Build Dynamics 365 Business Central-Connected Apps in Choreo

The Choreo platform from WS02 is a versatile platform designed for low-code and cloud-native engineering. Developers, even those without advanced coding skills, can leverage Choreo's user-friendly low-code environment to simplify application development. When combined with CData Connect AI, users gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data for applications. This article details the process of connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central using Connect AI and building an application with real-time access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data within Choreo.

CData Connect AI delivers a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics 365 Business Central, enabling you to construct applications within Choreo that utilize live Dynamics 365 Business Central data data, all without the need for data replication to a natively supported database. With its built-in optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently directs all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central, capitalizing on server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Configure Dynamics 365 Business Central Connectivity for Choreo

Connectivity to Dynamics 365 Business Central from Choreo is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Choreo, we start by creating and configuring a Dynamics 365 Business Central connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Dynamics 365 Business Central" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

   To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must select an AuthScheme and provide the required properties (OAuth by default).

   All Methods

   Specify the . If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the to indicate which company you would like to connect to. does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

   Access Key

   To authenticate with an Access Key, set AuthScheme to "AccessKey" and provide the and properties.

   To obtain the and values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the and connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

   If you wish to authenticate through other methods, refer to the Help documentation.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Dynamics 365 Business Central Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
   
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Choreo.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central from Choreo

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Choreo to create a new application with access to live Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Creating a Construct

1. Sign in to the Choreo platform. Note: This article is from the perspective of an Anonymous user. 👁 Displaying Choreo landing page
   
2. Select Components from the left sidebar and then click +Create. Next, choose Manual Trigger and then Start from scratch. 👁 Selecting manual trigger
   
3. Give the manual trigger a Name and Description and click Create. 👁 Creating manual trigger
   
4. After the trigger is created, click on Edit Code. 👁 Clicking Edit Code
   
5. The Ballerina Low-Code IDE is displayed. Choreo automatically generates a construct in the low-code diagram view. Delete this construct by highlighting it and clicking on the trashcan icon. 👁 Showing Ballerina Low-Code IDE
   
6. Click the + icon towards the top of the screen and select Main from the Add Constructs toolbar on the right. In the following Function Configuration form, click Save. 👁 Adding a Construct
   

Adding the CData Connect AI Connector

1. Click the + icon between the Start and End ellipses and click Connector.
👁 Adding a Connector

2. In the Connectors sidebar on the right, search for "CData". Click CData Connect to open the Connector settings pane.
👁 Searching for CData Connector

3. In the Connector settings pane, enter the configuration settings:
   • Enter an Endpoint Name for your use. In this example, we use "connectEndpoint".
   • In the User field, enter the email address of the CData Connect AI user, wrapped in quotation marks (for example, "[email protected]").
   • In the Password field, enter the PAT you generated earlier, wrapped in quotation marks (for example, "SampleToken").
👁 Configuring an endpoint

4. After clicking Save, the low-code editor appears with the CData Connect AI logo.
👁 Displaying the new CData connector

Adding a Query Action

1. Click the + icon between the new and end shapes, select Action, and then select our existing connector endpoint.
👁 Creating an Action

2. Select query for the connector Operation. There is now an Action pane on the right.
👁 Showing Action pane

3. Enter a SQL query to retrieve Dynamics 365 Business Central data as the sqlQuery parameter for the query. For example:

   			SELECT * FROM D365BusinessCentral1.D365BusinessCentral.Accounts LIMIT 10
   		

   • When writing the query, be sure to specify the Connection Name as the catalog and Data Source Name as the schema. For example, D365BusinessCentral1.D365BusinessCentral.
   • These parameters appear on the Connections page of your CData Connect AI dashboard.

Iterating over Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

1. Click the Show Source icon in the top right of the code editor.
2. Add an import statment to import the ballerina/io library:

   		
   		import ballerina/io;
   	

3. Next, add a from statement after the query action to iterate through the results of the SQL query:

		
		check from record{} result in resultStream
		do {
			io:println("Full Accounts details: ", result);
		};
	

4. The code for the construct will now look similar to this:

			
			import ballerinax/cdata.connect;
			import ballerinax/cdata.connect.driver as _;
			import ballerina/io;

			public function main() returns error? {
				connect:Client connectEp = check new (user = "connect_cloud_username", password="connect_cloud_pat");

				stream<record {}, error=""?> resultStream =
				connectEp->query(sqlQuery = `SELECT * FROM D365BusinessCentral1.D365BusinessCentral.Accounts LIMIT 10`);

				check from record{} result in resultStream
				do {
					io:println("Full Accounts details: ", result);
				};
			}
		

5. Click Save to save the action. The diagram should now look similar to this:
👁 Displaying the new endpoint in Ballerina

Deploying the Program

Once you have added all of your desired actions to your program, follow these steps:

1. Commit and push your final source code in the web editor and sync those changes with the Choreo platform.
2. Click Deploy in the left navigation bar of the Choreo Console.
3. Under Build Area, click Configure & Deploy to deploy your program.
4. When prompted, enter the same CData Connect AI username and password that you used earlier and click Deploy.
👁 Deploying the program

You have now created an application with access to live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Choreo.

Get CData Connect AI

For more information about using Choreo with CData Connect AI, see the CData Connect Ballerina Guide. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!