Tag Archives: Power
Monitoring the Power Platform: Dataverse – Continuous Monitoring with Availability Tests
Summary
Continuous monitoring allows enterprises the opportunity to ensure reliable performant services are immediately available to its users. Platforms need to be able to keep up with demand in such a way that its seamless to a user. Systems that become unreliable or unusable are quickly disregarded or abandoned. One sure fire way to ensure uses won’t use a service is if the service is unavailable. To account for this, enterprises looks to service level agreements and business continuity strategies. Part of this strategy includes testing for availability.
Azure Application Insights provides features to allow organizations to quickly report and take action on current and trending availability metrics. This article will review the various tests that can be configured within the service. From there we will go into how the data is and can be collected for analysis. We will look into a use case involving monitoring the Dataverse API. Finally, we wrap with implementing a monitoring strategy to assist with notifications and automation.
Azure Application Insights Availability Tests
Azure Application Insights availability tests come in three distinct groupings. The first, reaches out to a URL from different points around the world. The second, allows for the replay of a recorded user interaction with a site or web based service. Both of these originate from within the Azure Application Insights feature itself, created in the Azure Portal or through the Azure APIs.
The final type of test is a completely custom test. This custom test allows flexibility into how, what and where we test. Due to these attributes, this type of test is ideal and will serve as the test strategy implemented below.
Important Note on web tests:
The web test mechanism has been marked as deprecated. As expected this announcement comes with various feedback. With this in mind, I recommend avoiding implementing web tests
Building Ping Tests
URL Ping Tests with Azure Application Insights are tests that allow the service to make a request to a user specified URL. As documented, this test doesn’t actually use ICMP but sends an HTTP request allowing for capturing response headers, duration timings, etc.
For the Power Platform, this can be useful for testing availability of Power Apps Portals or services utilizing Power Virtual Agents or custom connectors. When configuring the test, conditions can be set for the actual request to the URL. These include the ability to include dependent requests (such as images needed for the webpage) or the ability to retry on an initial failure.
The test frequency can be set to run every five, ten or fifteen minutes from various Azure Data Centers across the globe.
Finally, recommends that the optimal configuration for working with alerts is to set the number of test locations equal to the threshold of the alert plus two.
Building Custom Tests
Continuing down the path of availability tests, the need to expand beyond URL ping tests will eventually come up. Situations such as validating not only uptime but authentication, latency, service health, etc. all could benefit from custom availability tests.
Before building custom tests, let’s look take a closer look at the Availability table within Azure Application Insights.
The Availability Table
The availability table is where our test telemetry will reside, either from URL ping tests or custom testing. The table is designed to allow for capturing if a test was successful, the duration (typically captured in milliseconds with a stopwatch approach), location of the test and other properties. I’ll review this in depth further in the article but for now keep in mind at a minimum we want to capture successfulness, timing and location for each test.
Creating and Deploying an Azure Function(s)
Azure Functions offer an ideal service for hosting out availability tests. Deployable worldwide and resilient, we can quickly modify and publish changes to our tests with minimal effort. Azure Functions also offer a real advantage, the ability to use a timer based trigger similar (actually uses ) or an allowing for ad-hoc test runs.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Click on each image to enlarge for more detail
Triggers
The image above shows two public entry points, one based on the and one based on the TimerTrigger. The HttpTrigger is relatively straight forward allowing for GET and POST messages. The advantage for the use of , function requests can be sent from practically any pillar in the Power Platform, such as Power Apps, Power Automate Flows or Power Virtual Agents.
The TimerTrigger on the other hand is, as expected, set to run on a predefined interval using the . What I like about this approach is we use a well known interface for scheduling tasks utilizing the power of Azure Functions. In the image above the schedule is hard coded but this can be configurable using settings contained within the Azure Function or elsewhere.
The approach laid out here provides another major advantage. This approach is decoupled from the Power Platform and will not be impacted or hindered by the very platform we are testing for availability!
Dataverse Requests
The decision how best to connect and report on Dataverse availability is completely up to the business requirements that need to be met. What I would recommend is to authenticate and perform a command confirming not only availability but authorization. Below is an example of requesting an OAuth token and performing two requests, the WhoAmI and RetrieveCurrentOrganization actions.
This helps confirm that the service principal used is valid and can return responses from the Dataverse. In my example, I had two main requirements for working with the Dataverse: connect using a service principal and avoid any SDK dependency. The such as license modifications or assembly version lock-in. Again, how you implement this is completely up to you.
Location, Location, Location…
Once its been determined what needs to be tested and how to go about testing, the decision on where to test and metric collection still needs an answer. Again, Azure Function comes to the rescue, allowing developers (DevOps engineers cover your ears) to quickly deploy from Visual Studio to locations around the world. That said, ideally are followed.
Measuring latency across regions and continents is natively collected by Microsoft by use of ThousandEyes. The , documented , is a good reference of the average latency between Azure Data Centers when performing actions across the Azure network backbone. Alternatively, you can collect latency and bandwidth information using popular tool, .
Building the Availability Telemetry
Once the application we want to test for availability has been identified and the endpoint connected to, we now need to create the availability telemetry message. As discussed above, the AvailabilityResults table within Azure Application Insights contains columns that can be used to track successfulness of API actions and the locations from which they originated.
For the Dataverse, or in fact any HTTP invoked request, we can also capture headers from the response. This can prove beneficial to gaining insights as well into current API usage as it pertains to limits (e.g. Entitlement Limits) or correlation identifiers. These headers work well in the Custom Dimensions column, a JSON serialized column providing the flexibility needed to add additional data points.
That said at a minimum what I have found most useful for the Azure Application Insights tooling is first coming up with a name for your tests. Once named, setting the Run Location property will be key to grouping the tests regionally. Within Azure Functions is an environment variable called “REGION_NAME” that provides the data center location. Finally, setting the Success property along with the Message is needed to ensure we track uptime.
Optionally, duration can be set and depending on what your requirement is for this will dictate what call timings are captured. In my example I am executing a simple action call and wrapping that in a timer. Taking this duration and comparing it to should provide ample timing metrics.
Reviewing Tests
The messages from our availability tests will reside within the AvailabilityResults table with Azure Application Insights. The messages are summarized and can be drilled into visually using the Availability feature as shown below.
As the image shows, the tests are grouped by name, in this case “Dynamics 365 Availability Test“. Expanding the test we can see the various regions. Once a region is selected we can drill into the scatter plot to see how uptime may have been impacted. Consider the gif below, showing how to add filters to expand the time window searched as well as organization version.
Using the technique described above, we can now see not only when a organization version changed but the beginnings of availability and duration timings.
Custom Availability Tests with the Dataverse API Demo
Below is a link to video including detailed analysis and a demo of working with availability tests within Azure Application Insights. The demo includes setting up the test, deploying to Azure, reviewing logs and creating Azure Monitor alert rules.
Sample Code
Sample code can be found here.
Next Steps
In this article we have reviewed how to use availability tests within Azure Application Insights. We explored creating URL ping tests as well as building custom tests. From there, we designed and published an Azure Function globally to test Dataverse availability.
As shown, not only can the availability tests let us know the uptime of an API or service but is flexible enough to capture data points such as build versions, flow runs, etc. Consider how to use extend the use of this type of testing to further utilize Azure Monitor capabilities such as alerting.
If you are interested in learning more about , which includes a , please contact your Technical Account Manager or Microsoft representative for further details.
Your feedback is extremely valuable so please leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help where I can! Also, if you find any inconsistencies, omissions or have suggestions, .
Index
Planning at the speed of COVID: P3 Adaptive and Power On
It’s not adversity which defines you, but how you respond to it.
GPS and Steering Wheel
Power BI = GPS. Power On = Steering Wheel.
In 2020 we’ve been talking a lot about how important it is to be both intelligent AND agile in the face of unpredictable business conditions. During “normal” times, you can often get away with guessing that tomorrow will resemble yesterday, and simply following your well-worn business map. But 2020 has thrown all of that out the door, and even though 2021 is hopefully kinder, we all know that it will be far from a return to normal.
To survive and thrive in chaos, you have to SEE changing conditions clearly and quickly, but then also ACT – decisively. And taking action is a team sport – everyone needs to know their new targets. They need to believe in them. And they need to know how their actions play into the new overall plan.
Agile Planning, Integrated with Power BI
Register now for our webinar on agile planning
The velocity at which you need to change plans is unheard of now and as such, planning needs to be nimble and continuous. To facilitate this we need tools that enable faster and more collaborative planning. We’ve been using PowerOn for several years now with our clients and it has performed very effectively in this role, resulting in a more effective and efficient planning process as well as organizational gains.
Organizational planning is a holistic exercise. Changes to forecasts and assumptions can have sweeping impacts across the organization. With our solution utilizing Power BI and PowerOn visual planner we can instantly see how changes to our input assumptions and forecast, impacts everything from financials including the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow, to operational functions including inventory, production, headcount, resource load, and training needs.
Planning also cannot exist in a vacuum. We know that as we seek to make planning more agile and continuous we need to make it more collaborative. Of course, in the past, the more collaborative the process, the slower it would be as there would be more versions of the forecast and plans to keep track of and update over time as the actuals changed.
PowerOn’s Visual Planner solution includes a workflow process to review and approve forecasts and add commentary/notes on any data point. This. facilitates a collaborative process that includes input across the organization while not bringing forward movement to a crawl.
The ability to continuously plan and make decisions in an agile, collaborative way is not just a competitive advantage anymore, it is essential to future success.
Want to learn more about how PowerBI and PowerOn can help transform your planning? Please join us on Thursday, December 10th from 12 pm – 1 pm CST for a webinar.
Creating a Custom Connector for Power Apps
Power Automate is one of the essential components that make up Microsoft’s Power Platform. Being a robust and built-in workflow engine, Power Automate can quickly automate workflows while securely connecting cloud-based services with on-premise data. This opens opportunities for optimization of existing data.
When Microsoft decided to shift the previous workflows in Microsoft , Power Automate became more popular as it provides its users with multiple connector APIs. These APIs enable users to connect and communicate with the disconnected applications and systems without coding. Unfortunately, not all connectors are suitable for versatile business needs in today’s world. Luckily, our infographic covers how you can create a custom connector to meet your exact business needs in just 24 easy steps!
Internet Explorer 11 support for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform is deprecated
Effective December 2020, Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 support for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform is deprecated, and Internet Explorer 11 won’t be supported after August 2021.
This will impact customers who use Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform products that are designed to be used through an Internet Explorer 11 interface. After August 2021, Internet Explorer 11 won’t be supported for such Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform products. We recommend that customers transition to Microsoft Edge.
If you have more questions, contact your Microsoft Customer Service representative or Microsoft Partner.
Walter Carlin
Senior Customer Engineer | Dynamics 365 CE | Microsoft Corp.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Monthly Update-March 2021
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform at Microsoft Ignite – March 2-4, 2021
- Connect with experts.
- Engage with your global community.
Access On-Demand content
Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event – April 6, 2021
Get an in-depth look at the new features and capabilities in the 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform on April 6.
Power Apps 2021 Wave 1 Preview Release is now Available | UI features enhancements
The Power Apps Release Wave 1 for 2021 is available for you to enable in your environment ahead of the April rollout.
We have a number of new features that will modernize your end users’ model-driven app experiences.
Check this page on Power Apps blog to learn about few enhancements that will increase productivity for your end users:
Mobile Enhancements:
Modern Experience for End Users
Microsoft Dynamics 365 App for Windows comes with Offline Access in Public Preview
Power Apps Mobile | Introducing Power Apps mobile app’s new look | Public Preview
We announced the public preview of the new app selection and discovery experience for Power Apps mobile. With the new look, there now exists a home page to access your commonly used content and a navigation bar to easily navigate through the app.
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Personalized Home Page experience
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Favoriting and pinning apps to home screen using gesture controls
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Find all your apps in one page
Power Apps Mobile | Run model-driven apps and canvas apps on Power Apps mobile
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When you create an app, or someone shares an app with you—either a canvas app or model-driven app—you can run that app on iOS and Android devices by using Power Apps mobile.
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If you’re on a Windows device, you can only run canvas apps; model-driven apps aren’t supported on Power Apps for Windows.
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If you want to we create an entirely separate icon on our phone that will open your desired app with one click, learn more about this functionality here and more on Microsoft docs website.
Power Apps Mobile | The new search experience for model-driven apps is now also available on Mobile
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In November 2020, usability enhancements and core improvements to relevance search were introduced on the web.
- These additions make information discovery fast and easy.
- We are now bringing this experience to mobile.
- These improvements include:
- A user-friendly search experience and smart suggestions during search.
- Ability to Search from any page in the app.
- Recent searches and recently accessed records will show on the search page
- Suggested results as you type
- Additional Enhancements coming to search in March 2021:
- Results page, Filtering your search results.
With Relevance Search and 2021 release wave 1 preview enabled, you can try out all these capabilities.
Dynamics 365 Sales App | Sales accelerator brings digital scalability within reach
Sales accelerator helps sellers work faster and smarter with:
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A prioritized work list of the next best lead or opportunity
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Allowing to engage through the customers’ preferred channel with integrated email, phone dialer, and a Microsoft Teams channel (coming soon)
- For more technical details, check out our blog to “Enable digital selling with the sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales.”
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) |
V9.1 On-Premises update brings the latest version of Unified Interface
- The Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement Version 9.1 On-Premises is coming in Q2 2021.
- In March 2021, we will publish the dates on when they will become available so you can plan your upgrades.
- This release contains major updates to the Unified Interface with improved performance and a host of new and updated usability features.
- Upgrades from Microsoft Dynamics 365 version 8.2 or Microsoft Dynamics 365 version 9.0 to version 9.1 will be supported for customers to take advantage of the latest version of Unified Interface.
What’s New for Unified Interface in on-premises ?
- Unified Interface uses responsive web design principles to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience for any screen size, device, or orientation.
- Whether you are using a browser, tablet, or phone, you will be able to consume similar experiences.
- With this release, features and improvements that were previously only available online will now also be available on-premises, such as:
- Enterprise Sales usability enhancements
- Improved data management with record sharing, bulk edit and merge capabilities
- Timeline usability enhancements
- Agent productivity enhancements for knowledge capabilities
- Case routing rules
- Advanced Find
- Hierarchy view
- Improved navigation experiences
- Main form dialog editing experience for queue items
- Hybrid experiences like Sharing
- Personal views
Recommendation for D365 On-Premises Customers
- Now is a great time to start planning and preparing to transition On-Premises deployments to Unified Interface for Model-driven apps from the legacy web client, and to take advantage of these major improvements!
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) |
On-premises data gateway February 2021 update is now available
Here are sone of the highlights in the February 2021 update release:
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Azure Cosmos DB connector renamed from DocumentDB to Cosmos DB on Gateway
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Compatible with February PBI desktop
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.Net Framework Update
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Deprecation
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Kerberos single sign-on (SSO) to SAP BW using gx64krb5
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SAML single sign-on (SSO) to SAP HANA using OpenSSL
The following issue has also been resolved:
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In a Flow, when using an action where fields change dynamically if any change was made in the source of the connector, it was necessary to restart the gateway to clear the cache to see the changes.
D365 Online | Deprecations | Most recent deprecations with deadlines in 2021
IE 11 support for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform is deprecated
- In line with already public Microsoft 365 and Azure DevOps announcements, you probably have received a message in the Message Center announcing we will no longer be supporting Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) after August 17, 2021.
- This will impact customers who use Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform products that are designed to be used through an Internet Explorer 11 interface.
- After August 2021, Internet Explorer 11 won’t be supported for such Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform products. We recommend that customers transition to Microsoft Edge.
Low-density headers in model-driven apps won’t be supported with the 2021 release wave 2
- With the upcoming 2021 release wave 2 (public preview in August 2021 and GA in October 2021), the low-density header option, and runtime experience won’t be supported in model-driven app forms.
Form footers in model-driven app won’t be supported with the 2021 release wave 2
- With the upcoming 2021 release wave 2 (public preview in August 2021 and GA in October 2021), form footers won’t be supported in a model-driven app form.
App Source: Deprecation of Attachment Management Add-on for Dynamics 365 using Azure Blob storage
- Attachment Management solution is a popular add-on feature to Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Services to manage notes and email attachments using Azure blob storage.
- Enables business users to optimize use of Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Services storage and retrieve files on-demand through Dynamics 365.
- This solution is built on Dynamics 365 and seamlessly works on Dynamics CRM 2016 and above.
By June 2021, this solution will deprecate from App Source.
- Recommended to move Default Dataverse File storage by providing Consent in Blob storage settings page for the existing Users of this solution.
- Once the Consent accepted by the Customer then all the solution related Create/Update Plug ins will be disabled and start move all the new notes/activity mime attachments to default file storage.
- Product team will start migrating the old attachments to Default File storage in back end.
- Additional details are available here.
Organization data download filters for mobile offline are deprecated
- Effective February 2021, Organization data download filter option that filters the data when you set up mobile offline are deprecated.
- We recommend that you start preparing your organization and move relevant data filters from Organization data download filter to the offline profile option, which lets you determine what data will be available when users work in offline mode.
Once the old filter criteria has been moved to offline profile, you can clear or delete the filters set in Organization data download filter.
TLS RSA cipher suites are deprecated
- Beginning March 1, 2021, customers can only use our standard cipher suites. This change impacts your clients and servers that communicate with our servers, for example, syncing emails from your Microsoft Exchange server, running outbound plug-ins, using native (local) clients to access our servers.
Dynamics 365 Home is deprecated
Dynamics 365 Home users will see notification about the new location and recommendation to change browser bookmarks starting October 1, 2020.
Deprecation of Office365 authentication type and OrganizationServiceProxy class for connecting to Dataverse
- Effective April 2021, the authentication protocol will be retired for all new environments within a tenant.
- Effective April 2022, the authentication protocol will be retired for all new and existing environments within a tenant.
- Effective February 4, 2020, the WS-Trust authentication type that is used by custom clients to connect to Dataverse is deprecated.
- This change affects applications that utilize Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.OrganizationServiceProxy and Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.CrmServiceClient classes for the authentication type of “Office365″.
Regional Discovery Service is deprecated
- Until March 1, 2021, Microsoft will continue to provide support, security, and other critical updates for the regional Discovery Service, but won’t release any additional functionality beyond what has already been announced.
- After March 1, 2021, the regional Discovery Service won’t be available.
Some client APIs are deprecated
- Deprecated Client API: ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx
- Replacement Client API: None
- Comments:
- The ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx page is deprecated and scheduled to be unavailable after October 1, 2021.
- Alternative methods to access global context information will be available before April 1, 2021.
Reminder | For the full list on deprecation check out the
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Updates & Releases
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Manage Updates | General availability deployment
- Check out Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Release Plans to learn more about new features to be released in the release waves.
- After a release wave is generally available, all environments will be automatically turned on to receive mandatory updates which will enable the early access features and the general available features of a release.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online Release
Note:
- The Service Updates for Dynamics 365 online version 9.1 are now available in some regions and coming soon to others.
- To determine which version your organization has applied, check your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online version number.
- Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner, then click About.
- Platform Services
- When creating a canvas app within a solution and viewing the dependencies in the solution, the canvas app was not listed as a dependency.
- The “Call to” and “Call from” fields were empty in the Activity entity grid when used in offline mode. *
- Accessibility
- When creating a new record within a custom entity, the lookup menu did not contain a name label in the Unified Interface.
- On iOS, in the Field Service mobile app, the accessibility screen reader did not read the name or purpose of navigation buttons. *
- Platform Services
- When importing a contact record into a marketing campaign, the import remained in the “transform” stage. *
- Unified Interface
- New records created in the contact sub grid were not displayed in the sub grid. *
- When creating a phone call activity, the activity description was not present in the timeline. *
- The Notes tab in a Booking entity and Timeline tab of a work order continuously loaded. *
Microsoft Dynamics 365 On-premises Updates
Cumulative updates available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 9.0
- Repaired Functionality
- Issue with the Audit Summary view filter not showing correctly.
- White space display issue on editable sub-grid.
- Unexpected error displaying cases on TimeLineWall.
- Upgrade of BulkOperation Activities from v8
Portal Capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Releases
Version Check and Upgrade Information
- To determine the version of a particular portal deployment, please reference to this KB #3166126.
- For instructions on how to upgrade the solutions within Dynamics 365 when a newer version is available, please reference to this KB #3192042.
Latest Portal Capabilities Update-
This release includes only an updated portal host and no solution package updates.
The portal host will automatically be updated to version 9.2.10.19 by Microsoft.
To know the release schedule please check Office 365 message center for release schedule in your geographical region.
The latest Portal host Version 9.2.10.x resolves the following issues and more:
- Related Record Filtering defined on lookups is not working correctly when a 1:n relationship is used to filter records.
- Unable to search datetime field in dd/MM/yyyy format when using search functionality in entity list.
- Month chart does not honor the sorted order defined in the chart for link entities
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Additional Information
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PowerApps | January 2021 Updates recap for Microsoft PowerApps
Power Apps feature recap for the month of January 2021:
Power Apps | New Search Experience and quick actions in Power Apps
- It enhances productivity, makes information discovery easier and is an essential part of how customers navigate through model-driven Power Apps.
- With relevance search and 2021 release wave 1 preview enabled, you can try out all of these capabilities:
- Search bar in the header
- Suggested results, as you type
- Results page that is easy to understand
- Quick actions with search
Power Apps | Use ‘Edit in Excel” in Dataverse for Teams
Power Automate | Automate document processing with Power Automate
Power Platform enables you to build a rich and robust document automation solution using:
- Power Automate to orchestrate the overall process.
- AI Builder to bring the Intelligence required to efficient extract information from documents.
- Power Apps to allow users to manually review and approve documents.
- Dataverse to manage the document queue and store all the data, files and configuration required.
- Manage documents received in emails orchestrated by Power Automate,
- Use AI Builder form processing solution to extract data from those documents,
- Process the data extracted and allow users to review and approve data, through a central manual validation Power App.
Power Automate | 12 New Connectors Released in January 2021
Power Automate | Power Automate Desktop February 2021 Update
The February 2021 update of Power Automate Desktop has been released!
New features and updates have been added, it includes:
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The ‘Run from here’ functionality is now available in the flow designer.
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Various actions have been improved to be configured more intuitively.
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Existing variables can now be selected and used as produced variables.
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Training Corner |
Power Apps | Optimizing data migration – integration with Power Platform
Learning corner
This blog covers scenario where we need to move data (testing/building data migration/integration process), using ADF (Azure Data Factory) and how to optimize the data transfer.
- For instance, you can move millions of rows quickly; in addition, you have a daily integration that needs to move high number of rows in a very short time frame.
- You are able push some data BUT not fast enough.
This blog will help explains the impact of different configurations such as batch size and parallelism level.
Power Apps | Enhanced component properties
Learning corner
We’ve added two great new experimental features to formula based components:
- Property parameters. You can now pass parameters for a property evaluation, similar to how you would pass parameters to a parameterized query or function in other languages. You can now, for example, define an output property MathUtils.RandBetween that does a calculation based on its parameters and is called like a function.
With property parameters, you can now create simple user defined functions with formulas!
There are some limitations, such as output properties must be pure without side effects, but it shows the direction we are headed.
There will be more to come in the months ahead.
Dynamics 365 0n-premises | Set of Best practices for a Dynamics 365 on-premises deployment
Learning corner
Here us a list of good documentation and best guidance for a Dynamics 365 On-Premises deployment:
Power Platform – Dynamics 365: Technical Update Briefing Webcast: March 25
Please join us on March 25, 2021 at 11:00am US Eastern Time for a Technical Update Briefing regarding Power Platform and Dynamics 365. This update will include top of mind updates for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 topics and will be based on our monthly updates we have been providing in this blog for some time. The webcast will be delivered via a Teams Live Event, with a link to join below and a link to add to your calendar. Some of the topics we will be covering are:
- Microsoft Events (Ignite, BizApps Launch event…)
- Power Apps and Dynamics 365 2021 release wave 1
- Introducing Power Apps mobile app’s new look
- Understanding Updates
- Deprecations
- And many others…
Questions will be taken via chat during the webcast and we will answer as many as possible. So please join us March 25 for the latest updates on Power Platform and Dynamics 365!
Meeting link (accessible March 25 prior to meeting)
Add to Calendar link (iCalendar File)
Microsoft Business Applications Customer Engineer Team
Never let your device hold back your work – Unified Kanban views enables cross device compatibility for seamless visualization of your data within Dynamics 365 CRM / Power Apps!
Data visualizations have come a long way in recent years. The focus on creating visualization formats to quickly digest complex information has given rise to innovative visual solutions that make data organization and management look like a delight. One such powerful visual capability is offered by the which offers a Kanban View of your Dynamics 365 data as a custom control that can be attached to any view within Dynamics 365 CRM / Power Apps.
For example, the Kanban View for your Cases can be categorized and visualized according to Case Status –In Progress, On Hold, Waiting for Details, and Researching, as shown below.
The above cases are categorized according to their status to give a compartmentalized view of your entire cases. This lane-based categorization allows for a clear picture of your current situation and allows you to plan your future resources accordingly.
While this visualization makes data organization much simpler, what happens when you are on the go? Does it mean you have to wait till you can find a big-screen desktop or laptop to access this feature? Absolutely not! If you are using , you have exclusive access to the cross-compatibility feature in the Kanban View.
The compatibility can be enabled from Controls > Kanban Board >Select web, phone, tablet.
Among the many advantages of a unified experience, below are the key benefits of cross-device compatibility:
Seamless switch between devices
Data organization and management is no longer constrained by screen sizes. Users can quickly switch from desktop or laptops to tablets or mobiles and have the ability to seamlessly visualize across devices and continue their work even if they have to switch devices.
Ease for drag and drop with touchscreen mobiles and tablets
The transition from a larger screen to a smaller screen without losing the ability to execute UI-based functionality like drag and drop. Use the touch interface to drag cards and easily switch the lanes of cards for a comfortable user experience.
Instant status updates
Make updates on the go. Users can keep the status of their data up to date no matter their location. Increased mobility allows for remote updates and a constant streamline of the workflow. This ensures that the current status of the work is constantly reflected on the board to ensure that the team does not stop unnecessarily.
These benefits are not the whole story, the full effect of the feature of Kanban Board and cross-compatibility can only be understood through experience. This is why Kanban Board can be tried for a 15 day free trial from as well as . Want to understand better? You can even opt-in for a personalized demo by contacting us at crm@inogic.com to see it in action.
So until next time –stay safe, stay organized, stay distraction-free!
Power Apps portal: Security 101
If you’d like a deep dive into specific areas within Power Apps portals security, Microsoft Docs is the ultimate, so I am making no attempts to replace our existing documentation. That said, when we’re new to an area such as Power Apps portals, it can be helpful to get a higher level and snapshot view. Here I’ve broken it down into a 101-level primer.
How do users access the portal?
When planning for your portal deployment, one of the first questions that will inevitably be asked is– Will your end-users be logging into the portal and be treated as authenticated users, or will they be accessing anonymously as guests? Power Apps portal supports both scenarios, and you can even use a combination of the two. If you will be requiring or allowing users to register and login to the portal, various external identity providers are available for configuration.
Portals users are not Dynamics users!
The Power Apps portal is meant to extend your Dataverse data to an external audience— this means that a portal user is not the same as a Dynamics 365 / Model-driven app user. In fact, if you do have Dynamics 365 users that are using the portal, their security roles and business unit are not going to apply here.
The portal is on a separate security model from what Dynamics 365 administrators may be accustomed to. This is because Power Apps portal users are treated as contact records in Microsoft Dataverse. When a user registers for the portal –or signs in if they are using Azure AD– a contact record is created in Dataverse. If the contact record already exists in Dataverse, they can be invited to the portal using out of the box functionality. The contact record will then store the portal user’s identities and web roles.
Web Roles
To reiterate, Dynamics 365 security roles will not apply to the Power Apps portal! Granted, the general concept is not too different here. In the portals’ case, a user’s persona is defined by the Web Role(s) that they have been assigned. Web Roles themselves will not have permissions stored on its record. Rather, think of a web role as a container table for permissions. It is only the web role that is then directly assigned to users– or rather, contact records.
Page Permissions
When it comes down to it, your portal is a website; it has web pages! Naturally, we are able to specify permissions at the web page level. We can use permissions to restrict user access to certain pages to those that are logged in or who may have a specific web role. If applied, a user who does not have access to a certain web page will neither be able to see the web page in the navigation menu nor will the user be able to navigate directly to its URL without it erroring out. In a hierarchical setting, page permissions can also be used to secure entire branches of a portal through inheritance.
Table Permissions
If we’ve opted to implement the Power Apps portal, chances are that we have done so in order to extend our Dataverse data to an external audience. If that’s the case, then we need to ensure that we’re taking into account our security at the table level. Table permissions are what determine the CRUD actions that users can take on specific records. Yes, that means that we can indeed apply long sought-after record-level security here, which is done via Dataverse relationship definitions.
Realistically, you are going to be using a combination of page and table permissions. We may need to restrict users from specific web pages or branches of the portal. If web pages contain Dataverse table data, then we also need to ensure that said table has been secured with table permissions.
Tip: Table permissions will not apply unless you check the box “Enable Table Permissions” on its respective table form and table list.
Optimizing data migration/integration with Power Platform
You are getting close to your “Go Live Date”. You have gone through multiple iterations of testing processes and you are now in the process of testing/building data migration/integration process. You have to move millions of rows quickly; in addition, you have a daily integration that needs to move high number of rows in a very short time frame. You are able push some data but not fast enough.
If you are still following, you might have encountered this issue in the past or will encounter it in the future, maybe you had a similar issue as well. In this blog I’ll cover a scenario where we need to move data, using ADF (Azure Data Factory) and how to optimize the data transfer. I’ll also explain the impact of different configurations such as batch size and parallelism level. I do hope that you will find this blog helpful.
Challenge
We need to move the data from one instance to another, the data that we are moving is a custom table. This is a very simple table, not too many fields no plugins are getting triggered. The amount of data that we need to move is about 36K rows. We need to move it as fast as we can.
Solution
If we are moving row by row, and each row takes 1 second to process, it may take up to10 hours (36k seconds) to process all the rows. Luckily, Dynamics 365 support batching processes and parallelism so we can speed up the process. When we are planning to utizlie parallelism we should also look at the Power Platform throttling or API calls limitations.
See links:
Requests limits and allocations
To figure out what is the best configuration to move data I researched with different scenarios. In the screenshots below, you can see Azure Data factory configuration with the Dynamics 365 connector.
In the Sink tab, you can configure the batch size and max concurrent connections:
In the Setting tab, you can configure the degree of copy parallelism:
In case that you are not familiar with Azure Data Factory, here is a useful link:
Copy data from and to Dynamics 365 (Common Data Service) or Dynamics CRM by using Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory documentation
I ran multiple scenarios where I moved the data, you can see the results in the following table:
|
Batch size |
Concurrent |
Parallel |
Rows |
Seconds |
Create rows per second |
|
10 |
52 |
32 |
35985 |
98 |
367.1938776 |
|
50 |
52 |
32 |
35985 |
84 |
428.3928571 |
|
100 |
52 |
32 |
35985 |
86 |
418.4302326 |
|
100 |
52 |
20 |
35985 |
99 |
363.4848485 |
|
100 |
52 |
16 |
35985 |
113 |
318.4513274 |
Consider the scenario where I deal with a larger data set, can I use the same configuration? Do I need to modify it? Please see the following scenarios:
|
Batch size |
Concurrent |
Parallel |
Rows |
Seconds |
Create rows per second |
|
10 |
52 |
32 |
150000 |
1147 |
130.7759372 |
|
50 |
30 |
30 |
150000 |
1133 |
132.39188 |
|
100 |
10 |
16 |
150000 |
834 |
179.8561151 |
|
200 |
24 |
8 |
150000 |
717 |
209.2050209 |
|
200 |
24 |
12 |
150000 |
795 |
188.6792453 |
Conclusions
- Increasing the batch size, doesn’t always help. Batching size can also have different impact based on the latency and locations of where those processes are running from/to.
- You could see that there is a different between vey high amount of data vs small amount of data and how can you spread the process to run in parallel.
- Increasing parallelism can help a lot, but if we have too many processes in parallel and high amount of data, that will actually results in a slower rate of operations. (see service API Protection limits)
- If you are encountering this problem, use the tables above as a guideline, measure how many records you are creating, look at the throttling and limitations documentations. I highly recommend to make few tests to optimize your process.
- You can apply the same process of optimizing, when you use other ETL tools or build your own console applications. For more documentations and configuration see this link: How to maximize throughput
Disclaimers
Please note that I oversimplify the process here, things to consider when we are moving data:
- Are we triggering plugins? Can we turn them off?
- What type of entities are we moving, how many attributes, for example creating a contact is more expensive compared to create a custom entity, creating an entity with 10 columns is more expensive compared to creating and entity with 2 columns (columns type is also a factor)?
- How much data already exist in the system can also be impactful.
- What type of operation are we doing: create/update/insert/delete?