How To: Automatically Create Document Location for Records in Dataverse

Use this simple Flow as a template to create the document location for a record in Dynamics 365 or your custom Dataverse application.

Use Case:

Almost everyone using Dynamics or Dataverse leverages the SharePoint integration to store their documents. This is great, because SharePoint is the best document management tool their is, Dynamics/Dataverse is not. There is one problem with the way this works out of the box and that is the location for the documents does not exist until the user requests to view the documents in the Dynamics/Dataverse user interface. This causes problems for users who want to view that folder in SharePoint or sync the SharePoint library to their file explorer with OneDrive sync before a user has requested the document location in Dynamics/Dataverse because it doesn’t exist yet! 

This Flow is really simple and will streamline this process for your users. You can even expand on it to include creating custom nested folder locations for you documents. i.e. an Account folder that has a subfolder for each Contact record.

In my example, I was building this Flow for a client’s New Product Development Process, where they wanted their SKU table to automatically have a folder for each SKU so that users could work in SharePoint or their custom Dataverse Model App to upload the SKU documentation.

Step 1: When a record is created

Step 2: Create a New Folder

Step 3: Get the Parent Document Location

This step is important. You need the parent document location so that the document location you create in Dataverse follows the same path as the folder that was created in SharePoint. In my example scenario, the document integration for Dataverse automatically creates a document location record for the SKU table. That will serve as our parent, and I grabbed the GUID from that record to put in my action here. 

Step 4: Create the document location

Important to note here, the relative URL must match the folder name from the SharePoint folder that was created earlier. 

Step 5: Relate records

This step sets the regarding field of the Document Location record in order for it to show up in the subgrid of the SKU record. 

This 5 step Flow is pretty powerful and can certainly streamline your workflow for the scenarios I mentioned above, plus can be extended to be more advanced including subfolders and separate document locations.

Working with the COVID-19 US Sample Power BI Report

Microsoft has provided a free, downloadable or embeddable, Power BI Report sample using COVID-19 data for the US. This report can be used as is, or customized to leverage the COVID-19 data and report capabilities to compare to your regular business data. 

About the report

You can use the embed code below to embed this report wherever you would like:

<iframe width="1600" height="900" src="https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiMmI2ZjExMzItZTcwNy00YmUwLWFlMTAtYTUxYzVjODZmYjA5IiwidCI6ImMxMzZlZWMwLWZlOTItNDVlMC1iZWFlLTQ2OTg0OTczZTIzMiIsImMiOjF9" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>

Make note, you may need to adjust the iFrame size.

Or, you can download the PBIX file itself and make your own customizations and bring in your own data here: download the .pbix file (here).

Report Capabilities 

  • Filter by Date
    • Select your data range
  • Filter cases by State
    • Click on the State you would like to select in the left hand chart. 
    • Watch as the visuals filter to that states numbers.
Select-your-state
  • Drill Through to the County View
    • Right click on the left hand visual for the state you would like to select.
    • Drill Through to County View
      drill-through-to-county
    • View the Metrics by County
county-view

Customize the Report

  1. Choose the data you would like to bring in (in my case, we want to view account and sales numbers from Dynamics 365 Sales – I’m not going to walk through all the transformations we made here)
  2. Create your visuals
    Visuals
  3. Save your report
  4. Publish to Power BI Service
    (show in Power BI service)
    power-bi-service
  5. Configure a scheduled refresh for your data sources
  6. Share in Teams or SharePoint to distribute
    (image shared in teams)
    report-in-teams

How to: toggle visuals on and off in Power BI

When building a Power BI report, it’s important to take screen space into consideration. You don’t want an overcrowded report canvas that makes it tough for your decision makers to find the actionable insights they need to make their decisions. 

That being said, a valuable skill to learn in Power BI is showing or hiding visuals at the click of a button. Follow the steps below to achieve this.

power bi button sample

Step 1: Add a couple of visuals to your canvas

For the sake of my demo, I’ve added 2 visuals of different types to opposite ends of the canvas. One is a pie chart, one is a bar chart.

power bi graphs

Step 2: Add two blank buttons to the canvas

Add each button above the visual you want to show with that button. In my example I am naming one button Pie Chart and one Bar Chart.

power bi graphs labels

Step 3: Open the Selection Pane from your View menu

This is an important and rarely-used feature of Power BI. The selection pane allows you to see all the visuals on your screen, and set their visibility.

power bi selection pane

Step 4: Hide one of the visuals

Click on the visibility icon next to the visual you would like to hide.

power bi visibility

Step 5: Open the bookmark pane

Another little used feature of Power BI. Read more about the capabilities of bookmarks here. For the purpose of this demo, we are using them to hide and show different visuals on the canvas.

power bi bookmark pane

Step 6: Create a new bookmark

This will essentially take a screenshot of what your report page looks like at the time of adding the bookmark, you can always update it later. Make sure to name your bookmark something useful, and uncheck the “Data” item.

power bi create new bookmark

Step 7: Hide the other visual and show the one you previously hid

Go back to your selection pane and hide one visual while showing the other.

power bi create new bookmark

Step 8: Take another bookmark

Follow the same steps as in Step 6.

power bi bookmark

Step 9: Add a bookmark action to the buttons that you have on the canvas

This is where the canvas will come to life, now your visuals will be hidden and shown based upon the users click of the buttons. Hold the control button and click the buttons to test out your creation!

power bi button

I hope you found this helpful and can apply it to your next report!

A running list of my favorite announcements/features from Ignite 2019

Project Cortex (Skynet?)

Project Cortex is the newest AI-powered service released by Microsoft. At a high level, it creates a knowledge network for your organization and can deliver relevant knowledge to people though topic cards and pages in the apps that they are already using every day.

Key Links:

Teams

Pop out windows for chat and meetings. A long awaited feature is being rolled out some time in early 2020.

Private Channels. Maybe the most requested feature in Teams. These are available NOW!

Live Captions AND Video Backgrounds

Power Apps

New name (notice the space) which now fits all of the other Power Platform application names.

Enhanced Formula Bar. Is any explanation needed here? The previous version constantly was in the way of your app making screen and the autocomplete list was hard to see and navigate.

Environment Variables. Use these when apps or Flows need different configuration across different environments. They can act as input parameters to reference within solution components.

Embed Power App in Teams as a Top Level App. I love this feature, especially if you have an organization wide Power App that needs to be accessed quickly.

Power Apps Monitor. See what users are clicking and be able to pinpoint connection failures or why your performance is dragging.

Power Automate

Microsoft Flow is no longer! Welcome in Power Automate and give it a round of applause for a list of brand new features such as RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

Robotic Process Automation – UI Flows. Available now in Public Preview, create a flow that automates a process in a point-and-click experience.

Virtual Agents. Azure Cognitive Services and Bot Framework fully integrated and just a few clicks away.