Although not officially released, there are strong signals that the support for Dark mode is coming very soon to Power Platform Model-Driven apps. Recent investments made in the platform like the ‘New look‘ that leverages the Fluent 2 design system are paving the way to Dark Mode. Adapting PCF Controls for Model Driven apps New (Modern) Look Modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn While we wait for an official Dark Mode toggle, thanks to Andrew Butenko (…whom I finally had the chance to meet at the last MVP Summit ) we now have a way switch to dark mode b ..read more

As Microsoft pursues its One Dynamics, One Platform initiative, substantial investments are made to integrate the D365 Finance and Operations suite with the Power Platform and Dataverse. These includes the ability to surface most F&O tables as virtual entities in Dataverse. Bringing full CRUD capabilities, but also opening up the whole Power Platform ecosystem to consume and act on F&O data. Think Power Automate, Model-driven and Canvas Apps, PCF Controls, Power Pages, etc. While experimenting with Finance and Operations virtual entities, I found gaps in the tooling and processes requi ..read more

Recently, while developing a PCF control with the FluentUI React v9 library, I encountered a rather unusual and annoying runtime display bug. Its resolution ended up shedding light on an important concept that had previously escaped my attention and I thought it deserves its own blog post. The symptoms The control I was developing is my latest community PCF control, the FluentUI Month Picker. FluentUI Month PickerPCF Gallery GitHub repo : drivardxrm/FluentUI.MonthPicker.PCF Given that FluentUI v9 (@fluentui/react-components) is the main library used by the platform to render form elements ..read more

The Power Apps grid control is a new and improved version for the data grid control for Power Platform model-driven applications. It introduces a modern data grid user experience and a range of noteworthy features, including the ability to perform inline editing and seamless infinite scrolling of the grid records, amongst others. Simply implement the Power Apps grid control component on your applications data grids (table views or form subgrids) to unlock up its capabilities. Configure a Power Apps grid control Power Apps grid control Moreover, as a developer, one of the most appealing aspects ..read more

In a previous blog post, I described how to use the new modelbuilder command group of the Microsoft Power Platform CLI (PAC CLI) to generate early-bound classes for Dataverse code customization projects. This time we’ll take this a step further and explore how to automate the early-bound class creation process by invoking the PAC CLI modelbuilder within an Azure DevOps pipeline. Link to previous post here : How to Generate Dataverse Early-Bound Classes with PAC CLI ModelBuilder When it comes to Dataverse code customizations, like server-side plugins, early-bound classes can play a vital rol ..read more

As a Power Platform developer, I have always been a strong advocate for the use of early-bound classes in customization projects that targets Dataverse tables and actions. Early-bound classes not only increase code readability and maintainability, they also significantly reduce the risk of errors. I think that being proficient and fast in generating early-bound classes is a must-have skill for any developers who works with the platform. Recently, the Microsoft Power Platform CLI (PAC CLI) introduced the new modelbuilder command group that enables early bound classes generation directly from th ..read more

Whenever a new version of C# is released I’m always eager to explore the new features of the language. However, as a Power Platform developer, it can be frustrating knowing that they can’t be used to develop Dataverse plugins, which constitutes a significant part of my daily work. As a matter of fact, due to a dependency on the Microsoft CRM SDK, Dataverse plugins are confined to use an older version of the .NET framework (4.6.2) which natively supports C#7.3, while the latest version is C# 11. Well, those days are over! In this post we’ll see how to take Dataverse plugin development to the ne ..read more

Dataverse Custom APIs are a powerful extension model of the PowerPlatform. However, at the time of writing, there are no direct method to execute a Custom API inside the PowerApps Canvas App model. In this post I will show how to call any Custom API from a Canvas App with the use of a generic Power Automate Flow and the new ParseJSON functionality. UPDATE 17-FEB-2023 Dataverse Custom APIs can now be called directly from PowerFx in Canvas Apps and Custom Pages. (still in experimental phase) Call Dataverse actions directly in Power Fx | Microsoft Power Apps Custom APIs in context First off, I ..read more

While I was starting a new PowerApps Component Framework (PCF) project, I stumbled upon the latest release notes of the framework’s main package (pcf-scripts v1.18.4). I was stoked to see that they improved the performance of the bundling process by switching from babel-loaderto esbuild-loader. Let’s take this opportunity to nerd-out on the bundling process of a PCF control and see if this change really measures up . PCF control Bundling As a quick recap, it’s important to know that the PCF control framework uses webpack to create the bundle (bundle.js), which is nothing more than the deploy ..read more

This is the second part of a series on Storybook for PowerApps Component Framework (PCF) controls, where I take one of my community PCF control hosted on Github (CountryPicker.PCF) and implement a Storybook from scratch. While the first post, revolved around the setup and authoring process of the Storybook, this one focuses on the publishing steps required to make Storybook static site publicly available from GitHub Pages. We’ll start by uploading the Storybook site manually. And then, with the help of a GitHub action, we will implement a release pipeline that publishes the site on every commi ..read more