Are you a Power Platform or Dynamics 365 CE Developer, you would definitely need to work on Plugin Registration tool at any given point of time and having a local application for Plugin Registration tool greatly helps…in this post, I will show a little different way to install Plugin registration tool and that too very easily.
Well, this approach is especially useful to me when I got a new laptop and need to work on Plugin Registration Tool where the Plugins already build for the implementation.
First 3 ways might have known to everyone through which you can download Plugin registration tool…do you know there is fourth approach as well…
Because there were limitations to use these approaches at least in my experience, I found the fourth one very useful.
XrmToolBox – Not quite convenient to profile and debug your plugins
https://xrm.tools/SDK – Dlls in the downloaded folder will be blocked and would need to manually unblock the DLL’s for the Tool to work properly
CLI – People rarely use this.
Just do note that the approach is very easy and works only if you have a Plugin Project already. Please follow the steps below
Just open the Plugin project.
Right click on the solution and choose manage Nuget Packages for the solution
Search for Plugin Registration tool as below
4. Choose the Plugin project and click install, confirm the prompt and agree the license agreement shown
5. Once installed, next go to the Project folder in the local machine.
6. Navigate to Packages folder, you should see a folder for Plugin Registration tool below
7. There you go, you can open the Plugin Registration Application under tools folder. You can undo the changes for the Assembly it is linked to Source control.
That’s it, how easy it was? Hope this would help someone.
Wondering how you can enable Copilot in Dynamics 365 Model Driven App …? Then you come to the right place, few days ago, I was trying to use it few days back but couldn’t. Hence this blog post is from my experience.
There were few things to configure for your Copilot to respond to your queries. So, I will be taking about that in this blog post today. Let’s get started…
Copilot in model-driven Power Apps was in Preview since July 2023.
Prerequisite: You must have a non-production environment with Dataverse database, apps, and data.
Step 1: Go to Power Platform Admin Center –> Select the environment –> Settings –> Product –> Features –> Select On for AI-powered experience as highlighted below, if you were App maker and want to try it for yourself, you would also need to check the option in yellow below.
Step 2: Go to Power Platform Admin Center –> Select the environment –> Settings –> Product –> Behaviour –> Select Monthly channel or Auto for Model-driven app release channel option and click save.
Step 3: Well, this step is important, in this task, we configure a Dataverse table and columns for Copilot.
Go to Power Apps and make sure that you have the correct environment.
Select tables and navigate to the respective table for which you want to enable Copilot capability.
Step 4: Here I am using OOB Account entity, you can choose whichever entity you wish to setup.
Step 5: Navigate to Properties for the Account table as below
Step 6: Choose settings as highlighted below and click on save.
Step 8: Open the Account table and go views
Step 9: Here in this step, would need configure the Quick Find View, add the necessary fields to the view for it to be searchable for Copilot. Add in the fields which your users would be searching for in the Copilot.
Step 10: Here we have to make sure the fields are added to the view and then save and publish.
That’s it, the configuration is done.
Step 11: In this step, we will test the Copilot by opening the App in which the configured entity is available. Click on the Copilot icon as highlighted below, this shows the Chat window for Copilot
Step 12:
Test 1: Prompt: How many Accounts are there which Primary Contact starting with H? Well, it showed correctly as below.
Test 2: Prompt: Show Accounts whose Annual Revenue is more than 300,000? It showed correctly as below.
Hope this helps you to setup Copilot for your Model Driven Apps. I will leave it to yourself to try this out.
Make sure, you give all the details in the prompt itself, it will not be able to store the previous response, meaning you can’t continue your conversation providing information in bits and pieces. You can setup the same for your Custom entity also, make sure you add the fields to the quick find view of that entity.
It is not recommended for Production environments as it is still a preview feature. In case, the response is not accurate, you can report this to Microsoft by hitting thumbs up or thumbs down and provide the relevant feedback.
Lot more to come in the upcoming days, learning different aspects of Copilot became a necessity these days.
Well, this could be a very interesting post as we talk about optimizing the Dataverse performance using bulk operation messages and too using Dataverse plugin customizations but wait, this post is not complete because of an issue which I will talk later in the blog. First let’s dig into this feature by actually trying out. Generally, every business wants improved performance for any logic tagged out to out of box messages and so developers try to optimize their code in various ways when using Dataverse messages.
Firstly, before diving deeper into this article, let’s first understand the differences between Standard and Elastic tables, if you want to know a bit of introduction to elastic tables which were newly introduced last year, you can refer to my previous post on elastic tables here.
The type of table you choose to store your data has the greatest impact on how much throughput you can expect with bulk operations. You can choose out of two types of tables in Dataverse, below are some key differences you can refer to:
Standard Tables
Elastic Tables
Data Structure
Defined Schema
Flexible Schema
Stores data in Azure SQL
Stores data in Azure Cosmos DB
Data Integrity
Ensured
Less Strict
Relationship model
Supported
Limited
Performance
Predictable
Variable, preferred for unpredictable and spiky workloads
Agility
Limited
High
Personalization
Limited
Extensive
Standard and Elastic Table Differences
Plugins:
With Bulk Operation messages, the APIs being introduced are Create Multiple, UpdateMultiple,DeleteMultiple (only for Elastic tables), Upsert Request(preview). As of now you’re not required to migrate your plug-ins to use CreateMultiple and Update Multiple instead of Create and Update messages. Your logic for Create and Update continues to be applied when applications use CreateMultiple or UpdateMultiple.
This is mainly done to prevent two separate business logics for short running and long duration activities. So, it means Microsoft have merged the message processing pipelines for these messages (Create, Create Multiple; Update, Update Multiple) that means Create, Update messages continue to trigger for your existing implemented scenarios, when you update to use Create Multiple, Update Multiple still the Create, Update will behave.
Few points for consideration:
While I have tested and still could see IPluginExecutionContext only provides the information and still I have noted Microsoft Documentation suggests using IPluginExecutionContext4 for Bulk Messages in Plugins where it is being shown as null yet.
While you were working with Create, Update, Delete, you could have used Target property to get the input parameters collection, while working with Bulk Operation messages, you need to use Targets instead of Target.
Instead of checking whether the target is Entity you need to use Entity Collection, we need to loop through and perform our desired business logic
Coming to Images in plugin, these will be retrieved only when you have used IPluginExecutionContext4.
Below is the image from Plugin Registration Tool to refer(e.g. I have taken UpdateMultiple as reference, you can utilize any of the bulk operation messages)
Sample:
Below is the sample, how your Bulk operation message plugin can look like…you don’t need to use all the contexts, I have used to just check that out.
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I have posted this question to Microsoft regarding the same to know more details on this why the IPluginExecutionContext4 is null , while still I am not sure if this is not deployed to my region, my environment is in India.
Recommendations for Plugins:
Don’t try to introduce CreateMultiple, UpdateMultiple, UpsertMultiple in a separate step as it would trigger the logic to be fired twice one for Create operation and another for CreateMultiple.
Don’t use batch request types such as ExecuteMultipleRequest, ExecuteTransactionRequest, CreateMultipleRequest, UpdateMultipleRequest, UpsertMultipleRequest in Plugins as user experiences are degraded and timeout errors can occur.
Instead use Bulk operation messages like CreateMultipleRequest, UpdateMultipleRequest, UpsertMultipleRequest
No need to use ExecuteTransactionRequest in Synchronous Plugins as already they will be executed in the transaction.
Hope this guidance will help someone trying to customize their Power Platform solutions using Plugins.
I will write another blog post on using Bulk operation messages for Client Applications…
When I was working with my Power BI reports, I suddenly started encountering this error. I don’t have any more clue except this error message which I could see in my Power BI Desktop as below. Initially I thought there could be some problem connecting to my SQL end point of my Dataverse connection, but it isn’t.
The error message above clearly say that the Queries are blocked. I then quickly started reviewing the model of the Power BI Report to see if there were any issues like the Relationships etc. But I couldn’t find anything in my relationships. Since I was using SQL Connection to my Dataverse, I tried to increase the Command timeout in minutes (max value being 120 minutes) from Advanced options of my connection but still the same error.
Cause: Then I quickly noticed that in my model I have fetched the same table data both using Direct Query and Import mode. So, when I was refreshing, because of the relationships, the one imported is being dependent on the one with Direct Query.
Fix: After review, the unnecessary Direct Query table was removed and voila it fixed the issue.
If anyone is facing the same problem, I strongly recommend you review the Semantic Model of your Power BI Report.
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.
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.
I am a big fan of Power Automate…but this post is not about flows but features about Custom Workflow in Dynamics 365 CE.
Did you ever come across this problem where you were not able to debug custom workflow extension. I had come across this and this blog post is all about it…I successfully registered my Custom workflow, but it is not triggering at all.
So, I need to debug it to see what the exact issue was…as I am encounter this error.
Error message says Duplicate workflow activity group name: ‘EcellorsDemo.Cases(1.0.0.0) (Profiled)‘. So, I tried to check my code, plugin steps and any activated plugins but couldn’t find any duplicates.
Usually while debugging your custom workflow using profiler, your workflow will go into draft mode and another copy of the same workflow gets created with name of (Profiled) attached to the name. However, in my case, I didn’t see the same behavior and at the same time, I was unable to use Profiler after the first profiling session and it gave me error shown above.
In order to resolve, this just delete the Plugin Assemblies which could find in the default solution like highlighted below…
Once you have deleted this, try to debug the custom workflow and voila!!!
Hope this helps someone troubleshooting Custom workflow…!
This post is for all who are working on D365 Model Driven Apps and mainly Plugins.
Yes, you saw it right, in this blog post, we will see how can debug plugin without using our favorite plugin profiler which is very widely used from quite some time by everyone working on Plugins for Dynamics 365. All this is done by a tool called Dataverse Browser, which is not yet on XrmToolBox. Please note that there were some limitations as detailed in limitation section below.
Here are 3 simple steps to follow..
Install Dataverse Browser
Attach the Debugger
Run your actual operation.
Step into your code and debug it.
The tool embeds a web browser based on Chromium. It works by translating the Web API requests to SDK requests. Then it analyzes if plugin steps are registered on the message and it loads them, make them run locally. All other requests are sent to the Dataverse, so that the plugins are interacting with the real database.
Download the latest source code of Dataverse browser here.
Next extract the zip file downloaded as highlighted below
Extract the zip file downloaded, open Dataverse.Browser Application as highlighted below.
In the popup window, click on More info as highlighted below…
Then run the application anyway…you will be presented with a window where you can select the environment. Going forward, any time you want to open Dataverse browser, just open the Dataverse.Browser.exe and choose the environment as below.
Click on New, enter the details as above and key in the details.
Enter the settings of your environment:
A name meaningful for you
The host name of your instance (without the https://)
The path to the plugins assembly file (the dll). For a better experience, it should be compiled in debug mode with the pdb file generated.
Then click Go.
You just need to Authenticate to your instance.
Once Authenticated to the respective model driven apps, all the Web API requests sent to Dataverse will be shown as below.
I have following Plugin Libraries registered.
Next step is to choose the instance and perform the respective operation which triggers the Plugin. So, in here, I will perform an update to the Account entity from the Dataverse Browser which triggers the Plugin.
Once an update is performed, a Web API request gets recorded in the Dataverse browser as highlighted below.
Since the Plugin is in Post Operation, i.e. Stage number is 40
Just expand the Patch Request, you should see two operations on 30, 40, but area of interest here is for the Plugin which was registered on stage 40.
Make sure you open the Visual Studio and perform the below steps from Dataverse Browser.
Attach the debugger from Dataverse Browser by clicking on the Plug Symbol as below which will show the list of debugger options available for you to select from. Here I have selected Execute Plugins, plugin will be invoked. You can either select any of the three options as presented below.
1.Do not execute plugins – recommended when you want to debug without actually triggering your plugin logic. i.e. With this approach even you can check the code in Production environment.
2. Execute plugins/Execute plugins with auto break – recommended when you want to debug by triggering your actual plugin, this is recommended in case your plugin code had changed recently and in Development environments.
Just select Ecellors Demo – Microsoft Visual Studio: Visual Studio Professional 2022 version which will launch an existing Visual studio 2022 as below in break mode. Next click on Continue as highlighted below or press Click F5 on your keyboard.
This shows you that the debugger has been attached when you navigate to Dataverse Browser asking you to place your breakpoints.
Now just place breakpoints in your code in Visual Studio. Just go back to Dataverse Browser and click on Ok on the Diaglog box.
Perform the operation which triggers the Plugin from Dataverse Browser itself, this will hit the break point in Visual Studio from where you can debug your plugin.
As you might have observed, your code need not throw exception in order to debug, you could do similarly to the way you would debug using Profiler. But here just that you don’t need to deploy the latest code to the Dataverse just for debugging purpose.
This gives a lot more flexibility eases the way you debug plugins.
Limitions:
There is no support for transactions.
When plugins are triggered because of a server-side operation, they will not be run locally.
For many reasons, behavior will never be perfectly similar to the one when plugins are executed on server side.
Happy debugging, I hope you found this post useful…
Do you know that you can connect to your Dataverse DB right from your old toolbox SSMS, an express version would be more than enough to try out. Possibly we didn’t think of, but yes, we can…so let’s see that in this blog post.
Open SSMS..
1.Select Server type as Database Engine
2. Server name as the environment URL from your Power Platform Admin Center as below.
3. So key in those details as below, make sure to Select Authentication method as Azure Active Directory – Universal with MFA option.
Once you click on Connect, you will be prompted for authentication via browser.
Once your Sign-In is successful, you will be able to see.
That’s it, how simple it was connecting to your Dataverse instances…
Having said that it’s easy to connect to Dataverse, not all operations performed using normal transact SQL are supported here using Dataverse SQL. You could see it says Read-Only besides the instance name, that means that you don’t have any capabilities to modify from SQL.
Because Dataverse SQL is a subset of Transact-SQL. If you want to see what statements are supported and what not, just go ahead to this link to find out.
This opens a whole lot of opportunities to explore, so don’t forget to check this out.
In my previous blog post, I have already explained how you can utilize Power Pipelines which is the OOB Dynamics 365 Product capability.
Power Platform have many ways where we can deploy our solutions to higher environments…in this blog post, we will see how we can utilize Power Platform CLI to deploy our solutions.
Prerequisites: Power Platform CLI
If you don’t have installed yet in your machine, you can download Power Platform CLI from this link in either of the ways below
Once you got this installed, make sure you set your environment variable in your machine as below
Then you can use your favorite IDE or Command line. I personally recommend using Visual Studio Code because of the flexibility it offers and ease of installation, use.
Export and Import can be done very easily with CLI with a few commands once you were authenticated with your instance.
For authentication with your instance. Open a new terminal in visual studio code.
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Once you have set up correctly, it will show that it is connected.
Now in order to export your solution..use the below commands from Vs Code
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You should see a Solution zip file got created with the same name as mentioned above…
Similarly, u can import solutions using CLI..
Here I have a solution named ecellorstest in the same folder in my machine..
Let’s try to import using CLI..inorder to import your solution,use the below commands from Vs Code…
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While you may have noticed this or not, but it’s real. Now Dynamics 365 CE existing table types have a new companion called Elastic, it is yet to be announced.
However let’s take a quick look of the table types showing up when you were trying to create a new one in Dataverse.
While everyone is aware about Standard, Activity, Virtual types in Model Driven Apps. Elastic tables are new tables which came in to Dataverse and probably it will be announced in the upcoming Microsoft Build 2023.
From my view, Elastic tables were
1. Built similar to the concept of Elastic Queries in Azure which is usually meant for the purposes of Data archiving needs.
2. You can scale out queries to large data tiers and visualize the results in business intelligence (BI) reports.
3. Elastic Query provides a complete T-SQL Database Querying capability on Azure SQL, possibly Dataverse.
Hope we get all the capabilities released with Elastic Queries of Azure SQL be released in Dataverse as well.
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