The world of Microsoft is ever-changing. We get updates that make our lives easier, and sometimes we get tool deprecations that can make our lives anything but easier, but nonetheless, need to be taken care of.
One of the larger deprecations is right around the corner. At the end of October 2022, the Dynamics 365 connector will be fully disabled and no longer functional. That means all of the flows in your system that use the Dynamics 365 connector will stop working.
In order for you to determine if any of your current flow processes use the Dynamics 365 deprecated connector, make your way over to Microsoft 365 admin center. Look in the section called “Message center”. You will be prompted with a message as follows: “URGENT: Take action to migrate your flows using the Dynamics 365 connector to the Microsoft Dataverse connector” as pictured below.
The flows that currently use the “Dynamics 365 (deprecated)” connector will need to be replaced with flows that use Microsoft Dataverse connector, with the following exceptions:
Flows connecting to environments outside of the current environment
Flows that use the “When a row is selected” trigger
If you meet these exceptions, you must move to the Microsoft Dataverse (legacy) connector (please see the picture below) instead. This “legacy” connector will remain functional until 2023. Below see examples of the deprecated and legacy Microsoft connectors:
Fixing your flows
To begin the process of fixing your flows that use the deprecated connector, you can go to either https://make.powerapps.com/ or https://make.powerautomate.com/. Microsoft kindly helped create a Wizard that will remake our flows to use the new Microsoft Datavese connector instead of the deprecated connector. It will make a copy of your flow with all the updated pieces and same functionality.
After clicking into one of your flows, you should be prompted with a yellow banner at the top of your flow warning you that there is something potentially wrong with your flow.
Hit the Flow Checker button located in the upper right-hand corner to see the details of the potential problems.
If you are not currently using connection references in your flow, you’re going to need to fix that before you are able to use the migration assistant wizard. Luckily, you will get a warning telling you that you need to use connection references and you will be provided steps on how to do so.
Back on the flow details page, you can disregard any warnings that your flow is off, the flow does not need to be on for the migration assistant wizard to do its job.
Click on the Open the migration assistant blue words. You will then be promoted with a message like the one below. It reminds you that a copy of this exact flow will be made and to make sure that the connection references used in the new flow work, as well as a heads up that the current flow will not be turned off. You’re going to want to turn it off as soon as your new flow is ready.
After reading through the warning, please click ‘Migrate’ to proceed- Rather quickly. You should see a message like the one below informing you that your flow has successfully been copied, or “migrated” to the new Dataverse connector. Open up your new flow and check it out.
You might see something like this after opening your new flow, this is what it looks like when flow needs a new connection reference to use. Press ‘continue’, then save your flow.
Just like that, you’ve easily and quickly migrated your flows, and can enjoy the new Dataverse connector without any hiccups!
If you need more help with this, or another Dynamics 365 update, contact JourneyTEAM today.
Article Written by: Leecia Barajas, Nevin Anderson, and Cristian Millan