Common Data Service for Apps – Automatically create entity using excel data – Part 2

Part 1 of series explains how to create entity, field, relationships and import data. In this blog we will see how CDS for Apps automatically creates entity for you while importing data. We will make use of below excel data to add Products for Companies. Same is uploaded to one-drive.

Steps:

• Login to PowerApp web portal. Navigate to Data -> Entities and Click on Get Data

• Select Excel from list of data source, enter Product excel file url. Refer Part 1 to know how to get excel file URL and use it. Click on Next

• Select Table1 and Click Next
• Product data will be displayed. Power Query allows us to modify column names, types, add or remove columns or any other transformations. We will change data type for column “Expiration Date” to Date/Time/Zone

Note – Currently CDS for Apps does not accept Date or Date/Time, so you need to convert your date type columns to Date/Time/Zone type.

• Click on image button ABC/123 left next to Expiration Date and select Date/Time/Zone

• Expiration Date column data will be transformed to have time and time zone part. Also you will see one transformation step added on right side under Applied Steps. Which means for each transformation Power Query will add step under Applied Steps and you can always go back to previous state by selecting previous step. Click Next

• Select “Load to new entity” option. Provide entity name, entity display name and select Primary Name field in drop down. Click Next

• Entity will be created and data will be imported, Click Done. Select Entities on left navigation and change default view to custom on top to display only custom entities. You will see new entity created as “Company Product”.

Note – If entity is not displayed, refresh page once

• Select “Company Product” entity and Click on Data tab to see imported data

Part 1

Part 3