Category: Dynamics 365 Updates

Visualize this view – what this mean to developers and end users…?

Hi Folks,

Have you noticed Visualize this view button in in the app bar of any grid view of Dynamics 365?

Here is a dashboard built within couple of minutes. While this can greatly help end users visualize the data present in the system. So, in this post, let’s understand bit more details about this capability and what are the some of the features which are left behind.

Let’s understand the how’s this is generated along with its capabilities and disadvantages compared to traditional Power BI dashboard both from Developer and end user perspective, please note that this is my understanding..

For Developers:

a. Visualize this view uses a PCF Control which calls the Power BI REST API and then generates the embed token for the report embedding that into an Iframe.

b. Then uses Power BI JavaScript API to handle user interactions with the embedded report such as filtering or highlighting data points.

c. When Power BI first generates your report, it takes a look through your data to identify patterns and distributions and pick a couple of fields to use as starting points for creating the initial set of visuals when data is not preselected.

d. Any changes to the data fields calls the UpdateView of the PCF Control and there by passing the updated data fields to REST API and then displays the visuals.

e. Visuals will be created with both selected and non-selected fields which are the related to the selected fields in the data pane.

For End Users & Developers:

Advantages:

  1. Visuals are generated when no data is selected
  2. Cross Highlighting is possible
  3. Click on the Report to see Personalize this visual option
  4. People with Contributor, Member, or Admin role assigned can save the Report to workspace
  5. Users with no access to Power BI cant view this feature, they can request for free Power BI License
  6. Free License users can save the Report to thier personal workspace
  7. Users get build permission when any role above Contributor is assigned and reshare permission is given
  8. The report will be saved as direct query with SSO enabled and honours dataverse settings
  9. Show data table presents a list of tables if the model comprises of multiple tables.
  10. Able to specify the aggregation for each of the field in the model.

Disadvantages:

  1. Only able to export summarized data from Visuals, you will be able to export the data in table from data table.
  2. Only Visual Level, no page level or report level filters
  3. During these reports creation, the model is configured to use Direct Query with Single Sign On.
  4. Embed a report on a Dataverse form requires modifying the XML of the solution
  5. Report published into the workspace are available to download but downloaded reports will not be able to customize further in Power BI Desktop as it would be built using Native Queries.
  6. If the page is kept ideal for long time or the user navigates to other browser window, the session and report will be lost.

Considerations & Limitations:

  1. Power BI Pro license is required to create these reports
  2. While this is wonderful for end users to visualize the data but this is not an alteranative to building reports using Power BI Desktop.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

PMDY

Using Preferred Solution in Power Apps saves you time..Quick Review

Hi Folks,

Today, I will be pointing out the advantages of using Preferred Solution and it’s consequences of using or removing it…while the feature is out there from quite few months, yet many of the Power Platform Projects are not utilizing this feature, it can reduce your hassles when many people are working together in a team and you can make sure everyone’s changes go to this solution.

Here we understand what Preferred Solution means to the makers, firstly in order to use this affectively, let’s turn the feature to create Canvas Apps & Cloud Flows in Solutions by enabling this preview feature as suggested below from https://admin.powerplatform.com, this is not mandatory step but would be better as you can add Power Automate flows and Canvas Apps in the Solution and click Save.

Next navigate to https://make.powerapps.com –> Solutions –> Set preferred solution

If no preferred solution is set, by default, it will show the Common Data Service Default Solution to set as Default Solution, if you wish to set another Solution, you can select the respective Solution from the drop down.

Enable/Disable the toggle to show Preferred Solution option in the Solutions Page.

Just click on Apply.

Advantages:

  1. Once preferred Solution is set, any components added by the makers would by default go the Preferred Solution, so makers need not worry about choosing right Solution while creating Power Platform Components.
  2. No need to worry if the solution components will be added in the default solution as the new components will be added to the preferred solution automatically.

Limitations:

  1. Preferred Solutions can be only set in Modern Designer
  2. Components created in Classic Designer won’t go to Preferred Solutions
  3. Custom Connector, Connections, DataFlows, Canvas Apps created from Image or Figma Design, Copilots/Agents, Gateways

You can always delete your preferred solution so that other makers can set their preferred solution, but do this with caution so that none of your team members or your works gets impacted.

Hope this saves few seconds of your valuable time…

Cheers,

PMDY