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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/dynamics365-cloud-appsmith.rst

⇱ Create Dynamics 365-Connected Applications in Appsmith

Create Dynamics 365-Connected Applications in Appsmith

👁 Cameron Leblanc
Cameron Leblanc
Senior Technology Evangelist
Connect to Dynamics 365 Data via CData Connect AI in Appsmith and create custom business applications with real-time access to Dynamics 365 data.

Appsmith is an open-source internal tool builder that allows teams to quickly and easily build a UI to help improve their business operations. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to Dynamics 365 data for business applications. This article outlines the process of connecting to Dynamics 365 using Connect AI and creating a basic application from Dynamics 365 data within Appsmith.

CData Connect AI offers a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics 365, enabling the creation of business applications directly from live Dynamics 365 data within Appsmith, all without the need for data replication to a native database. As you build applications, Appsmith generates SQL queries to gather data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Dynamics 365. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Dynamics 365 data.

About Dynamics 365 Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Microsoft Dynamics 365 data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Read and write data in the full Dynamics 365 ecosystem: Sales, Customer Service, Finance & Operations, Marketing, and more.
  • Extend the native features of Dynamics CRM with customizable caching and intelligent query aggregation and separation.
  • Authenticate securely with Dynamics 365 in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage their Dynamics 365 entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dynamics 365 connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources) or analyze live Dynamics 365 data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).


Getting Started


Configure Dynamics 365 Connectivity for Appsmith

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Dynamics 365" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Dynamics 365.

    Edition and OrganizationUrl are required connection properties. The Dynamics 365 connector supports connecting to the following editions: CustomerService, FieldService, FinOpsOnline, FinOpsOnPremise, HumanResources, Marketing, ProjectOperations and Sales.

    For Dynamics 365 Business Central, use the separate Dynamics 365 Business Central driver.

    OrganizationUrl is the URL to your Dynamics 365 organization. For instance, https://orgcb42e1d0.crm.dynamics.com

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Dynamics 365 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, we are ready to connect to Dynamics 365 data from Appsmith.

Create an Appsmith Application from live Dynamics 365 Data

To establish a connection from Appsmith to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server, follow these steps:

Connect to Dynamics 365 in Appsmith

  1. Log in to your Appsmith instance and create a new application.
  2. In the new application, open the Data page and select Bring your data. 👁 Open the Data page
  3. On this page, you can search for Microsoft SQL Server and select it as your data source. 👁 Select Microsoft SQL Server datasource
  4. Enter a name for the new data source and then enter the following connection settings:
  5. Click Test configuration to confirm a successful connection, then click Save to save the datasource.

Create a new query

With a connection configured to a datasource, we can add a SQL query to actually retrieve data from the data source.

  1. On the screen with the new data source, click New Query. 👁 Create a New Query
  2. This opens the Query Editor to enter a SQL query to select data. To assist with specifying a SQL query, use the Explorer of CData Connect AI to preview the SQL queries and the data you want to retrieve. 👁 Preview queries in the Explorer
  3. After creating the SQL query, return to the Query Editor in Appsmith and enter the SQL query, then click Run. 👁 Run the SQL query
  4. Once the query successfully runs, all that remains is to set up the Page to display the data retrieved.

Display Dynamics 365 data

  1. Open the UI tab and click New UI element. 👁 New UI element
  2. Choose a new UI element to grab, then drag and place the element on the page. 👁 New UI element
  3. Click Connect data on the new UI element, then select the query previously created. 👁 Connect to data
  4. With the data connected, it is then displayed in the UI element. 👁 UI element connected

Deploy the application

With the Dynamics 365 data connected to the UI elements in the application, we can deploy the Application. To do this, click Deploy in the top-right corner of Appsmith, then the application is opened in a separate window displaying the Dynamics 365 data.

👁 Application deployed

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