Using the Solution Checker

When building new solutions with PowerApps (and now that Microsoft is strongly encouraging people to push solution infrastructure and usage to the new PowerApps model) you can now take advantage of the Solution Checker.

The Solution Checker is available from the main solution window and allows an administrator to validate a solution before exporting it and avoiding the whole conversations of “but you told me it was done?” that can sometimes happen with Dynamics.

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After you run the checker against your solution you are then able to view the results and identify what needs to be fixed (if anything) before

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Dynamics365 is Not a Database

Yes, it has a database, more than one to be correct and it has this very cool and fancy thing called CDS which is equally awesome.

But it’s not a database.

Which right now is reminding me of this…

Image result for its not a tumour

As you embark on your next DTS (Digital Transformation Services) project and you decide to move to this new platform, it’s important to remember this concept.

It’s Not a Database.

Even though you can configure it with entities (that look an awful lot like tables) and you can create relationships (that look an awful lot like foreign keys) that have attributes (that look an awful lot like columns).

It’s Not a Database.

Hiring a Database Architect to develop a schema for you in Dynamics will not be as efficient

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Calling your HTTPTrigger

After you deploy your first HTTP Trigger function, the first thing you are going to want to do is call it.

(And why not).

However, how you call it at what URL you use are not as straightforward as you might think.

To find the URL that will trigger your app, navigate into the function itself and look for the (very, very small) link that says “< /> Get function URL“

When opened, this will give you the URL that you can use to call your function. Simply “copy” the URL and you’ll be good to go.

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Azure Function Publish Failed

I had a few instances last week where I was getting this incredibly descriptive error message. When I dug into the logs, I got an even more descript messaging saying that “Publishing had failed.”

Both lead me nowhere and after deleting publishing profiles, pulling them down, pushing them back, doing whatever I could, nothing seemed to function.

Cue finding out about this key in on my function itself – WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE 

By default, when you create your function in Azure, this is set to 1. However, for Web Deploy to work (i.e., from Visual Studio), this needs to be set to 0.

Once I did that, boom, publishing was working solidly like a rock once

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Geocoding with Dynamics

I’ve been working on a few projects the last little while that has involved leveraging Geocoding services to augment address data stored in Dynamics.  Where I previously thought that all Geocoding services are created equal, I was quick to learn that they are not and you should definitely do your due diligence in looking into what service you use.

This is an important piece as well, we were focused on using services only and not buying data that needed to be updated every quarter.  Many of the services out there give you a free stack of geocoding requests (based on what you’re doing) that you can most likely throttle down your daily limits and/or take the hit on.

What I found most interesting was to see which platforms had access to which

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