Dynamics 365 monthly reading list May 2019

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Subscribe to AD changes using Microsoft Flow and Graph API
• Sprinkle some DevOps on your PowerApps & Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement projects – BRK3093 (Youtube 00:53:22)
• Build 2019: new accelerators bring Dynamics 365 and Power Platform ISVs to AppSource and Azure Marketplace
• Understand record references and polymorphic lookups in canvas apps
• Dynamics 365 Sales Insights – how relationship analytics values are calculated
• Building the platform for every developer
• Import or export records from PowerApps for Dynamics 365 CE
• Dynamic country maps in PowerApps
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Banking accelerator is now in private preview
• Why would you use “Stage for upgrade” with managed solutions?
• On the Fasttrack to a Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement on premise to online migration
• ALM at scale: new features and automation capabilities
• Announcing the general availability of the new view designer
• Dynamics 365 integration with Microsoft Flow
• Unearthing the “solution layering” feature of Dynamics 365. How are good old concepts of patching and cloning related to it?
• Flow vs Azure Logic Apps why am I a convert?
• Provisioning and administration of CDS instances is getting easier
• Geocode a custom entity with Microsoft Flow
• Using Azure Active Directory groups to manage user access to Dynamics 365 apps and data

Topics for Dynamics 365 Business Application Platform analysts, project managers and power users

• Power Platform and the definition of done … or why SOWs are fundamentally broken
• Common Data Service – Strategies and silos
• PowerApps – Why spreadsheets suck
• Are you brave enough to ask your customers how you are doing?
• Dynamics 365 & Power Platform timeline for the 2019 release wave 2
• Steve has a chat with Jeff York – interesting podcast where Steve Mordue interviews Jeff York (CFO – Microsoft Business Applications)
• Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service is available for preview
• The future of Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA) also check out A letter to our Microsoft Project community
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing Insights Podcast – Know what your consumers say, seek and feel

PowerApps Component Framework available in public preview

On April 23th the PowerApps Component Framework (PCF) and the PowerApps CLI was finally made available for public preview. The PowerApps Component Framework (PCF) is the foundation for all controls used in the new Unified Interface released with Dynamics 365.

PCF allows 3d party developers to build visual components using the same framework which is used internally by Microsoft (see picture below for some examples) in the unified interface.

Components created using the PowerApps Control Framework are solution aware and can be used to build a more compelling user experience. The Dynamics365 developer community immediately picked up on this exciting news and Andrew Ly already shared the source code for 3 different controls  - Progressbar control , keybinding example  and countdowntimer.

Guido Preite  @crmanswers also set up PCF Gallery which contains a list of different controls like a timeline control, data card and UK postcode validator. Everyday new controls based on PCF are added.

The PowerApps Component Framework has been in private preview for quite a while but some details were already shared on a number of occasions in 2018. Initially the framework was called Custom Controls Framework and I you encourage to take a look at some interesting post from Bob Guidinger on this topic (see references below). Do keep in mind that there are some changes between the private preview and public preview – see Update existing custom components for more details.

You will notice from the documentation that most samples are using Typescript to implement custom components so I added also some other reference links below which might help you to get started. For a brief introduction you might also want to take a look at the PowerApps April community call recording (PCF presented from 00:47:00 onwards). One thing to note though is that this is a framework which is clearly targeted at professional developers so the Dynamics consultant who occasionally writes some Javascript web resources or some simple plugins in C# will face a steep learning curve. I even think that pure Javascript/.NET developers even have an edge on the average Dynamics consultant when trying to learn the necessary skills required for PCF development.

References:

• What is the Custom Control Framework and why should Dynamics 365 developers be excited about it
• Custom Controls Framework – Introduction by Bob Guidinger
• Custom Controls Framework – Miscellaneous (Part 7) by Bob Guidinger
• PowerApps component framework (Microsoft documentation)
• Getting started with the PowerApps Component Framework (Youtube webinar 00:58:30) – webinar with the PowerApps development team
• Credit card Validator PCF Control with Hands On Lab and demo code
• Typescript SDK for Visual Studio 2017
• Typescript in 5 minutes
• Getting started with Typescript in 2019
• How to create a PowerApps PCF control (Youtube 00:13:05) by Todd Baginski
• Develop your custom control using PowerApps Component framework and use it on your CRM interface
• PowerApps Component Framework – frosting on the cake
• Microsoft PowerApps CLI – time for the non-citizen developers to get more involved
• Create custom controls using the PowerApp Component Framework