General availability of PowerApps Solution checker makes it easier to check Dynamics 365 solution quality

On May 2th Microsoft announced the general availability of the PowerApps Solution Checker, tooling which allows you to run a static code analysis of your CDS and Dynamics 365 solutions against a set of best practice rules. By running these checks, you can identify problematic patterns in your code base which might impact performance or maintainability/upgradeability of your code.

Tooling like this is a must have for Dynamics 365 CE Online where releases are delivered on a continuous basis (with bi-weekly releases). With this release schedule, the risk of low quality solutions (from ISVs or SIs) interfering with Microsoft updates becomes more probable.

But this is not only about Microsoft safeguarding their Dynamics 365 SAAS platform but also about delivering value quicker and in a reliable fashion. I truly believe that code quality is a good indicator about how quickly developers can add business value to a software system. Static code analysis tools such as PowerApps solution checker might not be the holy grail but they at least give you an indication of the amount of technical debt that you have amassed within your Dynamics 365 instances.

I have been using PowerApps solution checker since a couple of months now and for projects with lots of different teams working on solution it allows you to have some indication of code quality without having to delve through 10.000 lines of code.  I also think that announcements such installing the solution checker by default, introduction of the Solution Health Hub and the announcement of PowerShell script support coming soon are showing Microsoft’s commitment on finally delivering on a good DevOps story for Dynamics 365.

References:

• Use solution checker to validate your model-driven apps in PowerApps
• Best practices and guidance for the Common Data Service

Dynamics 365 monthly reading list April 2019

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Integrating Dynamics 365 with Azure Function using Managed Identity
• Create Model Driven Apps for CDS environments
• PowerApps sample – visualization of beautiful mathematics
• Using the new Top and Bottom operators in views and fetchxml – part of the April 2019 release
• Working offline with PowerApps
• Understanding data loss prevention policies in Power Platform admin center
• Activating Field Service Mobile app licenses
• Dynamics 365 & Azure DevOps – Unit testing
• Does enterprise scale Dynamics 365 require multiple instances?
• Solution history entity in Dynamics 365 CRM
• PowerApps solution designer vs classic solution designer
• Power Platform & Azure enable developers to build applications faster than ever
• View solution layers (docs.microsoft.com)
• Dynamics 365 CE – set classic UI and navigate to classic UI
• Mobile offline for Dynamics 365 CE apps available in public preview
• Updates for the basic list and campaign management capabilities for Dynamics 365 applications (Mar-May 2019 release)
• Use Flow to monitor multiple Dynamics 365 instances
• PowerShell scripts to discover and manage specific features in the Power Platform
• Tricky application ids in Dynamics 365 apps
• Using a service principal with the CDS connector
• Demystifying PowerApps environments – Part 1 – default instance
• Demystifying PowerApps environments – Part 3 – production environments

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

• Microsoft, Adobe CEOs detail latest data sharing efforts and here the official announcement Adobe, Microsoft and SAP announce new Open Data Initiative details
• Microsoft product priorities that will shape Dynamics 365 partner efforts
• Power Platform – the Uncommon Data Service
• Dynamics 365 – Dead is a strong word
• Business Applications ISV news at Build 2019
• You don’t have to be a developer to turn a great idea into an app
• Microsoft steps up to Salesforce’s AppExchange
• Has Microsoft just introduced a 20% tax on Dynamics 365 ISVs?
• Upcoming program for Business Applications ISVs
• Use playbooks  for guided selling in Dynamics 365
• Project accurate revenue with sales forecasting in Dynamics 365 CE (Preview)

Quick tip: solving rendering issues in PowerPoint presenter mode

After upgrading to a newer version of Office, my PowerPoint slides displayed incorrectly in presenter mode – see screenshot below. I googled around but did not find anything useful.

Fortunately I remembered  a similar issue that I had in Internet Explorer 11 see Solve image rendering problems in Internet Explorer 11 on HP ZBooks. It seems that PowerPoint has a similar setting – go to Options>Advanced and underneath the Display section I had to check the “Disable Slide Show hardware graphics acceleration."