Integrating with Microsoft Dataverse

Note

Effective November 2020:

  • Common Data Service has been renamed to Microsoft Dataverse. Learn more
  • Some terminology in Microsoft Dataverse has been updated. For example, entity is now table and field is now column. Learn more

Business apps often use data from more than one source. Dataverse combines data into a single set of logic that makes it easier to connect other Dynamics 365 applications, such as Dynamics 365 Sales or your own application built on top of Dataverse, to Business Central. For more information about Dataverse, see What is Dataverse?

The following steps provide an overview of the steps to integrate Dataverse with Business Central.

Note

These tasks require the System Administrator security role in Dataverse and Business Central.

  1. Assign licenses for Dataverse to the Business Central users who will use the integrated apps.

  2. Set up a connection to Dataverse. For more information, see Connect to Dataverse.

  3. Synchronize data between the apps. For more information, see Synchronizing Business Central and Dataverse.

Getting Started with Dataverse

To get started with Dataverse you will need a Microsoft Power Apps account. If you do not already have a Power Apps account, you can get one for free by visiting powerapps.com and choosing the Get started free link. To learn more about how to get started with Dataverse, see the Get started with Dataverse module from Microsoft Learn.

Bi-Directional or Uni-directional Data Synchronization

Depending on your business needs, you can set up the integration to synchronize data either to or from one Dynamics 365 business app to another, or in both directions in near-real time through Dataverse. For example, if you integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Sales through Dataverse, a salesperson can create a sales order in Dynamics 365 Sales and the order will be synchronized to Business Central. Conversely, from Dynamics 365 Sales, the salesperson can view information from Business Central about the availability of the item on the order.

Standard and Custom Entities

Dataverse securely stores data in a set of tables, which are sets of records similar to how a table stores data within a database. Dataverse includes a base set of standard tables that cover typical scenarios, but you can also create custom tables specific to your organization. In Business Central, you can view standard and custom tables being synchronized on the Integration Table Mappings page.

About the Business Central Base Integration Solution

The Base Integration Solution is a key component of the integration. The solution adds the required roles and access levels to the user accounts for the integration, and it creates tables needed to map Business Central company to business unit in Dataverse.

By default, the Set up Dataverse connection assisted setup guide will import the solution. To do that, the setup guide uses an administrator user account that you specify. This account must be a valid user in Dataverse with the following security role:

  • System Administrator

For more information, see Setting Up User Accounts for Integrating with Dataverse and Create users in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) and assign security roles.

The administrator account is used only one time during the setup for the configuration changes that the Base Integration Solution makes in Dataverse. After the solution is imported the account is no longer needed. Integration will continue to use the user account that is automatically created specifically for the integration.

In addition to customizing Dataverse, the solution also creates the following roles in Dataverse for the integration:

  • Integration Administrator - Allows users to manage the connection between Business Central and Dataverse. Typically, this is assigned only to the automatically created user account for synchronization.
  • Integration User - Allows users to access synchronized data. Typically, this is assigned to the automatically created user account for synchronization and other users who need to view or access the synchronized data.

For details about each role, such as the permissions and access levels, see Setting Up User Accounts for Integrating with Dataverse.

During connection setup, integration table mappings that are needed to synchronize data, are created. Entities in Dataverse are mapped to tables and table fields in Business Central through integration tables. For more information, see Standard Entity Mapping for Synchronization.

See Also

Data Ownership Models

Note

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