Tag: dynamics 365

I Wish I Would Have Known #11: Unable to add Licensed Users to Power Platform Environments.

 Dynamics 365 Enterprise licenses does not include general purpose Power Apps capabilities. Dynamics 365 Enterprise users will continue to be able to run apps and portals that extend and customize the licensed Dynamics 365 application, as long as those apps and portals are located in the same environment as their licensed Dynamics 365 application. Custom apps or portals outside of the Dynamics 365 environment will require a standalone Power Apps license. In short, If a user A has only dynamics 365 license applied, then A can be added only to environments which has at least one Dynamics 365 App installed. Read more here.

I Wish I Would Have Known #9: Delete Button not Available for Business Rules in PowerApps Maker Portal

Not sure if I am missing something but, I couldn’t find the delete button in the PowerApps maker portal whereas, it is available in the classic UI.

PowerApps Maker Portal

Classic UI

I Wish I Would Have Known #7: Email Tracking in D365 using duplicate email address

If you are using email tracking and your system has records that share the same email address then, emails will be tracked to all records that uses the same email. You need to consider this when designing your solution…

I Wish I Would Have Known #1: Fetchxml VS Query Expression

It totally depends on your plugin style: In case for early-bound, I like using LINQ because it’s strongly typed and It helps development speed. Certain benchmark test have proved that Fetchxml is slightly faster than QueryExpression.

As per Microsoft official docs, there is no visible performance difference but just a personal preference of the developer.

Authenticate Dynamics 365 in Azure Functions using MSAL

As you all know, ADAL is deprecated and will be unsupported by June 30th 2022, Microsoft recommends to use the MSAL (Microsoft Authentication Library). MS has also advised to migrate your existing applications to MSAL.

MSAL makes it easy for developers to add identity capabilities to their applications. With just a few lines of code, developers can authenticate users and applications, as well as acquire tokens to access resources. MSAL also enables developers to integrate with the latest capabilities in our platform—like passwordless and Conditional Access.

Microsoft Build 2020

Read the official FAQ for migrating your applications to MSAL here

MSAL is now the recommended official authentication library for use with the Microsoft identity platform.

Photo by Ilargian Faus on Pexels.com

In my pervious post Authenticate Dynamics 365 in Azure Functions Version 3 , I used ADAL for authentication. The below code authenticates D365 using MSAL, and use WEBAPI to fetch the contact record with the email address passed in the request body.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs;
using Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Extensions.Http;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Microsoft.Identity.Client;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Net.Http;

namespace AzureFunctionMSAL
{
    public static class ConnectMSAL
    {
       

        [FunctionName("MSALFunction")]

        // change get or post based on your scenario

        public static async Task<IActionResult> Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)] HttpRequest req,
            ILogger log)
        {
            log.LogInformation("C# HTTP trigger function processed a request.");

            string contactEmail = req.Query["eamil"];
            string contacts = string.Empty;
            string requestBody = await new StreamReader(req.Body).ReadToEndAsync();
            dynamic data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(requestBody);
            contactEmail = contactEmail ?? data?.email;


            // MSAL Authentication
            string clientId = "*********583";
            string secret = "zDC******";
            string[] scope = new string[] { "https://******.crm.dynamics.com/.default" };
            string webAPI = " https://***.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.1/";
            string authority = "https://login.microsoftonline.com/69e9641e-4be0-4f4c-9ae4-06fdc1160c34";

            var clientApp = ConfidentialClientApplicationBuilder.Create(clientId: clientId)
            .WithClientSecret(clientSecret: secret)
            .WithAuthority(new Uri(authority))
            .Build();

            try
            {
                AuthenticationResult authResult = await clientApp.AcquireTokenForClient(scope).ExecuteAsync();

    // WEB API
                var httpClient = new HttpClient();
                httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("OData-MaxVersion", "4.0");
                httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("OData-Version", "4.0");
                httpClient.Timeout = new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0);
                httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
                httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", authResult.AccessToken);
                httpClient.BaseAddress = new Uri(webAPI);
                var queryOptions = "contacts?$select=fullname,mobilephone&$filter=emailaddress1 eq '" + contactEmail + "'";
                var response =  httpClient.GetAsync(queryOptions).Result;
                
                if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                {
                    var contactsresult = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
                    contacts = contactsresult;
                    log.LogInformation("webapi executed");
               
                }

            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                // log error 
                string errorMessage = ex.Message;
                log.LogError(errorMessage);
                //response
                return new BadRequestObjectResult(JsonConvert.SerializeObject("an error occured while retriving contacts:"));
            }



            //
            string responseMessage = "WEB API Response: " + contacts;

            return new OkObjectResult(responseMessage);
        }
    }
}

Test your function from post man.

Request
Response

Please note, the response in the code is not well formatted, you may format the response as a proper json object based on your business need. You might also need to add required exception handling in the code.

A short explanation on the code.

Hope this helps.