Set up Common Data Service connection for Business Central

Hello Team!

Today we set up Common Data Service connection for our Business Central environment.

I really appreciate Renato Fajdiga for his blog about this topic but I think I could add more details to that. Also I'm planning additional articles about CDS integration and you'll need initial setup to start with.

So let's begin:

1. First of all - we need CDS environment. Go to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments and check your environments. I want to use new trial environment for test, so I click on +New action:

2. Input Name, select Trial type (remember - you can have only 1 trial environment), choose region and select "Create a database for this environment"

3. Here is very important point - Currency. It must be the same as you have in Business Central as local currency. So if you have US localization for example - choose USD instead of EUR. Other values I left as default.

4. Click Save and you'll get your environment on the list after some time.

5. Now we need 2 users on Power platform to build our connection - Admin user and non-admin CDS user.

Click on your environment -> Choose Settings -> User + Permissions -> Users.

If you already have 2 users which you can use - nothing to do here. Otherwise create new one on Active directory, assign power platform license to it and add it here with +New action:

6. Now we need to manage user's roles. Click on "Manage users in Dynamics 365" action:

Environment management will open, select needed user and press "Manage Roles":

Both users should have next roles:

Admin user also should have:

And non-admin user should have:

now you have all that you need and we can open Business Central to setup the connection.

7. Click on Assisted Setup -> Set up Common Data Service Connection:

8. Click on next:

9. If you have several CDS environments - you'll get window with environment selection Choose needed:

10. On next window click on Sign in with admin credentials:

11. Input Admin user login and password.

12. After you'll see that admin is signed in - click next and input non-admin CDS user credentials:

13. On next window we need to choose Ownership model - for this test leave it as Team:

14. Press Finish on final window and our quest is over:

15. Finally you'll see the sync window. It could contain record or could be blank - depends on is it the first setup to environment or not.

So congratulations - setup complete. In next article I'll show you how to replicate custom data from Business Central to CDS.