Extend Dynamics 365 Dual Write Solution

Dual Write is a Power Platform based solution to synchronize Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement in real time. I’ve uploaded a Youtube Video that shows Dual Write in Action. The default solution comes with a set of synchronization entities like Products, Customers, Vendors, Quotations, Sales Orders and Invoices. In a Dynamics 365 project you typically need to add additional information in both applications.

In this example a customer shall have a preferred carrier. The carrier (e.g. UPS, DHL) will be stored in a main table. The customer entity will have a reference to set the carrier. The corresponding account entity in Dynamics 365 Sales will have the same lookup field and preferred carrier settings will be synchronized between Finance and Sales.

Extend Dynamics 365 Finance / SCM Data Model

For Dynamics 365 Finance / SCM create the necessary artifacts in Visual Studio:

• A carrier table with a mandatory Name and Description field. Also create a primary index based on the Name.
• An entity to make the carrier table accessible from external applications.
• An extension of the CustTable with a Carrier field and a table reference from the CustTable to the Carrier table.

Save, compile and create a deployable package. Upload the package to your projects LCS asset library. After the package was validated, deploy the package to your target environment. After the package was deployed, go to Data Management Workspace > Framework Parameters > Entity settings and refresh the entity list.

Extend Dataverse (aka. Common Data Service) Entities

Navigate to https://make.powerapps.com and switch to your target environment. Go to Data > Tables and create a new table for the carrier. The table shall match the carrier table in Dynamics 365 FO. Make the Name field as mandatory primary field and add a second optional text field for the Description. Add a lookup field to the existing company table to match the DataAreaId that will come from Dynamics 365 Finance. Note that PowerApps will add a lot of other fields like owner, created, etc. as well.

Find the account entity that was created by the Dual Write solution. Add an addition lookup field called Carrier that references the newly created carrier table.

Customize the accounts form in Dynamics 365 sales

In PowerApps > Data go the accounts table and switch to the forms tab. There go to the Main form that is used in Dynamics 365 Sales to work with accounts. Click on the Name of the form, this will open the forms designer.

In the PowerApps designer add the Carrier field to the form. Save the change and publish the customized form.

Map the Carrier Entity from Dynamics 365 Finance to the Carrier table in Sales

In Dynamics 365 Finance open the Data Management Workspace and go to Dual Write. Create a new table mapping. Map the Carrier entity from Dynamics 365 FO with the Carrier table form the Dataverse.

Next map the Carrier Name fields and the Carrier Description fields. Save and start the initial synchronization.

Check if the synchronization was successful. Open https://make.powerapps.com in a browser and switch to your target environment. At the left menu go to Data > Tables. Click on the Carrier table and switch to the Data tab. You should see the same carrier like in Dynamics 365 Finance.

Add the Carrier Lookup field to CustomverV3 mapping

Stop the synchronization of the CustomerV3 to account. Go to table mappings and refresh the tables. This will load the table schema from the Dataverse with the new carrier lookup field. Create a new mapping from the Carrier in Finance to the Carrier field in Dataverses entity. Save the mapping definition as a new version. Restart the synchronization and make sure there are no errors.

Now you should see and edit the Carrier in Dynamics 365 Finance as well in Dynamics 365 Sales. Changes made in any of the two products will be synchronized.

Limitations

Dual Write has some limitations regarding the number of lookup fields. If you come across an error during the synchronization you may need to remove some of the lookup fields from the Dual Write table mapping.