Use AI Assistance with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Excel Data Imports

Simplify Dataverse Mapping with AI-Driven Functionality

One of the most often used functionalities by administrators and power users is the data import from Excel. It is also one of the more complex processes to understand and train users on because it requires advanced knowledge of the data structure and mappings.

Microsoft has released a preview feature that holds some promise to automate some of the data importing process and adds some other new options to it that users may find beneficial. The preview feature has some limitations, but the AI-assistance could eventually be a game changer. The functionality is presented in the Power Apps “maker” portal at the table level, but is activated in the Power Platform Admin Center.

Key Features

• Copilot AI assisted mapping – analyzes data and provides relevant matches
• Sheet selection—allows selection of worksheets from a multi-worksheet book
• Supports record updating—existing rows can be updated if the primary key is mapped
• Suggested matches—provides possible match selections which you can accept or reject

AI Assistance Activation

To activate the feature, you will need Power Platform Admin access and privileges.

1. Navigate to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com
2. Select the environment in which you want to enable the feature
3. Navigate to Settings>>Product>>Features
4. Enable the feature in the first column
   
   
   
   
5. Click Save in the lower right-hand corner

Tutorial

Once enabled, you can go to the Power Apps portal (https://make.powerapps.com/) and check it out.

1. Select your environment
2. Navigate to Tables, open the table you are importing data to
3. Select the “Import data from Excel (Preview)” action from the command bar
   
   
   
   
4. Browse and upload the file you wish to import. If multiple worksheets are present, select the correct one.
   
   
   
   
5. The system will return a dialog after processing that shows the results broken out into mapped, possible matches, and unmapped.
   
   
   
   In our instance, Copilot did a good job of determining custom field mappings.
   
   
6. Under “Possible Matches” you can accept or reject a suggested match or manually change a source column.
   
   
   
   
7. Optionally select a primary key for updating existing data records
   
   
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8. The import button is disabled until you resolve all the mappings. Once you have resolved everything, then let the import process do the rest of the work.

AI Assistance Critique

While the process to this point is promising and polished, once you submit the import it breaks down considerably and is yet to be viable as a reliable piece of functionality.

Unlike the current method of importing, there is no visibility to the import process. These jobs do not appear in the import list under data management in the Power Platform Environment Settings app or portal.

For admins this means that to verify the success of any imports, you must query the newly created records themselves, which is time-consuming and does not guarantee accuracy of the import. Furthermore, the existing error reporting which is often helpful in resolving import issues is not available.

I would be fine using this today for small batches of simple records like leads, but I would not go much beyond that yet, particularly for updating existing records. Hopefully Microsoft will soon polish it up and provide documentation as they make it generally available.

Mike Springer - Senior Consultant

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