I have started working with AI Builder recently and yesterday I finally took a look at the Business Card scanner. I decided to check how this works in the different apps, both Modal Driven as well as Canvas Apps.
I ran my tests using 4 different types of business cards and wanted to see how well this works. The results overall were pretty good, but not perfect. It is still hard to expect perfect results, as not all Business cards are created equal.
Since the announcement by Microsoft at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit last month, and even before, I’ve been eager to take a look at the new SQL Connection for the Common Data Service Endpoint. What this means is that we can not write and execute SQL queries against the entity data.
Creating navigation in a Power Apps portal application is straight forward, and can easily be done using Web Link Sets, but how about showing to the user where they are in the process and modifying the style of each element once the user has finished entering the data for that page. We have done this a few times and this involves the combination of liquid and JavaScript code on the different pages.
When working with model driven apps, we have the ability to navigate through the flow of the record using the Business Process Flow. The BPF is a great way to navigate through the different stages of the record, but what if that is just not enough. What if in order to complete the record I have to go through 10 or maybe more stages.
Over the past year, I played here and there with AI Builder, and particularly form processing, but have found that it was somewhat cumbersome for some of the forms that I wanted to build, especially when working a lot in the government space. Yesterday, May 4th, Microsoft announced some new changes to the AI Builder Form processing that allows recognition of undetected fields. I decided to test this out, and in order to implement this, used the IRS W-9 form, which is not such as easy form to implement.
A few years back we developed an AutoNumber solution that enables the implementation of AutoNumbers for Dynamics 365 and the Common Data Service. This AutoNumber solution allows the creation of rules for simple autonumbers with prefix, suffix and number of digits, but also has a lot of advanced features for getting numbers from related fields or option sets.
We have all been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak one way or another and have started getting used to a new reality, whether it is working remote, not being able to go to work or even worse have gotten infected by the virus. A few weeks ago (March 8), the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio said that the city would provide relief for small businesses across the City seeing revenue reduction of 25% or more because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
I am current engaged in a project where a vendor suggested to the customer to use the same entity for various purposes. That decision might have worked for some organizations, but it did not have a foresight of the future requirements of the organization.
It is a very trivial scenario that we would want to create a Common Data Service entity record from a web page. An example can be a contact us page or request for help that would create a lead or a case in Microsoft Dynamics backend. Although Dynamics Portals (and now Power Apps Portals) are available for this kind of integration, many organizations still use other types of web applications and they need to integrate with the Common Data Service, such as various web to lead products.
Over the past couple of years, since the release of Unified interface, one of the biggest pain points for most customer was that features that are available in the web client are not available in the new Unified Interface. There were a lot of improvements in the Unified Interface with the responsive client, custom controls and more, but when you are used to working in a certain way, taking away features is sometimes hard to get used to.
