Document Generation Enhancements in 2020 Release Wave 2

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2020 Release Wave 2, Microsoft has made some enhancements to the document generation capabilities and file attachments in model-driven apps. This first post will cover the document generation capabilities and the generation of pdf documents based on document templates.

Customer Service Workspace (Preview) in 2020 Wave 2 Release Plan

For anyone who has experience with Microsoft Omni channel interface, and has enabled the 2020 Wave 2 Release Plan, there is a new app that appeared with the name Customer Service Workspace (Preview). As noted in the release plan, the multisession app allows customer service agent to multitask on several customer cases simultaneously and seamlessly switch among issues without losing context of the in-progress work.

Power Platform 2020 Release Wave 2 plan

Today, July 8, 2020, Microsoft released the Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 2020 Release Wave 2 plan documentation with a list of all the features that will be made available in the Wave 2 timeframe which starts October 2020 until March 2021. Going through all of the features is almost impossible unless you want a few hundred pages of documentation.

June 2020 Updates to Solution Experience

As I was going through one of my solutions in the last few days, I noticed that there are a few changes that were made to the Solution experience, and wanted to share this with everyone. Usually we see a change appear here and there, but it seems like Microsoft is trying hard to simplify the experience and add the missing pieces that are available in classic and not yet available in the Modern experience.

AI Builder Business Card Reader

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.

T-SQL Endpoint for Common Data Service

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.

Showing page status of multi-page forms in Power Apps Portals

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.

Changing record statuses in UCI and 2020 Wave 1 release

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.

New Features in Form Processing for AI Builder

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.

Advanced AutoNumber Source Code now available

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.