In this article, we will go over the 6 basic steps for how to create a basic Dynamics 365 Business Central customer integration using an Excel source. You may want to do this to help simplify transferring customer data between Excel and Business Central. It saves time, reduces errors, and makes managing customer info easier. It’s a handy skill for anyone working with both systems.
If you’d rather watch a step-by-step tutorial on this, see the video below or click here.
How to Create a Basic Dynamics 365 Business Central Customer Integration Using an Excel Source
- To start, you will need to create a Data Source. In this example, I will use an Excel Data Source. Go to the ‘Data Sources Tab’ at the top of the screen and select ‘Create’. Find the data source that you want to create, in my instance that is an Excel File, then find the Excel file you want to use and put that in the Excel workbook section. Make sure to fill out the name and select the sheet. Then press ‘Preview’ to make sure everything is working as expected.
Once it looks correct, press ‘Save’ and move to the next step. - You can then create the integration. Go to the Integrations tab at the top, then select ‘Create’ on the left.
- Now you can set up the integration. First, you will need to give it an ID. This can be whatever you like but it’s recommended to be something relevant to the integration process, for example, “BC_Customers”. Then you will fill out the description and move down to the Source & Destination section. If you are also doing an Excel File source you can select File / Folder, otherwise you will need to select whatever Data source type you set up in the first step. Then you will find the data source you made in the step on on the Data source field. Finally, the most important part is the Data source keys. You will need to find a unique value/s, in my instance the order ‘CustomerNumber’ will work.
- Now we can move to the Destination portion. Select ‘Business Central OData’ for this example. Next, select whatever your Business Central connection is called from the instances list, and then for the ‘Services’, select ‘Customer Card’.
- For mapping these fields, we will map just a few basic fields to get this integration up and running. Here is an example of what you should fill out. I did a few basic fields here: ‘CustomerNumber’, ‘CustomerName’, and ‘Address’ fields are good ones to start with.
Then I selected ‘Update Existing’ in the top right. After that you will navigate to the left pane and select ‘Grouping’. This is import you will need to select the exact same fields as your data source key/s for the grouping. In my example, you’ll see mine is ‘CustomerNumber’. Then you can press ‘Ok’ in the top left to save your progress. - After this is all set up the integration is complete and you can press ‘Run’ to see the records in Dynamics 365 Business Central!
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