In a recent AI project, I developed a solution to evaluate every incoming email in a shared mailbox using an AI model (GPT with prompt). To inform users of the shared mailbox that an email has been processed, the email is flagged with a custom Outlook category. This process leverages a special HTTP action for Outlook, simplifying the implementation. Notably, there is no need to set up any special permissions if the flow owner already has access to the shared mailbox. This example does not cover the specifics of communicating with the AI through Power Automate.
Creating custom category in Outlook
Open Microsoft Outlook.
Click on Category in the Home Ribbon.
Click on All Categories.
Click on New.
Set a name and select a color.
Click on OK followed by Clicking on OK.
You have now created the custom Outlook category.
Setting the category with Power Automate
Create a new Power Automate flow with an outlook/email trigger. For example: When a new email arrives in a shared mailbox.
I was tasked with developing a canvas app for a client that required each screen to include a popup element. The popup needs be openend by clicking an image, upon being clicked, it triggers a popup screen where users can compose a message. I utilized a Library Component and explored methods to control its visibility effectively. The challenge was ensuring that the message popup would appear when an image is clicked and disappear upon user interaction with a designated button. My solution involved manipulating the component’s dimensions — adjusting the height and width to expose only the image or to reveal the entire component. This technique successfully creates the perception of the popup screen being opened and closed by the user.
The first step is to create a solution with a canvas app and a component library.
In my example I named the component comp VIM Message.
Then open the component.
Set the size of the component to 640 by 640.
Add two custom output properties to the component named CompVIMHeigt and CompVIMWidth.
Set the component width to ‘comp VIM Message’.CompVIMWidth
Set the component height to ‘comp VIM Message’.CompVIMHeight
Set the component reset to Set(varCompHeight, 80);
Add an image element and set the following code on the Onselect. This will make the container visible and make the component bigger.
Bing maps has been an easy-to-use solution for getting location information in canvas apps, but this offering will be placed under the Azure Maps umbrella. While Bing Maps will continue to function for now, it’s essential to prepare for the transition. In this blog post I will explain how to use Azure Maps in a Canvas App. Please note that the locations shown in this post are not my actual location.
Azure Maps Services
First, we need to create a Azure Maps Account in a resource group (I will presume you know how to create a resource group).
Open your resource group.
Click on Create and search for and click on Azure Maps.
Click on Create.
Give the Azure Maps Account resource a name.
Select the correct Region and Pricing tier.
Agree with the terms and click on Review + Create.
Click on Create and wait for the deployment to be ready.
Click on Go to resource.
Click on Authentication and copy the Primary Key. You will need this in the Power Automate Flow.
The Power Automate Flow
Create a new Power Automate Flow and name it Azure maps get Postal Code.
Add as the trigger Power Apps (V2), with two text inputs called Longtitude and Latitude.
Next, we will add a HTTP action, this will call Azure Maps to get the location details based on the provided GPS location.
Set the method to Get.
Set the URI to the following code, make sure to put in your subscription-key (that is the primary key from the Azure Maps Account resource).
Set the Latitude and Longitude with the input fields form the trigger.
Add an output text called postalcode and add the compose as its value.
Your flow will now look like this.
The canvas app
We will now create the canvas app with a map that shows the user’s current location on a map, and a button to get the postal code of that location and a reset button. Please note this is not my actual location.
Create a new canvas app, I blank Phone canvas.
Click on Power Automate followed by Add flow to add the earlier created flow.
Add the map element to the canvas app.
Set the DefaultLatitude property with the following code.
Location.Latitude
Set the Location.Latitude property with the following code.
Location.Longitude
Set DefaultLocation property with the following code.
true
If you want to see your Latitude and Logitude you can add labels to display the values.
Add a Label and set the Text property with the following code.
"Latitude: " & Location.Latitude
Add a Label and set the Text property with the following code.
"Longitude: " & Location.Longitude
Add a button and set the Text property with the following code.
"Get postal code"
Set following code on the OnSelect property. If needed update the code with your flow name, I used AzuremapsgetPostalCode.
Microsoft Power Platform provides powerful tools for creating web portals, and Power Pages is one of them. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to enhance the user experience by pre-filling order forms on your portal using custom fields. Specifically, we’ll focus on pre-populating the order form with data from the user’s profile page.
Imagine you have a Power Pages website with an order form. Users need to fill out details such as their city and country and other relevant information. To streamline this process, we’ll leverage custom fields you’ve added to the user’s profile page. When a user accesses the order form, we’ll automatically populate these fields based on their profile information.
Adding fields to the Profile
Add the required fields to the Contact and Order table in Dataverse
For example, a text field called City and a lookup field called Country.
Add the fields to the form Profile Web Form, which is the default form used in the Power Pages profile page.
Open the Power Pages website to see if the changes are visible and fill them.
JavaScript to prefile the columns on a order
Open the Portal Management of your Power Pages website.
Open the element where you need to prefill the fields. In my case it’s the Order Information Web Form Step that is part of the Create Order Web form.
On the tab Form Options (this can be different per element) and navigate down to the Custom JavaScript input box.
Add the following code and change the following if needed.
$(document).ready(function() {
//Get the profile county ID and Name datavar CountryGUID = "{{ user.abc_country.id }}";
var CountryName = "{{ user.abc_country.name }}";
//Get the City from the users profile (contact table)var City = "{{ user.abc_city }}";
//set the text input element city with the profile field Citydocument.getElementById("city").value = City;
//set the lookup input element with the profile field Country//Set the name of the lookup field
$("#abc_country_name").attr("value",CountryName);
//Set the GUID of the lookup field
$("#abc_country").attr("value", CountryGUID);
//Set the logical name of the lookup table
$("#abc_country_entityname").attr("value","abc_country");
});
Open the page in a web browser and use the web developers tools (f12) to find the id of the city field.
Update the document.get ElementById if required.
Do the same thing for the #abc_country_name, #abc_country and #abc_country_entityname.
Update the $(“”).attr where required.
If you are using different field names make sure to update the field names or add them to JavaScript.
{{ user.[fieldname] }} will return the value of that field.
{{ user.[fieldname].id }} will return the id of the selected value of a lookup field.
{{ user.[fieldname].name }} will return the name of the selected value of a lookup fields.
Save the changes and your fields will now be filled automatically.
Within the Dynamics 365 ecosystem, the Customer Portal serves as a gateway for clients to interact with your organization and order products. While the default template for Power Pages/Portal facilitates order creation and product management, it falls short when it comes to allowing users to edit or delete existing orders and products.
In this blog post, we embark on a journey to enhance the functionality of the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management Customer Portal. We’ll focus specifically on empowering users with the ability to edit and delete orders and products, providing them with greater control over their transactions.
By default, there is no option to go to orders that are not submitted, so I added the a page to see the draft orders.
Besides adding the draft order view, I renamed other tiles and a link to the create order page.
Order editing
I will assume that you already have a Power Pages setup with the Supply Chain Management Customer Portal template and that you know how to add a new page named Draft Orders with a view and how to make a tile. I will go straight into how to add the capability to edit an order and its products.
Add a new page called Update Order to the Portal.
Open the Draft Orders page and select the Edit Record option under List settings – Actions.
Select the newly created page Update order and give it the name Update Order.
The Target type is Webpage.
Then open the Portal Management tool to create the Web Form. A web form is a form with multiple steps.
Open the already existing Web Form called Create Order.
Open a new tab and create a new Web Form called Update Orders.
Setup the Update orders Web form exactly the same as the Create order Web form.
Under Web Pages add the existing page called Update Order.
Open the Update Order page to make sure the Web Form property is set to the newly created Update Orders web form and the Publishing State is Published.
Reopen the Web Form and open the Web Form Steps tabs.
Create four new web form steps equal to the steps in the create order web form.
Some of the settings cannot be set in the user interface. You will have to open the table adx_webformstep in Dataverse to make sure all the settings are the same.
Now that the steps are the same, we are going to make the following changes to them.
Open the step Items and set under Form Definitions the Mode to Insert.
Reconfigure the Source type to Results From Previous Step
Reconfigure the Entity Source Step to Order Information.
Open the tab Metadata under and create a new Subgrid
Select the Type Subgrid
Selected the salesoderdetailsGrid
In the Grid Configuration we will add the buttons for Edit, Delete and Add item.
Click on Create in the View Actions section to create the following action.
Create the delete action in the Item Actions section.
Create the view details action in the Item Actions sections.
Open the step Order Information and set under Form Definitions the Mode to Edit.
Reconfigure the Source type is Query String
Reconfigure the Primary Key to ID, if it changed.
Reconfigure the Name to Order (Salesorderid), if it changed.
You have now created the web form for your users to enjoy!
Knowing how your external users are using you Power Pages is very important. Especially if you are sharing import documents through the Power Pages. In this blog post, we will show you how to set up a Power Page with a script that monitors the downloads and stores this data in Dataverse. By leveraging this functionality, you can gain valuable insights into user behaviour, track file downloads, and make data-driven decisions.
This solution was created together with my colleague Rik de Koning who speaks regularly at Power Platform events.
Power Pages configuration
Before we can save data to the Dataverse with a JavaScript we need to configure the Power Pages to allow the web api access. You need to configure the first 2 settings for each Dataverse table where data needs to be stored.
Open the Portal Management of your Power Pages.
Go to Site Settings
Here you need to add three settings.
The first setting is to enable the web api on your Dataverse table.
Name: Webapi/[table logical name]/enabled
Website: Select the website
Value: true
The second setting is to allow the web api to access the fields
The third setting is to allow for errors to be displayed.
Name: Webapi/error/innererror
Website: Select the website
Value: true
The JavaScript
In our example we created a button that both downloads a document (note with an attached file) and creates a new record in a Dataverse table. The api call to create the record is added as a onclick event on the button, while the href is linked to the actual document. The JavaScript itself needs to be added on the content page linked to the Information page. If you have another use case please look at the details of the Portal Web API on Learn Microsoft.
Open the Portal Management and open the Web Pages
Open the Information page where the JavaScript needs to be added.
Open the related Content page.
First you will need to add the Wrapper AJAX function, this will give you the function safeAjax to use the web api.
You can now add a function to the script that gathers the required information and send that to the safeAjax funtion. The safeAjax function then executes the api call.
function openfile(url) {
var nowDateTime =newDate();
var username ="{{ user.fullname }}";
var contactid ="{{user.contactid}}";
webapi.safeAjax({
type:"POST",
url:"/_api/[tablename]",
contentType:"application/json",
data: JSON.stringify({
"cre9b_userid": contactid,
"cre9b_document": url,
"cre9b_username": username,
"cre9b_dateandtime": nowDateTime
}),
success:function (res, status, xhr) {
//print id of newly created table record
console.log("entityID: "+ xhr.getResponseHeader("entityid"))
}
});
}
You can use the {{ user.[column] }} to get data out of the contacts table.
url is not a default options, I created a variable in a different part of the JavaScript.
For everybody that is interested in how we added the buttons I have added that code as well. With a JavaScript we created a button for each file (note) by changing the URL column into a button.
$('.entitylist').on("loaded", function () {
// this will get the index of the corresponding table headervar columnindex = $('th:contains("URL")').index();
// this will loop through each table row below the corresponding table header
$('tr').each(function () {
var column = $('td', this).eq(columnindex);
if (column.text().includes("https://")) {
// this will find all a attributes based on the document links linkconst documentLinks =document.querySelectorAll(`[href="${column.text()}"]`)
documentLinks.forEach(documentLink => {
// this will set the className and the text of the link accordingly
documentLink.className ="btnViewDocument"
documentLink.target ="_blank"
documentLink.text ="View"
documentLink.onclick =function() { openfile(documentLink.href);};
});
}
});
// this will clear the name of the corresponding table headerdocument.querySelector(`[aria-label*="URL"]`).innerHTML =""document.querySelector(`[aria-label*="Created On"]`).innerHTML ="Shared On"
});
Model-driven apps, a fundamental component of the Power Apps suite, provide a robust framework for designing data-driven solutions. While they offer a wealth of functionality out of the box, adding customized actions and automations can greatly enhance the user experience and boost operational efficiency. This is where low-code Power Fx buttons come into play, providing a simple yet effective way to empower users to take control of their apps and automate routine tasks.
In this blog post, we will delve into the world of low-code development and explore how you can leverage Power Fx buttons to supercharge your model-driven apps. We’ll walk you through the process of adding a button that when pressed will save data in Dataverse.
Creating a Power Fx Button (command bar button)
Open your Model-driven app in edit modus.
Select … of the table (entity) where you need to add the button.
Click on Edit or Edit in new tab under Edit command bar.
Select the command bar that where the button needs to be added, in my case that is the Main form.
Click on Edit and the command bar will be loaded.
Click on New followed by Command to add a new button.
Change the label (name) of the button and place (drag) it to the correct location on the command bar.
If required select an Icon, selecting an icon help the user with recognizing the button and its function.
With the help of Power Fx code we can add when the button will be displayed (visible). For example; Only show the button when the the color field has the value Green.
Select the Show on condition from formula on the Visibility property.
Click on the Open formula bar, that appears below the property.
Add your Power Fx command that dictates when the button needs to be displayed.
In today’s digital age, businesses are constantly looking for ways to streamline their processes and improve their customer experience. One way to do this is by leveraging the power of chatbots, which can quickly and efficiently answer customer inquiries. In this blog post, we will explore how to create a canvas app that uses Power Automate flow to ask ChatGPT API questions and display the response in the canvas app. By the end of this tutorial, you will have the tools and knowledge to build your own chatbot app that can answer your customers’ questions in real-time, enhancing their overall experience and increasing your operational efficiency. So, let’s get started!
In my previouse blog post I explained how to automatically create and delete B2C account for Dataverse Contacts. In this post, I will dive deeper into the process by automating the redemption of an invitation code process. By default, new contacts need to redeem an inventation code before they can access the Power Pages. I am using the one-time-password setup for access to the Power Pages and for ease of use I don’t want the contact (external users) to have to redeem an inventation code.
To achieve this, we will automate the process by granting the contact a web role, connecting the B2C account ID, and adding the external identity. This will allow the contact to access the Power Pages without having to redeem an invitation code.
Today, we’ll be discussing a crucial aspect of B2C account management – the creation and deletion of B2C accounts in response to changes in the Dataverse Contact. This is an important topic for businesses that deal with external Power Pages user (contacts) that want to ensure the security of their records and Power Pages. In this post I will explain how to create or delete B2C accounts that are connected to a Dataverse Contact. So, let’s dive in!
Create a B2C account when a Dataverse Contact is created
Whenever a new contact is created a new B2C account needs to be created automatically that is linked to the contact. This is done thought the email address of the contact and the Azure B2C account id. These automations will limit the amount of manual admin work.
Create a new Power Automate flow with the name Create B2C user for Dataverse Contact.
Add the Dataverse trigger When a row is added.
Set the Change type to Added.
Set the Table name to Contacts.
Set the Scope to Organization.
Create the following 3 variables.
You will need to create an Application Registration in the B2C tenant with the following permissions.
Permission type
Permissions (from least to most privileged)
Delegated (work or school account)
User.ReadWrite.All, Directory.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)
Not supported
Application
User.ReadWrite.All, Directory.ReadWrite.All
Store the Client ID, Tenant ID and Secrect in the corresponding variables.
Add a HTTP action called HTTP – Delete User to the flow.
Set the Method to: Post.
Set the URI to the following code.
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users
Set the body to the following code.
In my scenario the user will not be using the password but the one-time password from B2C. That’s why I have added a guid twice as the password.
This call will create an account of the type email address which allows for any valid email to be used. The email does not have to be part of the B2C domain.
Parse the JSON response of the HTTP – Create User call.
Add the Dataverse action Update a row.
Set the Table name to Contact.
Set the Row id to the contact id of the trigger.
Add the id that was returned by the HTTP call that created the B2C account.
Save the flow.
Delete B2C account when Dataverse Contact is deleted
In my scenario I am maintaining the Power Pages contacts within a canvas app, and when a contact is deleted the associated B2C account needs to be deleted too.
Create a new Power Automate flow with a Power Apps (V2) trigger with the name Delete B2C users for deleted Dataverse Contact.
Add an input Text field names ActiveDirectoryID.
This is the Object ID of the Azure B2C Active Directory User connected to the Contact.
Create the following 3 variables.
You will need to create an Application Registration in the B2C tenant with the following permissions.
Permission type
Permissions (from least to most privileged)
Delegated (work or school account)
User.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)
Not supported
Application
User.ReadWrite.All
Store the Client ID, Tenant ID and Secret in the corresponding variables.
Add a HTTP action called HTTP – Delete User to the flow.
Set the Method to: Delete.
Set the URI to the following code.
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/
Add the PowerApp (V2) parameter ActiveDirectoryID to the end of the URI.
Set the Tenant, Client ID and Secret fields with their corresponding variables.
Set the Authentication to Active Directory OAuth.
Set the Audience to the following code.
https://graph.microsoft.com
Save the Power Automate Flow.
Open or create a canvas app (Power Apps).
Open the Power Automate panel in the canvas app.
Add the Delete B2C users for deleted Dataverse Contact Power Automate flow.
Add a gallery with the source set to the Dataverse Contact table.
Add a recycle bin or other delete Icon to the gallery.
Add the following code to the recycle bin icon under OnSelect.
This will remove the contact record.
Starts the Power Automate Flow and sending the User Name (Users B2C object ID).
