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Common Data Service – a complete overview

Common Data Service – a complete overview

By:

Pieter Veenstra

Date:

In this series of posts I will look at all the different elements in the Common Data Services (CDS). The subjects covered in this series are:

Anything that isn’t included yet, that you would like to know more about, feel free to contact me.

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There’s a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I’m the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I’ve been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://staging.sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://staging.sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@staging.sharepains.com

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6 responses to “Common Data Service – a complete overview”

  1. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Hi, do you have any idea where the Labels are stored in CDS for multi-select optionsets? When I connect to CDS I only see the numeric values in the multi-select fileds.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Mike, The option sets are maintained within the CDS ui. Looking at your question I am assuming that you might be looking for an entity option sets that contains labels and numbers. That doesn’t exist. The option sets are separate from the entity model. Entities can only use the option sets.

      Have you noticed that in new CDS databases the values have gone. They store the labels only now.

      1. mhammo Avatar
        mhammo

        Hi Pieter. In CDS, only the values from a “regular” optionset are in the entities. E.g. I have an optionset for Contact Rating (High, Medium, Low). In CDS, these values are seen in CDS fields as new_contactrating (which stores the value) and new_contactrating_display (which stores the label). The problem is with a Multi-Select optionset.

        E.g. I have a multi-select field called Contact Interests, the multi-select fields only store the value (99900001, 9990002,etc.). So, it appears the labels for multi-select optionsets are stored somewhere else. In the previous version of CRM, they were stored in a table called StringMapBase…this table does not exist in CDS.

      2. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        I just created a new multi select option set and I found that the values (rather than those numbers) are stored. It looks like there may still be some left overs of the old numbering system there.

      3. mhammo Avatar
        mhammo

        Pieter, when you refer to values, do you mean it shows the numbers, whatever format they are, or are you seeing the text labels? I only see the values/numbers/uniqueid and not the text.

        FYI. the numbers in my previous post are not the real ones, I made those up as an example.

        The problem is finding where those text values from multi-select optionsets are stored.

      4. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        Yes, when I talk about values then I mean labels.

        I wonder if things are about to be changed and I’ve got updates before you.

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