Category Archives: Dynamics

Hidden fields are not “required” anymore in model-driven forms?

Coincidentally, there seem to be change in how required fields are treated in the model-driven forms. I’m saying “coincidentally”, since I recently wrote a post on a related(though different) topic: https://www.itaintboring.com/dynamics-crm/how-to-not-to-get-stuck-on-the-required-fields-when-creating-a-power-automate-flow/ And, then, a co-worker just mentioned that, it seems, hidden fields are not “required” anymore in the model-driven forms even if they have been… Read More »

Image control for model-driven apps

You may have seen the announcement: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/simple-image-control-for-model-driven-apps/ So, I was looking at it tonight and realized that I should probably take it for a spin on my phone. After all, one of the obvious scenarios would be to have a few image fields on the form so we could open that form on the mobile… Read More »

Canvas App on the Dashboard – how do we handle application url?

Environment variables can be very helpful in a lot of situations. Here is yet another scenario where I found them very useful the other day. Imagine you have a Canvas Application you wanted to display in a web resource. Maybe even on the dashboard… something like this: The app there is very simple, but it’s… Read More »

How to: intercept record assignment and keep it under the same team all the time?

There was a little unusual scenario to cover. With user-owned tables in Dataverse (see, I’m practicing different pieces of new terminology in the same sentence ), how do we keep all records under the same team? You might probably question the scenario to start with, and I’d be happy to just say that there is… Read More »

Promote to Admin and Check Access – two buttons we can use to investigate access issues

It might be yesterday’s news (or, at least, it’s probably at least a month old now) that we have “Check Access” button in the model-driven apps: This one is available from the command bar, and it allows us to check record access for any user in the system: It can also track record sharing –… Read More »

Power platform Dataflows – have I missed “Incremental refresh” option somehow?

This month seems to be all about data integration/data migration for me, so, even though I’m still using good old SSIS in many cases, I wanted to look at the Dataflows a little closer. After all, they don’t require any additional deployment/licensing – we just need to go to the maker portal and start building… Read More »

The challenges of using external data in the model-driven applications

Integrating external data with model-driven applications in the Microsoft Dataverse can be a challenging task for a number of reasons: Data volumes Storage costs API throttling and entitlement limits Technology limitations Lack of experience with the tools/technologies Vague requirements where a little change can affect the whole approach to the integration In this post,… Read More »

Virtual Entities Revisited: using embedded canvas app for updates

As you could see in the first post of these series, virtual entities are still alive, Microsoft itself is relying on them for integrations, and we can also do some interesting things with them. In the second post, I walked you through the process of setting up a virtual entity and creating a custom provider.… Read More »

Virtual entities revisited: setting up a virtual entity

In the previous post, I blogged about how useful virtual entities can be when integrating external data with Dataverse, and how we can take that integration even further by adding CRUD support through an embedded canvas app. But there was a teaser video and no technical details, so, in this post, I’ll talk about setting… Read More »

Virtual entity revisited – let’s see how far we can push them

If you have not heard of the virtual entities for a while, it’s understandable. Sometimes, it seems there were no new developments on that front for a while now. And, yet, it might not be quite fair, so, it seems, I’m going to write a few posts on this topic (not that I like writing… Read More »