CDS Solution Checker What Why When How

While delivering D365 projects, to address unique business requirements often we do customizations. The customizations can be simple or complex. A few times doing customizations can create performance and maintainability issues in solutions. Usually, teams follow some sort of best practices to avoid such risks. CDS solution checker is great Power Platform feature which can analyze customizations in a model-driven solution and report any potentials issues.

To use and run Solution checker we need to login to PowerApps, select the correct environment and target managed or unmanaged solution.

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I remember before solution checker in a project we used SonarQube (open source) to ensure code quality but the real benefit of using Solution checker is that we don’t need to configure it or define rules, it uses Microsoft best practices to analyze the following components and customizations:

• Plugins
• Workflow activities
• Web resources (HTML and JavaScript)
• Configurations, such as SDK message steps

Here is list of rules, which are used in analysis:

Solution component	Rule name	Rule description
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-specify-column	Avoid selecting all columns via Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement query APIs.
Plug-in or workflow activity	meta-remove-dup-reg	Avoid duplicate Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement plug-in registrations.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-turn-off-keepalive	Set KeepAlive to false when interacting with external hosts in a Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement plug-in.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-avoid-unpub-metadata	Avoid retrieving unpublished Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement metadata.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-avoid-batch-plugin	Avoid using batch request types in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement plug-ins and workflow activities.
Plug-in or workflow activity	meta-avoid-reg-no-attribute	Include filtering attributes with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement plug-in registrations.
Plug-in or workflow activity	meta-avoid-reg-retrieve	Use caution with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement plug-ins registered for Retrieve and RetrieveMultiple messages.
Plug-in or workflow activity	meta-remove-inactive	Remove inactive configurations in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-meta-avoid-crm2011-depr-message	Don’t use Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 deprecated messages.
Plug-in or workflow activity	meta-avoid-crm4-event	Don’t use Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 plug-in registration stage.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-avoid-specialized-update-ops	Don’t use specialized update operation requests in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-use-autonumber-feature	Use the auto-number feature instead of a custom auto-numbering solution.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-avoid-parallel-plugin	The usage of parallel patterns should be avoided within plug-ins.
Plug-in or workflow activity	il-avoid-lock-plugin	Avoid lock of static members in plug-ins.
Plug-in or workflow activity	meta-avoid-retrievemultiple-annotation	Avoid registering a plugin on RetrieveMultiple of annotation.
Web Resources	web-use-async	Interact with HTTP and HTTPS resources asynchronously.
Web Resources	meta-remove-invalid-form-handler	Correct or remove invalid Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement form event registrations.
Web Resources	meta-remove-orphaned-form-element	Correct or remove orphaned Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement form event registrations.
Web Resources	web-avoid-modals	Avoid using modal dialogs.
Web Resources	web-avoid-crm2011-service-odata	Don’t target the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 OData 2.0 endpoint.
Web Resources	web-avoid-crm2011-service-soap	Don’t target the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SOAP services.
Web Resources	web-avoid-browser-specific-api	Don’t use Internet Explorer legacy APIs or browser plug-ins.
Web Resources	web-avoid-2011-api	Don’t use the deprecated Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 object model.
Web Resources	web-use-relative-uri	Don’t use absolute Common Data Service endpoint URLs.
Web Resources	web-use-client-context	Use client contexts.
Web Resources	web-use-dialog-api-param	Use dialog API parameters.
Web Resources	web-use-org-setting	Use organization settings.
Web Resources	web-use-grid-api	Use the grid APIs.
Web Resources	web-avoid-isActivityType	Replace Xrm.Utility.isActivityType method with new Xrm.Utility.getEntityMetadata and don’t use in ribbon rules.
Web Resources	meta-avoid-silverlight	Silverlight web resource usage is deprecated.
Web Resources	web-remove-debug-script	Avoid including debug script in non-development environments.
Web Resources	web-use-strict-mode	Use strict mode when possible.
Web Resources	web-use-strict-equality-operators	Use strict equality operators.
Web Resources	web-avoid-eval	Don’t use the ‘eval’ function or its functional equivalents.

After running solution checker we can views results or can download results as an excel sheet with detail analysis. It is a good idea to run solution checker regularly, making it part of the definition of done in the scrum teams, or automating this service into release and build pipeline.

Feedback for Improvements

Solution checker is really a great feature to mitigate potential risks due to customizations in projects, but the following features can further improve this service:

• Capability to add custom rules (it can be through custom code or regular expressions)
• Ignore list, ability to skip few customizations or files from analysis
• Directly sending (email) reports to the team or relevant people

I hope you will find this helpful. Please feel free and share this post, leave your feedback and suggestions.

Thanks, enjoy your day.

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