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Cloud flow | Dataverse Connector | Useful formulas and Syntaxes
In this article, I am going to collate useful Syntaxes and Formulas frequently used in Cloud Flows with Dataverse connector.
Format DateTime:
When working with date and time values in flow, they may look like:
- 2019-12-06T22:47:23.0798367Z or 2009-06-15T13:45:30Z
You may format these values to look like:
- 6/15/2009 1:45 PM or Monday, June 15, 2009
This is done by using Date and Time Format Strings passed to the formatDateTime() function.
Example: Following is the formula to convert the ‘CreatedOn’ to ‘MM/dd/yyyy’ format.
- ‘createdon’ has been retrieved from Flow’s ‘triggerBody()’.
Get Optionset/Choice Label:
- By default, ‘Optionset/Choice’ field gives the Value not Label.
- As an example, ‘Gender’ field (i.e., ‘pis_gender’) gives the ‘100000001’ not ‘Male’.
- To get the Label, read by _{field-schema-name}_label.
Set the Lookup value:
- To set Lookup field, in the Dataverse’s ‘Add a new row’ and ‘Update a row’ Actions, use following syntax.
- Entity/TableName(UniqueId)
- In below example, ‘pis_customers’ is my table name and reading ‘Customer ID’ from TriggerOutputs body.
- pis_customers(@{triggerOutputs()?[‘body/pis_customerid’]})
Read the Dataverse ‘Trigger Name’:
- If you have a Dataverse trigger with ‘Change type’ set as ‘Added or Modified or Deleted’.
- Following is the statement to read the ‘Message’ (i.e., Create or Update or Delete).
- @{triggerBody()?[‘sdkmessage’]}
Get Length of the Rows:
- In my flow, I’ve a ‘List rows’ Action which retrieves the ‘Cars’ records.
- To get the Count of the records, following is the syntax:
- @{length(outputs(‘GetAssociatedCars’)?[‘body/value’])}
🙂
[Step by Step] Dataverse | Connect Cloud flow with Service Principal (Application User)
By default, Cloud flow Dataverse connectors run under the Owner (i.e., User who created the flow) context. When the flows move to different environment via solutions, connectors run under the user account who imported the Solution.
Making the flows run under interactive user accounts is not recommended as they cause confusion when we check the record’s audit for who updated the record. Its recommended to make the flow run under ‘Application User’, if the calling user can be a fixed account.
In this article lets see how to make the flow run under Application User using Connect the flow using Service Principal option.
High level design:
Following are the steps we gonna go through.
- App registration in Azure Active Directory (AAD)
- Create an Application User in Environment.
- Create a Cloud Flow and connect with Application User.
App registration in Azure Active Directory (AAD)
- Connect to Azure Active Directory Admin Center.
- Create a new ‘App Registration’.
- Add a Secret and save the Secret.
- Copy the Application ID and Tenant ID.
- Refer this article for the detailed ‘App Registration’ steps.
Create an Application User in Environment
- Connect to Power Platform Admin Center.
- Open the Environment and click on ‘S2S Apps’ (S2S stands for Server to Server).
- Click on ‘New app user’ and select ‘Business Unit’ and ‘Security Role(s)’.
- Click on ‘Add an app’ and select the App registered in previous section.
- You should see the ‘Application user’ listed as below.
Create a Cloud Flow and connect with Application User:
- Connect to Maker portal and create a new Solution.
- Click on New -> Cloud flow.
- Click on ‘Connect with Service Principle’.
- Provide the details captured in Azure Active Directory ‘App Registration’ section and click ‘Create’.
- Now you should see that in ‘Connection references’ as below.
- If you go back to the ‘Solution’, you would see a new entry ‘Connection Reference (preview)’ along with the flow.
- With the ‘Connection Reference (preview)’, we can conveniently move flow to different environment using Solution export and import.
- Lets proceed and complete the flow, which creates a ‘Contact’ record upon the creation of an ‘Account’.
- Create an ‘Account’ from the ‘Customer Service Hub’ App.
- A ‘Contact’ gets created triggered from the flow and Owner would the ‘Application User’.
Notes:
- You can use ‘Run as’ option and make the ‘Dataverse’ run under one of the highlighted User contexts.
🙂
Rajeev Pentyala - Microsoft Power Platform 