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Tag: Flow

22.04.2023
Ben
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KeyBox – A Dataverse solution to govern credentials

Posted in Power Platform, and Dynamics 365

Most of the time, I create solutions based on customer requirements. Sometimes, I create solutions to learn something new and “KeyBox” was my last personal project to learn some new skills.

KeyBox – The features

It is a solution to store and govern credentials (stand alone or in regard to a customer) in Dataverse. You can store usernames & passwords or client IDs & client secrets. It reminds you when the “valid until” or “remind me on” date is reached. Additionally, a note can be placed at the MFA switch and a URL.

KeyBox Record

Additionally, you can create new passwords, based on the rules of the organization.

KeyBox Config

I’ve learned in my KeyBox project:

Get your KeyBox!

Sounds like I try to sell you something, but I don’t. I put it on GitHub under MIT licence. Means you can use and modify it in any way you want.

KeyBox

22.04.2023
Ben
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Working with FetchXML aliases in Power Automate

Posted in Power Automation, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform

For my private project (Key Box), I’ve built a FetchXML statement to group data already during the query, instead of building a logic in Power Automate. For that, I had to set an alias in the query.

KeyBox

When I tried to access the “myOwner” alias, I did not find it in the Dynamics Content list of Power Automate. It only provided me the default Owner choices.

KeyBox

Hoping that this is only a question of visualization, I tried to insert the “Owner (Value)” and got nothing. Therefore, I looked into the result of the Fetch query and found “myOwner”.

FetchXML aliases in Power Automate

tl;dr; How to access now FetchXML aliases in Power Automate?

  1. Select the original owner (or whatever you have) from the dynamic content list
  2. Place the cursor inside your action and copy the inserted formula
  3. Delete the inserted formula
  4. Paste the copied formula inside the expression area of the dynamics content
  5. Replace ‘@{‘ at the start and ‘}’ at the end
  6. Replace the original attribute name with your alias and press “OK”
KeyBox
30.10.2021
Ben
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Bulk active Flows from a solution

Posted in Power Automation, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform

Scenario

We start our projects with our best practice solution and add further value over time to that solution. We also try to let benefit existing customers from the innovations and optimizations that get implemented in the solution over time, since their project has started.
Knowing our goal, you can imagine our setup. A source instance in our tenant and several target instances at different customers.
On top, some customers receive manual, an unmanaged version of the solution and other customers receive a managed version with an Azure Pipeline.

Issue

Flows can only be turned on if the user turning them on has permissions to connections being referenced by the connection reference.

Marc Schweigert: https://gist.github.com/devkeydet/f31554566b2e53ddd8e7e1db4af555a6

This causes no issues when importing manually, but as we use Application User to connect the Azure Pipeline, this ends with all Flows in the solution turned off after solution import.

Solution – Bulk active Flows

One solution would be to create a PowerShell script in the Azure Pipeline that impersonate the owner of a connection reference (Source).
I decided to create a Power Automated based solution to bulk active Flows, with an Environment Variable that contains Flows that should not be enabled automatically.

Step by step

Step 1 – Environment Variable:
Create an Environment Variable of type JSON to store the Flows that should not be activated automatically. Doing this as an Environment Variable enables you to define this per instance.

To enable our Flow to find the right Flows by name, workflowid or workflowuniqueid, the structure should be:

{
  "Flow 1": "worklowid",
  "Flow 2": "workflowidunique"
}

Step 2: The Trigger of the Flow

A managed solution only get modified when you import an update of it. Therefore, this is my trigger, filtered on my solution.

The dataverse flow trigger on table 'Solutions'.

Step 3: Some vars and const

Vars and const for the Flow.

Step 4: Get the exclusion list

I needed to put it in a compose action. Working directly with the environment variable did not work for me.

Load the exclusion list in a compose.

Step 5: Get inactive Flows from the solution

Get the inactive Flows from the solution with a fetch to bulk active flows later.

I found the FetchXml in the Dynamics Community, it was an answer from Scott Durow where he helped someone. By that way, thank you, Scott, that inspired me to my solution.

<fetch>
  <entity name="workflow">
    <attribute name="category" />
    <attribute name="name" />
    <attribute name="statecode" />
    <attribute name="workflowidunique" />
    <filter>
      <condition attribute="category" operator="eq" value="5" />
      <condition attribute="statecode" operator="eq" value="0" />
    </filter>
    <link-entity name="solutioncomponent" from="objectid" to="workflowid">
      <link-entity name="solution" from="solutionid" to="solutionid">
        <filter>
          <condition attribute="uniquename" operator="eq" value=@{outputs('Solution')} />
        </filter>
      </link-entity>
    </link-entity>
  </entity>
</fetch>

Step 6: Loop over fetched Flows

Loop to bulk active Flows.

Step 6.1 Check inside the loop if the current Flow is not excluded

Condition to excluded flows from the environment variable.
contains(string(outputs('Get_ExclusionList')), string(items('Loop_fetched_Processes_from_Solution')?['workflowid']))


contains(string(outputs('Get_ExclusionList')), string(items('Loop_fetched_Processes_from_Solution')?['workflowidunique']))


contains(string(outputs('Get_ExclusionList')), string(items('Loop_fetched_Processes_from_Solution')?['name']))

Step 6.1.1 Activate the current Flow in the TRUE path of the condition

Update the record in Dataverse to activate the flow.

Step 6.1.2 Log if an error happens after activating the current Flow

A counter and string for error logging.

Click the three dots on the “Counter++” action and choose “Configure run after”.

Open the 'run after' menu.
Configure the 'run after' option.

Step 7: Check if an error occurred, after the loop is completed

Condition to inform about errors.

Step 7.1 If an error occurred, get the URL of the CRM instance

Get the CRM URL from OData.Id.

I described how to get it in my post: Get CRM URL in Power Automate

Step 7.2 Send a notification

Send an email with Power Automate.

Let me a comment if you find this helpful or how you solved this or a similar problem.

26.01.2021
Ben
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EntitySetName Bookmarklet

Posted in Dynamics 365, Power Automation, and Power Platform

Almost six years after my last post about bookmarklets, I’m proud to present you a new bookmarklet for Dynamics 365 CE.

It can be used to retrieve the EntitySetName for for an entity (table).

In case you don’t know what the EntitySetName, here is what Microsoft writes about it.

This value is used in the resource path for this entity in the Web API. For custom entities, you can change the name of the entity set used. By default it is the same as the LogicalCollectionName.

Source: Microsoft Docs

In other words, you need when you use the WebApi or the Common Data Service (current environment) connector in PowerAutomate.

The EntitySetName Bookmarklet

Create a normal bookmark in you browser and replace its url with the following code:

javascript: etn=prompt("SchemaName?","account");var xhr=new XMLHttpRequest;xhr.open("GET","/api/data/v9.0/EntityDefinitions(LogicalName='"+etn+"')?$select=EntitySetName",!0),xhr.onload=function(t){4===xhr.readyState&&200===xhr.status&&prompt("EntitySetName:",JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).EntitySetName)},xhr.send();

You can use it at any place inside of D365 CE. You only need to write in the SchemaName of an entity (table) and it answers you with the EntitySetName from the EntityDefinitions.