New scenarios enabled with Power Platform convergence

Article
09/08/2022

Important

This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new or changed in Finance and Operations apps home page. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.

Enabled for	Public preview	General availability
Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	Jun 30, 2021	Oct 22, 2021

Business value

Microsoft Power Platform integration removes the barriers to entry for customers to fully harness the Microsoft Power Platform stack with each of their Finance and Operations environments. Features such as dual-write become a one-click experience to set up. Add-ins are now unlocked for an environment using Microsoft Power Platform integration. Virtual entities are also made available by default in the environment. Business events and create/update/delete (CUD) events in Finance and Operations apps are also integrated with Microsoft Dataverse. Note that CUD events are only going to be available with Microsoft Power Platform integration.

Feature details

Microsoft Power Platform provides a suite of capabilities for Dynamics 365 applications via the Power Platform admin center. Today, Finance and Operations apps are not managed by the admin center; however, over time more and more management capabilities will be migrated from Dynamics 365 Lifecycle Services to the admin center. In the interim, customers will be able to unlock features, such as dual-write, virtual entities, add-ins, CUD events, business events via Dataverse, and more via Microsoft Power Platform integration functionality in Lifecycle Services.

Set up Microsoft Power Platform integration

Using a new experience on each environment in Lifecycle Services, customers can complete the initial setup of the Microsoft Power Platform environment. This will provision an environment of the same type (sandbox or production) in the Power Platform admin center. This environment in the admin center will have the same name as the one from Lifecycle Services, and you will also see the Finance and Operations URL populated on the environment in the admin center. This environment will be powered by Microsoft Dataverse and will have several platform solutions preinstalled for virtual entity support, dual-write orchestration, and more.

Unlock dual-write application setup

Once the setup is completed in Lifecycle Services, the dual-write application setup button will be enabled. From here, customers who want to enable this functionality can do so from Lifecycle Services in a fast and easy manner. Customers can then choose which entity maps to sync from inside the Finance and Operations app.

Virtual entities

Virtual entities are installed in the environment with the Microsoft Power Platform integration. It will no longer be required to set up manual connections between the environments as the environments are preconnected.

Authentication and authorization

Starting in a preview with version 10.0.20, and generally available with version 10.0.22, Finance and Operations users who use virtual entities will no longer be required to be manually added or managed in Dataverse. When Microsoft Power Platform integration is enabled, Finance and Operations users will be automatically added to Dataverse just in time when users access virtual entities from Power Apps. This functionality can be used by enabling flight BusinessEventsCDSIntegration in Finance and Operations apps.

Finance and Operations business events in Dataverse

Starting in a preview with version 10.0.20, and generally available with version 10.0.22, when Microsoft Power Platform integration is enabled, business events in Finance and Operations apps will converge with business events in Dataverse. This will mean that, when a business event happens in a Finance and Operations app, the event will be available in Dataverse. Subscribers to Finance and Operations business events will receive the event from Dataverse. This will also enable execution of C# plug-ins in Dataverse for Finance and Operations scenarios that execute in response to business events.

Finance and Operations CUD events in Dataverse

Starting in a preview with version 10.0.20, and generally available with version 10.0.22, when Microsoft Power Platform integration is enabled, CUD events will be available for Finance and Operations OData-enabled data entities. It will be possible going forward to subscribe to create, update, and delete events on Finance and Operations OData-enabled entities. CUD events will be exposed via virtual entities in Dataverse. The CUD operation in a Finance and Operations app can happen via the Finance and Operations user interface, Power Apps/Power Portal using virtual entities, or from Finance and Operations OData APIs. The CUD event will consistently trigger the entity regardless. This also enables execution of C# plug-ins in Dataverse for Finance and Operations scenarios that execute in response to CUD events.

Dev tools

The Plugin Registration Tool will enable registering C# plug-ins for the CUD events and business events coming from Finance and Operations apps. With the release of a Visual Studio extension for Microsoft Power Platform, developers can explore Dataverse environments and write, register, deploy, and debug C# plug-ins directly from within Visual Studio. For developer audiences already working in Visual Studio, such as Finance and Operations developers, this will provide one work space (Visual Studio) to author their customizations across the Dynamics 365 apps in Dataverse and Finance and Operations apps.

Unlock additional features

Additionally, once the setup is completed in Lifecycle Services, the add-ins experience will be enabled as one-click installs from the environment details page.

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