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

⇱ Integrate Dynamics 365 Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate

Integrate Dynamics 365 Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Dynamics 365 data and integrate live Dynamics 365 data into your Power Automate tasks.

Microsoft Power Automate is an online service that automates events (known as workflows) across the most common apps and services. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Dynamics 365 data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Automate and integrate live Dynamics 365 data into your workflows and tasks.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics 365, allowing you to easily integrate with live Dynamics 365 data in Power Automate — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Automate and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Dynamics 365, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return 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 Power Automate

Connectivity to Dynamics 365 from Power Automate is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Dynamics 365 data from Power Automate, 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 Power Automate.

Connecting to CData Connect AI

To use Connect AI to integrate Dynamics 365 data into your Power Automate tasks, you need a new SQL Server connection:

  1. Log in to Power Automate
  2. Click Data -> Connections -> New connection
  3. Select SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Connection
  4. In the connection wizard:

    • Choose to connect directly
    • Set SQL server name to tds.cdata.com,14333
    • Set SQL database name to the name of the Dynamics 365 connection (e.g. Dynamics3651)
    • Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
    • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
    • Click Create 👁 Connecting to Connect AI

Integrating Dynamics 365 Data into Power Automate Tasks

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to integrate live Dynamics 365 data into your Power Automate tasks.

  1. Log in to Power Automate
  2. Click My flows -> New flow and choose to create the flow from blank or template
  3. Add (or configure) a SQL Server action (like Get rows) and configure the action to connect to your Connect AI connection
  4. Select a Table to work with (from the drop-down menu) and configure any advanced options (like filters, orders, etc) 👁 Getting Dynamics 365 "Rows"
  5. Configure any actions to follow and test, then save the flow

SQL Access to Dynamics 365 Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Dynamics 365 data from Power Automate tasks. You can create more connections and workflows to drive business — all without replicating Dynamics 365 data.

To get SQL data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.

Related Power Automate Articles

This article explains how to use CData Connect AI with Power Automate (Online). Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate Desktop: