Tip #1243: Forgot to turn off the Flow

Whoever decided that you shouldn’t be able to save a Flow in a solution if you haven’t turned it off first is a cruel, cruel person

Save me please

In case you haven’t head, you can add Microsoft Flow to solutions now (yay!) but if you edit a flow without first turning the Flow off, you will see the following error:

This is one of those moments where you may be tempted to utter the expletive of your choice in frustration, especially if you have made extensive change.

But fret not, all is not lost.

Simply right click on the browser tab and select “duplicate.” Then in the newly opened copy of your flow, go to the information screen, where you can turn off your Flow, then toggle back to the original tab and save your Flow.

Thanks MVP Natraj Yegnaraman for saving my Flow. Got any tips? send them to jar@crmtipoftheday.com.

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You can now listen to us read and elaborate on the weekly tips of the day on the Power Platform Tip Show. Subscribe on Apple or Google podcasts, or catch us on the CRM Audio feed.

Cover photo by unsplash-logoChris Gallagher

Tip #1242: Invalid App SiteMap

After an update, you can’t get into your model driven app. The error says “Invalid App Site Map.”

To fix this, open the app in app designer.

Click the pencil to open Site Map Designer.

Make some kind of update to the SiteMap–if you don’t want to rearrange the subareas you can simply edit the name of one of the areas or groups, then change it back to what it was.

Save and publish your sitemap, then save and publish your model driven app.

Problem solved!

Cover photo by Muhammad Haikal Sjukri

Tip #1241: Unified Interface Only and Outlook Client

We have an old version of Exchange that doesn’t support the Outlook app, but we want to move to Unified Interface only in browser. Is this possible?

Old timer

As you may know, if you want to disable the classic UI for all users, you can go to “My Apps” and select the […] button and choose “Hide for all roles.”

But you may be curious how this will impact D365 for Outlook (the classic Outlook client), given that the classic client does not recognize unified interface. Will views and records continue to open?

Based on our testing, the answer is yes. After disabling the classic UI for all users, users with the Outlook client were still able to track and open records.

Note that this will require you to still test and maintain both classic and unified experiences, and it is recommended that you have a plan to move to the app for Outlook before classic UI goes goodbye.

Cover photo by Vonecia Carswell

Tip #1240: Trigger another entity’s flows

I have a flow on Account, and sometimes I want to trigger that flow to run when a related contact is updated. Given we don’t have child Flows yet, how can I make a change to one record execute a flow on a different entity?

One trick that I’ve used on workflow that is also a solution for Flow is to update one of the fields that triggers the flow on the parent record. If you don’t want to change the value of the record, you can update the field with its current value.

This will trigger the flow to be run.

Tip #1239: Can’t manage solutions

If you want to enable a standard Microsoft solution like Gamification, Voice of the Customer, or Field Service, the standard method is to go to the Dynamics 365 instance manager, select your instance, then click the Solutions button.

But what if you select your instance and do not see the solutions button? As Marius “Viking” Agur Lind told me, “click your instance again.” When you click a second time, the Solutions button will magically appear.

Got tips, send them to jar@crmtipoftheday.com.

Cover photo by unsplash-logoJørgen Håland

Tip #1238: Painless upgrade from 8 to 9

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200

Chance and Community Chest card

When planning upgrade of your 8 or 8.2 on-premises instance to version 9, there are two rules:

  1. Do not, I repeat, do not consider in-place upgrade.
  2. Raise a support ticket and get yourself a build 9.0.02
    EDIT: download service update 0.3

If you are using VMs either on-premises or in Azure, or if you have spare physical capacity, always, I repeat, always go for the first option which is Migrate by using a new instance of SQL Server. Why? Because it’s painless and fast. Do you really run your current version on Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016? I’m asking because both are required. You don’t have to go through painful upgrades if you opt for a new instance. Just install RTM build, add the 0.02 patch (is it like $0.02 patch?!)

EDIT: ignore the rest as service update 0.3 is available for download.

Why to create a support ticket? Because if you use RTM build of version 9, changes are that during the organization upgrade you will receive an error message at the last mile:

Error : The AttributeLookupValue (Id=81cde1dc-2241-db11-898a-0007e9e17ebd) entity or component has attempted to transition from an invalid state

Build 0.02 takes care of that nasty error and for every single version 8 or 8.2 databases we imported so far, the upgrade did take a bit of time but it went as smooth as butter.

Cover photo by Paul Felberbauer

Tip #1237: Access D365 admin center when you are not O365 admin

If you need to go to the instance selector to manage one of the Microsoft solutions but you are not an O365 admin, you can’t go through the O365 admin portal. No sweat, go to Power platform admin center and you can get to the Dynamics 365 instance managers from there. In fact, to paraphrase:

All admin centers are equally represented

John Bender

Thank you Joel Lindstrom for the tip (since he could’t be bothered writing it himself)

Cover photo by Brooke Lark

Tip #1236: Review RetrieveMultiple plugins before migrating to Unified Interface

It’s not uncommon to register a plugin on RetrieveMultiple message and fiddle with the output, e.g. drop some values, add some calculations, etc.

Chances are that you are changing the QueryExpression, and the plugin is working fine in the classic UI but you will have challenges migrating to Unified Interface.

The reason is that in the Unified Interface Dynamics 365 uses FetchExpression, so you’ll need to handle both cases if you want to use both classic UI and Unified Interface.

To reuse as much of the existing code as possible, use FetchExpressionToQueryExpressionRequest to convert, then do what you need to the QueryExpression, and then change it back with QueryExpressiontoFetchExpressionRequest. Sample code is available.

Thank you Guillaume Domont for the tip! (And don’t forget to send yours to jar@crmtipoftheday.com).

Cover photo by Lucas Vasques

Tip #1235: Create personal charts in Unified Interface

Nasty rumors (and this official page from Microsoft) claim that you cannot create personal charts from Unified Interface.

This is not true anymore.

From any view in your unified interface model-driven app, click “show chart” then under the more options (…) menu, click “+ new.”

This will launch the classic chart builder in a new window.

And BTW, audit logs are also now available. So what are you waiting for?

Thanks Rob Dawson for the tip. Send your tips to jar@crmtipoftheday.com

Cover photo by unsplash-logoIoana Cristiana

Tip #1234: When Dynamics 365 App for Outlook hasn’t found what you’re looking for

You set regarding in the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, but you don’t get the results you expect.

If you are in Outlook desktop, you should be aware that behind the scenes webpages rendered in Outlook (and the entire Office platform) are rendered in Internet Explorer. This issue can be caused by cache issues in IE.

Microsoft is working on a fix for the issue, but for now, if you or another user has this problem, the following steps should fix the issue (as reported by Lu Hao on this Dynamics Community forum thread).

Clear your browser cache

  • Shut down IE and Outlook. Make sure in task manager that no IE or Outlook processes are running.
  • Clear Internet Explorer Cache, Cookies, History, Temporary Internet files completely. 
  • There is a setting in Internet options under Browser history section: Settings > Caches and databases tab. If dynamics.com has a cache, delete it. 
  • Restart Outlook.

F12 Chooser

If this bug only appears in desktop client and clearing the cache via Internet Options does not help, try clearing it via F12 chooser. Here is the process (steps are not applicable for Windows 7)

  • Open Dynamics app in desktop client
  • Open IEChooser.exe in %WindowsFolder%\System32\F12
  • Click on Dynamics 365 thread
  • Go to Network tab and click clear cache button

Cover photo by unsplash-logoAnnie Theby