Few points on UTCNow and FormatDateTime – Power Automate / Dataverse


Recently we wrote a flow that will run daily once and will pick all the tasks due in the last 24 hours i.e. schedule end date less than equal to utcNow() and greater than equal to addDays(UTCNow(),-1)

Interestingly we observed one of the task records not picked.

The scheduled end date on the task record was – 2024-07-22T20:00:00Z

And for the flow the filter condition was –

scheduledend le 2024-07-23T20:00:35.5173871Z and scheduledend ge 2024-07-22T20:00:35.5173943Z

If we look at the date for the greater than equal condition, we can see that the seconds part is 35, the exact time when the List rows step would have run, and in case of that particular task record is 00, so it was not picked.

Then we applied the below formatDateTime function, excluding the time part.

(scheduledend le ‘@{formatDateTime(utcNow(),’yyyy-MM-dd’)}’ and scheduledend ge ‘@{formatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(),-1),’yyyy-MM-dd’)}’ and _regardingobjectid_value ne null and statecode eq 0)

Again we saw few tasks not picked,

The records that were not picked had scheduledenddate as

  • 2024-07-25 18:00:00.000
  • 2024-07-25 19:00:00.000

And as per new condition

scheduledend = ‘2024-07-24’ which essentially was

scheduledend = ‘2024-07-24 00:00:00.0000’

Eventually we updated the flow’s Filter Rows condition to include only the hour and minutes, ignoring the seconds/milliseconds because of which we got the issue in the first place.

(scheduledend le ‘@{formatDateTime(utcNow(),’yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm’)}’ and scheduledend ge ‘@{formatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(),-1),’yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm’)}’ and _regardingobjectid_value ne null and statecode eq 0)

One more example for more clarity –

Below we are creating a contact record and setting values for 3 date time fields, UTC1, UTC2, UTC3.

  • UTC1 = utcNow()
  • UTC2 = formatDateTime(utcNow(),’yyyy-MM-dd’)
  • UTC3 = formatDateTime(utcNow(),’yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm’)

The values for those fields inside CRM’s form –

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The corresponding values within the Dataverse/ CRM’s database (UTC) –

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Hope it helps..

Author a note before saving the form – Timeline (Dynamics 365 / Dataverse)


This feature added to Timeline control allows us to take notes even before creating/saving the record/form.

Select the Timeline control, then Notes properties, and check the “Enable to author a note before saving the form” option.

Save and publish the change.

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Before –

Now after enabling the author note before saving option, we can see the option to create a note enabled on the create form.

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We can enter the details and also upload an attachment.

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On Saving the record, we can see the notes added to the record.

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Also, check

Hope it helps..

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Set an app (Model-driven or Canvas App) as a startup app – Power Apps Mobile


Microsoft has introduced a new feature, through which we can now specify a particular app as a start-up app, that will open up when we launch the Power Apps mobile, instead of waiting for the home page / or selecting it from favorites.

Below we can select the option Open at Startup to specify the Customer Service Hub app as the startup app as an example.

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Or we can swipe left to mark an app as “Startup App

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We can see an icon next to the app.

Now launching the Power Apps mobile app will directly open the Customer Service Hub app.

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Using the Remove from startup option we can remove it as the startup app

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We can only have one app set as a startup app, if we try setting up another app as a startup we get the notification that it will replace the existing app.

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Get all the details here

Hope it helps..

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Mobile Offline Profile – Select columns to be downloaded (Dynamics 365 / Model-driven apps)


With this new feature (preview) now we can specify the columns to be downloaded on mobile devices for offline use.

Select edit for the Model-driven app.

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Select Settings and select an existing offline profile or create a new profile.

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Select a new table or an existing table for the profile, we can see the Manage Columns option for it.

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We can see key columns already selected as part of Required Columns.

We can select columns from the other columns section for our offline profile. The fewer the columns the faster the app will download the data for offline usage.

One point to note is that we get this option only from the Maker Portal not from the Power Platform Admin Center.

Hope it helps..

Perform Age calculation using Formula Columns in Dataverse / Dynamics 365


Below we have created a new field of Data Type Formula and Formula Data Type as Whole Number

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Specify the following formula.

RoundDown(DateDiff(birthdate, UTCNow(), TimeUnit.Days) / 365.25, 0)

  • DateDiff calculates the difference in days between birthdate and current UTC Date.
  • Dividing by 365.25 takes care of converting the days to years, considering the leap year into account.
  • Roundown takes care of rounding the result to a nearest integer.

Below we see the field in action.

UTC current date is 10th Wednesday July 2024 for the below example.

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Also checkout the helpful video –

and the forum – https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Dataverse/Calculating-age-in-CDS-entity/td-p/495528

Hope it helps..

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Using Homogenous Batch / Bulk operation messages for improved performance – Data Migration / Dataverse


As we all are aware Microsoft has introduced Bulk Operation messages in the platform. Now we could use the same in our SSIS Package that uses KingswaySoft’s SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365 by using the Homengeneous Batch Operation Messages option in the CDS / CRM Destination Component Editor.

Let us first use the data spawner component to generate sample data for a custom table for which we just have 2 new custom first name and last name fields created as well as mapped with 100 K records.

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Let us first run the Package with batch size = 1000, threads as 20, multiplexing user = 5, and homogeneous batch operation disabled.

Below is the User Multiplexing option in the Connection Manger.

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Here we have defined 5 different application users.

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Now let us run the same with the Homogenous Batch Operation option checked.

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Below are the findings with different variations of Batch Size, Threads, Multiplexing Users, Homogenous Batch Operation for the – 100K records – Custom table

Batch Size

Threads

Multiplexing Users

Homogenous Batch Operation

Duration (minutes)

1000

20

5

N

5:48

1000

20

5

Y

1:54

500

20

5

N

4:16

500

20

5

Y

1:29

250

20

5

N

3:58

250

20

5

Y

1:38

100

20

5

N

4:47

100

20

5

Y

1:58

500

50

5

N

4:00

500

50

5

Y

1:24

We can see huge performance improvements while using Bulk Operations (Homogenous batch option) for our custom table, with threads around 20 and multiplexing users as 5. Increasing the number of multiplexing users will provide further performance improvement here.

Now let us run it against the Contact table and this time we take 10K as a sample instead of 100K as a sample.

10K records Contact table

Batch Size

Threads

Multiplexing Users

Homogenous Batch Operation

Duration (minutes)

500

1

1

N

25:26

500

1

1

Y

42:14

100

1

1

N

24:34

100

1

1

Y

36:06

100

5

1

N

21:56

100

5

1

Y

16:45

100

10

1

N

6:59

100

10

1

Y

12:54

100

10

2

N

6:14

100

10

2

Y

11:28

100

10

5

N

3:26

100

10

5

Y

9:36

100

15

5

N

2:56

100

15

5

Y

9:57

100

20

5

N

2:34

100

20

5

Y

10:17(Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

1000

20

5

N

5:30 (Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

1000

20

5

Y

5:02 (Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

500

20

5

N

4:20(Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

500

20

5

Y

2:36 (Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

100

20

1

N

18:00

(Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

100

20

1

Y

11:20

(Ran into a server-side throttling error.)

With the higher Batch size along Threads + Multiplexing users + Homogenous Batch Operation message option, we could get a good performance improvement, however, we can see that we ran into server-side throttling errors on increasing the batch size. So with tables having a higher number of fields/relationships, we need to be more careful than a custom/table with fewer relationships and fields

[CDS Destination] Warning: An exception has occurred while processing the service request, the same request will be attempted again immediately. KingswaySoft.IntegrationToolkit.DynamicsCrm.WebAPI.WebApiServiceException: The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server. (Error Type / Reason: KeepAliveFailure, Detailed Message: The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.)

[CDS Destination] Warning: A server side throttling is encountered, the same request will be retried after 5 minutes (as instructed by the returned throttling error message from the server). KingswaySoft.IntegrationToolkit.DynamicsCrm.WebAPI.WebApiServiceException: The remote server returned an error: (429) . (Error Type / Reason: 429, Detailed Message: {“error”:{“code”:”0x80072321″,”message”:”Combined execution time of incoming requests exceeded limit of 1200000 milliseconds over time window of 300 seconds. Decrease number of concurrent requests or reduce the duration of requests and try again later.”}})

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More on the Homogenous Batch Operation option – https://www.kingswaysoft.com/blog/2023/11/29/Use-Homogeneous-Batch-Operation-Messages-for-Greater-DataverseCRM-Writing-Performance

Hope it helps..