Microsoft has recently worked on promoting their power platform and has implied the existence of “internal makers community”. All their COE ideas come from their community discussion as fusion teams make sense there. This community is made to bring ease to citizen developers work. If you want to set it up then you need to:

• Go to Admin Panel and make sure you are visible as an advisor

• Next, in the maker portal open Power Platform Settings
• Join Advisory Program

Once in, you can ask Virtual Agent questions; you may need to use a different account as it is difficult to seek help being “yourself”; and most importantly once a Virtual Agent hits a roadblock it can increase your problems.

Or, alternatively, Virtual Agent could display a link to a Teams group if that one were configured in the admin center:

The result is good or bad is irrelevant here. It is basically another feature that can be useful. I have not been able to find any organization so far which has introduced its internal community to each other to benefit from Power Platform. This is actually disappointing because it is such a powerful feature of Microsoft that everybody should benefit from. If you want to surface advisor contacts you can email anyone anytime. Users can go to teams and post a question and anyone can assume the role of an advisor to answer.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us anytime.

Whenever someone logs in to a portal, they are usually greeted by a bot asking very basic questions like ‘What Do You Want?’ or ‘Do You Need Any Help?’ this is followed by almost all the log ins. These are basic automatic questions intended to help the user without knowing their identity. Since the information in question is generic the bot does not require any specific identity. However, when a user gets into conversation with the bot and seeks specific information, there always follow the process of identification. In order to yield some specific information, the bot needs to make sure that the person to whom the information is to be given is the relevant person. Sometimes the process of identification starts with the requirement for logging in.

It simply means that a bot will only need specific personal information when the information required from the bot is specific. For basic, generic information, it does not need any information. Specific questions like the information about the leave balance o a particular person, location of a parcel or the status of an issue rose with customer care; the bot will require personal information for identifying the person seeking the information. These scenarios can be controlled through various ways. The bot can be restricted to a specific group of users, followed by authentication in bot implementation coming in the form of a picture. The users do not need to be issued any license. People having the link of the bot can simply access it provided that it is authenticated.

The process of authentication can be controlled or customized by using Manage – Security. Some of the options that can be used are given below.

• No Authentication – Anybody who has the link of the bot can access the bot
• Only for Teams- this bot is available for access only through the Microsoft Teams app
• Manual (For any channel including Teams)-supports AAD or Auth2 identity provider

The checkbox requiring the user to immediately log in as soon as they interact with the bot can also be added. Once only the Teams is enabled/allowed to be given access to a particular bot, only Teams users will be able to do so.

A visual representation of the steps is given below:

Next The Following Steps will take place:

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us anytime!

Many people struggling with the Sort Function in Microsoft. You should be surprised to know that the said function can be used to Sort Arrays in Power Automate. The new approach is far easier than the traditional Three Step Approach. However, there are a few things you should know about before sorting array by dates.

Using Sort Function to sort Dates:

The first approach is to sort dates in Power Automate like the example below:

STEP 1

STEP 2

Here you can see that some dates have been generated for example get items in SharePoint. Moreover, all dates are nicely formatted for the sake of automation processes.

Caution

If we have a bad date format it can be problematic as it can be returned by API. See the example below:

STEP 1

STEP 2

In the examples above you can see that dates have been sorted by month rather than day. This is not of any use to anyone. If such cases appear, you shouldn’t be worried because there are easy ways which can be used to fix them.

Fixing the Date:

To fix this problem all you need to do it to Select Action which will allow you to convert the Date Format in the US. The expressions below can be used to achieve it:

formatDateTime( item(), ‘yyyy-MM-dd’)

For sorting you can use this one-liner command:

sort(body(‘Select’),’Date’)

Voila! Everything is sorted out.

Final Word

It is time to bid farewell to the old Three Step Approach and welcome the new approach which is way easier to deploy and easy to learn the best thing is it does not matter how many times you may need to use it because it is done in a few minutes.

Multiple rows or records can be retrieved in Microsoft Dataverse using List Rows. You just need to introduce a structured query using either Fetch XML or OData queries. You should know that all columns are by default retrieved in List Rows if you do not mention the columns you want to retrieve explicitly.

Moreover, if the flows return all the columns then the performance of the flow is affected. In this regard, it is better to practice and perform tweak to mention the columns directly in the list rows action Select Columns field.

We have shown you an example so you can see how Select Column contains name and amount field only for the sake of Loan Entity. It only retrieves the record with only two columns and other columns are not retrieved in the output.

Be careful!!

You should remember that if you are mentioning column list in Select Columns then you need to use those columns which are actually mentioned in the list in next actions steps of the Power automate. Here, you cannot use other columns which are not retrieved. For this you should need to add other columns as needed.

We hope this read was helpful for you, if you have any questions you can contact us.

If you want to learn how to use lookup function in the canvas power apps then you are at the right place. You should know that Lookup function is used to find record which matches criteria from the source which is table in the app. We have exemplified a scenario for you to understand it better.

Example:

If you have a gallery control which is loaded with account data from Dataverse; then you will have Textbox (Text Input) through which you can pull up a field from a record in the Dataverse which actually matches a certain criteria.

• How to Look up in Microsoft Canvas Apps
• Here, we will show you how you can Lookup in a Canvas app using the example above:
• Begin by typing “Lookup”; you will be able to see valid function in the list
• Remember that the first thing in the parameter is opening the bracket source
• You will be able to see suggestions in the list below. Here you have the select the Table/Entity from where you want to fetch the record

• Here you will see Accounts; you need to select it and Press Comma (,).
• Next you will be asked the Condition
• Here you need to mention the record you want to retrieve based on your decided criteria

• Here find the Account you want to retrieve in (Account Name) and it should be equal to <value>
• I have exemplified showing the account we are trying to fetch; Account record whose ‘Account Name‘ field has value “Coffee House”

Once you have a condition identified that the condition is satisfied; next step is to identified what field you want to retrieve as it needs to be shown in Text Input box which you have inserted.

In the example; we are trying to retrieve “Main Phone Field”

Here, the formula is complete, you can simply bring it to a close with “closing bracket”. As you can see the example below “Main phone” from matching criteria has shown up.

Final Word:

We hope the reading was helpful for you to understand how Lookup function can be used to pick a record’s value using specific criteria.

Data consumption plays an important role in Power Virtual Agent PVA licensing. It is important to keep a check on the data storage requirement of PVA implementations. You should know how the data is calculated because PA has special storage requirements for all of its conversations with usual configurations. You just need to keep a check of conversations of the chatbot and any other attachments which are uploaded in the conversation.

Moreover, you should also be familiar with the tables which store conversation transcripts. All the conversations are saved in the PVA bot which has conversationtranscripttable. It is for forecasting data storage that you need to be mindful of the conversation and expected conversation. However, it all depends on the complexity of the conversation.

You can refer to any existing implementation on the table and check its size; once assumed you need to validate it during the operations. Generally, a forecast is done for sizing and licensing costs of one year. It is multiplied above size per conversation with the total number of conversations which are expected in a year. Once you have the number you can calculate the forecasted size of the dataverse that you need for implementation.

In addition to the conversation transcript, you need to check the requirement in which you are expecting users to upload attachments. You also should keep a check of plugin trace logs, audit logs and data consumption. While calculating the size, you should also consider that the data retention policy is an important requirement. There is one bulk deletion job which runs every day and deletes conversations every day too. This is helpful because it optimizes storage requirements.

One of the most useful features of Dynamics 365 is records in Model Driven apps. As easy as it sounds many people struggle on browsing and sharing links of records found in Dynamics 365 model driven apps.

Outdated Way

The outdated way was to open the record and find the link from the browser address bar.

This way is no longer used. Microsoft Dynamics 365 introduced a new release which now provides a copy link button which can be used to copy and share records in an easy manner

How to access Records:

To access record you need to go to record section and find share in the menu on top right ribbon.

There are three options which you can use to share:

• Email Link: Outdated option, but still can be used
• Copy Link: The new option, allows you to copy URL of the record which can be pasted anywhere directly
• Manage Access: Allows you to open the share window

As you can see below, one you choose the option of Copy Link you will be able to see the URL which can be pasted anywhere.

If you still have any questions you can contact us anytime.

Many people struggle to create a dynamic contact card. I have written this blog for you to tell you how you can create a dynamic contact card in a few steps and retrieve it with PowerAutomate. As you must know that  contact card is one of the easiest ways to give the desired person all the basic details about a person’s professional life. They are the simplest possible introduction for business and opportunities.

Now, it has become quite easy to design whatever kind of contact card by simply using basic Power Point. Here’s a simple and step to step description of the method:

1. Open PowerPoint and page layout option in it.
2. Save the file as an HTML file
3. There are many design suggestions available in the PowerPoint
4. By putting all the basic information-name, address, contact numbe and other details- any design can be created/ or a suggestion can sought
5. Once, the best design is selected, it can be saved as pptx-file.
6. The next step is converting that pptx file html file by using some online converter
7. The file can then be saved in the OneDrive

Creating a Cloud Flow

Trigger: ‘When a HTTP request is received’  and choose the metode ‘get’ – (you will get the URL to trigger this flow after saving) use the action ‘Get file content’ and select the saved html-file

insert the ‘response’ action and return the html-file content (Header: “content-type”: “text/html”)

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

I hope this was helpful for you, if you have any questions feel free to contact us.

Power BI Model Documenter v2.1.0 is here to account for and address most of the issue and complaints forwarded by the users since the launch of Power BI’s field parameters! It was long overdue is verified by the fact that nearly 6000 to 7000 people have already downloaded it since its introduction. These downloads are direct from the website. There are other downloads and clones from Git Repository as well. The response and feedback to this new version of the external tool have been overwhelming. This latest version has chiefly tried to mitigate the complaints and concerns of the customers from all over the world.

What is fixed?

One of the most recurrent complaints since the field parameters of BI Model were launched was the problem with generating/creating vpax file which is an essential requirement to run the Model. This new version removes this obstacle altogether. The nugget package used to generated the vpax file has been updated keeping in view the problem related with it. The second problem was duplicate values in the perspectives table, which has been fixed through the addition of an index to recognize and sort out unique perspectives in an early stage of loading the vpax file. So, with that two most complained about areas have been updated.

What is new?

Based on feedback received from all ovet the world the template report have been made more wholesome by incorporating more insights into data model. Below a short overview of the new enrichments.

Some notable additions are given below.

• Updation of Power Query parameters and mentioned queries
• Changes in partitions and policies page
• A separate page for calculation groups
• One page for Field parameters
• Enhancements in security page

What’s next?

Evaluations are already under process and any more problems pointed out will be surely addressed!

If you are wondering why Power Apps has introduced the feature of “managed properties” then you are at the right place, because today I will tell you everything you need to know about them. Managed properties are introduced inside a managed solution to enable component customization. It is because all components are disabled by default however, for some solution if you want to introduce component customization then you needs to make use of managed properties. You can use managed properties to export managed solutions. Below are the steps which you can use to achieve your goal:

Step 1: Open Power Apps Solution and Component

• The first step is to login to Power Apps Solutions and Component
• Then choose the solution you want to work on
• Once you find the solution; you will find all the components

Step 2: Open Component and use Managed Property Option

• Next step is to select a component for examples: you can choose the “Table component”
• Click the chosen component and choose advanced option and go to managed properties

•  Next you need to choose Allow Customization Option
• Here, you will choose the customizations you want to be allowed; all the options are enabled here except for “Can enable sync to external search index”.
• Look for “display name can be modified”; if it is enabled it means that current unmanaged solution can be exported as a managed solution. Once it is done, you can import it to another environment.
• After this the display name can be changed and other properties could also be changed.

I hope these steps are easy for you to follow, if you have any questions you can contact me anytime!