How to update Customer fields in Dataverse

[mgr]

In Dataverse, if a "Customer field" was implemented, there are always two fields in the Update Action of Dataverse connector: one for Account and one for Contact.

The problem is, that if you sometimes have Accounts and sometimes Contacts to fill in, you always need a second Update step and a condition before, to decide whether you want to update the Account or the Contact for the Customer field.

Reason is that until now I couldn't find an expression that allows me to do this:

if(empty('output of an action above'),DO NOTHING/ACT AS IF THIS EXPRESSION WASN'T EVEN ENTERED,'Take action')

Anyone a better idea?

[HenWang]

Hi @mgr ，

You can use below condition to confirm which way to update this field:

Best Regards,

Hen Wang

[mgr]

Thanks Hen Wang, but exactly this is what I want to avoid.
This way I always need to configure two ways to update the same record with the same content. Imagine I update 20 fields, only the customer field is sometimes Account and sometimes Contact. This way it might turn out that you need to maintain 20 expressions each two times. This makes your flow quite complex, also for following actions where you need to reference the former one(s).

[LinnZawWin]

@mgr 

I don't think there's an easy way for that. I have done it by tricking the Update a row Dataverse action step to accept all the values in the JSON payload as the Record Item parameter. But it is probably not worth it to trade off with the readability especially if your lookup is Customer lookup which only accepts two types (Account and Contact).

https://linnzawwin.blogspot.com/2020/12/dynamically-populate-polymorphic-lookup.html

If this is for the Update a row action, a second Update step as you are doing right now would be the best idea.

But if this is for Add a new row action, you can use the following expression to conditionally use the concatenated lookup value with the entity set name or the empty string ''. This only works for the Add a new row action because Update a row action does not accept an empty string '' in the lookup value.

Expression for Customer (Account) lookup

if
(
    equals
	(
		outputs('Get_a_row_by_ID')?['body/_lzw_customer_value@Microsoft.Dynamics.CRM.lookuplogicalname']
		, 'account'
	)
    , concat
	(
		'accounts('
        , outputs('Get_a_row_by_ID')?['body/_lzw_customer_value']
        , ')'
	)
	, ''
)

Expression for Customer (Contact) lookup

if
(
    equals
	(
		outputs('Get_a_row_by_ID')?['body/_lzw_customer_value@Microsoft.Dynamics.CRM.lookuplogicalname']
		, 'contact'
	)
    , concat
	(
		'contacts('
        , outputs('Get_a_row_by_ID')?['body/_lzw_customer_value']
        , ')'
	)
	, ''
)