PCF Builder Feb 2021 Released

There were some suggestions and improvements asked on the tool that made me work on those and release a new version of PCF Builder for XrmToolBox.

This time focus was on improving the experience with Microsoft Dataverse solution creation and deployment.

Support for Publisher Friendly and Unique Name

This was requested by William Bittle on GitHub; more info here.

William specified in his request that he wanted me to find a way to support Publisher Name with spaces. By default the pac command does not support spaces; so I had to dig into the solution.xml file that gets generated after the pac solution init command is executed. Using the magic of XML, I was able to make sure the solution that gets created can accept Publisher Name with spaces but the unique name is without spaces to be consistent with Dataverse design. So now tool asks for two different data points; Publisher Friendly Name and Unique Name. But to make your life easier tool auto-populates the unique name (similar to Dataverse functionality). Though you have the ability to change the unique name. The tool is now also able to parse the solution file and correctly identify unique name vs friendly name as can be seen from the following image:

Similarly solution also has Display Name and Unique Name where solution friendly name can accept spaces. Though at this point solution display name is sanitized to create unique name. When the solution is deployed from the tool to Microsoft Dataverse environment you can see that the solution display name is having a space but solution unique name does not have any space in it.

And same happens with publisher details after deployment to Microsoft Dataverse. But here you have the ability to change the publisher unique name from the tool.

Default Publisher Prefix to lowercase

This request came from Rick Wilson who today got awarded as MVP in BizApp (congratulation 🙌🎉 & welcome to the family) on GitHub; more info here.

Rick said he is having issues when he specify publisher prefix with uppercase which mismatches with how Dataverse functions. I had this issue in the past myself and I had to go in the solution.xml file to edit the correct prefix which resolved the issue. Taking this issue in consideration; I have forced publisher prefix to always be a lowercase which should resolve mismatch issue.

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If you still haven’t download PCF Builder; you should give it a try today.

If you have any suggestions or issues on the tool, please submit an issue/enhancement here.

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