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

⇱ Create Dynamics 365-Connected Dashboards in Grafana

Create Dynamics 365-Connected Dashboards in Grafana

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

Grafana is an open-source platform that allows users to analyze, monitor, and visualize telemetry from various data sources. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to Dynamics 365 data for business dashboards. This article outlines the process of connecting to Dynamics 365 using Connect AI and creating a basic dashboard from Dynamics 365 data within Grafana.

CData Connect AI offers a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics 365, enabling the creation of dashboards directly from live Dynamics 365 data within Grafana, all without the need for data replication to a native database. As you build visualizations, Grafana 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 Grafana

Connectivity to Dynamics 365 from Grafana is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Dynamics 365 data from Grafana, 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, you are ready to connect to Dynamics 365 data from Grafana.

Visualize Live Dynamics 365 Data in Grafana

To establish a connection from Grafana to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.

  1. If you have not already done so, download and install Grafana for your operating system from the Grafana Website. Once installed, access Grafana at http://localhost:3000/.
  2. Log in to Grafana with your username and password for Grafana. If this is your first time logging in, the username is admin and the password is admin.
  3. On the navigation menu, click Sources > Add new connection. On this page, you can search for Microsoft SQL Server and select it as your data source. 👁 Adding a new Connection in Grafana
  4. Select Microsoft SQL Server and click Add new data source. 👁 Adding a new Connection in Grafana
  5. Enter a name for the new data source and then enter the following connection settings:
  6. Click Save & Test. A Database Connect OK message appears when you have a successful connection established.

Create a Dashboard

Once you create the data source for Dynamics 365, you can start building dashboards on Dynamics 365 data. Start in the navigation menu and click Dashboards

  1. On the Dashboards page, click + Create dashboard, then click + Add visualization.
  2. This opens the Select data source window where you can select your created connection. 👁 Select your connection. (Salesforce shown)
  3. After selecting your connection, you can choose the tables and columns that you want to query for your visualization. Then press Run Query to run the generated query. 👁 Select the tables and columns you want to query. (Salesforce shown)
  4. After running your query, the resulting data is populated above the query editor. Here you can select the visualization that you want to use to present your data on the dashboard panel. 👁 Visualize your queried data. (Salesforce shown)
  5. When you have finished editing your panel, you can click Save dashboard to save the changes made to your Dashboard.

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