There are scenarios where we need to configure approvals in Dynamics 365, for example, mark an account as a premium customer after approval or qualify leads after approval etc. We used dialog control to capture approval request and comments but, now dialog controls are depreciated and not advised for use in new projects.
As per Microsoft’s initial announcement
Dialogs are deprecated and are replaced by mobile task flows (available as of the December 2016 update), and business process flows. Both task flows and business process flows will continue to evolve to make the transition easier.
But either tasks flow or business process flow was not a perfect replacement for Dialog. Knowing this pain from users, Microsoft has now modified the announcement.
Dialogs are deprecated, and should be replaced by business process flows or canvas apps
Even though I knew canvas apps can be now embedded in model-driven apps, I hadn’t thought of this option until I came across this new announcement, so tried replicating my approval dialogs with a canvas app and it works fine. Pheww!!!! 🙂
For testing purpose I replicated the dialog for creating approval request for Account entity.
- created a canvas app to create approval request.
2. Now we need to call this app from account form, obtain the app ID from app details section.
3. I need to call this canvas app as a popup when user clicks a button. I created a custom button for account entity-> added a JavaScript as button action to call an HTML web-resource and embedded my canvas app in this html I-frame.
<html><head>
<title>Approval</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body style="padding: 0px; font-family: arial; overflow-wrap: break-word;" onload="LoadPowerApp()">
<center>
<iframe id="Approval" width="800" height="600"></iframe>
</center>
<script id="myScript">
function LoadPowerApp()
{
var AccountID = window.parent.opener.Xrm.Page.data.entity.getId().slice(1, -1);
var url ="https://web.powerapps.com/webplayer/iframeapp?source=iframe&appId=/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apps/56123673-f45c-4b96-b9e6-ece1b0a8069a&ID="+AccountID;
document.getElementById("Approval").src=url;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
I know you have many questions now. "https://web.powerapps.com/webplayer/iframeapp?source=iframe&appId=/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apps/56123673-f45c-4b96-b9e6-ece1b0a8069a&ID="+AccountID;
This is the key and I will breakdown it into parts “https://web.powerapps.com/webplayer/iframeapp?source=iframe&appId=/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apps/APP GUID&CUSTOM PARAMETER NAME=”+PARAMETER VALUE
App GUID I explained in step 2, now regarding custom parameter, I deliberately didn’t mention it when we discussed the app creation and kept for this section. When we open this canvas from an account form(like we start a dialogue) the app needs the record GUID to update the account status
I have used form control in the canvas app and filtered the item using the ID Parameter.
4. Now try your button and you can see the magic.
You can download the sample APP from TDG Power Apps bank.
Please note this is a basic app I tried for testing purpose and needs many improvements to use in a live project. you are always welcome to discuss with on this app.
Hope this helps….. 🙂
nijos.dev 