Another step closer - Finance Operations data in Power Platform - Virtual Entities

This post focuses on the integration technologies available to have the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Operations data available in Dataverse/Common Data Services/CDS. What could be better then having The biggest ERP system's data in Power Platform. You can Power Portals, Power Apps, Power BI analytical reports, use power virtual agents for inventory closing and year end closing processes, manage expenses and employee/contractors time entry processes, most of these processes can be even without logging to MS ERP (Dynamics 365 Finance Operation) so can safe on license cost too. 

Let's see what options are available to integrate F&O data with Power Platform however, this post is dedicated to Virtual Entities. 

3 Options available out-the-box to integrate F&O data with Power Platform;

👉 Data Integrator - Click on link to read more

👉 Dual-Write - Click on link to read more

👉 Virtual Entities - MS Tech Talk on Virtual entities 

Before we jump to the installation and configuration part, let's see when were the virtual entities available and what features these have come up with compared to other two integrations technologies.

Virtual Entities Generally available

✔️ Finance and Supply Chain Management App: 10.0.12 or later

✔️ Dataverse: Service update 189 or later

Virtual Entities features

✔️ Finance and Operations is available as a data source in Dataverse

✔️ No Finance and Operations data replication in Dataverse

✔️ Access all public data entities of Finance and Operations in Dataverse

✔️ Support all CRUD operations

Install Virtual Entities solution

Head to this link https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/dynamics-365/mscrm.finance_and_operations_virtual_entity and Get it Now

Enter your work or school account and Sign in

Choose the environment where you want to install this solution

Wait for finish to installing

Finance and Operations Virtual Entity solution shows as Enabled

Finance and Operations Virtual Entity solution is installed successfully - Hurray!! that was easy

Register an App in Azure Active Directory

The AAD application must be created on the same tenant as F&O.

1. Log on to http://portal.azure.com
2. Azure Active Directory > App registration
3. New Registration
   
   
   
   Define these attributes
1. Name
2. Account type
3. Redirect URI - leave blank
4. Select Register
5. Make note of the Application (Client) ID, you will need it later

Create a symmetric key for the application, Save and note it for later use.

Steps to follow in Dataverse environment 

Log on to Dataverse environment and click on Advance settings

Go to Administrator

Choose Virtual entity data sources

Finance and operations is available as of the data source in Dataverse

Click on Finance and Operations and following screen pops up, this is where the connections established

Configuration in Finance and Operations

1. Log on to Finance and Operations and go to System Administration | Users | Users
2. Create a new user and assign 'CDS virtual entity application' role to it - don't assign system admin role to this user - This user is used to look at the metadata of the data entities from the Dataverse instance.
3. Enter Application Id in System Administration | Setup | Azure Active Directory applications screen with the User ID = <The user created in step 1>

Test Finance and Operations data in Dataverse

Log on to Dataverse instance and click on a little funnel to open advance find and look for 'Available Finance and Operations Entities' in the list of tables in Dataverse instance. 

By default not all the entities are enabled this is to avoid cluttering the user experience in Dataverse but individual entities can be enabled e.g. I enabled DataManagementDefinitionGroupEntity and mark visible to make this as a virtual entity in Dataverse.

To illustrate this example, I created an export data project in Finance and Operations under Data Management with the name 'CDSVirtualEntitiesExport' - The data entity behind this data export projects is DataManagementDefinitionGroupEntity which is marked as virtual entity in above step. 

Restart the Advance find in Dataverse instance and look for Definition Group (mserp) table map and Run to see the output

This is it for today, with next post I will explain how to do customization/extension in F&O and get data into Dataverse using Virtual Entities. 

Hope you may have enjoyed the post, please do provide your feedback. Enjoy your break!!