Category: Power Apps#

Maximizing Your Power Platform Solution’s Reach: Essential Performance Considerations for Optimal Efficiency

Hi Folks,

This blog post is all about performance considerations for your Power Platform CE Projects and how you can plan to optimize application performance for your Power Apps. So I just want to take you through them…

Are you tired of creating solutions for longer durations and while at the end of the project or during UAT you end up facing performance issues for the solutions you have developed, one of the most important non-functional requirements for a project’s success is Performance. Satisfying performance requirements for your users can be a challenge. Poor performance may cause failures in user adoption of the system and lead to project failure, so you might need to be careful for every decision you take while you design your solutions in the below stages.

Let’s talk about them one by one..

1. Network Latency and bandwidth

A main cause of poor performance of Dynamics 365 apps is the latency of the network over which the clients connect to the organization. 

  • Bandwidth is the width or capacity of a specific communications channel.
  • Latency is the time required for a signal to travel from one point on a network to another and is a fixed cost between two points. And usually many of these “signals” travel for a single request.

Lower latencies (measured in milliseconds) generally provide better levels of performance. Even if the latency of a network connection is low, bandwidth can become a performance degradation factor if there are many resources sharing the network connection, for example, to download large files or send and receive email.

Dynamics 365 apps are designed to work best over networks that have the following elements: 

  • Bandwidth greater than 50 KBps (400 kbps)
  • Latency under 150 ms

These values are recommendations and don’t guarantee satisfactory performance. The recommended values are based on systems using out-of-the box forms that aren’t customized.

If you significantly customize the out-of-box forms, it is recommend that you test the form response to understand bandwidth needs.   

You can use the diagnostics tool to determine the latency and bandwidth:

  1. On your computer or device, start a web browser, and sign in to an organization.
  2. Enter the following URL, https://myorg.crm.dynamics.com/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx, where crm.dynamics.com is the URL of your organization.
  3. Click Run.

Also, to mitigate higher natural latency for global rollouts, customers should leverage Dynamics 365 Apps successfully by having smart design for their applications. 

2.Smart Design for your application

Form design 

  • Keep the number of fields to a minimum. The more fields you have in a form, the more data that needs to be transferred over the internet or intranet to view each record. Think about the interaction the user will have with the form and the amount of data that must be displayed within it.
  • Avoid including unnecessary JavaScript web resource libraries. The more scripts you add to the form, the more time it will take to download them. Usually, scripts are cached in your browser after they are loaded the first time, but the performance the first time a form is viewed often creates a significant impression.
  • Avoid loading all scripts in the Onload event. If you have code that only supports OnChange events for fields or the OnSave event, make sure to set the script library with the event handler for those events instead of the OnLoad event. This way loading those libraries can be deferred and increase performance when the form loads.
  • Use tab events to defer loading web resources. Any code that is required to support web resources or IFRAMEs within collapsed tabs can use event handlers for the TabStateChange event and reduce code that might otherwise have to occur in the OnLoad event.
  • Set default visibility options. Avoid using form scripts in the OnLoad event that hide form elements. Instead set the default visibility options for form elements that might be hidden to not be visible by default when the form loads. Then, use scripts in the OnLoad event to show those form elements you want to display. If the form elements are never made visible, they should be removed from the form rather than hidden.
  • Watch out for synchronous web requests as they can cause severe performance issues. Consider moving to asynchronous for some of these web requests. Also, choose WebApi over of creating Xml HTTP Requests (XHR) on your own. 
  • Avoid opening a new tab or window and do open the window in the main form dialog. 
  • For Command Bar, keep the number of controls to a minimum. Within the command bar or the ribbon for the form, evaluate what controls are necessary and hide any that you don’t need. Every control that is displayed increases resources that need to be downloaded to the browser. Use asynchronous network requests in Custom Rules When using custom rules that make network requests in Unified Interface, use asynchronous rule evaluation.

Learn more Design forms for performance in model-driven apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Latest version of SDK and APIs 

The latest version of SDK, Form API and WebAPI endpoints should be used to support latest product features, roadmap alignment and security. 

APIs calls and custom FetchXML call velocity 

Only the columns required for information or action should be included in API calls: 

  • Retrieving all columns (*) creates significant overhead on the database engine when distributed across significant user load. Optimization of call velocity is key to avoid “chatty” forms that unnecessarily make repeated calls for the same information in a single interaction.
  • You should avoid retrieving all columns in a query result because of the impact on a subsequent update of records. In an update, this will set all field values, even if they are unchanged, and often triggers cascaded updates to child records. Leverage the most efficient connection mechanism (WebAPI vs SDK) and reference this doc site for guidance on the appropriate approach.

Consider reviewing periodically the Best practices and guidance when coding for Microsoft Dataverse – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn and ColumnSet.AllColumns Property (Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query) | Microsoft Learn.

Error handling across all code-based events 

You should continue to use the ITracingService.Trace to write to the Plug-in Trace Log table when needed. If your plug-in code uses the ILogger interface and the organization does not have Application Insights integration enabled, nothing will be written. So, it is important to continue to use the ITracingService Trace method in your plug-ins. Plug-in trace logs continue to be an important way to capture data while developing and debugging plug-ins, but they were never intended to provide telemetry data.  

For organizations using Application Insights, you should use ILogger because it will allow for telemetry about what happens within a plug-in to be integrated with the larger scope of data captured with the Application Insights integration. The Application Insights integration will tell you when a plug-in executes, how long it takes to run and whether it makes any external http requests. Learn more about tracing in plugins Logging and tracing (Microsoft Dataverse) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn.   

Use Solution Checker to analyze solution components 

Best practice is to run Solution Checker for all application code and include it as mandatory step while you design solutions or check when you complete developing your custom logic.

Quick Find 

For an optimal search experience for your users consider the next:

  • All columns you expect to return results in a quick find search need to be included in the view or your results will not load as expected.
  • It is recommended to not use option sets in quick find columns. Try using the view filtering for these. 
  • Minimize the number of fields used and avoid using composite fields as searchable columns. E.g., use first and last name as searchable vs full name.
  • Avoid using multiple lines of text fields as search or find columns.
  • Evaluate Dataverse search vs using leading wildcard search

3. Training

This step should be done during user training or during UAT. To ensure optimal performance of Dynamics 365, ensure that users are properly leveraging browser caching. Without caching, users can experience cold loads which have lower performance than partially (or fully) warm loads.

 Make sure to train users to: 

  • Use application inline refresh over browser refresh (should not use F5)
  • Use application inline back button instead browser’s back button.
  • Avoid InPrivate/Incognito modes in browser which causes cold loads.
  • Make users aware that running applications which consumes lot of bandwidth (like video streaming) may affect performance.
  • Do not install browser extensions unless they are necessary (this might be also blocked via policy)
  • Do use ‘Record Set’ to navigate records quickly without switching from form back to the list. 

4. Testing

For business processes where performance is critical or processes having complex customizations with very high volumes, it is strongly recommended to plan for performance testing. Consider reviewing the below technical talk series describing important performance considerations, as well as sharing practical examples of how to set up and execute performance testing, and analyze and mitigate performance issues. Reference: Performance Testing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 TechTalk Series – Microsoft Dynamics Blog

5. Monitoring

You should define a monitoring strategy and might consider using any of the below tools based on your convenience.

  1. Monitor Dynamic 365 connectivity from remote locations continuously using network monitoring tools like Azure Network Performance Monitor or 3rd party tools. These tools help identify any network related problems proactively and drastically reduce troubleshooting time of any potential issue. 
  2. Application Insights, a feature of Azure Monitor, is widely used within the enterprise landscape for monitoring and diagnostics. Data that has already been collected from a specific tenant or environment is pushed to your own Application Insights environment. The data is stored in Azure Monitor logs by Application Insights, and visualized in Performance and Failures panels under Investigate on the left pane. The data is exported to your Application Insights environment in the standard schema defined by Application Insights. The support, developer, and admin personas can use this feature to triage and resolve Telemetry events for Microsoft Dataverse – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
  3. Dataverse and PowerApps analytics in the Power Platform Admin Centre. Through the Plug-in dashboard in the Power Platform Admin Center you can view metrics such as average execution time, failures, most active plug-ins, and more.
  4. Dynamics 365 apps include a basic diagnostic tool that analyzes the client-to-organization connectivity and produces a report.
  5. Monitor is a tool that offers makers the ability to view a stream of events from a user’s session to diagnose and troubleshoot problems. Works both for model driven apps and canvas apps. 

I hope this blog post had helped you learn or know something new…thank you for reading…

Cheers,

PMDY

Power Platform Pipelines to Deploy Managed Solutions

Hi Folks,

As you all know Application Life Cycle Management(ALM) is very important for a project to become successful in this automation era. The faster is the iteration speed to deploy your solution to production, the more healthy your project is and so your stakeholders. This kind of Automation is usually made possible with the help of CI/CD Azure Pipelines. CI/CD for GIT Repo for Azure DevOps is famous from quite some time. You might have heard that Microsoft had got this kind of CI/CD architecture to Power Platform released in Preview last year and is now Generally Available(GA).

But if you still don’t really have a hands on and pretty new to get this into your project, then this blog post is for you. You don’t need to know Azure DevOps or at least you don’t need to be technical to use this new capability, even administrators can. All you need is to just follow along….You can download the presenation I had presented at Singapore User Group here…

First of all, let’s see what are the prerequisites to create a Power Platform Pipeline.

  • Four environments are recommended, but you can use as few as three environments to create a pipeline.
  • Dataverse database is a must in all the environments except the Host Environment.
  • Dataverse for Teams environments aren’t supported for use with pipelines.
  • You must have a Power Platform administrator or system administrator role.
  • Pipelines are a feature of Managed Environments. As such, the development and target environments used in a pipeline must be enabled as a managed environment. Standalone licenses won’t be required when you use developer or trial environments with pipelines. More information: Managed Environments.
  • If you want to share these pipelines, you should grant access by opening the security from the host environment. The Deployment Pipeline User security role grants access to run one or more pipelines.

Now let’s see how you can set up Power Pipelines…

You need to identify which of your environments you want to configure pipeline for. For a healthy pipeline, at least you need 3 environments ie. Dev, Test, Prod, however there is no upper cap.

So for configuring our pipeline, we need one more environment in addition to above which is nothing but Host Environment which serves as the environment which stores all the configuration of the pipeline.

So below are our environments we will be using in this tutorial…

Host Environment(Required)

Development Environment (Required)

QA Environment(Optional)

Production Environment(Required)

You can navigate to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/ to create an environment with Dataverse database or follow this.

First thing, you have to do is to set up the host environment which holds the configuration of your pipeline. The configuration is pretty much easy and intuitive to follow. Make sure you choose same region to all your environments and select type as Production for all environments except developer environment. You don’t actually need to create a database as this stores only the configuration.

In the same way, I have already created the host environment and I also have few trials which I will be one of them as my test environment and one as my Developer environment, we can also configure other environment but for brevity I am leaving one not configured. Make sure to check Create database for this environment while you were creating for all the environments except the Host Environment.

For setting up the pipeline, you need to have the Environment Id’s of the environments which you would like to configure ready. Follow this link if you don’t know how you can get them.

Copy and paste them in a notepad for your quick reference during configuration.

Open the host environment from Admin portal and click on Resources Option available and click on Dynamics 365 apps.

In the next window, click on Install app and in the list of apps, choose Power Platform Pipelines, click on Next and install the app after agreeing the terms of service.

Now you need to open the host environment from https://make.powerapps.com to configure the pipeline and you should an app for Deployment Pipeline Configuration as below.

Before moving further let’s understand the table structure used for the pipeline.

Open this app as below and configure the environments which you want to use in your pipeline, set up the Development environment from where you would like to deploy the changes to your target. Make sure you select Environment Type as Development Environment and provide the respect Environment Id which you copied to your notepad earlier as above.

Similarly configure the other target environments, but proceed to select as Target Environment as the environment type. Once after system validation is done, validation status is shown as successful and the environments setup will look as below.

Now you need to create a pipeline for the configured environments, once saved, link the development environment which you configured above.

Next is configure your target environments for the pipeline to which you would like to deploy your solutions, from the quick create, give a name, choose your Previous Deployment Stage lookup and select the target environment you would like to Deploy from the lookup.

Once setup, your power pipeline should look something as below.

Note: While you are configuring the first stage to deploy to Test environment, you need leave the Previous Deployment Stage as empty.

Now go back to your Development environment, include any power platform component which you would like to deploy to next environment, here for simplicity I added one Canvas App to the solution as below.

The Canvas App component added and as soon as you select or even before you should see a Pipeline symbol as highlighted below….

Note: This icon will be appeared if you have setup everything correctly, if you still don’t see this option when you try to deploy component from Dev, then you need relook at your configuration which you have setup in the host environment, either you gave the wrong environment Id or you configured incorrectly.

Once this icon is being shown, you are set to go…once you click on the Pipeline symbol, it takes you to a new screen showing your pipeline as below

All you need to just click on Deploy here and wait for a couple of mins to Deploy the solution to next environment to Test and you should see below screen. Then click on Deploy.

Once deployment is successful, then you should see Deploy to next environment(Prod) also enabled.

That’s it, lets see if our Solution is deployed to our Test and Prod Environment.

Prod Environment:

Tips:

Use environment names that indicate their purpose, I have used trial environments for demo purpose but this feature is Generally available, so you might try it out in your actual projects meaning the deployed solution will be managed and not editable as below.

Limitations:

  1. Deleting the host environment deletes all pipelines and run data. Use caution and understand the impact of data and configuration loss as well as maker access to pipelines hosted in the environment.
  2. After General availability all the environment will be automatically enabled as managed environments, so you don’t need to worry much about setting up the environment as Managed.
  3. Licensing is also not a problem if you are a maker who’s creating the pipeline, you need to give the Deployment Pipeline Administrator and Deployment Pipeline User to the maker/user and share the pipeline for them to run it.

Hope you found this post helpful and you should definitely incorporate this feature in your projects to deploy managed solutions from one environment to another. How cool is this one….

Cheers,

PMDY