You know those days when you get stuck on a simple problem? When I recently extended one of our COSMO CONSULT Canvas Apps for our Self Service Management, I had such a day – such a problem: My custom connector to my API provided a list of Azure DevOps Artifacts. Nothing very special, just a list of records. Each record had the app name, version and its URL. You can see an example collection in the following snippet, assigned to…
I love to create Canvas PowerApps! It’s easy and fast when you stay on basic functionality. On the other side, the effort increases when a PowerApp is growing up. You start using complex layouts in screens. This leads mostly into long function triggers. After a while you need to maintain the app or you want to see a diff between versions. Well, Microsoft has improved the tooling a lot. Unfortunately, it’s still hard to identify changes in your Apps or…
Recently, I realized that there is a very simple way to prepare and share telemetry reports. This are Jupyter Notebooks. A Jupyter notebook is ideal for combining documentation texts and telemetry queries. This means that my explanations and recommendations for action are part of my telemetry reports. I like this possibility. This helps us at COSMO CONSULT to create prepared reports for monitoring and analysis of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central in a simple way. Prerequisites Azure Data Studio Python…
Any kind of automation will lead into losing information about the magic in the background. You see only the results like “Build Succeeded” or “Build Failed”. That’s fine if you manage one or two Azure DevOps build pipelines, but this is terrible if you maintain hundreds or thousands! What happens is predictable. If you don’t know what is going on in the background and what causes problems – you are in trouble. You have to investigate issues direct in each…
Why should I setup a Data Migration from my Business Central Docker Container to a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS tenant: “Because I can?” Well, this might be one answer, but there are other good reasons. Let me explain. When I start a SaaS migration project for a customer I want ensure that all needed business data will be migrated and transferred in the right way. Furthermore I want to identify and remove all technical obstacles like missing apps,…
Early this year I discovered an announcement about PCF components for the Power Platform. What does this mean? Can I create own powerful components in TypeScript and React, import them into my PowerApps, and add new functionality? Can I perhaps even bypass limitations of standard controls? This all sounds promising, and you know I’m incredibly curious. What more can I say, PCF Components have definitely peaked my interest! As soon as I realized that this preview feature was available in…
My main requirements for a modern Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central project are automation, transparency and traceability! Therefore I include status badges in my documentation to give all team members an overview of the project status. In detail, you can use status badges in Azure DevOps to visualize all information that is useful for your team. Do you know badges from Azure DevOps and their possibilities? If not, let me explain. 🙂 Badges At the beginning I told you that…
In my last article of the CI/CD series I explained which package types I use to upload my Artifacts. As you can imagine, this is just one piece of the puzzle in my release management workflow for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. More important for me is the correct traceability of my artifacts. In other words, this is the key to keep control over my projects. As a result, I track each of my Artifacts respective to each deployment stage….
Sometimes it’s hard to start. Especially when everything is new. You have to deal with the new programming language Microsoft AL. You are facing the challenge to use a new Source Code Management like Git. And finally, your CI build automation in Azure DevOps expect a well structured project. I know these problems. Therefor, I provide templates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central projects to my developers. You find my example repository for Business Central (BC15) at GitHub: https://github.com/megel/MSDyn365BC-15-Template Company…
In my last CI / CD post I promised to describe: “… why I use Universal Packages for my artifacts”. To explain this, I must answer the following question: What kind of artifacts do I have in my Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central projects? Well, my answer is simple: I usually have to manage files in my CD process… 😮 Simple Files My CI build pipelines compile and create my Apps-Files. In case of Hybrid-Development, my Artifacts are also FOB-Files….