Category Archives: Power Platform

AgileXRM Release Notes 8.0.23142.2040

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It is Spring time and that means it is time for a new Release.

The main improvements in this release are the following:

  • Version 8 of the Process Engine
  • Enhanced Search functionality (Search Shape, Search Control and Query-based Controls)
  • Performance Improvements overall
  • Smoother Modeler Experience
  • New Rule Editor in Page Forms

New Enhancements & Fixes

Dataverse Integration

Enhancements

  • Support SSO limitations of PowerApps Native Mobile App
    As SSO is not supported in the Native App, when user navigates to a page with AgileXRM functionality, the user is now notified that it is not supported, and allows the user to click a link to take them to the corresponding page in the browser, where AgileXRM and SSO work correctly and context is not lost
  • Support running a process against multiple selected records in a View
  • “Processes I can Initiate” view uses a more logical filter
  • Support certain operations in a process in current environment in another environment
    The operations Search, Insert and Update can be executed against another org
  • Enable Entity/Activity now generates corresponding Unmanaged Solution for upstream ALM
  • DEPRECATION: A new process variable called ProcessInitiatorId replaces the deprecated ProcessInitiatorCSDId
  • Update Dynamics 365 SDK to 9.0.2.48 

Fixes

  • Upsert shape did not populate SaveEntityIdTo property when query found the record
  • Detach Shape was sometimes failing during runtime
  • CrmConnector threw an exception when Process Template record had already been created in Dynamics/Dataverse
  • Process Launcher was taking a lot of time to show data
  • Process Launcher did not render process diagram properly
  • Set Status shape was failing when ClosePendingTask property was set to True
  • Wait For Update shape was failing with “Is Any of These” operator 

AgileDialogs

Enhancements

  • Add a HTML/RichText Editor Control
  • Improve Search Control and Query-based Controls
    Including improvements in Query, Columns, Mapping and Advanced tabs and support for dynamic custom FetchXML
  • Support Progress Bar and Messages between Pages
    When the steps between two pages are going to take long, allows to inform the end user with a progress bar and informative messages
  • Allow editing the Source HTML of Labels
    Gives full control over the content of the label
  • Support Custom Attributes inside Dialog Title and End Message
  • Allow setting custom labels for Two-Options control (not just Yes/No)
  • Allow Ordering Radio Buttons based on OptionSet
  • Allow 3 Grids in a row: Minimum Column Span is now 4 (instead of 6)
  • Add Ordered and Unordered List functionality to Label editor
  • Add SignOut option to Page Form Editor
  • Button background contrast increased in theme.uui
  • Added better support for DPI > 100%
  • When IFrame Control has no file to display, show a more friendly message 

Fixes

  • “Reassign To Me” button was not showing in the user message informing that this is not your activity
  • When Stages were enabled, page was not rendering properly
  • Custom Validation was executing for hidden controls
  • PageForm editor was taking excessive time to copy large amount of controls
  • An unnecessary vertical scrollbar was showing when rendered with the non-hosted option
  • History was not working if Page was in a loop
  • Grid was not working correctly if REST returned empty JSON
  • Page columns were not aligning correctly
  • Resizing Dataverse window was not centering AgileDialogs window correctly
  • AutoNext in Grids was not working the second time if going back to the grid page
  • Scrollbars were not responding to mouse clicks if Page Width was not 100%
  • Search Control was not mapping to attributes from a linked entity
  • Validation message window was left open when navigating back
  • Default value for Numeric Control was overriding old value
  • Required flag was not always at end of last line of label
  • Auto-scroll was not working with Continuous Render mode
  • Grid Control was not always returning the correct number of rows
  • Undo (CTRL+Z) in Control Caption editor did not work correctly
  • Dialog Task assigned dynamically via custom FetchXML was not being assigned correctly

Process Manager

Enhancements

  • Performance improvements

Fixes

  • Process Manager did not always provide correct information about sub-process status
  • Show All Processes functionality was not working if processes had been deleted/archived
  • Open Task functionality was not opening Completed Dialog Tasks
  • Under certain circumstances process status was not being shown correctly

Process Modeler

Enhancements

  • New Rule Editor in Page Form Editor
    Easy to configure Rules greatly reducing the need to use javascript to customize Page Forms
  • Support M:1 and M:M Relationships in Search
  • Add Clone Action to Environment Explorer
    The Clone action allows duplicating an exiting process or dialog model with a different name. This is the only supported way to rename a process.
  • Handle “WS Trust Auth” deprecation for all new Dynamics 365/Dataverse Organizations
    Microsoft deprecated Basic Authentication, so this enhancement allows using OAuth instead
  • Environment Explorer Check-Out button now always does a Get-Latest
    When more than one modeler is working on a model, this enhancement ensures no work is overwritten by the other modeler
  • Logic Inspector improved to include all variables in all shapes
    And also takes into account Global Variables and performance improved
  • Add keyboard-shortcuts to AgileXRM Ribbon buttons
  • Allow empty string for Equals and Does Not Equal operators for string-type fields
  • DEPRECATION: Change Ownership and Change Ownership (Multi) shapes are deprecated
    Use Update Entity and Update Entity (Multi) shapes instead

Fixes

  • Certain XPDL files were failing to import
  • Delete key inside the property grid was deleting the shape rather than the item in the grid 
  • Sub-Process shapes failed to Validate when Template Name was a custom attribute
  • Environment Explorer had some unhandled exceptions
  • REST Shape Schema Mapper lost mapping information after select “Only Unmapped Items” option
  • REST Shape Schema Mapper was taking too much time to open
  • REST shape config would fail if service was not retuning any data in the body
  • Query Expression Editor threw an exception when the same related entity was added multiple times
  • SetStatus and SetStatusMulti shapes were sometimes being misconfigured
  • Multi Shapes were allowing contradictory configurations
  • Could not delete the last row of Activity Properties
  • Could not set Priority for Manual Activities
  • WCF shape was throwing an exception after closing config window
  • CheckIn and Undo CheckOut was failing if modeler account name had changed case

Miscellaneous

  • Security: Hide and Encrypt Secret Key in CRM Connector
  • Security: Encrypt Secret Key in root web.config
  • New Azure DevOps Tasks for Process Template Import/Export
  • Includes NX v8.0, Software Update 2, Cumulative Update 4 (See Release Notes)
  • New AgileXRM Administration PowerShell Module (Preview)
  • “Get Process Data” task in the AgileXRM Connector for Microsoft Flow was not retrieving data from the Process Engine
  • Process Import Tool was not loading .zip files with non-ascii chars in file name
  • Known issue: AAD User Virtual Entity cannot be used in AgileXRM because it does not support Client Credentials

Announcing the AgileXRM Community Edition

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person hand reaching body of water

“You’ve got the Holy Grail of Process Management Tools”

— Microsoft Program Manager


AgileXRM has been around for quite a while now and has been fully tried and tested, out there in many clients around the globe, including many hard-to-convince enterprise and public sector customers, helping them manage their Business-critical processes.

AgileXRM started life back in 2006, in the Dynamics CRM 3.0 era, and has since grown and matured through the amazing evolution of Dynamics CRM On-Premise to Dynamics 365 Online and on to the remarkable Power Platform (Dataverse), Microsoft’s Business Application Platform.

All these years, we have been happily occupied with evolving the product through all the feedback we received from our customers, to cater for their ever-changing and increasingly demanding real-world business scenarios. Our customer base was growing just through word-of-mouth!

It is now time to make AgileXRM available to a much larger audience, and what better way to make our product more reachable in the market, than by offering a Free-Forever version of it. With AgileXRM Community Edition you can verify for yourself, the value it brings to your Digital Transformation strategy and how it complements the Power Platform.

Recruitment Process Example

Below we try to answer some questions you may have:

What is the value of AgileXRM for me?

In short, you will be receiving the following:

  • A Microsoft Visio-based Modeler to let you model processes and dialogs
  • Powerful dialog functionality for creating guided interactions for any type of user
  • A Business Process Engine (BPM) to manage the lifecycle of your processes end-to-end
  • A Process Monitor to let you visually see and manage running processes

The answer also depends on you background:

  • If you are new to Power Platform and just starting
    Power Platform is many things to many people. You may be looking at Canvas Apps in conjunction with data sources like SharePoint to create your Apps. Or maybe you have already recognized the need for Dataverse as your data repository and want to create more solid and manageable Model-driven Apps. If it is the latter, then AgileXRM would add great value.

    AgileXRM Value: AgileXRM keeps Model-driven process-apps Low-Code (mostly No-Code). Because with AgileXRM, you avoid having to use javascript in your Dataverse Forms and avoid needing to write custom C# code (Plugins etc.). Also being a BPM tool, you will be modelling and configuring your business processes and your User Interfaces/Interactions explicitly with Microsoft Visio, a visual tool that is designed to be understood by business users. Anyone can create very complex process-apps easily and cleanly without extensive knowledge of Dataverse customization.
  • If you are already using Power Platform to some extent and want to do more
    Having delved into the platform already, you probably have recognized how some requirements are harder to implement, either needing resources with expert knowledge or requirements that need too much effort to implement.

    AgileXRM Value: AgileXRM allows you to reach much further and quicker without requiring a higher level of Dataverse knowledge.
  • If you are already deep into Power Platform and have created many complex solutions
    There is no better person than you to know exactly where the pain-points are:

    • Difficulty in correctly capturing the business process requirements
      Business users usually use a flowchart diagram to describe their process requirements, but they will never see it again in the produced apps

      AgileXRM Value: From requirements capture to creation to execution, everyone uses the same Process Model. Everyone sees the same model at design-time and at runtime and it is understandable by everyone.

    • Cost/effort in creating the solutions
      Good expert resources are hard to find in the market and certain requirements demand excessive amounts of code leading to over-customization of the platform

      AgileXRM Value: Implement complex business requirements much faster and by non-developers. Avoid over-customization of the platform by keeping everything truly Low-Code.

    • Cost/effort of maintaining the solutions
      The business logic is split in many parts and hard to see the overall picture, especially when project resources leave or when business requirements change once in production, and how those changes affect existing processes that are mid-flight

      AgileXRM Value: The process logic is being documented with the end-to-end process model as What You Model Is What You Execute, and it is easy to see what needs to be changed and where in the model. You can even compare different versions of the process to see exactly what changed and where.

    • Cost/effort in troubleshooting when things go wrong
      Given the end-to-end business process is split across many components (Flows, Workflows, Actions/Custom API, Business Rules, Business Process Flows, Plugins, Custom Pages and client-side javascript), it is hard to identify what failed and what needs to be fixed. And even when it is identified and fixed, it is hard to evaluate how the changes affect existing processes which are still in progress

      AgileXRM Value: Firstly, you can model error-handling in your business process using alternative paths. Then, there is also a Retry mechanism, but if eventually a step in the process fails, the process is Suspended, and the error is made visually visible in the Process Monitor and recorded in Dataverse against the Process record (and admins are notified). If it is an external issue and it is fixed, Resuming the process is enough to continue. If it is a logic error in the process model, you can correct it, publish it and then Migrate existing running processes to the new corrected version.

    • Handling high volumes and business-critical processes
      When the correct running of the processes is of paramount importance to the business because it touches the organization’s bottom-line, you are aware of the pressure for all of it to work correctly

      AgileXRM Value: Our customers, in both private and public sectors, run Business-Critical Processes with millions of process instances per month. AgileXRM JUST WORKS!

What can I do with AgileXRM Community Edition (CE)?

You can use the full functionality of the Licensed Edition, for up to 25 Users for Free and Forever. You get the Visio-based Process Modeler, the Process Engine, the Process Manager and AgileDialogs.

  • Model and configure end-to-end Business Processes for any of your Dataverse or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Apps
  • Visually monitor where you are in the process
  • Handle unforeseen situations by managing the running processes
    Things like jumping from any step of the process to another step. Or even migrating a running process to another version
  • Model and run powerful dialogs (screen flows, agent scripts, wizard-like self-service guides etc.) for internal and external users (Contacts or anonymous users do not need a license)

AgileXRM CE is single-server. If you require High Availability, Archiving or more than 25 Users, you would need to get a License.

How do I get my copy of AgileXRM CE?

Simple: Go through this dialog(Powered By AgileXRM) on our web site and just follow the steps to register.

How is AgileXRM CE deployed to my environment?

AgileXRM CE will be deployed to your chosen Azure tenant and your chosen Dataverse Environment (or Dynamics 365 Org). Everything is done via another nice dialog(Powered By AgileXRM) that will guide you through the steps of the deployment process automatically. You’ll receive a link to this dialog once you register.

AgileXRM CE Deployment dialog

You are going to need the following:

  • Azure Global Administrator credentials for the Consents
  • Azure Subscription Owner credentials (usually same as above) for deploying the Process Modeler and Process Engine VMs to your Azure Tenant
  • Dataverse Environment with System Administrator credentials for deploying the AgileXRM Solution and Consent
    If you do not have one, create a Trial Dataverse Environment here, clicking Start free button
  • Visio Plan 2 License as the Process Modeler uses Microsoft Visio
    If you do not have one, get a 30-day Visio Trial here
    NOTE: You can also use a Visio 2019 Product Key (Standard or Professional Editions), if you have one

What if I do not want to (or cannot) deploy anything to our Azure tenant?

You have two options:

  1. If you just want to try AgileXRM CE, you can create a new Azure Trial here
    You get US $200 of credit and you can deploy everything there, which gives you 30 days to try everything

  2. Let us know when going through the registration dialog and we can provide you with one of our AgileXRM Online Trial tenants. This way, nothing is deployed to your Azure tenant.
    You are still going to need a Dataverse Environment (or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Org) and an Azure Global Administrator credentials for the Consents.

What is the best way I can try the capabilities of AgileXRM CE?

We do Free PoC’s. We highly recommend that you let us help you to implement your first process-app. That way, you quickly get up to speed and will be able to realize the value that AgileXRM brings to your Power Platform projects.

AgileXRM Release Notes 7.0.22098.2070

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New Enhancements & Fixes

It is Spring again here in the north hemisphere and there is a new version of AgileXRM. This is a list of the more important enhancements and fixes included in it:

Dataverse Integration

Enhancements

  • New AgileXRM App in the Solution
    There is now a new App in the AgileXRM Solution which allows to Manage and Administer AgileXRM
  • Support for the latest FetchXML Schema
    The Query Editor now support many more operators and Advanced Mode now supports the full power of FetchXML
  • Support downloading the XPDL and Readable XML files for a Process Template
  • Correctly Handle Dataverse API Limits Errors
    AgileXRM now adapts to the API Limit Errors received and adjusts Retry times, accordingly.
  • Change of behavior when deleting a Parent Process 
    Now you can only delete a Process Instance if all its descendant processes are either Cancelled or Completed, otherwise it notifies the user with an error. More importantly, now when a Parent Process is deleted, all its descendant process instances are also deleted. This is to avoid orphaned process instances in the system.
  • Change all code that used Microsoft-deprecated Xrm.Page 
  • License types ‘Process Participant’ and ‘Employee Self Service’ are DEPRECATED
    These license types are no longer useable
  • Improve visual effect of embedding AgileXRM content in Dataverse Forms
  • Allow disabling the Confirmation window when launching a Process from the Command Bar
  • Update Dynamics 365 SDK to 9.0.2.42

Fixes

  • If multiple Dataverse records were selected and Run Process clicked, an error was shown
  • If a Process Template Owner was changed, the cache was not invalidated immediately
  • If user was not an AgileXRM Administrator, the Dataverse Cancel Activity action was failing
  • Enabling/Updating tables/entities was not adding Process Viewer tab to some Main-type forms
  • Disabling a Dataverse Activity that had all its Forms imported from a Managed-Solution, was failing
  • Disabling a Dataverse Activity that had corresponding Running AgileXRM Activities for it, was throwing an exception rather that Cancelling those activities first then disabling the Dataverse Activity

AgileDialogs

Enhancements

  • Support Centered layout
    Now it is possible to define what percentage of the available width is used to display the controls leaving the rest blank
  • Major improvements in Responsive layout especially in Mobiles 
  • Support for Multi-OptionSet and Two-Option fields in Radio-button and Checkbox controls
  • Support Quick Create of dialogs
    It is now, not necessary to add at least one control to every Page in a dialog. By just adding the empty Pages and publishing, the dialog can be run
  • Support Label Horizontal Mode at Page Level 
    This puts labels next to controls rather than just above them. Also allows setting ControlWidth of Radio-button, Checkbox and YesNo controls in Horizontal Mode
  • Support showing Radio-button, Checkbox and YesNo controls’ values horizontally
    This allows showing the options in these controls in a row. Useful in unison with Label Horizontal Mode.
  • Support Tooltip for showing full data when data is cropped in a Grid cell
    With mouse over the cell, the full content is shown
  • Support for Aggregate queries in Search Control
    In Advanced Mode, aggregates can now be used in the FetchXML
  • Allow customizing the Back button text
    This text can the also be translated to other languages via the Translation functionality
  • Support customization of buttons in Pop-Up rendered pages 
  • Allow setting minimum and/or maximum values for DateTime controls
  • Save both html and text value of Info controls
  • Support authenticating Users in AgileDialogs External site with Azure AD B2C
  • Support Azure Translation Service for AgileDialogs
    An Azure Translation Service Key is required for this to work
  • Improved default settings in dialogs
    Now, by default, dialogs are Centered (use center 50%). Process Viewer is shown (deselect for Production), and Scope is set to Standalone
  • Support 86 Languages (all Dataverse Languages plus 48 more) 
    This includes many Right-to-Left (RTL) languages:
    Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani (Latin), Bangla, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa (Latin), Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, Korean, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Maori, Marathi, Mongolian (Cyrillic), Nepali, Norwegian (Bokmal), Odia, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tajik (Cyrillic), Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek (Latin), Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu
  • Remove Theme and Hosted cookies
  • New CSS and custom javascript Editors (Preview)
    Inside the modeler, it is now possible to edit CSS and javascript with syntax highlighting

Fixes

  • Showing a document in SharePoint was failing if the configured URL contained Custom Attributes
  • Showing a document in SharePoint was failing in SubDialogs
  • If a column was not translated in Dataverse and it was used in a Grid as a related tables/entity, the schema-name was being shown instead of the Base Language literal
  • YesNo control was wrongly saving Display value in English (United States) irrespective of current language
  • Lookup control was throwing an exception if user tried to search a datetime field
  • Lookup control was not showing previously selected value when user navigated back to the Page
  • If a users was logged on with multiple Microsoft Accounts, dialogs sometime failed to start correctly
  • FileUpload was failing upon returning to the same Page
  • XRM Search control was breaking the Radio-button control’s ShowInTaskbar functionality
  • Translation mechanism was missing custom Column Header labels in the Lookup control, so in all languages, the same base language header was being shown
  • Currency symbol was not being shown correctly in Currency control if value was being set via a variable
  • The afterSubmit parameter was not handling passing multiple parameters in it
  • When cloning a Checkbox control, its source was not being copied correctly 
  • When importing a Page Form, the OnLoadScript was not being imported
  • DialogsEngine.addChangeEventHandler API call was overwriting the handler if called more than once for the same control
  • DialogsEngine.getDialogContextValue API call was throwing a server exception in certain circumstances

Process Manager

Enhancements

  • Sub-Process Activity details to show datetime values in Relative format

Fixes

  • Relative time was being shown wrongly under certain circumstances

Process Modeler

Enhancements

  • Envision Performance greatly improved
    This is specially relevant to larger models
  • Schema Picker now shows the Shape(s) that create the variable
  • Schema Mapper improvements
    Very useful when trees are large. Added a Quick Filter box to find nodes on either side. Added option to show Mapped Only and Unmapped Only nodes 
  • Support for Multi-OptionSet fields/columns
  • Warn User if configuring Wait For Update shape with an Entity/Table that is not Enabled
  • Support Global Disco Service (Regional Disco Services deprecated)
  • Add Quick Config links to more shapes for easier reaching main config window
  • Collapse shape functionality improved for easier recognition of the shapes
  • Environment Explorer Improvements
    Show Model Thumbnails. Add a new Ribbon. Allow deleting empty Applications (with no models)
  • Allow opening a Sub-Process (or Sub-Dialog) Template directly from shape
    This includes the possibility of creating a new SubProcess/SubDialog
  • Allow opening Process Models and Shape configurations where underlying Environment is not the same
    If an Entity/Table or an Attribute/Column is not available in the Dataverse environment connected to the model, it is shown in red allowing modeler to see configuration and change it accordingly. If a WCF Service is not available, configuration is visible and not lost upon changing the service URL
  • Hide all Advanced properties of all Shapes so as not to confuse Modelers
    These can be made visible again if necessary for edge cases. Also many unneeded properties have been permanently removed
  • Expose certain Page Form properties in the Page Form property grid with corresponding visual indicators
    Render type and Disable Back properties are now visually distinguished in the Page Form Shape and are easily accessible for change 
  • Improve Process Validation to make it easier to identify the Shape causing the error
  • Allow setting the Scheduled Start date in Manual Activity shapes
    It is now possible to define the Scheduled Start datetime (scheduledstart field/column) of a Dataverse activity to be set in the future, rather than automatically set it when the process reaches the activity. For instance, at the beginning of the process, one can now create all the activities and set their start time to any time in the future
  • Allow setting the entity/table in the configuration window of Create, Update and Upsert shapes
    A warning is shown if configuration will be reset
  • In the Query Expression’s Columns tab, clearly show which Columns have already been selected
  • View Process History window improved
    Ordered by ID Descending. Removed superfluous columns
  • Typing the characters ${ opens the Schema Picker in many more places
  • Many configuration windows are now resizable up to to full screen size
  • Improve use of JSON as source including a JSON Editor
  • Add ISO8601 UTC mask to Datetime Operations shape
  • Replace deprecated WebControl control with modern IWebView2 control
  • Shapes now only have Property Grid (Design Tasks panel removed)

Fixes

  • Word shape was failing to create a Folder in SharePoint site Document Library root
  • Wait For Update shape was failing in a process that did not have Main Entity
  • Visio was sometimes throwing an exception upon closing the Process Modeler (Envision) and it was reopening automatically 
  • Multi-language Email Templates could not be consumed correctly
  • Set Stage shape configuration was not being set correctly if Stage was not set specifically
  • On-Premise Envision Translation functionality was not working

Miscellaneous

  • Authentication changed to use Microsoft Graph API instead of deprecated Azure AD API
  • Improve Archiving Connector logging
  • Includes NX v7.0, Software Update 2, Cumulative Update 7  (See Release Notes)