Corvus.Deployment.Dataverse

A PowerShell module to assist with code-first deployment of Microsoft Dataverse schemas.

Basic Usage

Install-Module MSAL.PS -Scope CurrentUser
Install-Module powershell-yaml -Scope CurrentUser
Import-Module ./module/Corvus.Deployment.Dataverse.psd1

Code-First Table Authoring

Dataverse table schemas can be authored as YAML files, whereby a single file defines a single table and its columns. These files should be structured as shown below:

name: applicant
displayName: Applicant
description: An applicant
collectionDisplayName: Applicants
keyType: Uniqueidentifier
keyName: applicantId
keyDisplayName: Applicant Id
keyDescription: The unique identifier for an applicant

columns:
  - name: applicantName
    type: String
    description: The name of the applicant
    displayName: Applicant Name
  - name: applicantDOB
    type: DateTime
    description: The applicant's date of birth
    displayName: Applicant Date of Birth
    additionalProperties:
      Format: DateOnly
  

Column Types

In the current version only a subset of column types have optimised authoring support (whereby the YAML files can use a more terse syntax to define entities than otherwise required by the underlying REST API).

Explicitly supported column types:

• String
• Boolean

Other types with no associated special metadata can also be used as-is.

In the absence of optimised authoring support, the additionalProperties key can be used to provide the additional metadata required by the REST API for certain column types (see the applicantDOB column in the above example).

Code-First Table Deployment

The following script provides a basic example of how this module can be used to deploy the code-first table definitions to a Dataverse environment.

Import-Module powershell-yaml
Import-Module ./module/Corvus.Deployment.Dataverse.psd1

# The following will prompt for interactive Microsoft Entra ID authentication
Connect-DataverseEnvironment `
    -TenantId "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" `
    -EnvironmentUrl "https://myenv.crm11.dynamics.com" `
    -SolutionName "mysolution" `
    -SchemaPrefix "myapp"

$tablesToProcess = Get-ChildItem -Path ./tables/*.yml

foreach ($tableDefintionFile in $tablesToProcess) {

    $tableDefinition = Get-Content $tableDefintionFile | ConvertFrom-Yaml -Ordered

    $tableId = Set-DataverseTable @tableDefinition

    foreach ($column in $tableDefinition.columns) {
        $columnId = $tableId | Set-DataverseColumn @column
    }
}