Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list July 2020

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• SLA's in the Unified Interface
• Use SQL to query data (Common Data Service)
• Tabular Data Stream (TDS) Protocol endpoint for Common Data Service
• DirectQuery CDS from Power BI by @crmchartguy
• XrmToolBox school (Youtube playlist)
• How to convert an unmanaged solution into a managed solution in Dynamics 365
• Power Platform DevOps: Part 5 - Deconstructing the framework: solutions project
• Create engaging messages with Adaptive Cards (Youtube 001:12:05)
• Power Automate Saturday Playlist (Youtube)
• Power Apps Checker now analyses modern web syntax (up to ES9)
• Monitor now supports model driven apps
• Setting sub-grid filterxml in the unified interface and other naughty things by @ddlabar
• Overcoming 5 top challenges with embedded canvas apps
• Collaborate and debug an app together in real time with monitor
• Get a users last logon time in Dynamics 365  by @nishantranaCRM
• How to restrict users from executing on demand workflows
• Enhanced integrated calendar experience in Dynamics 365 Sales
• How to use enhanced reference panels in UCI for rendering multiple subgrids
• How to merge solutions in Power Apps and Dynamics 365 with XrmToolBox Solution Mover
• Power Platform - Talking about the underdog
• Send a Power App push notification using flow to open a record in a canvas app
• How to power up Teams using Power Virtual Agents with Luise Freese (#LessCodeMorePower youtube video) with @LuisFreese and the associated blog post https://m365princess.com/how-to-use-power-virtual-agents-to-simplify-it-and-unfck-user-experience/ 

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

• Announcing Power Platform and Teams updates to help customers adapt to remote work
• Go with what you know: the value of long term customers
• Omnichannel Engagement Hub: configuring outbound messaging by @tassya
• Forms Pro is now Customer Voice by @juliandynamics
• Are you an app person or a flow person? 
• Gartner positions Dynamics 365 Field Service Magic Quadrant Leader
• Telstra citizen developers automate processes with Power Apps in Microsoft Teams, giving million of minutes back to the business

Notes on learning to work with the Microsoft Graph API

Microsoft Graph is a REST API which allows you to access Microsoft Cloud services (e.g. Office 365 service like Microsoft Teams, OneDrive,Planner, SharePoint, etc.. but also enterprise mobility and security services like Azure AD, Identity Manager, etc..) resources using a single endpoint. You can use it for example for querying data in Outlook/Exchange and OneDrive but in the past couple of weeks I mainly used it for Microsoft Teams. The easiest way to get started with the Microsoft Graph API is the Microsoft Graph Explorer.

I learned quite a lot from the 30 days of Microsoft Graph blog series - a highly recommended starting point - for other resources take a look at the references section below.

References:

• Overview of Microsoft Graph
• Getting started with Microsoft Graph (Youtube 00:04:46)
• Graph explorer  - https://aka.ms/ge
• Microsoft Graph tutorials
• A lap around the Microsoft Graph Toolkit - https://aka.ms/mgtlap
• Build apps with Microsoft Graph - Associate (Microsoft Learn)
• Getting started with Microsoft Graph API for developers

Don't forget to update older client applications for Dynamics 365 to the correct .NET Framework version

I lost 30 minutes this morning when trying to troubleshoot an older console app (written in 2017) which refused to connect to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. It was only after updating the Nuget packages for Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies  that I noticed that I was still building against .NET Framework 4.5.2 which is not supported anymore.

Reference:

• Visual Studio and the .NET Framework (Dynamics 365 Developer Guide)

Quick tip: SQL access to Common Data Service using Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Recently Microsoft announced Power BI DirectQuery support (in preview) to the Common Data Service (CDS)  using Tabular Data Stream. You can also leverage this  CDS TDS endpoint within SQL Server Management Studio to write SQL queries against the CDS database. You can connect using the base url of your CDS instance and add the port 5558. To authenticate you will need to use Azure Active Directory - Password.

By default this functionality is not enabled, so you if you try to use SQL Server Management Studio you will get below exception.

As outlined on http://aka.ms/enablesqlforcds, you will need to to go the Power Platform Admin Center to switch on the TDS support.

References:

• DirectQuery CDS for Power BI
• Tabular Data Stream (TDS) Protocol endpoint for Common Data Service (CDS)

Quick tip: find duplicate records in Dynamics 365 with Deduplicator plugin for XrmToolBox

 If you want to quickly scan your Dynamics 365 or CDS instance for duplicate records, take a look at the Deduplicator plugin for XrmToolbox. It provides you with the option to specify one or more fields for a specific entity as matching criteria (with option to ignore blank values, leading and trailing white space and taking into account casing) and choose which additional fields to display for the duplicate results. 

Notes on the Power Virtual Agent in a day lab

Microsoft recently also released a Power Virtual Agent in a day and I decided to give it a try. Power Virtual Agents are one of the components in the Power Platform which allow you to built intelligent chat bots without any coding or AI experience.

Since Power Virtual Agents are built on the Power Platform and the Azure Bot Framework you still have the option to extend the capabilities to suit your organisations needs.

Some notes on the Power Virtual Agent lab:

• The creation of a virtual agent or bot is super easy and intuitive with a simple graphical interface for authoring the logic  that will drive your bots. The authoring canvas for the conversation tree has a great user experience and enables non-developers to create a powerful chatbot experience.

• After you import the SolutionPowerVirtualAgentInADay.zip solution file, you will need to reconfigure the connections in the different Power Automate Flows - to do this you will need to use the unique name of the CDS instance - so if you have used a Dynamics CRM instance you can not use the readable name - don't forget to add the region shorthand as well.
• If you are familiar enough with Dynamics 365 and/or Power Platform you will be able to complete the labs in a couple of hours.
• The built-in integration with Power Automate allows you to leverage the over 250+ external services and systems so the only limit is your imagination.

• To try out transferring a chat bot session to a human agent, the easiest option is to use Omnichannel for Customer Service (See Setting up Omnichannel for Customer Service on an existing Dynamics 365 trial for how to try this out). After you have completed t  Only limited documentation is available on how to write logic for escalating to an agent if you are not using Omnichannel for Customer service - see Configure hand-off to any generic engagement hub and code on Github

References:

• Introduction to Power Virtual Agents (Youtube 00:52:17)
• Create, test and deploy your bot with Virtual Agent for Customer Service (Youtube 00:10:48)
• PVA Series - real QnA chatbot with QnA maker
• Building proactive bot with Power Virtual Agent
• Create chatbot using Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for your customers 
• Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service (Youtube 00:08:13)
• Create, test and deploy your bot with Virtual Agent for Customer Service (Youtube 00:10:08)
• Power Virtual Agents Solution packaging (Youtube)

Quick tip : how to check if a Microsoft Teams channel exists in a Power Automate Flow

The new Microsoft Teams connector (Preview) in Microsoft Power Automate Flow makes Microsoft Teams automation scenarios a lot easier. The List channels action will return you a list of one or more channels for a Team. If you want to check if a channel with a specific name already exists you can  use the contains function. (For a good overview see Reference guide to using functions in expressions for Azure Logic Apps and Power Automate)