Category: Customization

Setting Autonumber Seed in a Managed Solution in Power Platform

~ Jonas Rapp ~ Leave a comment

Some details in the Power Platform are intentionally excluded from the solutions. Still, most of us developers think they are part of them—unless we read enough about the docs (which is boooring).
One example is Seed for columns that have the type Autonumber.

As far as I know, the seed is not stored in our tables or columns; it is only known in the deep down of the mystery SQL Server. So, how can it even be settable in the Maker Portal?

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Scary, dangerous, creepy tools 😱😬

~ Jonas Rapp ~ Leave a comment

…am I hacking your system?

There are a bunch of completely awesome and can’t-live-without tools. Most are created by the community, like me.

These tools can break your system. Completely.

“Are these tools even legal??”

Too often, I’ve heard CTOs and others say that these tools should be stopped! Either by thoroughly educating all users not to use them or simply by blocking these crazy tools on their computers.

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Layouts in FetchXML Builder

~ Jonas Rapp ~ 4 Comments

This is a new feature. A brand new fancy feature. This tool is now going from two dimensions to three dimensions.

As always, we can work with the query and see the data. From now on – work also with the layouts to get nice designs.

How do we show the data in the Model Driven Apps? Keep on reading…

Don’t like to read? See my simple tutorial video instead!

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A few requests for Environment Variables

~ Jonas Rapp ~ 3 Comments

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.

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Custom Translations – the Easy Way

~ Jonas Rapp ~ 4 Comments

In many customer projects and products, I have built solutions for managing translations in Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CDS / CRM.
Sure, the metadata can be translated to show labels etc in the language of the user, but having a custom solution for translations ensures localized content for texts that are shown to the user from code or automation.

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Querying date intervals in the Common Data Service

90 days from now
~ Jonas Rapp ~ 13 Comments

Querying date intervals in Microsoft Common Data Service, Power Apps and Dynamics 365 is not always possible using Advanced Find nor is it as easy as working with plain SQL.

TL;DR – with FetchXML this is quite possible!

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Conditional Unique Auto Number Sequences in Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM

Conditional unique auto number series
~ Jonas Rapp ~ 12 Comments

A common request for Auto Numbers in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CDS/CRM) is to have one number field with different formats and unique sequences based on data on the record or it’s parents.
I call this “Conditional Unique Auto Number Sequences”.

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Create view: Active Contacts in My State

~ Jonas Rapp ~ 14 Comments

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Common Data Service offer us the querying language FetchXML to retrieve data. Since this is the language used for views saved in the system, we can use FetchXML Builder for XrmToolBox to alter the features of views beyond what is possible using platform features, without making them unsupported.

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