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Canvas App to Dynamics 365 - inconsistent Patch and Refresh Behaviour

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Posted on by PaulD1

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I'm working on a canvas app that uses Dynamics 365 as a data source (new territory for me, I usualy use SQL or SharePoint) and seeing strange behaviour around patches, refreshes and displaying data.

Patch does not seem to automatically trigger a refresh, and, even when I do Refresh manually, I don't see the results of the Patch unless I refresh multiple times and even then, in some cases I only see the updated results when I exit and re-enter the screen.

The data is updated in Dynamics, it just isn't displaying reliably in PowerApps.

I have even see examples of the results in controls not matching what is displayed in the formula bar result view. In the example below, the same Filter is used in the Items property for both the DataTable and the Gallery. There should be 3 records (as shown in the formula bar result) but only 2 appear in the DataTable while there are 3 in the Gallery. Dynamics Bug.png

Is it usual to see such inconsistent behaviour when working with D365 or is this a glitch (like Import/Export being broken for the past few days)? If this is normal, are there work-arounds to try to get consistent results?

At the moment I am trying to build my screens so that any data change requires the user to open a new screen, after the Patch a Refresh is issued, another Refresh is issued OnHidden of the screen and a further Refresh on the OnVisible of the next screen which mostly seems to resolve the problem, but it is far from ideal.

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v-xida-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @PaulD1 ,

Do you add Dynamics 365 Entity as data source within your app?

Based on the issue that you mentioned, I have made a test on my side, and don't have the issue that you mentioned. Please consider turn off the "Improved app rendering (final validation)" option within Advanced settings of App settings of your app, then re-publish your app, check if the issue is solved.

In addition, as an alternative solution, you could consider use CDS Entity as data source in your app instead of the Dynamics 365 Entity. Actually, the Dynamics 365 Entity data structure is based on the CDS under same Dynamics 365 Environment instance.

On your side, you could consider generate an app based on your CDS Entity (rather than D365 Entity), then try your Patch function again, check if the issue is fixed.

Best regards,

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PaulD1 2,914 on at

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I took my canvas PowerApp (with connections to D365 entities) and changed it to use the CDS 'versions' of those entities.
This generated over 1,000 errors in the App (quite a big App) - it appears that many of these are due to field names not matching between D365 and CDS (why?), but the other issue was that many filters that were previously delegable became marked as non-delegable, so going the CDS route doesn't look like an option.

Perhaps related, we've also had problems migrating the App between environments - in some environments the App could no longer see the 'friendly names' of the D365 Entities. After wasting a few hours trying to replace the friendly names with the internal names I randomly tried the import again, and this time the App could see the friendly names just fine and everything 'just worked'.

The patching, while still slow, appears to have improved after this latest import and I don't have to issue quite so many refresh commands to see the updated record.

I know the import/export facilities are marked as preview, but if MS are going to start charging $40 per user per month for PowerApps, the platform really needs to be a lot more stable and feature-complete.

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