Power Platform Blog

With everything moving to the Power Platform, Dynamics 365 has become much more than just a CRM platform.  Many of the tasks and objects that you had worked within Dynamics 365 in the past (such as entities, forms, views, global option sets, solutions, etc.) have become available on the PowerApps portal.  While you're still able to work with these features within D365, you can  also navigate to the PowerApps portal and work with them there as well.



As we're getting more comfortable living in this brave new world, there's more and more features we're finding.  One such feature is the Solution Checker, which you must first install before being able to use.  To install, navigate to Solutions, and at the top of the grid you'll see Solution checker.  Click on that, and then click on Install.



This will take you to a PowerApps Checker page, where you'll need to click on Free Trial and Continue to the terms of use and privacy settings.  You'll then be taken to anot…

Today I released a new command for the Dynamics 365 ToolBot that I am really excited about! If you're not sure what the Dynamics 365 ToolBot is, it is a new Chrome extension that I released recently that allows you to quickly execute helpful commands for administrators, developers and testers.

This new command, called "Fill Form", will automatically populate all the fields on the form with random data. As a developer, I always need test data and I am the worst at coming up with fake data to use. With this command, you can navigate to any record, open the ToolBot, type "Fill Form" and your record will instantly be populated with random data so you can quickly save the record and proceed with your testing.


A few things to note about this command:
It attempts to detect contact fields (based on the field name) such as first name, last name, email, phone and address and populate those fields with realistic fake dataAny other field will generate random data based on t…

Microsoft recently announce their new WYSIWYG model-driven form designer.  See here for more details.

Initially looking at this, this designer seems pretty amazing and will resolve a lot of the pain points identified with using the classic Dynamics 365 form designer, such as:

Allowing makers to see how the form would look to end users as they configureEnhanced fields pane with searching and filtering capabilities on the leftAn always available properties pane allowing makers to configure components of the form without having pop-ups appearA tree view to quickly navigate forms fields and controlsThe ability to switch between form factors / sizes to see how the form will look on different devicesSave and publish via a single button

To use the new form designer, you must click on either Edit form (preview) or Add Form -> Main form (preview) from PowerApps.
Note that this is currently out only in public preview, and therefore consider this a very early version of something exciting to c…

Microsoft just released the release notes for the April '19 release which can be found here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/April19/index. The release notes are organized by application and can easily be searched through online through that link or the PDF version can be downloaded. Each application looks to be getting a significant amount of investment from Microsoft which is good to see.

A few things to call out:

Marketing is getting a new simplified trial sign-up - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/april19/dynamics365-marketing/easy-onboardingSales is getting Microsoft Teams integration - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/April19/dynamics365-sales/productive-sales-collaboration-teamsA new CDS Start Portal - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/April19/dynamics365-portals/cds-starter-portalPowerApps is getting a big variety of enhancements w…

Today I am excited to announce the new Dynamics 365 Toolbot! This new Chrome Extension will allow you to perform commands that will help you with your development or administrative tasks. The extension can be found here - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dynamics-365-toolbot/kljiiminicfmdlplhejocopfmgmipach.

Note: Currently, due to the APIs being used, it only works on v9+.

First, navigate to the link above using Chrome and install the extension. Then, head to your Dynamics 365 environment and open a record. From there, click the little blue robot icon in the toolbar of Chrome which will pop open the Toolbot.



Click the text box and a list of commands will display. You can select or type any of the commands and hit Submit to execute them. Some commands require you to replace the default token with the desired request.


For example, select or type "display id" and click Submit and the Toolbot will display the current record's ID.



The majority of the commands should …