PL 400 Plugin Development 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What happens to an asynchronous plugin if the Dataverse async service is restarted while the plugin is queued?
- The plugin execution is permanently cancelled
- The system message is lost and must be manually requeued
- The async service replays the message from the queue after restart (Correct answer)
- The plugin runs synchronously as a fallback
Correct answer: The async service replays the message from the queue after restart
The asynchronous queue is durable; the async service replays pending system jobs after a restart so no messages are lost.
Question 2: Which execution context property provides the unique identifier of the pipeline event that triggered the plugin?
- context.CorrelationId (Correct answer)
- context.RequestId
- context.OperationId
- context.MessageName
Correct answer: context.CorrelationId
CorrelationId is a unique GUID assigned to the entire pipeline execution chain and can be used to correlate logs across multiple plugins.
Question 3: A plugin throws an unhandled exception that is NOT an InvalidPluginExecutionException. What behavior should a developer expect?
- The operation completes successfully and the exception is logged silently
- Dataverse rolls back the transaction and shows a generic error to the user (Correct answer)
- The exception is swallowed and the pipeline continues
- Dataverse retries the operation up to three times before failing
Correct answer: Dataverse rolls back the transaction and shows a generic error to the user
Any unhandled exception causes Dataverse to roll back the transaction and surface a generic error, unlike InvalidPluginExecutionException which shows the developer's message.
Question 4: In the context of custom API development in Power Platform, how does a Custom API differ from a traditional plugin on the Execute message?
- Custom APIs support sandboxed execution while Execute plugins do not
- Custom APIs expose a named endpoint with defined input/output parameters and can be triggered from flows or client code (Correct answer)
- Custom APIs run in the Pre-Validation stage; Execute plugins run Post-Operation
- Custom APIs are asynchronous only; Execute plugins can be synchronous
Correct answer: Custom APIs expose a named endpoint with defined input/output parameters and can be triggered from flows or client code
Custom APIs let developers define typed input/output parameters and expose a discoverable action endpoint, unlike generic plugin steps on Execute.
Question 5: What must a developer do to make a plugin step fire for ALL fields during an Update, rather than only when specific fields change?
- Set Execution Mode to Asynchronous
- Leave the Filtering Attributes field blank (Correct answer)
- Set Execution Order to 0
- Register the step on Pre-Validation instead of Pre-Operation
Correct answer: Leave the Filtering Attributes field blank
Leaving Filtering Attributes empty means the plugin fires on every Update regardless of which fields are included in the payload.
Question 6: Which Dataverse service should a plugin use to impersonate another user when performing data operations?
- IOrganizationServiceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(targetUserId) (Correct answer)
- IOrganizationService with a custom header
- context.InitiatingUserId property setter
- OrganizationServiceProxy with alternate credentials
Correct answer: IOrganizationServiceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(targetUserId)
Calling CreateOrganizationService with a specific userId creates a service instance that impersonates that user for all subsequent operations.
Question 7: A developer needs to read the original field values before an Update in a plugin. Which entity image type should be registered on the step?
- PostImage
- PreImage (Correct answer)
- DeltaImage
- SnapshotImage
Correct answer: PreImage
A PreImage captures the record's field values as they existed in the database before the Update operation executed.
PL 400 Plugin Development 5
What happens to an asynchronous plugin if the Dataverse async service is restarted while the plugin is queued?