Tag: Azure

Dataverse – Git Integration – Preview – Quick Review

Hi Folks,

This post is about Dataverse and Git Integration which is the most sought after feature in the todays automation Era. This is a preview feature, you would need to create a new environment with Early Access enabled to test this feature or you can use an existing US Preview environment for testing this out.

While every MDA(Model Driven Application) and it’s components can be safely and moved across the environments using Solutions with the help of Azure DevOps Pipelines. However when coming to integrating Power Platform Solutions to Azure DevOps, we had to manually export the solution and download them each and every time when we would like to commit the Solution Artifacts to Azure DevOps Repo.

With this new Preview feature we can directly integrate the Power Platform Solutions to Azure DevOps.

Let’s see this action…wait a moment, there were some prerequisites to be considered…

  1. Environment should be a Managed Environment to start using this and you need to be an Admin for the environment
  2. Azure DevOps subscription and license should be available to set this up, also permission to read source files and commits(should be a member of contributor group in Azure DevOps) from a Repo
  3. Your email address used for Azure DevOps and Power Platform Solutions should be the same

Setup:

Connecting Dataverse with Azure DevOps is easy but requires a bit of understanding of the Binding options available.

Well, there were two types of Binding options

  1. Environment Binding – Single root folder binds to all the unmanaged solutions in the environment
  2. Solution Binding – Different solutions uses a different root folder in Azure DevOps for binding

Note: Once the binding is setup, there isn’t away to change, so set this up carefully, else you may need to delete the folder and create a new one in Azure DevOps.

Let’s see one by one…for demoing purpose, I have created two projects in Azure DevOps Instance

  1. Solution Binding: When we use this, all the components will be available as pending changes
  2. Environment Binding: When we use this, all the unmanaged solution components will be mapped to one Azure DevOps root folder. Let’s set this up.

We are currently able to use only Solution binding, as Environment Binding doesn’t show up any changes to be committed, but there is a catch here.

We can set up for Environment binding and verify if the Solution components are getting marked as pending changes or not. Do note that Setting up the Binding is a one time activity for environment, once setup, it can’t be changed from one type to another.

Open https://make.powerapps.com and navigate to solutions and click on ellipses as below

Once clicked on Connect to Git

Since we were currently using Environment binding, let’s select the Connection Type as Environment

Then click on Connect, once connected, you should a alert message in power apps maker portal at the top.

Now create a new solution as below named ecellors Solution

Verify the integration by clicking on Git Integration as below

It should show as below

Now let’s add few components to the solution we created

Once added, let’s publish the unmanaged solution and verify it..

Do look closely, you should see a Source Control icon highlighted in yellow color for illustration.

Also, you should see a commit option available at the top

You should now be able to commit the solution components as if you are committing the code changes.

It also specifies the branch to which we were commiting…

While it takes few minutes unlike pushing the code to Azure DevOps to push the changes, however this would depend based on the number of solution components you were pushing..once it is done, it will show a commit message like below…

Now let’s verify our Azure DevOps Repo..for this you can go back to the main solutions page, click on Git Connection at the top..

After clicking on Git Connection, click on the link to Microsoft Azure DevOps as below

Then you should be navigated to Azure DevOps folder as below where all the solution files will be tracked component wise.

Now we will move back to Power Apps maker portal and make some changes to any of the components inside the solution…

Let’s say, I just edited the flow name and created a new connection reference, saved and published the customizations.

If you did some changes at the Azure DevOps repo level, you can come back and click on Check for updates, if there were any conflicts between changes done in Azure DevOps and component in solution, it will be shown as conflict.

We now have 3 component changes and all were listed here…you can click on Commit.

As soon as the changes are committed, you should see a message saying Commit Successful and 0 Changes, 0 Updates, 0 Conflicts.

Now you successfully integrated Dataverse Solution components with Azure DevOps without any manual intervention required while deploying solutions using Azure DevOps Pipelines.

Hope you learned something new today…while feature is still in Preview and only available for early release, while couple of issues still need to fixed by Microsoft.

I have tested this feature by creating an environment in US Preview region and this feature will be a good value to projects using Automation and this solution repository can be further deployed to other environments using Azure DevOps Pipelines.

This will be rolled out soon next year, hope you learned something new today…

Cheers,

PMDY

What is Microsoft Cloud for Health Care…?

Hi Folks,

Have you heard about this before?

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare provides capabilities to manage health data at scale and make it easier for healthcare organizations to improve the patient experience, coordinate care, and drive operational efficiency, while helping support security, compliance, and interoperability of health data.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare includes solutions that are built on capabilities within Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Power Platform.

This is an introduction blog post. Firstly, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solution should be installed from Microsoft Cloud Solution Center. To say about Microsoft Cloud Solution Center, it actually checks for requirements such as licenses, dependencies, and enables you to easily discover and deploy capabilities and solutions in Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, there by simplifying the deployment process from a single location.

We will see what are the prerequisites.

Prerequisites

  • You must be a tenant admin, Dynamics 365 admin, or Power Platform admin to deploy Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solutions.
  • You must have licenses for the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solutions and apps that you’re deploying. If your organization doesn’t have the necessary licenses, you’ll be notified during the deployment process in Solution Center.

Here are the solutions that are part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, for each solution. We need to keep in mind that:

  • Some solutions have predeployment setup requirements.
  • Some solutions require configuration or have additional capabilities that you can set up after deployment.
SolutionDependencies
Patient accessPower Pages, Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Patient service centerDynamics 365 Customer Service, Digital Messaging add-on for Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Patient outreachDynamics 365 Marketing
Patient insight cardsDynamics 365 Sales Premium
Care managementDynamics 365 Customer Service*
Home healthDynamics 365 Field Service
Data integration toolkitPower Apps
Unified patient viewPower Apps
Patient trends (preview)Power Apps, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Patient population dashboard (preview)Power BI
Provider data modelPower Apps
Payor data model (preview)Power Apps
Life sciences data model (preview)Power Apps
Virtual VisitsMicrosoft Teams
Text analytics for healthAzure subscription
Azure IoT for healthcareAzure subscription
Azure Health BotAzure subscription
Azure Health Data ServicesAzure subscription
Healthcare database templatesAzure subscription
Health document intelligenceAzure subscription

There were a ton of Microsoft Azure capabilities to explore which I will do in my upcoming blog posts. So here, I am using a personal Azure subscription and rest everything I will try to keep using Trial accounts as long as possible. So, you don’t need to worry if you will charge just to try it out.

Also, with the advent of AI, health care industry is getting revolutionized.

Interested…? Then keep looking this space as I will explore more with all of you. Stay tuned…

Cheers,

PMDY

ChatGPT – Insights

Hi Folks,

In this modern era where AI/ML is ruling the world and automating all the possible day to day activities done by a human, in this blog article, let’s talk about the latest buzz word since November 2022. i.e. ChatGPT.

So, what is ChatGPT, why its has become so much popular?

Officially ChatGPT stands for Generative PreTrained Transformer, it’s an AI-powered chatbot created by OpenAI. ChatGPT was fine-tuned on top of GPT-3.5 using supervised learning as well as reinforcement learning using Microsoft’s neural network technology. Open AI’s Chat GPT uses powerful machine learning algorithms to generate coherent and natural-sounding responses for user queries. To some extent, its giving a tough competition to its competitor Google Deep Mind Sparrow. The differences between the two can be found here.

The AI race between Microsoft and Google has definitely been ignited. Microsoft’s recent $10 billion investment into OpenAI, the startup behind their popular Chat GPT chatbot, has increased competition for AI supremacy.

Ok, that’s all the sleek intro. Let’s see how to work on this Chat GPT.

It can be accessed here…

Once you click on the above link, you need login either with your Google or Microsoft credentials. You will be presented with below screen.

In the text box available at the bottom, you can enter your input for ChatGPT to search and get back the result to you.

I have just tried entering how we can integrate Open AI’s ChatGPT and Power Automate and results are pretty much shown in a manner which is easier to understand as below.

The interesting part compared to Power Platform’s Power Virtual Agents is that ChatGPT has the capability to record the previous responses used under the login which is a great enhancement. So with this, the problems can be analyzed and solutions can be generated. By the way, the GPT-3 model, in particular, is 175 billion parameters in size, making it the largest language model ever trained.

In the upcoming blogs, I will try to elaborate how Chat GPT can be used for Power Platform real world scenarios and how we can integrate with Power Automate step by step…. Till then stay tuned…and keep rocking….

Cheers,

PMDY

Azure API Management(APIM) for Power Platform

Hi Folks,

In today’s world, all the modern software applications use API for the front end to communicate with the backend systems, so lets see as it is very important for every developer working on Azure and API’s. Basically this is a PAAS Service from Azure. Follow along if you would like to know more details on this.

In short APIIM is a hybrid and multi cloud platform used to manage complete API life cycle. Azure API Management is made up of an API gateway, a management plane, and a developer portal.

  • Caching response to improve performance
  • Limit the number of API Calls
  • Security API and providing access
  • Interface to test API calls
  • API Analytics
  • Package related API Services
  • Transforms your API’s without
  • API Gateway is the first point of contact for any requests for your API which will route your requests to the appropriate backends. Imposes additional security restrictions with the help of JWT tokens and other certificates. Responses can be cached so that the API response could be faster.
  • Emits logs, metrics, and traces for monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting
  • API Management are highly configurable, with control over URL mapping, query and path parameters, request and response content, and operation response caching.
  • Groups helps to provide conditional viewing capabilities.
  • Policy can help to change the behavior of an API without any code changes, this is well suited for your production API’s.

Also its easy to integrate API Management with all the other Azure Service available in the market.

Now lets go into the hands on by creating an APIIM simply from Azure.

Go to Home – Microsoft Azure and search for APIIM and select API Management services and click on Create.

Input all the details, it was pretty self explanatory, coming to the pricing tier you could select based on your project needs and use case. Click on Review and Create and then Create.

It will take few minutes for the deployment to complete and you can use it.

The below Power point slide presentation is complete resource which can help you with all your queries related to Azure API Management.

Grand Tour of Azure API Management

grand-tour-of-azure-api-managementDownload

I hope this gives you a bit of introduction to Azure API Management, now lets see how you can use this in your Power Platform Solutions.

For this, once your API ready, all you have do is to export your API’s from Azure API Management to your Power Platform Environment. With this the citizen developers can unleash the capabilities of Azure where the API’s are developed by professional developers. With this capability, citizen developers can use the Power Platform to create and distribute apps that are based on internal and external APIs managed by API Management.

Steps to follow would be as below:

All you need to do is to create a custom connector for your API which can be used in Power Platform like Power Apps, Power Automate etc.

  1. Navigate to your API Management service in the Azure portal.
  2. In the menu, under APIs, select Power Platform.
  3. Select Create a connector.
  4. In the Create a connector window, do the following:
    1. Select an API to publish to the Power Platform.
    2. Select a Power Platform environment to publish the API to.
    3. Enter a display name, which will be used as the name of the custom connector.
    4. Optionally, if the API doesn’t already require a subscription, select Create subscription key connection parameter.
    5. Optionally, if the API is protected by an OAuth 2.0 server, provide details including Client ID, Client secret, Authorization URL, Token URL, and Refresh URL.
  5. Select Create.

Once the connector is created, navigate to your Power Apps or Power Automate environment. You will see the API listed under Data > Custom Connectors.

Custom connector in Power Platform

I hope this will give you a complete picture about API Management in Azure…if you have any further queries, don’t hesitate to comment here…

Cheers,

PMDY

Azure Service Bus Integration with Dynamics CE

Hi Folks,

In this post, we’ll talk about Azure Service bus.

Overview:

To start with Service Bus is fully managed messaging service which is used to connect any applications, devices, and services running in the cloud to any other applications or services. In this we can have queues which helps in the one directional communication and topics which provides two directional communication with the help of publish subscribe model.

Service bus can serve the following purposes

  1. Used for messaging
  2. For Decoupling producer and consumer of the message
  3. Load balancing
  4. For 1:N(publish and subscribe model) using Topics

Queues and Topics follow FIFO mechanism.

That said, lets see in action…

Create an Azure service bus namespace in Azure like below…

Following this, once you have created a namespace which is actually a container for all messaging components (queues and topics).

Next step is to create a queue or topic, in this case I am creating a queue….creating topic will be similar.

Fill up the details as required for the queue setup in the highlighted section…

After creating a queue or topic, you need to create an access policy for the same as below

Do note the queue URL as highlighted above….access control in service bus is achieved through Shared Access policies.

Once you have Primary connection string created, you need to go back to your Plugin registration tool and register a service end point for triggering your service bus message and provide the connection string in the below areas highlighted and click on next.

Next below appears for your review..

You can provide SAS Key or SAS Token for authentication in order to retrieve the messages from service bus and click on save. Now your end point is configured, now you can go ahead and create a step which will trigger the message to service bus from Dynamics, do note that you can only register an asynchronous operation inorder to communicate with your service bus.

You can perform the necessary operation and you can find the message being created in the service bus. If it didn’t show up immediately, please refresh and try after a few mins.

In order to consume these messages, you can use a console application for the sake of retrieval. Once the message is retrieved, it will be deleted from the queue by default.

Incase you want to use those messages for your troubleshooting purposes, you can peek command, the Peek operation on a queue or a subscription returns at most the requested number of messages. The following table shows the types of messages that are returned by the Peek operation.

Type of messagesIncluded?
Active messagesYes
Dead-lettered messagesNo
Locked messagesYes
Expired messagesMay be (before they are dead-lettered)
Scheduled messagesYes for queues. No for subscriptions

I hope this provides right insights for integrating service bus with Azure and service bus is widely used when both systems were not in sync and available at the same time.

Thank you for reading…

Reference: Service Bus from Microsoft

Happy integrating Dynamics CE with Azure….#PowerfulAloneBetterTogether

Cheers,

PMDY