I got a challenge from my colleague at CRMK: I need to set owners on accounts with a team with the same name as the account. Mia @ CRMK Is that even possible?? Yes, it actually is. Simplest query I start with a very simple query to get all Accounts: <fetch> <entity name='account'> <attribute name='name' /> <attribute name='ownerid' /> </entity> </fetch> New supported link-entity feature I need to join with Teams, not by a relationship like OwnerId, but by their only Name. <fetch> <entity name='account'> <attribute name ..read more

During the last few months, I’ve been working more than ever (well, most after my little stroke issue three years ago), and more work apparently creates more needs, more features, more improvement – just more! A few new features, a lot of improvements Why do I create new features and maybe a brand-new tool? 90% of those times because I simply need it. When I’m working for customers, by default, needs occur. 9% could be that I just had an idea to see if I could do it. Sometimes, I could, but most times, I don’t. 1% is that some colleague, someone in the community, or even someone from Microsoft ..read more

What is ALM? As always, it’s an acronym. ALM means Application Lifecycle Management and many texts about ALM are available; white papers, articles, blogs, how-tos… But in my subjective it means: Keep track of everything we need. Don’t track things we can generate. Generate everything automagically. /Mr. Rapp What is ALM for the general population in the Power Platform area? You may think: Why should I know ALM, I sortof know it anyway, but me and everyone can just export a solution, import that solution – tada! Actually, skip that too. It’s possible to fix a bug directly in the production en ..read more

Why mixing two very different but very similar features? I hope you will see it, if you read on… What’s a Token? I don’t really know why… but it’s a word, a special word, representing other words… where the word is a data word, will be replaced with words from the actual data, as it is actually used. I think. Ok, I started this post in the wrong way, since I can hardly explain it. I’ll restart the post, without explaining “token”. XRM Tokens? The XRM Tokens is just the name of this feature. Just accept it, just use it, just live with it. I do it now. I started to create this feature 10 or 12 y ..read more

It’s a small thing, a very fringe feature, and these improved features requests are only for me… or… crucial for everyone…? The Environment Variables feature became officially released a year ago, probably when I was “off the grid” last year. I sort of missed that… but it’s here now anyway. It’s like system settings, and is now supported by the core Power Platform. We don’t have to build anything for that anymore. Note: I might call this as “Settings” in this article – because it is used just like settings. But there is another similar feature called just “Setting”. This has fewer value type ..read more

It is crazy! I have now released a new version of my tool. Bulk Data Updater (and Assign, SetState and Delete of course) got the improved: Choices Update one, many, or all record or Choices column with one or many choices, or touch the existing data, or remove the datas. Remember that Choices means “an option where you can select many options to one record”. Set State If you have an “old” Dynamics version, check the “Try the old SetState“, if it would work Calculation The new feature to Calculation the value is now only available to text column, and therefore disable for other column typ ..read more

Microsoft Power Automate is a fantastic platform when it comes to low-code automation, with connectors to literally hundreds of data sources. But what if you need to do something too complex for the existing flow actions? Take the Pro Code Escape with the Common Data Service. In the true spirit of the #ProCodeNoCodeUnite movement, the Power Automate and Common Data Service platforms allow for extensibility to embed pro-code C# methods in no-code automation. Let me take you through the tech of it. Introduction At one point or another we are all faced with a problem that is too complex to solve ..read more

I’m a techie. I like new, shiny, cool stuff. Newest however, usually costs. And customers usually like cheap. Users don’t care about either. They just want a system that empowers more than it obstructs. So how do you find the balance between the three? Is it even possible? Or is it just another Project Management Triangle? Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a secret formula to solve the equation. The secret lies in the ability to keep perspective, and remember for whom we are in this game. The cool stuff The first thing to remind myself, is that this isn’t a game. It’s so easy to get swe ..read more

After working as a developer for a quarter century I have seen my fair share of nested conditionals and probably caused way beyond my fair share. Nested conditionals make the code harder to read and simply less aesthetic. When working with Microsoft Flow, this becomes even more obvious with the screen real estate that the Flow designed requires. An alternative design pattern is to use Guard Conditions. In a C# example, it could look like the sample below with nested conditions (bad) to the left of the image and guard conditions (good) to the right: Credit: Refactoring Guru. In Flow, a common c ..read more