Dataverse is the name of the Dynamics 365 Apps database (e.g. Sales, Service, Field Services, etc.). PowerBI desktop comes with a builtin Dataverse connector. However, if you have multiple environments not all of them may show up in the connector.
Dataverse environment missing in PowerBI connector
In order to make the environment visible in PowerBI Desktop Dataverse Connector you have to enable PowerBI Embedded in your environment.
Modern cloud-based ERP systems are complex distributed software applications. These systems became more powerful over the last decades and provide more features to satisfy user needs than previous generations of ERP systems. Furthermore, they are integrated with other cloud-based systems. [Question/problem] The resulting increase in complexity leads to a higher probability of failures within this integrated system. This makes it difficult for users to fully understand these systems and even qualified key users don’t have an overview of possible system issues anymore. As a result, the number of support calls and diffuse support ticket requests have increased in the last years. Moreover, ERP partner organizations such as insideAx experience that users lose trust in their systems. [Principal idea/results] The goal of our work is to foster the trust of ERP users in cloud-based ERP systems and to reduce the number of unnecessary support requests, by enhancing existing user feedback and monitoring mechanisms and provide a visualization of system health indicators to users. Overall, these visualizations and explanations of the system health status need to be easy to understand by users. [Contribution] In this workshop paper, we provide insights from industry on how to foster user trust in complex software systems and depict a conceptual solution which makes use of system monitoring data to communicate the system status to users in a simple and understandable way. Our conceptual solution, for which we also provide a first implementation architecture proposal, foresees that simple modifications to the software and ambient light devices allow to build such visualizations.
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.
Carrier in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management
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.
Dynamics 365 Finance / SCM Solution for customers preferred carrier
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.
Create a carrier entity in the Dataverse (CDS)
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.
Carrier lookup in the account entity
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.
Dynamics 365 Dataverse Account entity
In the PowerApps designer add the Carrier field to the form. Save the change and publish the customized form.
Add carrier to Dynamics 365 Sales Account 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.
Create a new table mapping in Dynamics 365 Dual Write
Next map the Carrier Name fields and the Carrier Description fields. Save and start the initial synchronization.
Map Dynamics 365 FO entity to Dynamics 365 Sales table
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.
Mapping carrier fields in Dual Write
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.
Preferred Carrier field in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain ManagementMapped and synchronized Carrier field in Dynamics 365 Sales
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.
Since the early days the integration of Dynamics AX ERP and Dynamics CRM was a painful challenge. Microsoft came up with may not so great working solutions. Dual Write is a Power Platform solution for Dynamics 365 Finance / SCM and Dynamics 365 CE. It supports the synchronization beween these two products almost in real time.
I’ve made a short video to demonstrate the synchronization between Finance and CE. A customer is created in CE and becomes immediately a customer in FO. The quotation from CE is synchronized to FO where it is converted into a sales order. The sales order is visible in CE. The order is invoiced in FO and can be reviewed from within CE.
Dynamics 365 Finance – CE integration via Dual Write
A typical challenge in a BI project is to integrate data from different sources. For example files stored locally, ERP databases, cloud services, etc. On the other hand, PowerBI (desktop) is designed for power users to develop reports quickly. However, power users may have business knowledge but in most cases lack the technical knowledge to integrate all the data they need. With PowerBI dataflow it is possible to break the workload into a technical IT-related part and a business analysis part.
PowerBI dataflow hides the complexity of integrating differnt data sources, but provides an ready-to-use data source for PowerBI desktop. I’ve recorded a video how to integrate Excel expenses from a local folder with Dynamics 365 Sales customers and promote result as certified data source. The power user accesses this promoted data source in the report.
ErpCoder 