Engineered Code

🎃 Happy Halloween from Engineered Code! 👻 What's scarier than a haunted house? A Power Pages site with: 👻 Anonymous users with Global Table Permissions 🧟 JavaScript pretending to be security 🕷️ A production site with no ALM strategy 💀 A mysterious bug that only happens in production 🦇 Someone saying, "Just clear the cache!" And the scariest words of all... "It works on my machine." 😱 What's your biggest Power Pages nightmare? Have a safe and spooky Halloween! 🎃 #Halloween #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Dataverse #EngineeredCode

🎙️ Hot SPA Time Machine in Power Pages! George Doubinski and I are back with another episode of Refresh the Cache, and this time we're talking about single-page applications (SPAs) in Power Pages. SPAs are becoming an increasingly important part of the Power Pages story, and they raise some interesting questions about how we build sites, where traditional development fits, and what the future of the platform might look like. Are SPAs the future of Power Pages? Or is there still plenty of room for more traditional approaches? Have a listen and let us know what you think! crm.audio/hot-spa-time-machi… #RefreshTheCache #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #SPA #React #Dataverse

#ThrowbackThursday 🔙 Back in 2018, I published a blog post titled "Hacking Your Way to Server-Side Code with Dynamics 365 Portals – Just Like Microsoft!" When Dynamics 365 Portals moved to Microsoft's hosted service, we lost the ability to add our own server-side .NET code. But I discovered an interesting workaround being used by Microsoft's own Event Portal. By combining Liquid, FetchXML, and a Dataverse plugin registered on RetrieveMultiple, you could effectively execute custom server-side code from your portal. Was it a hack? Absolutely. Was Microsoft using it themselves? Yep. 😄 I may have heard that not everyone at Microsoft was particularly happy about me sharing this technique. 👀 Eight years later, we finally have Server Logic in Power Pages, giving us a supported way to accomplish many of the things we were trying to do back then. If you want a trip down memory lane, here's the original post: engineeredcode.com/blog/hack… Who remembers the days of getting creative with server-side code in Dynamics 365 Portals? #ThrowbackThursday #PowerPages #Dynamics365 #Dataverse #Liquid #ServerLogic

Missed our latest Power Pages Community Call? The recording is now available! In "Troubleshooting Power Pages: How I Figure Out What's Broken," we walk through practical, live troubleshooting examples covering caching, Liquid and FetchXML, table permissions, the Web API, and Basic Form Metadata. We also highlight some Power Pages-specific troubleshooting tools and techniques that can help you track down those hard-to-explain issues. Watch the recording here: youtu.be/eSJ0rfo3Qdg What's your go-to technique when troubleshooting Power Pages? #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #MicrosoftPowerPages

🎉 Greetings from Las Vegas! It's Wednesday at the Power Platform Community Conference (PPCC), and it's great to be surrounded by so many people who are passionate about the Power Platform! Looking forward to more great sessions, interesting conversations, and catching up with friends from across the community. Of course, I'll be keeping a particularly close eye on anything Power Pages related. 😄 If you're here at PPCC, come say hi! Always happy to talk Power Pages, Power Platform, or just catch up. #PPCC #PowerPlatform #PowerPages #Community #LasVegas

Microsoft: Power Pages now supports Bootstrap 5! 🎉 Also Microsoft: Use Copilot to help build your Power Pages site! Power Pages Copilot: Here's some Bootstrap 3 markup for you. 😅 With all the investment in AI-assisted development, shouldn't Copilot at least understand which Bootstrap version the site is using? Anyone else running into this? #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Copilot #Bootstrap

Power Pages Tip #395 - Evaluating Dynamic Content with Liquid - Engineered Code Link: youtu.be/mqR_QT_p8Oc Did you know that Power Pages can evaluate Liquid expressions stored inside Content Snippets? In this tip, I demonstrate the liquid filter and explain why it should only be used with trusted content. #PowerPages #PowerApps #MSDyn365Portals #MSDyn365

✈️ Vegas, here I come! I'm heading to Las Vegas today for the Power Platform Community Conference (PPCC)! Looking forward to a few days of learning, catching up with old friends, meeting new people, and talking all things Power Platform (and probably a lot of Power Pages 😄). As much as I enjoy the sessions, one of the best parts of these conferences is getting to connect with people from the community in person. Who's going to be at PPCC this week? If you see me wandering around, please come say hi! #PPCC #PowerPlatform #PowerPages #Community #LasVegas

🚨 Common Mistakes Monday: "I'll Just Hardcode the GUID" You need to reference a specific Dataverse record in your Power Pages Web Template. Easy! Just copy the GUID from your development environment and paste it into your Liquid or FetchXML. Everything works perfectly. 😬 Then you deploy to Test or Production. The record has a different GUID, and suddenly your functionality stops working. While some records, including Power Pages configuration records, can retain their GUIDs across environments, you shouldn't assume that every Dataverse record will. ✅ Avoid hardcoding environment-specific GUIDs in your code. ✅ Use alternate keys, unique identifiers, or configurable values to find the records you need. ✅ Test your functionality across environments. A hardcoded GUID might save you a few minutes today, but it could cost you hours of troubleshooting during deployment. #CommonMistakesMonday #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Dataverse #Liquid #FetchXML #ALM

With Power Pages supporting modern JavaScript frameworks, there's a lot of discussion about what's possible. But just because a framework is supported doesn't necessarily mean it works as expected. Oleksandr Olashyn recently experimented with using Astro with Power Pages and shared some interesting findings, including challenges with how multi-page sites are deployed. It's a great example of why real-world testing matters, especially with new capabilities. Have you experimented with frameworks other than React for Power Pages code sites? dancingwithcrm.com/astro-in-… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform

Did you know that Power Pages still relies on classic Dataverse workflows for its out-of-the-box password reset functionality? While Power Automate has largely replaced classic workflows for new automation, this is one area where they're still part of the standard Power Pages implementation. Parthiv Suthar recently shared an article demonstrating how you can implement password reset functionality using Power Automate instead. An interesting approach for those looking to modernize their Power Pages implementations and reduce their reliance on classic workflows. Have you replaced any of the out-of-the-box Power Pages workflows with Power Automate? c-sharpcorner.com/article/ho… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform

🌍 Building multilingual Power Pages SPAs just got easier! Microsoft has added localization support to the Power Pages plugin for GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Code. With the new /add-localization skill, you can add support for 43+ languages to React, Vue, and Angular-based Power Pages sites. The plugin can: - Extract strings and generate translations - Add a language selector - Handle right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew - Test language switching and layouts in a browser You can even add localization as part of the initial site creation process. One important distinction: this handles localization of the SPA's user interface, not Dataverse data or the underlying environment. It's interesting to see how quickly the Power Pages plugin is evolving beyond simply generating code to handling more of the work involved in building and deploying a complete site. Have you tried the Power Pages plugin yet? microsoft.com/en-us/power-pl… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #GitHubCopilot #AI #Localization

🌍 Power Pages is expanding its global footprint! Microsoft has announced that Power Pages is now available in two additional Azure regions: Sweden Central and Italy North. This is great news for organizations in these regions looking to build Power Pages sites while keeping their data closer to home. Data residency can be an important consideration when choosing where to deploy a Power Pages site, particularly for organizations with regulatory or compliance requirements. Nice to see Microsoft continuing to expand the geographic availability of Power Pages! microsoft.com/en-us/power-pl… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Dataverse #Microsoft #Azure

✈️ Who's heading to PPCC in Las Vegas? I'll be attending the Power Platform Community Conference next week, and I'm looking forward to catching up with friends from across the community, meeting some new faces, and hearing about what's happening across the Power Platform. One of my favourite parts of these events is getting to connect with people I usually only interact with online. Who's going to be there? If you're attending, let me know! Would love to say hi! #PPCC #PowerPlatform #PowerPages #Community

Lots of changes happening with Power Pages lately, especially around SPAs! But what does that mean for everything that came before? 👀 Does traditional Power Pages development still have a place alongside SPAs? #PowerPages #PowerPlatform

Power Pages Tip #394 - Passing Parameters to Web Templates - Engineered Code Link: youtu.be/yOLVjR0m_Kk Did you know you can pass parameters to a Web Template using the Liquid include tag? In this tip, I show how to create reusable Web Templates that display different content depending on the parameters you provide. #PowerPages #PowerApps #MSDyn365Portals #MSDyn365

🔧 Having trouble with Power Pages? You're not alone! Our next Portals Community Call is tomorrow, and this month we're talking about troubleshooting Power Pages. We'll look at common issues, approaches to figuring out what's going wrong, and some of the tools and techniques that can help when things aren't behaving as expected. 📅 Tuesday, October 20 🕒 3 PM Eastern / 12 PM Pacific And a reminder that we're meeting on Tuesday this month, instead of our usual Thursday! Hope you can join us! engineeredcode.com/portals-c… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Dataverse #PortalsCommunityCall

🚨 Common Mistakes Monday: "I'll Just Filter Them in Liquid" You need to display a list of Dataverse records on your Power Pages site. Your FetchXML retrieves 500 records, but you only need 10. Easy! Just add an `if` condition inside your Liquid `for` loop. 😬 It works, but you're retrieving 500 records just to display 10. And there's another problem... FetchXML queries in Power Pages have a maximum of 5,000 records per page. If you're filtering in Liquid, you might miss matching records that weren't even retrieved! ✅ Filter records in FetchXML, not Liquid, whenever possible. ✅ Only retrieve the columns and records you actually need. ✅ Remember that Liquid filtering happens after the data has already been retrieved. Just because your Liquid displays the correct records doesn't mean you're retrieving them efficiently—or that you're getting all of them. #CommonMistakesMonday #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Liquid #FetchXML #Dataverse #Performance

🚀 Another interesting development for Power Pages SPAs! Microsoft has added SPA template support to the Power Pages plugin for GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Code. Instead of generating an entire site from scratch, you can now use the /create-site skill to start with a ready-made React template. Two templates are available to start: - 311 Citizen Services Portal - Supplier Invoice Portal And these aren't just front-end templates. They include the site code, Dataverse solution, and sample data. The plugin can even handle provisioning the site for you! Microsoft says this can reduce the time to create a working site from over an hour to just minutes, while also reducing AI credit consumption. I'm interested to see how this approach evolves, especially as more templates become available. Have you tried building a Power Pages SPA using AI coding tools yet? microsoft.com/en-us/power-pl… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform #Dataverse #React #GitHubCopilot #AI

With the Power Pages Web API wildcard deprecation, figuring out exactly which columns your existing code is using could be a bit of a pain. The community has been working on tools to help. Big Scene has released a free, open-source Power Pages Web API Auditor that scans your site code, compares the fields you're exposing with the fields you're actually using, and can help replace * with an explicit list. Worth checking out if you've got existing Power Pages sites to update. github.com/BigSceneUK/Dynami… #PowerPages #PowerPlatform