Dynamics is a great product suit from Microsoft where most of the businesses relies heavily. And looking at the nature of applications from the suit like CRM, ERP etc, integration with other LOB applications can not be ignored. Logic Apps provide a great binding (middle-ware) platform to achieve that. But first lets see what are the integration capabilities of D365 and Azure. Then we will see what capability and design pattern to use in what scenario. So let’s get started:
Integration capabilities: D365
- oData Services (for native and custom/composite entities)
- Custom services https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/data-entities/custom-services
- Recurring integrations https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/data-entities/recurring-integrations
Integration capabilities: Azure
- LogicApp
- ServiceBus
- EventHub and Event Grids for event based integration
- Azure Data Factory for batch jobs/bulk data transfer
Scenario based approach
- Real-time integration: Logic apps can call oData endpoints in two ways
- Logic app D365 connector (easy to use)
- Standard HTTP connector (better performance)
- Possible to call customer services as well
- On premise connectivity: Logic apps with on-premise data gateway
- Business events:
- D365 can directly push events to service bus or event-hub. Then a logic app can read the events and do further processing
- D365 can call http triggered logic app as a webhook
- Reconciliation or large volume data transfer, import export jobs: Using dynamics recurring integrations feature in combination with storage account and logic apps
Conclusion
There are many ways to address your D365 integration scenario. You have to look into and identify what fits the best in your specific case. But you can also contact me to know more about a specific scenario or implementation approach.
