Create Dynamics 365 Business Central-Connected Visualizations in Klipfolio

Klipfolio is an online dashboard platform designed to create real-time business dashboards, whether for your team or clients. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data to create visualizations, reports, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central within Connect AI and creating visualizations using Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Klipfolio.

CData Connect AI offers a direct cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics 365 Business Central, enabling you to construct reports from real-time Dynamics 365 Business Central data data within Klipfolio—without the need for data replication to a database natively supported by Klipfolio. While building visualizations, Klipfolio generates SQL queries to fetch data. With optimized data processing capabilities out of the box, CData Connect AI efficiently directs all supported SQL operations (such as filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central, harnessing server-side processing to swiftly retrieve the requested Dynamics 365 Business Central data data.

Configure Dynamics 365 Business Central Connectivity for Klipfolio

Connectivity to Dynamics 365 Business Central from Klipfolio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Klipfolio, 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 Klipfolio.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central from Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Klipfolio to create a new Dynamics 365 Business Central data source.

1. Open Klipfolio
2. Click in Data Sources to add a new data source
3. Search for and select MSSQL as the Service 👁 Adding a new datasource.
   
4. Click "Create a custom MSSQL data source"
5. Configure the data source by setting the MSSQL connection properties:
   • Host: tds.cdata.com
   • Port: 14333
   • Database: your database (e.g., D365BusinessCentral1)
   • Driver: MS SQL
   • Username: a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
   • Password: the above user's PAT
   • SQL Query: any query to retrieve data (e.g. SELECT * FROM Accounts )
   • Select the checkbox to "Include column headers"
   • Select the checkbox to "Use SSL/TLS"
   👁 Configuring the connection to Connect AI.
   
6. Click "Get data" to preview the Dynamics 365 Business Central data before building a data model.

Build a Data Model

After retrieving the data, click the checkbox to "Model your data" and click "Continue." In the new window, configure your data model.

1. Confirm that the model includes all columns you wish to work with
2. Name your model
3. (optional) Set the Description
4. Set "Header in row" to 1
5. Click the toggle to "Exclude data before row" and set the value to 2
6. Click "Save and Exit" 👁 Configuring the data model.
   

Create a Metric

With the data modeled, we are ready to create a Metric (or visualization) of the data to be used in the Klipfolio platform for dashboards, reporting, and more.

1. Click "Create metrics"
2. Select a Data source
3. Select a Metric value and default aggregation
4. Select Segmentation(s)
5. Select a Date & time
6. Select a Data shape
7. Configure the Display settings
8. Click Save 👁 Configuring a Metric
   
9. Navigate to your Metric and further configure the visualization 👁 A configured Metric
   

SQL Access to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a Metric built from live Dynamics 365 Business Central data. You can add it to a new dashboard, share, and more. Easily create more data sources and new visualizations, produce reports, and more — all without replicating Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

To get SQL data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI.