Trigger a Power Automate Flow from a Custom Button in Dynamics 365 or Dataverse

Trigger a Power Automate Flow from a Custom Button in Dynamics 365 or Dataverse

There are few solutions out there already for triggering a Power Automate flow from a custom buttons/commands, each has its pros/cons but none of them are great. I think I found a nicer way. This method uses a custom page that opens as a modal when a command button is selected from a row in Dynamics 365 or Dataverse. The custom page ‘OnStart’ property triggers the flow and responds to the user when complete.

BONUS: you can build a really nice UX that handles errors and conditional logic for the flows functionality which is so much better than hiding command buttons with no explanation or reason!

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View merged Lead, Contact or Account details in Dynamics 365

View merged Lead, Contact or Account details in Dynamics 365

The merge functionality for Leads, Contacts and Accounts in Dynamics 365 and Dataverse has been around for a while, but there isn’t great visibility of when a row was merged into, and what happened during the merge.

This post shows you how to add a note in the timeline to show when a row has been merged into, and also what data has been updated from the deactivated row.

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‘Distribution List’ Emails and Appointments with Power Automate

‘Distribution List’ Emails and Appointments with Power Automate

Automating the creation of Dataverse Activities to lists or groups of contacts. This post shows you how to build power automate flow that does the magic behind the scenes of the custom page in my last post ‘Distribution Lists’ in model-driven apps.

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‘Distribution Lists’ in model-driven apps

‘Distribution Lists’ in model-driven apps

Send group emails and appointment invitations to Contacts in model-driven apps and Dynamics 365 using Distribution Lists. This custom page allows you to browse and select one or many distribution lists, review the contacts who belong to those lists, then create an appointment or an email (and the type of recipient - To, CC or BCC) with the click of a button.

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Automate Timeline Posts in Dataverse Model-driven Apps for important events

Automate Timeline Posts in Dataverse Model-driven Apps for important events

Within Dataverse is there a way to have automatic posts to the timeline for events such as entry and exit of business process stages, change in ownership of the record, etc.?“ - of course!

How to automate useful auto posts into the timeline using Power Automate so you can get stuff done - quicker. The Dataverse timeline isn't just for activities in Model-driven Power Apps.

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Insert your email signature from Dataverse using Power Automate

Insert your email signature from Dataverse using Power Automate

If you are using Power Automate to create dataverse emails then the users signature will not be automatically populated (even if it’s been configured correctly in Dataverse!).

There is no guarantee that the user will have an email signature set up/assigned correctly. How to ensure we accommodate for both scenarios and automatically populate the email signature seamlessly as part of your flow.

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Document generation before your eyes and on demand with Power Automate

Document generation before your eyes and on demand with Power Automate

Transform how you automate and orchestrate document generation in Dynamics 365 and model-driven Power Apps. How to produce, review and distribute sophisticated documents using Power Automate without compromising on the user experience or leaving your model-driven app.

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Sync Dataverse Email Attachments to SharePoint using Power Automate

Sync Dataverse Email Attachments to SharePoint using Power Automate

When you ‘set regarding’ an email in The Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, an email record will be created in Dataverse, linked to the relevant record(s) then any attachments are created as files in Dataverse. Storing files in Dataverse is not often a good idea. Instead, you can automatically upload these files into the relevant SharePoint folder the document is ‘regarding’

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Set Dataverse Choices in Power Automate  dynamically - without a switch statement!

Set Dataverse Choices in Power Automate dynamically - without a switch statement!

Setting the value of a Dataverse choice option set or choices multi-select option set column field in Power Automate can be a little tricky. Flow expects either a static choice or the choice ‘Value’ rather than the ‘Label’. Smaller choices work ok with a switch statement but what about when your choice has 10+ choices? Here is a way to avoid cumbersome switch statements to handle larger choice lists.

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Document Templates and Rich Text Controls

Document Templates and Rich Text Controls

Document Templates and Rich Text Component Controls are both excellent features of Dynamics 365/Model-Driven Power Apps, but they do not work well together at all. The solution isn’t perfect but by combining some Power Automate flow magic and a simple Word Document setting you can restore some slight harmony between the features.

PS. don’t waste your time trying to add/remove line breaks in Power Automate

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Track and Process Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

Track and Process Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

Every customer application is unique, the additional evidence & supporting documents they need to provide depends on how they answer the questions. We can use Power Automate to send specific and personalised directions on what they need to do next after submitting an application.

Linking a customer voice response back to its originating invitation and related enquiry so that we can track all activities in one place. Ensuring any user can clearly see what is/was required and help move the application process along.

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Sending Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

Sending Digital Applications with Customer Voice & Power Automate

This post will focus on sending a personalised, uniquely identifiable application form to a potential customer with dynamically generated email content from the simple click of a button of a business process flow. Customer Voice and Power Automate are a serious work force when combined!

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Handling ‘Run Flow’ failures from a business process flow

Handling ‘Run Flow’ failures from a business process flow

Current limitations mean you cannot use business rules on the ‘Run Flow’ button on the business process flow, so its entirely possible for a user to run the flow when the scenario is going to cause silent failure in the background. Lets look at how to mark a business process flow step as failed, so you can handle flow run failures - gracefully and informatively, in a user friendly manner!

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Make the Activity Timeline Control Useful in Model-Driven Power Apps

Make the Activity Timeline Control Useful in Model-Driven Power Apps

The Activity Timeline you see in Model-driven Power Apps & Dynamics 365 is actually a huge awesome PCF control called ‘Timeline Control’. It has a massive range of configurable options available now from the new solution explorer. These are my top four highlights - Customising activity cards, Hiding the blobby things (aka ‘Persona with Initials’), cleaning up the timeline to speed up the load time and allowing/preventing creation from the timeline.

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Digitising paper-based application forms with Customer Voice - it’s not just a survey tool!

Digitising paper-based application forms with Customer Voice - it’s not just a survey tool!

You read that right - I used customer voice for an application process. Well ok not just customer voice, my good friend Power Automate got pretty involved too. There are so many new features in Customer voice which make it so much more than just a survey tool!

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