Importing External Data into the Common Data Service

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One of the new features within the Common Data Service is to use Power Query to
create custom entities that are linked back to external data. This data could reside
in a number of different places, including OData queries.
The good thing is that Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations allows us to surface
all of the data entities through the OData connection which means that we can use
this to incorporate direct connections from the Finance & Operations into the
Common Data Service entities and then those entities can be used by tools like
PowerApps to create new forms and integrations.
Importing External
Data Into the Common
Data Service

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The first example that we will show is how you can use an
OData feed to create a new Entity within the Common Data
Service.
Importing External Data Into the Common Data Service
Creating Custom Entities from OData Connections

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Start off by opening PowerApps and click on the + New
entity link within the menu bar.

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This will open up the Choose Data Service gallery where we
will be able to see all of the different Data Services that we
can choose to import the data through.
For this example we will want to get the data from
Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, and we can access
that data easily through an OData feed. So we will want to
click on the OData tile.

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This will open up the OData Connection setup form where
we will be able to start defining our OData connection.

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Start off by pasting in your base URL for your Dynamics 365
Finance & Operation instance and then add /data to the
end of the URL.

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That will then allow you to select the data gateway…
although I am not entirely certain that you need this.

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And then we will want to select the Authentication Kind that
will be used to connect to Finance & Operations.
For this example we will want to use our tenant credentials
and select the Organizational account option.

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Now we will want to authenticate so we will click on the
Sign in button.

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This will open up an account sign-in form where we can log
in with our tenant credentials.

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Once we have authenticated our account then we can click
on the Next button to continue on.

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This will take us to the Choose Data form and Power Query
will start reading all of the entities that are available
through the OData feed.

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After a little bit we will see all of the 1800+ entities that are
available within Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations.

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We can filter out the entities to easily find the entity that we
are looking for. So if we type in sellable into the filter the
entities so that we can see the SellableReleasedProducts
entity that will allow us to retrieve a list of all of the
validated products.
All we need to do here is select the
SellableReleasedProducts entity and then click on the Next
button.

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This will take us to the Power Query form where we will be
able see a sample set of data from the OData query.

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Before we continue on we will make a quick change and
change the Name to Sellable Products to make it easier for
the user to read and then click on the Next button.

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That will take us to the Entity Mapping where we will make
some finishing touches to the query.

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We will start off by selecting the Load as new entity to tell
the query to create a new Entity that used the query as a
basis.

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Before we continue on, we will need to specify what the
index or primary field is for the entity. To do that we just
click on the dropdown list for the Primary Name Field and
select the index field.
In this case we will select the ProductNumber field.

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Once we have done that we can continue on and click on
the Next button.

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This will start the load of the data, and the creation of the
data entity within the Common Data Service. When it says
Completed we can click on the Done button.

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That will return us to the Data integration page and we will
see that a new project has been created for us.

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Now that we have created our custom entity within the
Common Data Service we can use it within PowerApps by
attaching to it as a data source.
Creating a PowerApp using the Custom Entity

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To create a PowerApp we will want to start off by selecting
the type of PowerApp that we will want to create. To do
this we just click on the Choose a design mode link at the
bottom of the form and we will see that we can either
create a Canvas or a Model-driven PowerApp.
For this example we will click on the Canvas option.

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This will open up the Canvas gallery. We will want to create
the app from scratch, so click on the Start from blank tile.

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This will open up the options for the PowerApp and we can
either create a tablet, or a phone app.

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We want to create a phone browser, so we will select the
Phone icon and then click on the Make this app button.

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Now we will be asked if we want to jumpstart the app by
creating a form or gallery. For this example we will want to
click on the Create a gallery link.

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In a couple of seconds we will have a simple gallery app,
that is connected to sample data.

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We want to connect to the new Entity that we linked into
the Common Data Service, so we will want to create a new
data connection by clicking on the data connection and
then click on the + Add a Data Service button.

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This will open a list of all of our connections. If you haven’t
connected to the Common Data Service already then you
will want to add a connection.
Here we already have a link to our Common Data Service
connection.

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This will open up a list of all of the entities that we have
within our Common Data Service.

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If we type sellable into the Choose a table filter then we will
be able to find our new data entity that we imported into
the Common Data Service.

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All we have to do here is select the entity and then click on
the Connect button.

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This will automatically map some of the fields – i.e. the
Product Number.

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But the Subtitle field is not mapped to the right field so we
will just click on the dropdown list for the field and select
the productname field.

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Now the data looks a little cleaner and we can click on the X
to close the panel.

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That will return us back to the canvas and we will be able to
see all of the data.

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We can make the gallery a little bigger so that it fills the
entire form.

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And also we can browse down through the data and we can
see all of the data coming directly from Dynamics 365 for
Finance & Operations.

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We have just connected a table from Finance & Operations
and integrated it into the Common Data Service so that it
acts as if it is any other entity within the system.
How cool is that.
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Importing External Data into the Common Data Service

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