A simple implementation using Azure Functions, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft PowerApps, Dynamics CRM and SendGrid


Let us  implement a simple scenario where we create a lead record in CRM which then talks with Flow (and Power App).

The Flow calls an Azure Function (Custom API) that sends mail to the lead’s email address using SendGrid

1) Let us create an Azure Function that uses SendGrid to send email to the lead’s email address.

Login to Azure Portal and create a new Function App.

https://portal.azure.com

Let us create a Function using Generic Web Hook CSharp template

To keep it simple let us only enable GET method. Go to Integrate tab and in Allowed HTTP Methods Select Selected Methods and check GET.

Also set mode as Standard and Authorization Level as anonymous, which means we do not need a API Key to be passed as query parameter to talk with the function.

Now let us add a new Output

Select SendGrid as the template

Click on Save.

Here we would need to define SendGridApiKey.

Go to SendGrid portal and create a free account over there

https://sendgrid.com

Create and API Key and copy it’s value.

Now go to Application Settings of the Function App and set this key value with SendGridApiKey as the key name.

Now let us go back to our code and update it to work with lead object and Mail class which would be used for sending email using SendGrid API.

Here first we are referring the SendGrid assembly, then getting fullname and email from query string and then creating Mail object.

Save and check the log if the compilation succeeded or not.

Testing our Function.

We can see the mail in the mail box.

This completes our first part.

2) Now let us create the Swagger definition for it which we will use in Power Apps and Microsoft Flows for using this Azure Function as Custom API.

Select our function and click on API definition.

Click on Function.

Update the generated API Definition Template with query parameter details and also test it.

As it is running successfully, click on Export to Power Apps + Flow

This opens up the new section that details the steps we need to follow for using our Azure Function with Power Apps and Microsoft Flow.

There click on Download button.

Click on Go to PowerApps

It opens up the PowerApps portal (asks for log in) and opens the New Connection page.

https://web.powerapps.com

Upload the JSON Definition file for our Azure Function, provide name and description and click on Next.

Click on Create.

Let us quickly test our new connection.

Click on New App in our PowerApps web portal.

Select PowerApps Studio for Web. Let us create a Blank App Phone.

Add a new Data Source and select our Azure Function there.

To get the API Key go to our function and expand API Definition Key.

It works properly.

3) Now let us move to our last step, wherein we use it inside Microsoft Flow and integrate it with Dynamics CRM.

The good thing is to configure the same for Microsoft Flow, we do not have to do any extra step as both Microsoft Flow and PowerApps share the same connection infra.

Go to Microsoft Flow portal

https://flow.microsoft.com/

We can find our Custom API already added there.

Let us create a new flow. Start with Dynamics 365.

When a record is created. Select Organization Name and Leads as the entity and click on Add an Action.

Search for our Custom API.

Select LastName and Email as Dynamic Content from the lead record created.

Click on Create Flow to create the flow.

Unfortunately, we get the below error

Let us go back to our Swagger Definition and update it.

We have updated it as following

Let us quickly test it, import it in Power Apps as new connection and come back to our Flow.

Edit the connection there and specify the API Key as we had done earlier inside Power Apps and update it.

Open Flow and quickly add the required steps and click on Create Flow.

We have successfully created our flow. Now let us test it.

Let us create a new lead record

Our flow runs and sends the mail

That’s it we are done with our simple implementation. The main purpose of this post was to show the integration possibilities which could help us design and implement real world complex scenarios.

Hope it helps..

How to – Post a JSON body in Swagger


Recently working with an Azure Functions , we had to define its REST Signature using Swagger to be able to use it within PowerApps.

The Azure Function expected the code query parameter basically the apiKey for the function and JSON Body with custom object named Lead having following properties as POST method.

  • topic
  • fullname
  • email

This is how we’d define our Lead Object and pass it as one of the parameters in the body.


swagger: '2.0'
info:
title: mycrmfunctionapp.azurewebsites.net
version: 1.0.0
host: mycrmfunctionapp.azurewebsites.net
basePath: /
schemes:
- https
- http
paths:
/api/MyLeadWebHook:
post:
operationId: /api/MyLeadWebHook/post
produces:
- application/json
consumes:
- application/json
parameters:
- name: Lead
in: body
description: lead object
required: true
schema:
$ref: '#/definitions/Lead'
description: >-
Replace with Operation Object
#http://swagger.io/specification/#operationObject
responses:
'200':
description: Success operation
security:
- apikeyQuery: []
definitions:
Lead:
description: Lead Object
properties:
fullname:
type: string
description: full name
topic:
type: string
description: topic
email:
type: string
description: topic
required:
- fullname
- topic
- email
securityDefinitions:
apikeyQuery:
type: apiKey
name: code
in: query

We can use the Swagger Editor built-in with Azure Functions or http://editor.swagger.io/#/ to edit and test our Swagger.

Hope it helps..

Calling Azure Functions (GenericWebHook-Csharp) from CRM


In our previous post, we created a simple Azure Function using a free account. (1-hour limitation).

https://nishantrana.me/2017/04/26/starting-with-a-simple-hello-world-azure-functions/

In this post, we’d use our trial Azure account to create a Function App for which we will configure Web Hook trigger and it outputs to Queue and Azure Blog Storage.

We will call this Function from Plugin on Post Create of Lead in CRM Online and pass Lead details to it. This detail will be then passed to Queue and a file inside Azure Blog Storage as Output from the Function.

Open the Azure Portal

https://portal.azure.com

Select Function App.

Create the Function App.

Click on + for Functions to create a new Function.

We’d select GenericWebHook-Csharp template here.

This creates a new Function nme MyLeadWebHook and it has mode set to Webhook and type as Generic JSON.

We can define Post as the only allowed method to call this function as shown below.

Update the code for the function by defining the Lead Object and deserialization logic as shown below.

#r is syntax for referencing the library. Here Newtonsoft.Json library is being referenced for deserialization.

Save and Run to check if it has compiled successfully or not. Click on Test tab to test the function by passing the JSON in the request body.

We can see below that our function has run successfully.

This finishes our Web Hook trigger part. Now let us define the Queue Output to it.

Select Integrate and click on New Output.

Select Azure Queue Storage template here.

Name the queue as leadqueue. This will automatically create a queue name leadqueue.

The parameter name here is outputQueueItem. We will update our code to pass the lead details to this parameter.

Before we update the code for our function let us add new output which saves the Lead details to a text file. Click on new output and select Azure Blog Storage.

Here outputBlob is the parameter to which we need to provide the lead details. In the path outcontainer is the name of the container within Blob and rand-guid generates a random guid for the file name. Here we have added the extension .txt.

Now we have our outputs defined, so let us go back to our code for the function and update it to pass values to both the output parameter one for queue and other for the blob.


#r "Newtonsoft.Json"

using System;
using System.Net;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
public class Lead
{
public string Topic { get; set;}
public string FullName { get; set;}
public string Email { get; set;}
}

public static async Task<object> Run(<span class="hiddenSpellError" pre="" data-mce-bogus="1">HttpRequestMessage</span> req, TraceWriter log, </object>
IAsyncCollector<Lead> outputQueueItem, TextWriter outputBlob)
{
log.Info($"Lead Information Recieved");

string jsonContent = await req.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
var lead = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Lead>(jsonContent);

log.Info($"Lead named {lead.Topic} created for {lead.FullName} with email id {lead.Email}");

// add to queue
await outputQueueItem.AddAsync(lead);

// write to a text file in azure blog storage
outputBlob.WriteLine($"Topic: {lead.Topic}");
outputBlob.WriteLine($"Full Name: {lead.FullName}");
outputBlob.WriteLine($"Email: {lead.Email}");

return req.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, new { message = "Lead Information Recieved" });
}

To test the code click on Test and select Run

Click on Monitor tab for the Function and select the log created for our test run. We can see the values for the parameters in the invocation details section.

Now let us write a plugin that runs on Post Create of lead and calls this Function App.

First let us get the URL for our function app. Go to Function and click on Get Function URL.

Our Function URL –

The code parameter is the Key that should be passed while calling the above URL.

Keys tab is where we can configure out Keys.

Below is code for our plugin.


using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Json;
using System.Text;

namespace MyTestPlugin
{

public class Lead
{
public string Topic { get; set; }
public string FullName { get; set; }
public string Email { get; set; }
}

public class MyPluginClass : IPlugin
{
public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
try
{
// Obtain the execution context from the service provider.
IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));

// The InputParameters collection contains all the data passed in the message request.
if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") && context.InputParameters["Target"] is Entity)
{
// Obtain the target entity from the input parameters.
Entity entity = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];

using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
// get the lead details
var myLead = new Lead();
myLead.Topic = entity.Attributes["subject"].ToString();
myLead.FullName = entity.Attributes["fullname"].ToString();
myLead.Email = entity.Attributes["emailaddress1"].ToString();

DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(Lead));
MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, myLead);
var jsonObject = Encoding.Default.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());

var webClient = new WebClient();
webClient.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = "application/json";

// our function key
var code = "2QYP6xwCswMNmzJDFJdDE65ed1PdNBOj5Wlu4LbSpeSjs/58h1KLbg==";
// the url for our Azure Function
var serviceUrl = "https://mycrmfunctionapp.azurewebsites.net/api/MyLeadWebHook?code=" + code;

// upload the data using Post mehtod
string response = webClient.UploadString(serviceUrl, jsonObject);
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException(ex.Message);
}
}
}

}

Let us create our lead record in CRM and test our Azure Function.

We can check the Monitor tab for our Function and check the logs and can see the Lead Information added to queue and also a text file created from our output parameters.

Our text file in the container.

Hope it helps..

How to – Use WebClient to call external service from CRM Online Sandboxed Plugin (HTTP POST and JSON)


Sharing a sample code that can be used to send JSON data using POST to an external service inside CRM Online Plugin. As plugin runs in sandbox mode we cannot reference Newtonsoft’s JSON.NET library http://www.newtonsoft.com/json. The other option could be to use ILMerge, which isn’t that elegant.

Here, basically we are passing some information related to lead to an external service on Post Create of it.

</p>
<p>using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;<br />
using System;<br />
using System.IO;<br />
using System.Net;<br />
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Json;<br />
using System.Text;</p>
<p>namespace MyTestPlugin<br />
{</p>
<p> public class Lead<br />
 {<br />
 public string Topic { get; set; }<br />
 public string FullName { get; set; }<br />
 public string Email { get; set; }<br />
 }</p>
<p> public class MyPluginClass : IPlugin<br />
 {<br />
 public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)<br />
 {<br />
 try<br />
 {<br />
 // Obtain the execution context from the service provider.<br />
 IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));</p>
<p> // The InputParameters collection contains all the data passed in the message request.<br />
 if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") &amp;&amp; context.InputParameters["Target"] is Entity)<br />
 {<br />
 // Obtain the target entity from the input parameters.<br />
 Entity entity = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];</p>
<p> using (WebClient client = new WebClient())<br />
 {<br />
 var myLead = new Lead();<br />
 myLead.Topic = entity.Attributes["subject"].ToString();<br />
 myLead.FullName = entity.Attributes["fullname"].ToString();<br />
 myLead.Email = entity.Attributes["emailaddress1"].ToString();</p>
<p> DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(Lead));<br />
 MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();<br />
 serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, myLead);<br />
 var jsonObject = Encoding.Default.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());</p>
<p> var webClient = new WebClient();<br />
 webClient.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = "application/json";<br />
 var code = "key";<br />
 var serviceUrl = "https://xyz.azurewebsites.net/api/mylead?code=" + code;</p>
<p> // upload the data using Post mehtod<br />
 string response = webClient.UploadString(serviceUrl, jsonObject);<br />
 }<br />
 }<br />
 }<br />
 catch (Exception ex)<br />
 {<br />
 throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException(ex.Message);<br />
 }<br />
 }<br />
 }<br />
}<br />

Hope it helps..


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Starting with a simple Hello “World” Azure Functions


Hi,

In this post we’d have a quick look at the Azure Functions

Azure Functions can be simply defined as – Code and Event. Basically, we’d have an event on which our code will execute. We can create a function pipeline wherein one function acts as a trigger to another function which then triggers the next action passing the corresponding output.

Azure Functions are easy to write, we can write them inside our Azure Portal or can write in them using command line tooling or Visual studio and easily upload them.

They can be easily bind to existing services like SendGrid, OneDrive, DropBox etc.

And the most important aspect is the Pay only for what you use. Azure Functions comes with monthly free grant of 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-s of resource consumption per month.

The easiest way to try our Azure Functions is to go to Azure Functions Portal

https://functions.azure.com/

Click on Try It For Free (this doesn’t require setting up Azure Trial or using our existing Azure Subscription).

However, this trial is just for 1 hour.

We’d select Web Hook + API as our scenario and C# as our language and click on create this function.

It will ask as us to choose an auth provider.

After successful authentication, we are presented with the function editor page

We have the function with the below sample code already configure for us. It basically looks for name parameter in either as query parameter or request body and append Hello to it as response.

Click on Run to test it.

Below we have passed Nishant Rana as the value for the query parameter name.

Clicking on the Get Function URL provides us with the url of this particular Funtion.

We can test it in browser or can use any of the extensions like Postman, Advanced Rest Client etc.

View files shows us all the files

Clicking in Integrate presents us with the option to configure the trigger for the function as well as option to define output for it

We can update our Azure Function to update only the Post request as show below.

We can define an output for this function by clicking on New Output.

As we are using free account we’d see many of the options disabled.

Manage section shows us the Key associated for this function.

It is the same key that is being used in the function url

To add a new function we can click the plus button.

Below are the different Function Template that are available.

Again, we have most of the options disabled as we are using free account.

As a next step, we’d create a free Azure account and create function that does something more meaningful.

Meanwhile –

Hope it helps..

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{No Code Approach} Generic framework to delete all child records when a parent record is deleted in Dynamics 365 using Microsoft Flows


Interesting implementation using Microsoft Flow

Debajit's avatarDebajit's Dynamic CRM Blog

Here comes another requirement and here comes Microsoft flows again to bail me out. So let’s see what the requirement was and let’s see how can we implement Microsoft flows to achieve these easily which otherwise would have required extensive coding to achieve.

So it goes like this. Basically, there are lot of custom entities in the environment and there are many parent-child relationships in between those entities and they are referential in nature. Ideally parental would have suited for some, however due to the number of parental relationship limitation in Dynamics, they would set it up as referential.

Now whenever a parent record is deleted, the associated child records would be deleted as well. Since this is referential relationship, whenever we delete a parent record, the child records are left orphaned in the system.

Microsoft flows offers you an easy way to delete records in bulk. You could easily…

View original post 1,002 more words

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