Dynamics 365 first-party apps and Power Apps help businesses manage processes, schedule and track day-to-day activities, and deliver key reporting metrics. Business users expect their apps to perform smoothly all the time and lose patience when they don’t. Admins need the means to make sure their apps run efficiently. To that end, Microsoft is introducing Performance Insights. Performance Insights analyzes user data and provides recommendations to help improve the performance of Dynamics 365 first-party apps and Power Apps.
Performance Insights is currently in preview, i.e., it’s not ready for release, but far enough along for some user testing and feedback.
Follow along to enable Performance Insights and learn more about what it does. You’ll need some level of admin rights to turn it in on. Log into your system. Visit make.powerapps.com. Go to the left navigation pane.
Select a model-driven app from your environment. We’re using the Sales Hub in this example. Click on the ellipse and choose Performance (preview).
User data is collected in real-time and compiled for reporting once per day. Insights data is kept available for seven days. Access reports from the previous 7 days from this drop-down menu.
Here’s an example of the feedback or Performance Insights the system delivers. Performance Insights is analyzing factors that may prove detrimental and categorizing them based on the factor’s ‘perceived’ severity. Severity reflects page load times and the number of users affected. Factors that may impact performance include the on-premises environment, network, user behavior, configuration, customization, outdated browsers, forms with code that causes lag time, add-on solutions that may impact performance, etc. The categories of severity include:
- Informational
- Warning
- Critical
Critical items may have a significant impact on users and should be addressed immediately. Pay attention to Warnings as they portend future issues. Informational items are interesting but not actionable.
Looking on the right-hand side below you’ll see details related to the first line item with a severity level–Warning. Details include a list of (borrowing from medical terminology) symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of your problems.
Performance Insights helps Dynamics 365 Admins check up on your production and sandbox environments. We recommend visiting Performance Insights immediately upon receiving complaints from users. And you don’t have to wait–plan on checking regularly to support your users’ needs proactively. Users will be glad you did.
Get help with Performance Insights
By Erin Karatkiewicz, Dynamics 365 Application Consultant, Dyn365Pros, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner, San Diego, Southern California.
