PowerApps – Nishant Rana's Weblog

Very simple PCF Control to show Gravatar

The Gravatar or globally recognised avatar is basically an image associated to our email id, which appears besides our comments, blogs posts, sites etc.

https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/

To request an image of Gravatar, we need to first calculate hash of the email id and pass it to the URL

The format à

https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/{HASH}

e.g.

https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/205e460b479e2e5b48aec07710c08d50

https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/images/

Using this information, just created a PCF control for single line of text – email type that will show the Gravatar associated to it. It was more from learning perspective than trying to implement a business case or requirement.

This is how the control looks like within the form.

For another email id, it shows the corresponding avatar image.

For cases where there are no gravatar associated it shows the default image

And as we are using it for the email type of text field, the usual validation provided by the platform works seamlessly.

Get the tool here

https://github.com/nishantranacrm/GravatarPCFControl

Hope it helps..

No capacity available please check with your administrator error while using business card scanner control in Dynamics 365 Sales

We might get below error while trying to use scan business card feature in Dynamics 365 Sales

This is because as pre requisite it requires AI Builder licensing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder/administer-licensing

For enabling the 30 day

free trial login to PowerApps

https://make.powerapps.com/

For the AI Builder, start the free trial.

Once enable we can see the business card scanner control working properly.

Hope it helps..

Perform actions on the host model-driven form from embedded canvas app using ModelDrivenFormIntegration control in Dynamics 365

Let us continue our previous example of embedding the canvas app within the model-driven app and extend it to perform actions on the host form using ModelDrivenFormIntegration control.

This ModelDrivenFormIntegration control acts as a bridge and brings the contextual data from the host model-driven form to the embedded canvas app.

Here we will look at some of the pre-defined actions that can be performed using the ModelDrivenFormIntegration Control.

For this update our existing Canvas App and add the below buttons to the Form control in the canvas app

Save Form

For the Save Form button, first, create the flow (Power Automate) which will update the record.

https://nishantrana.me/2019/11/04/step-by-step-calling-flow-from-powerapps-dynamics-365-ce-crm/

Below we are calling the Flow from Save Form button and passing GUID of the record along with values of name, city and phone field.

Here we have used ModelDrivenFormIntegration’s Item property to retrieve the id of the account record in our formula that is being used to call the Flow (Power Automate)

Result –

updating the address 1 city field by appending text “Redmond” in the embedded canvas app.

save

Refresh Form

The true and false parameter value of the RefershForm method specifies whether to show prompt or not before saving any unsaved data on the host form.

Result –

refreshing the form, shows the address 1 city field of the form in the right section with the appended text “Redmond” as saved earlier.

refresh

Navigate to Main Form

NavigateToMainForm method’s parameters are entity name, form name, record id.

Result –

Here we are opening the same record.

navigatemain

Navigate to View

NavigateToView method’s parameters are entity name and view name.

Result –

Opens the view specified in the parameter

NavigateToView

Open Quick Create Form

NavigateToView method’s parameter is entity name.

Result –

Opens the quick create form of the entity specified in the parameter.

Get all the details here

Hope it helps..

Embedding a canvas app on a model-driven app in Dynamics 365

Let us start with some of the key points about the embedded canvas app

The embedded canvas app is now generally available. During preview.
The embedded canvas app supported sub grid control in preview, which is now no longer available.
The canvas app custom control is only supported for the Unified Interface Web client type. It doesn’t support Phone and Tablet client types.
We can only have 1 canvas app on the form. We can have multiple embedded canvas app but only 1 of them could be enabled.
It is recommended to have an embedded canvas app on a required field else it will not refresh on any change in the data on the host model-driven form.
The embedded app can only be created from the host model-driven form.
The existing canvas app cannot be used as an embedded canvas app.

To create the canvas app custom control, select the controls tab in the Field Properties dialog, and click on Add Control.

Select Canvas app in App Control dialog.

The Canvas app will have Web client selected as default and Phone and Tablet option will be greyed out.
Entity Name shows the name of the field that is associated with it.
App ID will be populated when the app is created.

Clicking on Customize opens the PowerApps Studio.

We can see the canvas app form control added to the canvas app.

We can see the fields for city, name, and phone already added to it.

ModelDrivenFormIntegration is a special control that is responsible for bringing the contextual data from the form to the embedded canvas app.

Using Edit Fields option, we can add, remove, edit, reorder the fields of the data source.

Just for the simplicity let us keep the app as it is.

Click on File à Save à The cloud (Save to PowerApps)

On a successful save, we can see the App ID generated.

Uncheck Display label on the form, save and publish the customization.

Changing the value in the Phone field in the form and saving the form changes the value inside the canvas app form control.

To Edit the canvas form control, we need to follow the same steps, open the field properties, controls tab and click on Customize

After making the changes inside PowerApps studio, save and publish the changes.

The other Dynamics CRM User say poweruser2 will get the below error message when they open the same form if the app is not shared with them.

The app can be shared with specific users, security groups or everyone within the organization. The users should have appropriate security roles to access the entities and also appropriate permissions on the cloud services that are being used as part of the canvas app.

There are no privileges specific to the canvas app within Dynamics 365 CE

To share the app, Navigate to File and select Share option

Here we searched for the user, made him Co-owner and assigned security roles which will give him access to Accounts entity.

We can see the embedded canvas app rendered properly in this case for the poweruser2

In this post, we covered some of the key points about the embedded canvas app along with steps to create, update and share it (although we just used the OOB generated app here), I would recommend to check out the videos by Shane Young to learn about PowerApps and different scenarios that we could implement.

Hope it helps..

Step by Step – Calling Flow from PowerApps (Dynamics 365 CE/CRM)

Let us take a simple example of creating lead to understand how we can call Flow from PowerApps.

TextInput for entering the Last Name, First Name and Email ID.
Button to call Flow.
The label named GUID which will display the GUID of the created lead record.

Now select the button, go to Action menu and click on Flows to create a new flow.

Click on create a new flow.

Select Instant – from blank option

Select PowerApps as the trigger.

Add a new Step – Create a new Record (Dynamics 365)

To create a new record step, specify the Dynamics 365 Organization Name, select Leads as the entity name.

For the Last Name field, click Ask in PowerApps that will generate the parameter to which we will pass the value from our PowerApps.

The generated parameter.

Repeat the above step for the First Name and Email field.

*for Topic field we have passed a hardcoded value.

Save the create step and add a new step “Respond to a PowerApp or flow”

Here we have selected output of type Text

We have added the output parameter as varLeadId and selected leadid as the unique identifier.

Save the Flow and navigate back to PowerApp and select the flow created for our button.

After adding the Flow, the next step is to update the formula to send the field’s value to the flow and also to receive the output from it.

Below will be our formula to pass the text to the flow.

But as we are expecting the GUID in return, we need to update it.

We are using the Set function to set the variable varResponseFromFlow with varleadid output.

Also, we have updated the label field for GUID with the variable

Now let us save the changes and run the PowerApp.

On clicking the button, we can see the GUID updated on the label on the form.

Back in our Dynamics 365 CE, we can see the lead created.

Thus we saw how easy it is to write a PowerApp which interacts with Dynamic 365 CE using Flow. We took a very basic example to understand how things glue, but we can clearly see the potential here to implement complex real-world scenarios with ease.

Hope it helps..

Using PCF Custom Control Builder (XrmToolBox Plugin) to update existing control in Dynamics 365 / PowerApps

A couple of months back I had written my first PCF Control to display GUID of the record, it was more of a hello world kind of thing.

https://pcf.gallery/guid-control/

Well, the code was using Xrm.Page client API which as we know is deprecated.

So, it was time to update it to use context instead.

Out of preview – New Model-Driven form designer (WYSIWYG) in PowerApps

Finally the new model-driven designer is out of preview and available for general use

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-general-availability-of-the-new-model-driven-form-designer/

Since I wrote about it last the few changes that we can see are

New Field button that allows adding Lookup Fields. However I still don’t see the option of Option Set fields there.

Form

Grouping of Components Section

Form

Preview for the components

Form

Looking forward to see all the remaining features that are part of our classic Form Designer like addition of Business Rules, Show Dependencies, Enable Security Roles etc. to be part of the new designer.

Below are the previous blog posts that I wrote about the new model driven apps while it was still in preview –

https://nishantrana.me/2019/08/19/subgrid-quickview-linear-gauge-arc-knob-linear-slider-controls-added-in-new-model-driven-form-designer-wysiwyg-in-powerapps/

https://nishantrana.me/2019/08/05/sub-grid-added-to-the-new-model-driven-form-designer-wysisyg-in-powerapps/

https://nishantrana.me/2019/05/27/few-improvements-in-new-model-driven-form-designer-wysisyg-preview-in-powerapps/

https://nishantrana.me/2018/12/24/the-new-model-driven-form-designer-wysisyg-in-powerapps-for-model-driven-apps-dynamics-365-ce-preview/

Hope it helps..

Subgrid, QuickView, Linear Gauge, Arc Knob, Linear Slider controls added in new model-driven form designer (WYSIWYG) in PowerApps

Recently we were trying out the model-driven form designer and noticed the option of adding new input control to the form in it.

Few days back only I wrote about the addition of Subgrid control, however the limitation was that we couldn’t add new subgrid control. But with the new updates, we can now add new subgrid control along with Quick View and other controls also as shown below.

The other option to configure these controls is from the Controls tab of the field properties dialog box.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/customize/use-custom-controls-data-visualizations

Hope it helps..

Sub-Grid added to the new model-driven form designer (WYSISYG) in PowerApps

Hi,

Microsoft is steadily adding all the essential features to the new model-driven form designer (preview) making it more and more usable and intuitive.

Latest addition is the support for sub-grid as shown below

The properties window for the sub-grid

We can select the view from either the related entities or view from any of the un-related entity (uncheck Related Records check box).

Similarly, we can enable view selectors and can show all the views or selected view as shown below.

We still can’t add new sub-grid to the form in the new form designer, for that we still need to go back to our classic form designer.

Check out below articles for more details –

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/model-driven-apps/form-designer-overview

The new model-driven form designer WYSISYG Editor

Few improvements in the new model-driven form designer.

Hope it helps..

Apply SLA choosing the SLA in the SLA lookup field for the SLA Enabled Entities in Dynamics 365 CE

One of the enhancements that came in SLA (CRM 2016 Update 1), which I feel has got unnoticed by few, is choosing the SLA manually using the SLA lookup field.

As we all know SLA comes already enabled for Case Entity and can be enabled for the below entities

Account, Contact, Order, Invoice, Quote, Opportunity, Lead, Activity Entities.

Basically, the above entities have SLA lookup field already created for them.

We can also Enable SLA for custom entities and activities, which will create the SLA lookup field in it.

Add the field on the form and select the appropriate SLA, and that selected SLA will be applied to that record.

It saves us from defining multiple SLA Items for an SLA to be applied as DEFAULT or to use the entitlements to achieve the same.

Hope it helps..

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