Something that is causing a lot of confusion in the Power Platform community at the moment is trying to figure out the impact of request limits. Particularly for organizations with "legacy" Dynamic CRM instances that load data from back end systems into Dataverse on a regular basis. Many of these integration processes were built long before Dynamics CRM transitioned to the … [Read more...] about Power Platform Requests – Base Request Capacity
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Power Automate Desktop – UI Flow
In a recent blog post I showed how you can use the Form Processing capabilities in AI Builder to extract the details of invoices received as email attachments. In this post, I am going to expand on this and take this invoice information and use a UI Flow to submit the invoice details to a legacy application. UI Flows provide RPA, Robotic Processing, Automation, capabilities to … [Read more...] about Power Automate Desktop – UI Flow
Synapse Link for Dataverse – Append-Only
By default Synapse for Dataverse exports records as in-place updates so if the record already exists it gets updated and if not it gets created. This can be configured so that record changes are appended as new records rather than updated. This can be done from the advanced options under Manage tables by selecting show advanced configuration settings and selecting the … [Read more...] about Synapse Link for Dataverse – Append-Only
Power Fx Formula Columns in Dataverse
The preview of Power Fx formula columns in Dataverse has just been announced. Up until now, I ignored formula columns as they were only available in Dataverse for Teams. So I wanted to check out a little bugbear of mine with calculated fields and how they handle nulls. Strictly speaking, calculated fields handle nulls correctly and if you perform an arithmetic operation on a … [Read more...] about Power Fx Formula Columns in Dataverse
Synapse Link for Dataverse – Metadata
I previously wrote a couple of blog posts (post1 and post2) suggesting two different ways to access your Dataverse metadata in Synapse. Both of these techniques are now redundant as Microsoft announced in May 2022 that the Dataverse metadata is now available directly in Synapse. Your Synapse serverless pool now contains additional external tables with the metadata. Your queries … [Read more...] about Synapse Link for Dataverse – Metadata
Extract Tables from a PDF using Power Automate Desktop
I previously did a post that demonstrated how you can use Power Automate Desktop to extract text from a PDF. At the time you were not able to extract tables from a PDF. In Feb 2022 Microsoft announced that they added that capability to PAD so I thought I might give it a quick whirl. To use it simply drag the Extract Table from PDF action to the designer providing the source of … [Read more...] about Extract Tables from a PDF using Power Automate Desktop
Dataverse Anonymization
Many organizations require that personal data in non-production Dataverse environments is anonymized. This may be company policy or a legal requirement such as GDPR which governs the collection and processing of personal information in the European Union. Here is a quick tip on how to use the Bulk Data Updater for XrmToolBox to anonymize Dataverse data. In case you are not … [Read more...] about Dataverse Anonymization
Dataverse Metadata in Synapse
Note: the Dataverse metadata is now available out of the box and so this approach is no longer relevant. I have an updated post here When you configure Synapse Link for Dataverse it exports your Dataverse data into a Synapse data lake as CSV files. A database with external tables is created automatically in the Serverless SQL pool providing access to the data in the CSV … [Read more...] about Dataverse Metadata in Synapse
Synapse Link for Dataverse – Option Sets
Note: the Dataverse metadata is now available out of the box and so this approach is no longer relevant. I have an updated post here On November 23 Microsft announced that DES (Data Export Services) will be deprecated and will reach end of life in November 2022. Microsoft is recommending that customers use Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse instead. DES has been around for a … [Read more...] about Synapse Link for Dataverse – Option Sets
Custom Pages – Multiple Screens
The introduction of custom pages within model-driven apps is the start of the long-awaited convergence of model-driven apps and canvas apps. Adding a custom page to your model-driven app gives you complete control over how the user interface looks and behaves. Coupled with the ability to connect to multiple data sources you can now create a single Power App with massive … [Read more...] about Custom Pages – Multiple Screens
Power Apps Automated Testing with Playwright
Playwright is an open-source web testing library developed by Microsoft that can be used for testing modern web apps. You can use Playwright to create test scripts for your Power Apps and use these to run automated tests. Some of the benefits of using Playwright are it supports the three major browser engines Chromium, WebKit and Firefox. auto-wait for elements to be … [Read more...] about Power Apps Automated Testing with Playwright
Power Automate Desktop – Document Automation
At Ignite this year Microsoft announced that anybody running Windows 10 can now use Power Automate Desktop for free. Power Automate Desktop empowers users to automate repetitive tasks they run on their Windows desktops. In this post I wanted to demonstrate some of its extensive capabilities by using Power Automate Desktop for Document Automation extracting the contents of … [Read more...] about Power Automate Desktop – Document Automation
