Quick feature comparison of Flows and classical D365 Workflows & what to expect

Finally, I found a comparison chart which outlines dis-/abilities of Power Automate (aka Flows) and the classical Dynamics 365 Workflows. Of special interest for me are pre-images of events and transactions. Looking forward…

Source: Thanks to @prokytom (Tweet)

Howto: Attribute fields in detail window of workflow action “Update Record” not editable

Let’s end the week with a tricky issue found even in latest Dynamics 365 / CRM.

Once upon a time, there was a system workflow action called “Update Record”. When users added it to their workflow and opened the detail window for inserting value placeholders, certain fields were mysteriously greyed out so users could not edit them. Coincidentially, the fields being disabled, were exactly those, that have been configured as “read-only” on the entities main form. So obviously CRM is re-using the entities main form definition for building up the detail window of said standard workflow action.

Side note: CRM does this not only for the said “Update Record” workflow action, but also on several more places too, like e.g. bulkoperation distribution window and the outlook client dialogs.

Problem:

Fields marked as “read-only” on entities main form are not editable in detail window of standard workflow action “Update Record”.

Solution:

  1. Open developer tools of your browser (f.e. press F12 in Chrome)
  2. Pick the DOM element representing the attribute input field you want to edit
  3. Delete HTML element attribute “disabled=true”
  4. Do whatever you want to do
Whilst this is no “real” solution to a “real” problem, it’s rather more a clever workaround for editing the detail window form. Whether this is a bug or just a (too?) consequent behaviour of the read-only option of a form control might be debatable.