Create Purchase Orders in D365 F&O using Power Apps

Hello all,

This will be my first post for 2021, hopefully it will add value to some one in the world wide web. With that said, this blog will be a little different:

1.Quick video of the end to end solution

2.Explain in my opinion the use case of this scenario. Pros and Cons of the approach. Some caveats to keep in mind.

3.I will share the zip file that contains the meta data to import the solution into your own Power Apps environment. With that said now the disclaimer (All posts on this website are based on my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of my company, Microsoft, or anybody. It solely for fun and learnings. No guarantees of any kind.) Thank you for reading.

Video Solution

Explanation

I won’t go into details of the code behind the Power App, hence this is why I am sharing the actual file. In essence once you import the solution and make the updates to the connection to your own instance of D365 F&O (both in the App and attached Power Automate flows) then it should work.

The scenario that this app is meant to solve is basically how to make the Purchase Order creation easier for users. It is no secret that the OOB PO forms are complicated, for the normal user remembering the fields that need to filled out can be a nightmare. Also, not shown on this App, now you can start controlling what vendors, purchasing categories, financial dimensions, etc… a user is allowed to interact with. I think the flexibility gained by switching the UI from D365 F&O to Power Apps is where the biggest wins are.

Now for the drawbacks. The first one is the speed of the creation of records. The App is using the Dynamics 365 F&O connector (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/dynamicsax/) which in my opinion is slow. You will see that it takes a few seconds to maybe a minute to create a new PO header and maybe up to a minute to load 10 PO lines. I have designed the App to where all the interaction with Dynamics 365 F&O is done using Power Automate so that users don’t have to wait for the lines to be created. They have to wait for the PO header to be created though.

You will also see that I am using the Vendor entity to load the vendor list. In my environment there are a little over 2000 vendors so there are two issues here. One is the speed in which they load. The other one is delegation, if you have over 2000 vendors then you won’t see the whole data view. Delegation is a cumbersome topic in Power Apps and probably a topic for another blog post. BTW the standard delegation is 500 records, I have switched it to 2000 records.

There are many work arounds this, such as using another data source for the vendors, such as a SQL table. Remember with Power Apps you can mix and match data sources.

This is the starting line for an App, you can maybe use approvals outside from D365 F&O, send an email to an user when the PO is finally created.

Below is the Zip file with all the contents. You can get it from my github repository below

https://github.com/jgrijalba/Power-Apps-Zip-files/blob/main/POC_CreatePOD365_20210203132105.zip

Hope this has been helpful, until next time.

Juan Sebastian Grijalba, CPA