How to integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Talent – part 3 (inserting data with LogicApps)

10/01/202010/01/2020 atotovic Azure, Business Central, Dynamics 365, HRM, LogicApps Azure, Business Central, D365HR, Dynamics 365 Talent, Flow, HRM, Human Resources, Integration, LogicApps, Power Automation, Talent

The last days of the previous year, I’ve started with blog series how to integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Talent (now Dynamic 365 Human Resources). I wanted to show how to integrate these two solutions without code, using only available services.

I’ve started with the first post, with an overview and then continue with the second one where I explained how to configure both solutions. Now I would like to continue with the third part where I’ll explain integration tools we can use.

Generally, you can use Flow (Power Automation) or Azure Logic Apps. Personally, for this purpose I prefer Logic Apps. There are many reasons for this, and I’ll show the basic comparison between these two solutions:

I don’t want to say Flow is not good solution as I enjoy in using it, but for this purpose (integration) I think Logic Apps is much better choice.

To use Logic Apps, first you must have an Azure subscription. When you open an Azure portal, you can easily find Logic Apps using a search feature. Create a new Logic Apps using Add command.

If you already used Microsoft Flow, you will find that Logic Apps are very similar, but as this is on the first place Azure service, you have to make some basic configuration as a choosing a service Name, what Subscription you want to use, Resource Group and Location for your service.

Then you just need to click on Create and wait a few seconds. If you still don’t see new service, probably you need to hit Refresh and new service will appear. When a new service is created, you need to open it and start creating a flow. System will open Logic Apps Designer and you can start with a Blank Logic App button scrolling little bit down (if this is your first time with Logic Apps, I can recommend to look the introducing video before you start). Do not forget that you need to have already deployed Business Central and Talent and created Talend entities in CDS (check in PowerApps with Data tab).

On the first sight you will see it obviously look like very similar as Microsoft Flow (Power Automation). First you need to start with a trigger, and as there is not trigger for Talent, you need to find ‘Common Data Service’ trigger – ‘When a record is created’. Yes, the first Logic App will be for inserting new data, but to complete this process, minimum necessary will be to make a Logic App for update as well.

Now you need to sign in to create a connection to Common Data Service. You will use credentials you used for Talent and CDS. When you finish with signing in, choose an environment where you have installed Talent and Workers as an entity name. On the end, add Organization as a Scope.

In a new step, you need to make an action. For this purpose, you need to choose Business Central and find ‘Create record’ action. When you sign in, first you need to choose if you want to use Production or some other environment and after that you need to choose a company name and as a Table name choose Employees (this is an API from Business Central).

On the end you just need to connect fields. To do this you need to click on Add new parameter and to choose Business Central fields you want to use for integration. Minimum you have to use are number, givenName and surname. Now you need to connect BC with Talent data i.e. Given Name (from Talent) to First_name, Surname to Last_name…

Click Save and as this is a service, do not forget to click Run. Only now, your Logic App is ready for using.

Be careful here with choosing fields for integration… you can try to integrate more fields here, but it cannot be useful. The answer on your question is when you create new record to the Worker entity in Talent, only a few field will be treated as an insert and the most of them will be treated as an update. Look at the last image where I’ll create new record… only these field you see are treated as an insert.

When you click Hire and add details, all other values you will add will be treated as an update. Because of that, you will see that created new Logic App for updating is absolutely necessary. But I’ll explain more about this in my next post.

But right now, you can create new Worker in Talent and you will see that system created new Employee in Business Central immediately.

How to integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Talent – part 2 (configure BC & Talent)

12/12/201912/12/2019 atotovic Business Central, Dynamics 365, HRM, Power Platform BC, Business Central, CDS, D365, D365BC, D365HR, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 Talent, LogicApps, Talent

If you’ve already read my previous article about introduction in BC and Talent integration, then you probably expect the next part. I cannot put everything in one blogpost as it will be a huge one and it can be confused to track all details, so I decided to write it in parts. Today, I’ll write how to prepare Business Central and Talent and how to locate data/entities you will handle with.

As I’ve already mentioned in previous post, as we don’t need all HR capabilities in Business Central and we will use all of them in Talent, we will enter data directly to Talent and move to BC only data necessary for other areas in BC. We will move data to Employee table as this table will be used in other parts of BC.

As we will create new employees in Talent, we need to configure No. Series to be fit with Talent requirements. If you want automatic numbers, you need to be careful and to make it exactly the same as in Talent, but I’ll recommend to configure Employee number series as Manual Nos.; this will keep the same numbers in Business Central as we have in Talent and you will avoid all potential risks.

As connectors with Business Central, we will use API’s. Employee table, for example already exists as an API, but if you would like to connect something more, you will probably have to create custom API and custom connector.

What we can synchronize? As I said, minimum we need in BC is Employee table. And you need to find entity as a source in CDS (I’ll explain later). You can connect entities as following:

Business Central	Talent / CDS	BC API
Employee	Worker …	employee
Alternative Address	Worker Address	custom
Qualification	Skill Type	custom
…	…

If you want to find all details about Workers data in Talent, the best is to use the following Worker entity relationship model. But the best is to integrate only what is really necessary… only what you will really use in Business Central.

As we need to locate Talent entities, you need to open list of CDS entities in PowerApps platform (you don’t need to do nothing in Talent environment and you can use it only if it will help you to better understand environment; for all integration purpose you will use CDS – PowerApp). When you open PowerApps web page, you need to choose environment created for Talent.

After that, you need to open Data and Find Entities. In Entities, you can easily find Worker entity as this is a place where we can find our information.

Opening this entity, you can address all necessary fields you want to use in integration. And how to do it, you will see in the following post.

How to integrate Business Central with Dynamics 365 Talent – part 1 (Introduction)

10/12/201912/12/2019 atotovic Azure, Business Central, Dynamics 365 Azure, Business Central, CDM, CDS, D365, D365 Business Central, D365 for Talent, D365BC, D365HR, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, ERP, Flow, HRM, Integration, LogicApps, Microsoft, Power Platform, PowerApp

When I think about new Business Central features, the first thing in my mind is openness for integrations. As a part of Dynamics 365 family, the main power of this solution is when it can work simultaneously with other. Because of that, I showed these capabilities in a few conferences. As I got lot of requirement to explain it in more details, I’ll write about good example of BC integrations with one other Dynamics 365 solution – with ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’.

‘Dynamics 365 Talent’ is a new Microsoft Dynamics HCM solution (new name ‘Dynamics 365 Human Resources‘). This solution was initially based on AX HRM, but now it is separated solution. As we can use it independently and this solution is really amazing HCM system, I think it can be interesting how we can integrate this solution with Business Central and make them as the powerful tool together… and with no code.

If you are thinking how to make it and how to make it with no code, the answer is using one of the Azure services – Logic Apps. As ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’ has entities on CDS and Logic Apps has connectors for CDS and for ‘Business Central’, only what we need to do is to map entities and fields in both systems and of course, to think abut business logic on the first place. Depends what is the primary reason for integration, we can choose some of the options:

integrate HRM core system with HR in Business Central
integrate Attract or Onboard apps in Talent with Business Central.

In second option, we will use HR module in Business Central and use only one or two parts from ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’. On the other side, in first option we will use core HR in ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’. In this text, I chose to explain the first option.

In this first text, I’ll just explain some basic concepts and you will find more details in the following texts with this topic.

Basic setup in Business Central

First, as we don’t need all HR capabilities in Business Central (we already have all of them in dedicated HR solution – ‘Dynamics 365 Talent’), we will move only data necessary for other areas in Business Central. In this example I’ll show how to move data to Employee table as this table can be used for example in a Payroll system or you can use this information in Fixed Assets card.

Locate information in Talent

Now when we have the basic configurations, we can continue with integration. First, we need to find where an employee’s data are saved in Talent. To find this we need to open list of CDS entities and we can do it using PowerApps platform.

When we have these basic information, we can continue with technical parts how to do it in a practice.