Extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps with Power Platform E-Book

Adrià Ariste Santacreu

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 245

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Uncover the synergy between Microsoft Power Platform and its integration with Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) with this essential guide to implementing low-code and no-code concepts to not only extend and enhance F&O but also improve maintainability and speed up development.
Systematically exploring Power Platform, this book covers topics such as Dataverse, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI using real-world scenarios in Dynamics 365 F&O to offer practical insights. You’ll then master the integration of F&O and Power Platform using dual-write and virtual tables, and delve into process automation with Power Automate. The book further deepens your proficiency in Power Apps by showing you how they can be used to extend the F&O functionality and incorporate artificial intelligence using AI Builder and its pre-trained AI models ready to use with your data. Throughout, you’ll gain a solid understanding of the diverse components of Power Platform and how they can transform your Dynamics 365 F&O experience.
By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to fully harness the immense potential of Power Platform and Dynamics 365 F&O.

Leseprobe

Extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps with Power Platform

Integrate Power Platform solutions to maximize the efficiency of your Finance & Operations projects

Adrià Ariste Santacreu

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Extending Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps with Power Platform

Copyright © 2024 Packt Publishing

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First published: January 2024

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Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-80181-159-0

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To my wife, Eva, for her support and encouragement in the moments of doubt while writing this book. And to my parents, Pili and Adrià, for providing me with an education, despite the fact that I wasn’t the most dedicated of students.

– Adrià Ariste Santacreu

Contributors

About the author

Adrià Ariste Santacreu has been working in the Microsoft Business Applications sphere since 2010, starting with Axapta and Microsoft Dynamics AX, and since 2016 with Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O. Adrià is a technical solutions architect and developer who loves solving requirements with all the tools available in the Microsoft ecosystem, including Power Platform and the Azure services that can be used with Finance and Operations. Adrià has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP since 2020 in the Business Applications category thanks to his community contributions, including speaking at events and conferences and writing technical articles about Dynamics 365 F&O, Azure, Dataverse, and the Power Platform.

About the reviewers

Cesar Garibaldo is a principal consultant in Microsoft’s Industry Solutions Delivery team, with over 13 years of experience implementing D365 F&O and 4 years in D365 CE/Power Platform. With a dual proficiency in both functional areas (Finance, SCM, Sales) and technical roles (Integrations, Data Migration, Development), he has contributed to over 25+ ERP/CRM implementations across 14 industries (Professional Services, Retail, Government) in the US, Canada, and Latin America. Fluent in both English and Spanish, Cesar has successfully delivered projects in both languages. He holds multiple certifications in D365 F&O, CE, and Power Platform.

Nathan Clouse, a Microsoft MVP, is renowned for his expertise in ERP and Microsoft Dynamics Finance and Operations. His career is marked by a passion for developing practical, results-oriented technology solutions that align closely with business objectives. With a robust background in business and accounting, Nathan excels at bridging the gap between technical and business perspectives, ensuring that technology implementations enhance operational efficiency and meet strategic goals. His active role in the technology community highlights his dedication to sharing knowledge and contributing to the advancement of enterprise technology solutions.

I would like to thank my wife and children, the author, and the publishing team.

— Nathan Clouse

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Power Platform

1

Dynamics 365 F&O and Low-Code Development

Benefits of low-code and no-code

Introducing Power Platform

Understanding low- or no-code

Is this the end of X++?

Convergence

The foundation of Power Platform – Dataverse

If not a database… what is a Dataverse?

Components of Power Platform

Power Apps

Power Automate

Power BI

AI Builder

Power Pages

PPAC

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

2

Dual-Write and Virtual Tables

Technical requirements

F&O and Dataverse environment linking

Configuring the Power Platform integration

Dual-write or virtual tables?

Scenarios for Dual-write

Table mappings

Different concepts between apps

When should I use Dual-write?

Scenarios for virtual tables

Enabling virtual tables

When to use virtual tables

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

Part 2: Extending Dynamics 365 F&O with Power Platform

3

Power Automate Flows in Dynamics 365

What is Power Automate, and why should I use another tool for my processes?

Aren’t batch jobs and X++ enough?

Scheduled, instant, and automated cloud flows

Automated cloud flows

Instant cloud flows

Scheduled cloud flows

Power Automate connectors

Connector types

Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations standard connectors or Dataverse connectors?

Connectors

Triggers

Actions

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

4

Replacing F&O Processes with Power Automate

Technical requirements

F&O Business events, our workflow trigger

Workflow business events

Parse the response

Using OData actions

Validate the workflow

Creating an adaptive card

Posting an adaptive card to Teams

Processing the workflow elements

Processing the response

Processing a timeout

Managing the approval process on Teams

Approvals using email

Adding Power Automate approvals

Approving via email

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

5

Building Automations and Integrations

Technical requirements

The issue with FTP and self-service deployments

The solution

Connecting to an FTP server in Power Automate

Using the SFTP connector

Parsing a JSON file

Why parse?

Using the F&O connector to update a record

Getting the existing record

Adding conditional branches

Using the Dataverse connector to update a record

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

6

Power Apps: What’s in it for Finance and Operations Consultants?

Technical requirements

Model-driven and canvas apps

Model-driven apps

Canvas apps

Embedding a Power Apps app in a finance and operations form

Passing the app context

Embedding in a form from the UI

Embed in a form using Visual Studio

Embedding from the dashboard

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

7

Extending F&O Apps with Power Apps

Technical requirements

Loading and modifying F&O data into a Power App

Using the F&O standard connector in a canvas app

Updating data using the F&O connector

Using F&O virtual tables in a canvas app

The F&O connector versus the Dataverse connector

Running OData actions from a Power App

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

8

Power BI Reporting for Dynamics 365 F&O Apps

Technical requirements

The Entity Store and embedded Power BI

Refreshing the Entity Store

Why is the Entity Store not enough?

Exporting to Data Lake and Synapse Link

What is a data lake?

What is Synapse Link?

Configuring the Synapse Link integration

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

Part 3: Adding AI to Your Flows and Apps

9

Integrating AI Builder

Technical requirements

AI Builder models

Prebuilt models

Custom AI models

Adding AI Builder image recognition to Power Automate

Building the flow

Testing the flow

Adding AI Builder image recognition to a Power App

Building the app

Creating the journal

Testing the app

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

Part 4: Dataverse and Power Platform ALM

10

Environment Management

F&O and Dataverse environments

Environments

Resources

Environment and project planning

Environment types

Linked environments

Developer environments

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

11

Solution Management

Why do we need solutions?

ALM

Publishers

Environment variables

Managed and unmanaged solutions

Exporting and importing solutions

Publishing an unmanaged solution

Exporting a solution

Importing an unmanaged solution

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Answers

Index

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Part 1: Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Power Platform

In this part, we’ll delve into the principles of low-code and no-code methodologies and their connection to Power Platform. Additionally, we’ll explore the main methods for making F&O data available within Dataverse to use it in Power Platform.

This part has the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Dynamics 365 F&O and Low-Code DevelopmentChapter 2, Dual-Write and Virtual Tables

1

Dynamics 365 F&O and Low-Code Development

System customization in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps has been a developer job since its early days as Axapta. If you needed to change or create new processes for the ERP, you needed a developer. Now, thanks to Power Platform, we can accomplish some of these things using a low-code approach that can speed up development and also enhance the overall maintainability of F&O. The goal of this chapter is to provide an understanding of Power Platform and how it can help you, learning about Power Apps or Power Automate, and other low-code elements in Power Platform, allowing you to gain insights of this new technology paradigm.

We will explore the following in this chapter:

Benefits of low-code and no-codeThe foundation of Power Platform – DataverseComponents of Power Platform

Benefits of low-code and no-code

If you’ve been working with Axapta, Dynamics AX, or the latest and current iteration of the product, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, you are already familiar with how changing the default behavior of the system when adding new functionality is done. It will probably involve a developer making changes or creating new objects.

And, if you know how the current development and deployment workflow is done, you must be aware that it’s a time-consuming process. You need to have developers available, they must make changes or create a new feature, and once it’s tested, you need to promote the changes to a sandbox environment and, finally, to your production environment. Deploying to production will require scheduling downtime, which can be inconvenient and must even be planned with enough time depending on your, or your customer’s, business.

What can we do to minimize production downtime?

In an ideal world, the answer would be: plan ahead, make a thorough analysis of your requirements, and have a solid testing strategy before releasing something to production. However, bugs are often unavoidable, and changes of requirements do take place, and sometimes you won’t test all the scenarios that will appear in the future.

Here is when Power Platform comes in handy to extend the Dynamics 365 F&O functionality. It will be very hard, or impossible in my opinion, to replace all X++ developments with Power Platform. But it’s possible to use Power Platform’s low-code tools to enhance Finance and Operations.

Introducing Power Platform

Power Platform (see Figure 1.1) is a low-code and no-code development platform built on top of Microsoft Dataverse, a data platform with a database, security, file-hosting, logging, and many more features that power the different components of Power Platform:

Figure 1.1 – Components of Power Platform

As seen here, Power Platform comprises different low-code tools and components with varying functionalities, enabling you to rapidly develop custom applications, automate processes, or generate insightful reporting, on top of Dataverse.

Understanding low- or no-code

Low-code or no-code is a software development approach that enables us to create applications, websites, or other solutions with little to no programming knowledge. It relies on visual interfaces of the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) type, drag-and-drop components, and templates that allow users to create custom solutions without writing lines of code.

And what are the benefits of low-code tools when using them along Dynamics 365 F&O?

Let’s take faster delivery of the customizations as an example. With Power Platform, you won’t need to deploy changes to F&O environments. Changing your Power Apps or Power Automate flow will be all you’ll need to do. You will also benefit from having more resources in your team to make changes thanks to the way you build solutions in Power Platform: developers’ or technical consultants’ availability won’t be a bottleneck because low-code tools can be easily learned by functional consultants and end users with some training.

Is this the end of X++?

No. And that’s not just an opinion, but Microsoft’s official stance: “X++ isn’t going anywhere.” Due to the transactional nature of the ERP and its complex business processes, the most common way of solving the requirements will be through X++ development.

Take the posting of a journal, or a sales order invoice: complex transactional processes that involve different parts of the ERP. If you’re willing to extend these processes, you’ll have to work with event handlers or a chain of command, like you do nowadays.

At the moment, we can see the business events framework as the most common way of interacting with Power Automate, using it as a trigger. Business events allow us to interact with external systems and send notifications from Finance and Operations.

We also have data events available. Similar to business events, data events trigger when create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations are performed and can be enabled for data entities. These events, thanks to the Power Platform integration, allow us to track changes in data and use them in our Power Apps or Power Automate flows.

Of course, those are not our only ways of interacting with Dataverse solutions, and in this book, we’ll learn some others.

Tip

With that said, regardless of whether you’re an F&O developer or a technical or functional consultant, you should start learning about Power Platform sooner rather than later because it’s not Finance and Operations Apps’ future; it’s already the present!

You will make most of the changes the way you’re used to, with the Application Object Tree (AOT) and X++ in Visual Studio, and thanks to Power Platform, you will add valuable new skills to your toolset. Being able to use Power Automate cloud flows to automate processes, read or write data in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, or create a Power App for some users will be a way to reduce coupling from your solutions because it will allow for more agile and faster changes to these processes you’re creating.

Note

Don’t think about Power Platform as a threat to developers but as an additional resource that will make your life easier.

Convergence

With the “One Dynamics One Platform” convergence scenario, Microsoft is bringing Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps and Dataverse closer together – improving the experience of integrating both systems and productivity and a more consistent user experience.

We’re already benefiting from this! If you remember the early days of Dual-Write, we had to configure the environment linking manually. Now, it’s possible to deploy a Dataverse environment along a Finance & Operations instance from Lifecycle Services (LCS) and then configure the integration with Power Platform with only two clicks.

This new LCS experience also helps us configure Dynamics 365 F&O virtual tables in the linked Dataverse environment and use them in our Power Automate flows or Power Apps, instead of using the standard Dynamics 365 F&O connector.

You can see all these investments in Dataverse and F&O from Microsoft go all in the same direction, on the one hand making our life easier with less setup and configuration needs, on the other hand making a more unified Dynamics 365 product line. How many times has a customer asked, “But isn’t everything Dynamics 365?”?

In the coming years, we will be getting new experiences such as One Admin, which will replace LCS for the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC). We already have a hint of this because, if you’ve got Dataverse-linked environments in your projects, you can already see the F&O environment URL in PPAC at the bottom of your environment’s page (Figure 1.2):

Figure 1.2 – F&O environment URL in PPAC

You can see the Dataverse environment details, with its URL on top under Environment URL, and the Finance and Operations URL at the bottom.

Another new convergence feature is One Batch, which will allow us to have batch jobs in Dataverse, or One Transaction. This will help in providing transactional consistency between Finance and Operations and Dataverse, which have already been announced in the release plans.

The foundation of Power Platform – Dataverse

I’ve already mentioned Dataverse a few times, and now we’re going to learn more about it. First of all, regardless of what we may think upon seeing its name, Dataverse is not a database, which is a common misconception.

Dataverse originated from the Dynamics CRM product as the XRM platform. In 2018 with the release of Power Apps, its name was changed to Common Data Service (CDS), and after some more name changes, it became the Dataverse we know today.

If not a database… what is a Dataverse?

Dataverse uses relational databases such as Azure SQL to store structured data, but it also uses unstructured databases such as Cosmos DB for logs, and it also has file storage.

Data and access are secured thanks to security roles to control access to environments, and of course, you can manage users and user groups in your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant for authentication. It also has audit capabilities at record levels to know who created, updated, or deleted a record, or also do that at the field level.

Other features include reporting, being able to export data to a data lake, and using Power BI, Business rules and Workflows, or integration capabilities thanks to the API. And of course, you can use Power Automate or Logic Apps or many Azure services with Dataverse thanks to the Microsoft cloud.

With this short introduction, we agree that Dataverse is not a database. Dataverse is a platform under the SaaS/PaaS model, and all the aforementioned services (see Figure 1.3) are transparent to users:

Figure 1.3 – Dataverse

We can use PPAC to manage environments, but we will never see the backing services nor have to take care of maintenance, which is also good news! In the background, Dataverse has relational databases, storage, reporting capabilities, and – of course – security, thanks to Azure AD. Having seen the foundation and benefits of Dataverse as the underlying platform, let’s explore which elements make up Power Platform itself.

Components of Power Platform

We’ve already learned about Dataverse, the platform on which Power Platform is built, and now we’ll delve into its different components.

Power Apps

Power Apps is probably the most known of Power Platform’s products. It is a low-code platform used to create custom applications that can be run on a phone or a tablet thanks to the Power Apps app (see Figure 1.4), or a computer using a browser:

Figure 1.4 – iOS Power Apps player

Thanks to the Power Apps editor we can quickly, and without any programming knowledge, create a canvas app. Thanks to its intuitive UI (see Figure 1.5), you can drag and drop the controls you need to the app and customize its design to fit your requirements:

Figure 1.5 – Power Apps editor

You can see this editor is a bit similar to what we have in Visual Studio for F&O. On the left, you can find a toolbox with the different controls, data sources, or components you can add to the app. On the right, you have a Properties pane that displays the properties of the selected element.

On top of the design workspace, we find one of the most interesting elements of the UI, an Excel-like formula bar (see Figure 1.6). In this bar, we will be able to not only calculate values but also do actions in response to user actions:

Figure 1.6 – Power Apps formula bar

And of course, we can have a sequence of formulas, so this will look like code. This is one of the places where we’ll see most of the code.

Power Automate

The next component we’re going to learn about is Power Automate, the automation tool that will enable us to create automations for our business needs. There are two different types of Power Automate flows (see Figure 1.7): cloud flows that run on the cloud and desktop flows that run locally on a Windows PC:

Figure 1.7 – Power Automate flows

In the Power Apps maker portal, you can navigate to the Flows menu and create a new flow; in our case, a cloud flow. Inside Cloud flows, we can choose between:

Automated flows: These will be started when the trigger condition is metInstant flows: These will be triggered manually; for example, from a button in the Flow appScheduled flows: These flows run on a schedule, and you can select their recurrence from minutes to hours, days, or weeks

Designing a flow is quite straightforward using the Power Automate