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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/dynamics365-jdbc-sisense.rst

⇱ Visualize Dynamics 365 Data in Sisense

Visualize Dynamics 365 Data in Sisense

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create an ElastiCube in Sisense app with access to Dynamics 365 data.

Sisense lets you join, analyze, and picture data to make more intelligent business decisions and craft effective strategies. The CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 makes it easy to integrate with Dynamics 365 data in Sisense. This article shows how to create an ElastiCube that connects to Dynamics 365 data and use the ElastiCube to visualize Dynamics 365 data in Sisense.

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 the Connection to Dynamics 365

Before creating the ElastiCube, note the installation location for the JAR file for the JDBC Driver (typically C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 20XX\lib) or copy the jar file (cdata.jdbc.dynamics365.Dynamics365.jar) to a new folder in the Sisense JDBC driver directory (typically C:\ProgramData\Sisense\DataConnectors\jdbcdrivers).

  1. In the Data page of the Sisense application, create a new ElastiCube (or open an existing one).
  2. In the Model Editor, click "+ Data" to open the Add Data dialog box.
  3. Click Generic JDBC to open the JDBC settings. 👁 Connecting via JDBC
  4. Set the connection string property to the JDBC URL for Dynamics 365, adding required properties.

    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

    Built-in Connection String Designer

    For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Dynamics 365 JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

    java -jar cdata.jdbc.dynamics365.jar

    Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

    👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

    When you configure the JDBC URL, 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 reports and visualizations.

    A typical example follows:

    jdbc:dynamics365:OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.operations.dynamics.com/;Edition=Sales;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;
  5. Set the JDBC JARs folder property to the location of the CData JDBC Driver JAR file (see above).
  6. Set the driver's class name to the class name for the JDBC Driver: cdata.jdbc.dynamics365.Dynamics365Driver
  7. Leave the username and password properties blank.
  8. Click Next. 👁 A configured connection in Sisense (HubSpot is shown).

Add Dynamics 365 Data to an ElastiCube

Once you are connected to Dynamics 365, you can add tables and views to your ElastiCubes.

  1. From the Tables list, select the tables and/or views you wish to work with.
  2. (Optional) Click "+" to customize the data you want to import with SQL.
  3. Click Done. 👁 Selected tables to add to the ElastiCube
  4. Click Build to build the ElastiCube for analytics.

Visualize Dynamics 365 Data

With Dynamics 365 tables added to your ElastiCube, you can perform analytics on your Dynamics 365 data.

  1. Navigate to the Analytics page of the Sisense application
  2. Select a Dashboard (or create a new one)
  3. Select your Data Source and click Create 👁 Selecting the newly created ElastiCube
  4. Click "+ Select Data" and choose fields to add to your visualization. 👁 Visualizing data in Sisense (HubSpot is shown).

With the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365, you can access Dynamics 365 data right in Sisense for powerful visualization and analytics. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working with Dynamics 365 data in Sisense today!