 365 Administration admin center url, D365 Admin Center, dynamics 365 administration, Power Platform, Power Platform Admin Center

Here’s a quick summary of the Admin Center URLs of each of these Dynamics 365 / Power Platform Admin Centers –

All Admin Centers under M365 Admin Centers

Here’s the link to all Admin Center under your O365 tenant based on your subscription and your Role in the tenant – https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?source=applauncher#/alladmincenters

Power Apps / Power Automate / Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) / Dynamics 365

Here’s how you can access the Power Platform Admin Center

http://admin.powerplatform.com/ – It will redirect to –
https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/

From here, you can access the D365 Environments

Power BI Admin Portal

Here’s the URL for the Power BI Admin Portal – https://app.powerbi.com/admin-portal

It’ll open up the Admin Portal which looks like this

SharePoint Admin Center

Here’s how you can check the link of the Admin Center for SharePoint – https://cft158-admin.sharepoint.com/

So basically, https://[domain]-admin.sharepoint.com/

Here, domain is the one that you created while creating the tenant. Example: you didn’t add a custom domain and your domain then look like this in your username admin@[cft158].onmicrosoft.com

And it will look like this –

Teams Admin Center

Here’s a link to the Teams Admin Center and it’ll look like below- https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/dashboard

Hope this was useful.

Here are some more D365 / Power Platform Admin related posts which might be helpful –

Thank you!

New App Designer for Model-Driven Apps | Power Platform

June 15, 2021 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft PowerApps model driven apps, power apps, Power Platform

The new Model Driven App Designer experience has been enabled and has been doing the rounds for a few days now. Here’s my take on the same to demystify and bring forward a quick example of a Model-Driven App capabilities.

I’ll keep enriching this post in the future as more enhancements come to this new experience! As of now, this is in preview, so kindly keep a note of that!

Let’s review further!

Create a new Model-Driven App

Here’s how you go about creating the new Model-Driven App using the new App Designer –

In your https://make.powerapps.com/ portal, create a new Solution and then go inside the Solution to create a New Model Driven App as shown below
Then, select the Modern App Designer (Preview)

And give it a suitable name.

Editing the SiteMap in the New Model App Designer

Here’s how you go about adding new Entities to the SiteMap in the new Model App Designer experience. Navigation section

I can click on New Page to start adding my first Page. Out of a Dashboard and Table, I’ve chosen to add a Table.
Now, if you look at the right hand-side of the page, you should be able to select what you want to add here.

And I’ll select Account Table.
I’ll also rename the Title to to Customers.
Now, I look at the left hand side, my App begins to take shape and I can then also change the Group and Area names like you would do in a Site Map.
I’ve also renamed the Area to Sales now.

Pages

Now, let’s see what all Components can be added to the App. Pages is where you can either add Entities directly or edit the ones which you added in the Navigation section above.

Now, if you go to the Pages section, you’ll be able to expand into the navigation and choose the components yourself.
Now, if you select the Account form (as selected in the step above), look on the right hand side to be able to select which all Forms you want to add to the App. If you don’t select anything, all forms will be selected by default.
Now, let’s select a couple of Forms.

And those will be added.
Same goes for Views as well. I’ve added 2 Views as shown below

Note: Ideally, the WYSIWYG Preview should show only the components I added, but it shows me everything. Perhaps, this is work in progress.

Along with that, there are Known Limitations at this point since this is in Preview.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/powerapps/maker/model-driven-apps/app-designer-overview?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911#known-limitations

Data

Also, if you expand data, as of now only the ones added to you app is shown. Nothing much happens here. I’ll update this area once more features are added in the near future.

Hope this post was useful!

Here are some more useful posts you might want to check –

Thank you!

Rating Control to represent data from Dataverse in a Canvas Power App | Power Platform

December 16, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft PowerApps canvas power apps, common data service, Dataverse, input controls in canvas power app, Power Platform, rating control

Although, you can use Text based controls to represent data as is in a Canvas Power App. So why not go an extra mile to make it look more intuitive.

Scenario

Let’s say there are Accounts and you have some kind of Compliance Ratings on them to represent compliant they are based on certain criteria. Could be a Numeric value or Decimal value. But Rating Control represents only in Numeric i.e. Whole Numbers.

So, for this example, I’m using a Rating field which is of type Whole Number in Dynamics 365 on Account entity.

And the complete Dataset looks like this in Dynamics 365 / Dataverse.

Note: I tried with Decimal but it rounded the values hence, sticking to Whole Number.

Rating Control

Let’s say below is the Gallery and you want to show Ratings in the form of stars instead of traditional numeric values.
Now, let’s use Rating Control below the Names of the Accounts to show the Rating values. Select the first Row once you connect to the Common Data Service i.e. CDS / Dataverse Data Source and select the entity you want to populate it with. In this example, we are using Accounts. So my Gallery is populated with Accounts records.
Select the first record and navigate to Insert tab and look for Input controls as shown below

Now, look for Rating control.
Once you select Rating, it’ll appear iteratively since it’ll be applied “For Each” of these records in your Gallery control.
I’ve just rearranged them under the name to make them look proper.
Let’s make it Read Only by changing the behavior, so that the Users don’t accidently touch and set a value during Runtime. Although, this won’t affect the actual data but the representation will be incorrect in that case.
Also, the Max will represent the length of your Rating whereas the Default value are kept to 0 in case the field value is not set at Source. (I think 1 would still be misrepresenting)
Now, I’ll connect this Control to the Data Source’s field i.e. Rating field on the Account entity that represents the Rating value.
On the Default, I’m setting ThisItem.Rating where ThisItem represents the Row of the Account i.e. the Account record itself and Rating is the field in Dynamics 365’s Account entity which we saw in the scenario above.
And that’s it. You can Save and Publish your App and Run it.

Rating values

Now that we’ve added the Rating Control, let’s Run our App and see how it represents the data from your Accounts entity.

And the Ratings represent the below data –

Hope this was useful!

Here are some more Canvas Power Apps posts you might want to check –

Thank you!!

There are missing dependencies. Install the following solutions before installing this one: “Active” | Connection References missing in Power Platform Solution

October 14, 2020October 14, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft PowerApps, Power Automate, Power Platform, Power Platform Admin Center Power Platform, Power Platform Admin Center, solutions, unmanaged solution import

While importing and Unmanaged Solution into another environment, you must’ve come across these error messages like “There are missing dependencies. Install the following solutions before installing this one: “Active”“

Now, there are various factors as to why this error is seen. I’ll try to cover one of them. Missing Connection References! Let’s take a look.

So, out of other reasons, one could by that there are some Flow’s Connection References that are not yet added to the Solution when it was exported out.

Error on Import

Let’s say you trying to import this Unmanaged Solution in an environment.

This is your Source Solution which you want to Export and Unmanaged and Import into other environment.
You see the following error on Import.
Now, there are many other reasons why you are getting this error. But, in this case, it’s about missing Connection References from the Source Solution

Adding Connection Reference

In my case, it was missing adding the Connection References in the Source Solution, so here’s what I did –

Go to the Add existing in your source Solution
Look for Connection Reference (preview)
When I add that, I can select what all Connection References are available to add.
Here, you’ll have to select all those Connection References which you have utilized in your Solution Components.
To understand more on Connection References, here’s a post by Alex Shlega’s posts on Connection Reference – https://www.itaintboring.com/powerapps/connection-references/
When you click that, it’s added behind the scenes. Now, export the Unmanaged Solution again.

Re-Importing into Source Instance

Now, In your Source Instance, re-import this newest Unmanaged Solution.

Now, importing the 1.0.0.2 version, you’ll see no issues.
And when you click next, you’ll be asked to Create a Connection right away
In this example, I’m supposed to create a CDS (Current Environment) connection. Because that’s what I had selected as a Connection Reference while exporting from the Source Instance.

Skipping a few intermediate steps. My connection is created as below.
Going back to the Import tab where I was importing the Solution, I’ll just refresh as directed.
Any my Connection is available.
I can just continue to Import as usual and it’ll be imported.