If you want to track a user who has opened records of any specific entity then you are on the right blog because today we are going to see how we can do simple customization to track the user activity of who has open which record for how many times. Step 1: Create an Entity to track the log of retrieve activity of the registered entity. Following are fields in the entity to track user activity tracking activity 1. Name — Logical name of Retrieved Entity. 2. Record Id — Record Id of that Retrieved Entity. 3. No of Time Retrieved — Stored number of times a user has retrieved that specific record. Step 2: Create a Plugin to create a Retrieved Log record The record will be created or updated whenever the user opens the entity form to check details and the following is code for the same. Explanation: 1. When the plugin will trigger it will check if the retrieved log of that record is already present or not. 2. If retrieve records is not present it will simply create a log record with the following details a. Name — Type of records which user has opened [Entity] b. Record Id — Record Id of record which user has opened c. User — which the user has opened the record. d. Count = 1 3. If the retrieved record is already existing in the system then it will increment the count of the number of times a user has retrieved that record by 1 so that we can track how many times the same user has open that specific record. Step 3: Register the Plugin on Retrieve of Entity on entities for which you want to add tracking. Retrieve: It will trigger whenever an entity form is open by any user. While registering the new step for the plugin please make sure that Run in User’s Context must be “Calling User” so that we can have a track that which user has opened which record. Note: All security roles which are given to the user should have read, create and update right to “Entity Tracker” Entity. Also, the stage of execution of Plugin and execution mode must be “PostValidation” and “Asynchronous” so that it will not affect any system jobs and it can run in the background process. If you want to track a retrieve activity of opportunity then you just need to register the new step and select Primary Entity as an opportunity as I have already done for Account and Contact. Now, your system is ready to track the user’s entity retrieve activities, and you will see the following records: Using the above record you can create any type of custom charts and put them in your admin dashboard or you can create a Power BI report to track activity. I hope this helps you, if yes please like the blog. And, the next blog will be on the dashboard & charts based on our Entity Tracker records so stay tuned for that!

Consider a case where users create a record say an opportunity. The name of the opportunity may contain special characters such as ampersand “&” and many more. This might not look like an issue, but these special characters are not accepted if you are trying to fetch a record using query expressions, that may be Fetch XML or any other. What to do in such case. There are certain ways in which this issue can be resolved. Replace the Special Character Using Variable in the flow itself. Replace the Special Character in the Record. Or Skip the Special Character. Let’s have a look on how to Replace the Special Character in the Record.Consider an Opportunity Record with name as Given Below. As we see that there is an “&” in the name – “COCS – Planning & Discovery“. This can be a cause for a Bad Request error while fetching this record using query expressions. Solution: – The Flow will run the flow when an Opportunity is Created. The Flow will get the Topic of the Opportunity. The Flow will Check if the Topic Name Has Any Special Characters If YES The Flow Will check which Special character it is and replace the Topic name Accordingly. After the name is being updated the flow will Update the Opportunity Record. If NO The flow will terminate successfully. Let’s Begin with the Flow Implementation. Process Flow: – Step – 1 The Flow will trigger when an Opportunity is being created. Step – 2 The Flow will get the Created Opportunity Record. Step – 3 Also we need to initialize an array of Special Characters as given below Step – 4 I have used a Special Character Array “createArray(‘&’,’|’,’/’)” according to my requirement for all special characters you can go with the below expression. Step – 5 “createArray(‘.’,’@’,’ß’,’²’,’³’,’µ’,’`’,’´’,’°’,’^’,’=’,'(‘,’)’,’&’,’$’,’§’, ‘~’,’#’,’%’,’*’,’:’,'<‘,’>’,’?’,’/’,’|’,’ ‘) “ Step – 6 The Flow will check if the Topic has any special characters. Step – 7 If Yes, it will replace & with “And” using the Filter query “replace(variables(‘Topic’), item( ),’ and ‘)” Step – 8 Lastly the flow will update the Topic of the Opportunity. Results Hope This Helps !.

Before you begin with this Blog, please read my previous blog which was on How to Create Object Detection Model inside the Power Platform — PowerApps | AI Builder. In a previous blog, we have created the Object Detection Model that we are going to use in this blog. Step 1: Expand the AI Builder section in Power App and click on the Models. Open Fruit Detection Model that we have created in the Previous blog series. Click on the Use model and select the Create new App. It will redirect to the Power App Builder Studio. Step 2: You will see the Object Detector Control will automatically on the screen. Your application is ready you can run the detect the objects. Step 3: Now, we will insert the Gallery Control so that we can see the count of each object present in the images. Click on Insert and Select on the Add gallery. If you are not able to see the Option Expand the ribbon from Top right Side. Select Vertical and choose Title and Subtitle. Step 4: Click on the Gallery Control and set the property to ObjectDetector1.VisionObjects Click on the Title and set the property to ThisItem.displayName Click on the SubTitle and set the property to ThisItem.count We will do some changes in the font and alignment of the control so that the application should look simple, readable & accessible. Step 5: Click on File and Save the PowerApp. You can give the name and icon to your PowerApp. Your App is ready you can select your app and click on the Play. And Click Detect it will open your file explorer to select the images. If you are using this application on the mobile your camera will be open. Following is a screenshot of Application with detected Object Inside it. I hope this helps you to understand how to create an Object Detection models and use that Model in Power Apps.

We have a requirement that we want to change button text and description for case entity to the incident. Since the case is system entity which is managed, dynamics 365 not allowed you to make any modification in button text or description. For the unmanaged entity, you can make a modification with the help of third party tool like