Start Transitioning your Dynamics 365 Client Applications to use Dataverse Client

Hi Folks,

This blog post deals about what you need to do for your client applications in specific to use Dataverse Client API instead of existing CrmServiceClient(Core Assemblies) API.

Below were 3 reasons cited by Microsoft and why we need to just be aware of this move.

1.Cross Platform Application Support: With the introduction of Microsoft.PowerPlatform.Dataverse.Client, the new Dataverse Service Client supports Cross Platform Support.

2. MSAL Authentication: New Dataverse ServiceClient API uses MSAL while our older CrmServiceClient API uses ADAL. ADAL.Net is no longer supported.

3. Performance and functional benefits: We can have one authentication handler per web service connection instead of just one per process. The Dataverse Service Client class supports a smaller interface surface, inline authentication by instance, and Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.ILogger.

What’s the impact?

  • Plug-ins or custom workflow activities – no changes
  • New or existing online applications – changes are needed but not immediately…
  • On-premises applications – this article is not for you, yet

So, meaning it impacts Online Client applications only. While you really don’t need to worry much about this the class member signatures of ServiceClient and CrmServiceClient are the same, except for the class names themselves being slightly different. Application code should not need any significant changes.

As of now, no changes to your code are required, but it is better to keep in mind that in the future the CRM 2011 Service End Point would be deprecated, and this change would be made mandatory.

So, what should you do to incorporate this change?

Use the following assemblies from Nuget instead of CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies

Add the below using statement to use Microsoft.PowerPlatform.Dataverse.Client

Use ServiceClient instead of CrmServiceClient, ServiceClient would return your OrganizationService.

Instead of

Be strategic to minimize the impact to your apps.

Cheers,

PMDY

Stop using OData V2.0 endpoint going further for your implementations….!

Hi Folks,

This blog is just to let you know why you should stop implementing OData calls using V2.0 version. I am pretty sure almost every Dynamics CE project out there have used this OData calls definitely in their implementations from quite some time. While some of new implementations have replaced the logic using Web API, still some people go with using OData V2.0 calls to build their functionality using JavaScript.

Microsoft had actually planned to remove this endpoint from April 30, 2023. But they deferred this because many projects are’nt yet prepared for removal of this end point and help the customers prepare for this transition to Web API end point.

Identify if you still using OData V2.0 end point, actually Organization Data Service is an OData V2.0 endpoint which was introduced with Dynamics CRM 2011..it’s deprecated way back with Dynamics 365 CE version 8.0.

So now, how to identify where and all you were using OData End Points in your code…you shouldn’t expect that existing code will work with only minor changes and this work can be taken at a later stage. This was a high priority warning message from Microsoft stating the removal, so I urge all of you to be prepared for this removal very soon and you shouldn’t be surprised.

So where to change…..?

Below are the places where you should change your way of implementation and align with Microsoft…

  1. The Organization Data Service using this end point /XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc in Javascript, you can find it out with the help of the checker service rule web-avoid-crm2011-service-odata for identification. This can be code which was making OData calls to perform CRUD Operations on the current table or related table.
  2. Check any other code, including PowerShell scripts, that send requests to this endpoint: /xrmservices/2011/organizationdata.svc.
  3. Cross Check your Power BI reports or Excel Data sources that may be using this endpoint.

Note:

This announcement does not involve the deprecated Organization Service SOAP endpoint, meaning using Organization service in plugins. At this time, no date has been announced for the removal of that endpoint. At the time of writing this blog post, Microsoft didn’t announce whether this removal is only for Online or On Premise Versions.

References:

How to use Application Insights to identify usage of the OrganizationData.svc endpoint?

OData v2.0 Service removal date announcement

The Clock is Ticking on Your Endpoint

Do not use the OData v2.0 endpoint

Hope this saves time and effort implementing your Dynamics CE Solutions…

Cheers,

PMDY