Although the In-App Notifications are documented as part of the Power Platform 2021 Release Wave 1, and was make available for Public preview in July, it is not yet available as part of GA, so I will be reviewing this new feature here.

So, what is In-app notifications. In-app notifications provide us the ability to alert users on certain processes that have been completed or required their attention, and these are displayed in their Model-driven app as part of the new notifications icon (or notification center).

This notifications feature is not available by default in every environment, and require a System Administrator or App Maker to make this feature available within the app. In order to enable this, we need to call the following statement (which can be done from the console of our browser window while running our model driven app.

fetch(window.origin + "/api/data/v9.1/SaveSettingValue()",{

 method: "POST",

   headers: {'Content-Type': 'application/json'},

   body: JSON.stringify({AppUniqueName: "ENTER_APP_UNIQUE_NAME", SettingName:"AllowNotificationsEarlyAccess", Value: "true"})

   });

An example of the Unique App Name would be: crde4_MyApp. Once this feature is enabled we will be able to use the Notifications table to display notifications to end users.

Now that we configured our environment, let’s go ahead and create a notification. There are a few required parameters (or recommended) that we need to add in order to display the notification, such as the title, owner and body. The owner of the notification is the user that this notification will be displayed for. There are additional options such as Icon Type, Toast Type Expiration and Data which is a JSON string that is used for extensibility and parsing richer data into the notification. The screenshot below shows you the properties

You can read the Microsoft blog on Notification, by clicking on the link below:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/model-driven-apps/clientapi/send-in-app-notifications#notification-table

Most of the sample in the above link are visible via JavaScript. Let’s demonstrate how this would look using Power Automate flow.

In our example we will create a flow that displays a notification when a new account is created. This is a simple flow, without any additional parameters, or configuration of the JSON string.

Let’s go ahead and create the record. As this logic does not require to create a lot of data, I will just enter some minimal data. The only parameters that the flow is actually using is the name of the account and the creator. The image below shows the record that we created.

Once we create the new record, we will receive a notification in the Notification Center or as a toast that the account has been created as shown in the image below.

Now, sometimes the toast notifications are not immediate, and we might have saved the record and closed it, so we would like to have a link back to the record. So let’s go ahead and first modify the flow and see how this works in action. We will add the Data element to create our custom JSON string, so that the user can access the record that was created. The image below shows the changes to the Add New row of the flow to enable a click-through, so that you can open the record that was created.

Once the flow executes, the notification will be displayed to the end user, with a link to navigate to the correct record. Note that sometimes notifications don’t appear immediately and there is a slight delay, but as mentioned previously, this is still in preview.

Additional posts related to the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2021 Release Wave 2 will be posted by following the link below:

Power Platform 2021 Wave 2 Release Posts

The post Power Platform 2021 Release Wave 2 Unified Interface Updates – In-App Notifications appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-the-modern-app-designer-preview/

With the new app designer, it is now easier and faster to build model-driven apps. With just a few clicks, you can build views and forms in the maker portal, and preview your app changes within the same designer. In order to access the modern app designer, we need to navigate to https://make.preview.powerapps.com/ and in order to start creating a new app, click on the “+ New app” command bar button and select Model-driven from the drop down menu.

This will pop up the create model driven app from blank window, where we can select to use the Modern app designer (preview) or the Classic app designer. To start with the Modern app designer, select that choice, and click Create.

Next we will need to give the app a name, and an optional description, and click on the Create button.

After a few seconds the new app will be created, and we can start adding pages. Let’s start and review what we see on the screen once we created a new app. In the Command bar we have 7 buttons. These are Back, New Page, Settings, Switch to classic, Save, Publish and Play. Most of these are pretty obvious.

The New Page allows us to create a new page for our app, which can be either table based or dashboard. The Settings allows us to change the app name and description that we entered before, and specify whether the app will be available offline.

When you select a page type of type table-based, you will be able to select one or more tables to add to the app, and also add them to the navigation (site map).

When you click on the add button, you will be able to see a preview of your app directly from the designer window, basically a preview of what you app would look like. The image below shows you the preview window. You will notice that the center area is the preview, and on the left hand side we see the tables that were added to the app.

The preview area, not only shows you the way the app looks, but allows you to change the layout so that you see how the app will look in responsive design for different devices.

You will also notice the collapsed section to the left that is expanded to show the data tables, which contain two additional links. The first link is Pages. This link shows you the tables you have selected and the different forms and views that you have access to edit.

The next link is navigation. This is basically your site map. By default the site map will contain a single Area, Group and Subarea, and any additional tables that you have added to the app, either automatically when selecting the entities or manually. You have the ability to rename the areas and the groups, as well as remove any of the existing items (such as the default Subarea1, which is not necessary once you added new tables). The image below shows the navigation that is available once the new tables are created.

The main thing to notice that when setting up the new app, this is all live data. As you click through the views and the forms, you will be able to switch between them and view the live data of the different views and forms. You will also be able to see which forms and views are enabled for the app, and navigate to edit each of these and edit them from the designer directly.

When you are in your apps view, and see the list of all your existing apps (the ones created using the new Modern experience or old ones, the edit button will now have a drop down option to edit the app using the new Modern design

As this is still work in progress, not all existing apps will be editable in the modern designer, but the new apps that you create can be editable from there. Not sure yet if this is a bug, or future enhancement.

There are still some limitations to the new Modern app designer that will probably be addressed by the time this become available to the general public, or at a later data and features that are missing. You can see those by navigating to the link below:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/model-driven-apps/app-designer-overview

The post New Model-Driven App Designer appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

https://www.ariclevin.com/Azure/Post/configuring-oauth-cds

In recent weeks, I had to do that same for an additional user, but while going through the logic of implementing this, I notices some changes.

After the creation of the User account and the registration of the App in AD, when I went to create the account in my Dataverse environment. The username, full name (first and last names) and the email addresses were locked. The only setting that I was able to enter was the Client Id.

I even tried using God Mode so that I can enter my own User Name (for the AD account) that I specified, but when I saved the new Application User, the User Name would store whatever name was entered in the App Registration record.

This change was implemented a few months back, as Microsoft was trying to simplify the creation of App Users, so that the user can be created only be entering the Client Id. After the user account has been created we are able to modify the email address, first and last name, but the name (domain name) and the last name cannot be changed. The last name seems to be configured to what is stored in AAD as the App Registration name. Might need to play around with this a little, but if you have access to AAD, you should created this in the right way

I asked around a little bit, and it seems like a few days ago there has been a change in Microsoft Docs on how applications user should be created. The link is provided below:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/manage-application-users

The new changes are that now Application Users can be created right for the Power Platform Admin Center. As a prerequisite we have to register the App in Azure Active Directory, but once the app is registered, we can add in directly by following the steps below.

Navigate to Power Platform Admin Center, select the environment, click settings, and under Users + permissions select Applications Users as shown in the image below

In the Application Users settings you will see a list of all the App Users that are currently configured for your dataverse environment. Click on the Command bar New app user button as shown below:

This will pop up a panel where you can start creating the new App User account. Under neither the App label, click on the App an app link:

This will pop up an additional panel which will show all of the apps that are registered in Azure Active Directory. Select the Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Dataverse) app registration that you previously configured, and click on the Add button

Once the app registration is added, we will need to select the Business Unit and to add the security roles. Click on the pencil icon next to Security role, which will pop up an additional panel showing the list of available security roles. Select one or more roles that need to be assigned to this user, as shown below:

The final page is shown below. Click on the create button to create the app user in your Dataverse instance, and it can be used after that.

This is a great step moving forward, but I still wish the User account details could be set on the creation of the App User to an actual AAD user.

The post New Dataverse functionality in creation of App Users appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

I will go over just some of the items that made it to the Power Apps Model-Driven Apos. Future posts will discuss Dynamics 365 enhancements, and the other Power Platform Apps. I had to add the picture that was part of the release notes.

In-app notifications for Model-driven apps

In-app notifications are shown to users as a notification toast or within the notification

center. Notifications are directed to a specific user and can be sent through external systems,

Power Automate, or from within the system

Multi-line text controls expand in Quick View forms

Prior to this release, Multi-line text controls that were added to Quick views had to be clicked on and scrolled through in order to see the entire content. In this release, users will no longer have to follow that logic, and the fields will automatically expand to show the full content when a Quick View form is loaded on the page.

Duplicate detection Unified Interface experience

The new experience for duplicate detection was introduced in the previous release, but required to be enabled by the admins. In the upcoming release, this will be the default experience.

The updated experience dialog is integrated seamlessly with merging records to help you manage data integrity when duplicate records are found. With this new duplicate detection experience you can quickly find and manage records with easier access to merge the duplicates and keep the record you want. When you merge a record, any related or child records are also merged.

Merging records Unified Interface experience

The new experience for merging records was introduced in the previous release, but required to be enabled by the admins. In the upcoming release, this will be the default experience. Not much has changed in the functionality with the exception of the design, and the ability to call merge functionality when duplicate records are detected

I will publish more as I go on reading about enhancements to Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

The post 2021 release wave 1 plan – First Look – Power Apps Model-Driven Apps appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.