Category: .NET

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

Calling Command Line Commands from C# – Quick Tip

Hi Folks,

In today’s no code world and AI, while most of the Apps are developed using low code approach, sometimes we have to go with the traditional way of development to handle any integrations with other systems.

When we give anyone Command Line script and ask them to execute, the other person would immediately open Search bar at the bottom available in Windows and start entering cmd. Immediately command prompt window appears and will be able to execute the same command.

But what if we ask to execute command line Commands from C# code…? So, in this blog post, I will show you how easily you can call command line commands with a simple example. Let’s get started…

Here in order to showcase, I will just use a basic command line command and run it from C#.

Everyone knows how to find the ipconfig command right, which just shows the internet protocol configuration when entered in command line like below.

In order to execute it from Console Application using C#, we would need to utilize the System. Diagnostics. You can utilize the below C# code.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Diagnostics;
namespace BatchTest
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Process pro = new Process();
pro.StartInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe";
pro.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
pro.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
pro.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
pro.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
pro.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
pro.Start();
pro.StandardInput.WriteLine("ipconfig");
pro.StandardInput.Flush();
pro.StandardInput.Close();
pro.WaitForExit();
Console.WriteLine(pro.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd());
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
view raw Command Line Commands from C# hosted with ❤ by GitHub

When we execute this command, it shows exactly same as what we saw above with Command Line.

In the same way we can call any Command Line Commands from C#. I have to use this approach for my Power Platform Implementation integration to decrypt encrypted messages using PGP and I found it to be very helpful and thought of sharing with all of you. If you were looking for a program to decrypt, you can check out for previous blog post here.

Cheers,

PMDY