PowerApps RAW!

In the web client version of Dynamics when you hovered over a rollup field it would show a refresh icon to the right of the field.  In the Unified Client Interface (UCI) version of Dynamics to recalculate the field you can click on the Calculator icon to the left of the field name and a Recalculate button will appear.

While working on a demo of the Business Cards Scanner component for PowerApps I found that the component only returns the address as a single line and not as parsed address components ( UPDATE : The Business Card Scanner does not split the address fields into the same level of detail as the Contact/Account entities).  After looking around for flow connectors that could parse the data I only found one from Pitney Bowes.  Looking around there are a lot APIs available for address parsing but they are not currently available on Flow so I decided to build my first custom Flow connector to utilize one of these APIs. Address Labs ( http://www.addresslabs.com/ ) does not require an API key to use and since I'm only doing a few calls for my demos it worked well for me.  You can also check out their document on GitHub ( https://github.com/addresslabs/api-docs/blob/master/README.md ). One of the easiest ways to create a custom connector to flow is to use a Postman collection....

When working through App In A Day Workshop I wanted to improve the Approval flow to move the Business Process Flow (BPF) Stage forward if the Device Order was Approved.  I have utilized plugins and workflow previously to accomplish this type of action but never with Flow.  After doing a quick search i found an article from Elaiza Benitez ( Automatically update the stage of a Business Process Flow with Flow 2.0 ), make sure to check it out it's great.  My post here utilizes the techniques Elaiza provided but applies it to the Device Approval Request Flow as part of the App In A Day workshop. Below if the final Device Approval Request.  The parts I added to the BPF are outlined in Red. The first thing we need to do is get the Device Procurement Process record for the Device Order that applies to the BPF we build in the workshop. Next we need to parse the returned record using the Parse JSON action.  In order to get the schema for this action jus...

When sending emails or approvals in flow it can be helpful to also include a link to the record which is being referenced.  In order to send those links though we need the environment URL of the Dynamics/CDS environment.  This article shows an example of how to get the base URL for the environment and how to build a link based upon it.  This will be demonstrated within a Flow created for the App In A Day Workshop . In this Flow we are attempting to get an approval when a Device Order entity record is created from our Canvas App.  The Approval step allows us to include a link to the item and we will also be sending out emails to the requester based upon the Approval outcome which will include the link. The first Action we need to add to our existing workflow is the CDS Get record step.  Why do we need this step?  Well unfortunately the Output that is provided from the Flow Trigger of when a record is created does not include the URL to the record....

When building canvas apps the naming conventions used by the objects can be very confusing once you have added a few screens.  It is important to make sure you rename your components while working to allow for better readability and supportability of your application.  Below are some common naming conventions which are available within the  PowerApps canvas app coding standards and guidelines whitepaper . Control name    Abbreviation button  btn camera control   cam canvas   can card   crd  collection   col combo box   cmb dates   dte drop down   drp form   frm gallery   gal group   grp header page shape   hdr html text   htm icon   ico image   img label ...