How to Access Live Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in Power Automate Desktop via ODBC

Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism

The CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central enables you to integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central data into workflows built using Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

The CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central enables you to access live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in workflow automation tools like Power Automate. This article shows how to integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central data into a simple workflow, moving Dynamics 365 Business Central data into a CSV file.

Through optimized data processing, CData ODBC Drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Microsoft Power Automate. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power Automate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (e.g. SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing workflows.

Integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central Data into Power Automate Workflows

After configuring the DSN for Dynamics 365 Business Central, you are ready to integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central data into your Power Automate workflows. Open Microsoft Power Automate, add a new flow, and name the flow.

👁 A new flow in Power Automate

In the flow editor, you can add the actions to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central, query Dynamics 365 Business Central using SQL, and write the query results to a CSV document.

Add an Open SQL Connection Action

Add an "Open SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

Connection string: DSN=CData Dynamics 365 Business Central Source

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Open SQL connection' action

Add an Execute SQL Statement Action

Add an "Execute SQL statement" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

Get connection by: SQL connection variable
SQL connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)
SQL statement: SELECT * FROM Accounts

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Execute SQL statement' action

Add a Write to CSV File Action

Add a "Write to CSV file" action (Actions -> File) and configure the properties.

Variable to write to: %QueryResult% (the variable from the "Execute SQL statement" action above)
File path: set to a file on disk
Configure Advanced settings as needed.

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Write to CSV file' action

Add a Close SQL Connection Action

Add a "Close SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

SQL Connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Close SQL connection' action

Save & Run the Flow

Once you have configured all the actions for the flow, click the disk icon to save the flow. Click the play icon to run the flow.

👁 A fully configured workflow

Now you have a workflow to move Dynamics 365 Business Central data into a CSV file.

👁 Application data in a CSV file (Salesforce is shown)

With the CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central, you get live connectivity to Dynamics 365 Business Central data within your Microsoft Power Automate workflows.

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/d365businesscentral-odbc-power-automate.rst