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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Small and medium business | Business Central, N... / External system integr...
Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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External system integration with Business Central

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Posted on by Curator 297
So we are setting up an integration with an external system to bring data into a journal in BC; we will send a call to the external system to bring in the data. After talking with a developer he mentioned that an integration table also needs to be set up on Business Central whereby Application ID and client secret needs to be registered for the external system. I mentioned isn't that normally set up in Azure but he mentioned that's only if you're sending data from an external system into Business Central not the other way round (api connection). So that left me somewhat confused. Surely there can be a quicker/better way of setting up an integration setup (to register the app ID and secret) when you are doing a pull of data rather than a push of data.
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Dynamics 365 Business Central
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  • Aziz Skhiri Profile Picture
    Aziz Skhiri 431 on at

    Hi, Your developer is mostly correct, but let me clarify the confusion.

    When BC is calling an external system (outbound / pull scenario, as in your case), the Application ID (Client ID) + Client Secret belongs to the external system (or to an app you registered in Azure for that external service). This is not registered in Azure Entra ID for Business Central itself.


    • The Azure app registration is needed when an external application wants to call into Business Central (inbound/push).

    • For outbound calls from BC → External API, you simply store the external system's credentials securely inside BC. 

    Standard/recommended approach: Most partners create a simple Setup table (often called something like "External System Setup" or "Integration Setup") with fields for:


    • Base URL

    • Client ID (Application ID)

    • Client Secret (stored as SecretText data type + Isolated Storage for security)

    • Other settings (Tenant ID if needed, scopes, etc.)


      •  
    This is very common and considered a lightweight "integration table" for connection parameters.
      
    Better alternatives for secrets:

    • Isolated Storage + SecretText → The most common and secure way for Per-Tenant Extensions (PTE).

    • Azure Key Vault → Excellent for long-term maintainability (especially if you have multiple environments or want easier secret rotation). BC extensions can read from it, but it requires some extra Azure setup.

    • Avoid hardcoding or plain text fields.


      •  
    Then in AL code you use the built-in OAuth2 codeunit with AcquireTokenWithClientCredentials (or HttpClient + manual token request) to get the bearer token and call the external API.
      This is much cleaner than full "integration records" used for bidirectional Dataverse sync.
     
  • Suggested answer
    OussamaSabbouh Profile Picture
    OussamaSabbouh 17,671 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Hello,
    For a pull from BC to an external system, you normally do not need to register the external app inside Business Central as a BC “application account” unless that app is calling BC APIs. The key point is: who is authenticating to whom. If BC is calling the external system, then BC only needs whatever credentials that external API requires — API key, client ID/secret, token URL, etc. — and you usually store those in your own integration setup table/page, preferably securely. If the external system is calling Business Central APIs, then yes, you register an app in Microsoft Entra ID, create the BC application account, assign permission sets, and use OAuth/S2S. So the developer is partly right that you may need a setup table in BC, but not because BC requires an “integration table” by default; it is only to store/configure the external system connection details. 
    Regards,
    Oussama Sabbouh

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