As Solution Architects, we’ve all encountered the question from customers about monitoring the entire platform. While we have various methods to collect data (audit, application insights, system jobs, plugin trace logs, and more), we often find ourselves in a quandary when it comes to storage capacity. In this article, we’ll explore ways to harness these data sources effectively and endeavor to automate the reporting process. Dataverse Capacity Storage As you may know, Dataverse storage is divided into three components: Database, File, and Log. The available capacity is primarily determined by ..read more

In this blog post, we’re stepping into the dynamic realm of Dynamics & Power Platform’s latest release – the 2024 Wave 1. While I won’t be delving into every nook and cranny, I’ve handpicked a selection of top features that caught my eye. Join me as we explore the power-packed enhancements, revolutionary tools, and game-changing capabilities that define this release. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a curious enthusiast, get ready for a curated journey into the heart of the 2024 Wave 1, where each feature has been chosen to leave a lasting impact. Let’s unravel the excitement and ..read more

When it comes to interfacing with another system, the possibilities are numerous and depend on many characteristics of the system, but also on performance, integration model, data, security, functional objectives, etc. We won’t go into detail about all this, but we will focus on a brand-new feature, in fact we prefer to talk about an improvement of a feature that has existed for a while: “Custom” Virtual Entities Tables. Introduction I have to admit that I have very rarely used Virtual Tables in real life for the simple reason that they never really interested me but also because on paper they ..read more

It’s been a while since we heard Microsoft’s desire to make Custom Actions and Workflows obsolete. For Workflows this seems to be quite logic since the availability of Power Automate and even if they are not synchronous we can always find a workaround by creating a plug-in. For Custom Actions this was more problematic because in this case not all scenarios can be replaced, for example if we want to call a consistent logic from a button added via RibbonWorkBench we would have to call a Power Automate with an HTTP trigger which is not at all secure.  These Custom Actions can also be used ..read more

Since the Power Automates were announced and their use democratized, especially with the concept of citizen developer, they are now an integral part of our daily developer/customizer life. As it is now strongly recommended to use Flows rather than classic Workflows (Dataverse), it is imperative to be familiar with them! As we know, there are many Trigger for these Flows (Scheduled, Automated, Instant…) and depending on how they are used and how they are implemented, we can’t necessarily monitor their execution. I mean, it’s not the goal, the principle is to implement an automation of a busine ..read more

Having worked primarily with D365 modules, it is quite common to set up approval systems for specific business cases. In this article, we will focus on the Power Platform’s standard ability to set up an approval system. Definition & Business Scenarios Before getting into the technical solutions, I thought it was essential to look at the approval process itself. Let’s start with two quite simple cases where an approval process can be implemented: Business Case: Order Management A basic and frequent scenario would be a case to handle order approvals based on a threshold amount. A salesperson ..read more

As I am a big fan of Azure services and in particular Azure Functions, I recently focused my attention on the possibility to create a custom connector from an Azure service. Indeed, the field of possibilities becomes unlimited once you are able to add an abstraction layer between two services with a custom connector to provide Power Platform makers what they need to take their Power Apps to the next level. Power Platform Custom Connector Before getting to the heart of the matter, and especially if you are new to the term “Custom Connector”, it is essential to understand what a Custom Connector ..read more

If you visit my blog from time to time, you may have noticed that one of my last articles was about the possibility to analyze the log data of your Dataverse environment directly from Application Insight, and therefore you may have implemented this standard integration between your Dataverse and Application Insight environment! However, we’re only talking about the standard Application Insights integration and analysis, but not what we can do to extend that information by sending custom traces from our server-side developments! If you still don’t understand, despite the title of the artic ..read more

If you have clicked on this article, it is not only due to this attractive title, but also because you have certainly asked yourself this question or simply because this subject may have come up in a discussion among your colleagues. If it is not for one of these reasons, you may never have had an issue with it, so you’ve come to the right place to save your time! As you can imagine from this introduction, this is not a new topic in the community, and you can find other articles on this subject. My desire to write about this topic is also a result of Alex Shlega’s article: Dataverse dilemma ..read more

Since this year, Microsoft has put forward several new possibilities to add telemetry to all services. The first major change was the new functionality of Monitor, which has been released initially only for Canvas Apps and then also for Models Driven Apps and results in a screen displaying in real time all events performed from a user’s session in order to diagnose a problem. There was also the integration of Application Insight with the Canvas App to send custom traces. Before all of this, we were mainly using Dataverse’s internal traces that we could manage via the ITracingService, but we o ..read more