How to autogenerate Primary Name field in custom Common Data Service Entity?

Question

Primary Name field is by default "Required". How to fill this field by GUID or random number on save?

Answer 1

Codeless solution: You can mark that field as not a Business Required, so you will be unblocked. You can use a codeless UI workflow to populate the Primary Name field with some fixed text. This WF can be triggered on post-create.

Code solution: Plugin can be triggered on pre-create & custom C# code can be used to pre-populate some autonumber/text in this field.

Pro tip: Model driven app is nothing but classic Dynamics CRM, so while searching for solutions use that keyword :)

Answer 2

There is a GUID() function in PowerApps that generates a random GUID. By default, its result is a GUID type of data (text, value, date, etc.).

Primary Name is a text field. To coerce the result of the GUID function to be a text string, wrap Text() around it:

Text(GUID())

So in your Patch statement or in the Update property of the field for PrimaryName, you can use the expression above to put in a GUID as a string.