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Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
Suggested Answer

Ingest data through api

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Posted on by 4
Hello everyone, I need some clarification. I have the need to import data from various sources into my Dynamics environment. To achieve this, I was thinking of using Customer Insights. Now, since all of this needs to happen in real-time, I wanted these systems to contact Customer Insights via APIs whenever something happens, such as when an order is placed. I've encountered difficulties in retrieving this information, so I'm reaching out here.
Does Customer Insights allow you to define externally accessible APIs for data imports?
Do these APIs have any limitations?
Thank you.
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  • Suggested answer
    RudyZhang Profile Picture
    Microsoft Employee on at
    Hi,
     
    As described in the official documentation, you can use these APIs to import data from various sources into your Dynamics environment. However, there are a few things you should be aware of when using them.
    1. To use the APIs administrators must enable API access to the data. Once access is enabled, any user can use the API with a subscription key.
     
    2. Customer Insights APIs will be deprecated on August 31st, 2024. Customer Insights recommends you use Dataverse APIs to query Customer Insights data.
    See the official documentation at the link below.
    Work with Customer Insights - Data APIs - Dynamics 365 Customer Insights | Microsoft Learn
     
    Here are some limitations
    1. Exporting real-time updates to external systems, like Power BI, is not possible
    Refer to the official documentation at the link below
    Real-time data ingestion (preview) - Dynamics 365 Customer Insights | Microsoft Learn
    2. Customer Insights has built-in limitations designed to ensure the reliability and stability of the service
    Refer to the official documentation at the link below
    Service limits in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data - Dynamics 365 Customer Insights | Microsoft Learn
     
     
    I hope my answer is helpful to you! If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me.
     
    Best Regards,
    Rudy Zhang
  • DE-27040930-0 Profile Picture
    4 on at
    Hi Rudy, thank you so much for the response, it has certainly provided me with much more information. However, I still have some doubts. Looking at the guide you sent me for using Dataverse APIs, do I define those APIs myself? So, can I define endpoints and based on the JSON obtained, populate entities? (I assume so, but I'm asking for confirmation.)
    One last thing, I'm not clear on the limitations. If I expose these APIs, do they have limits on concurrent calls or a maximum number of calls within a time window?

    I'm asking you this also because it seems that Customer Insights is based on Azure, so it has technologies for security and scalability.


    I've studied the situation a bit, and I see that Microsoft discourages the use of Dataverse APIs for making POST requests. I quote verbatim:
    "It's recommended to use Dataverse APIs only to read data (GET) and not to write data (POST/PATCH/PUT) as it can cause issues with Customer Insights - Data processing."

    Utilizing Dataverse APIs is similar to using Dynamics APIs? I wouldn't like to keep CRM busy but work directly on Customer Insights.
    I don't understand if I can achieve my goal with Customer Insights or not. I simply want to define entities and receive data on these entities from various external sources. Could you please guide me? Thank you.

    P.S
    Continuing to study, I've noticed that not all tables are saved in Dataverse. For example, I can only see a "unifiedactivity." I need to save activities for a user, such as activity logs, purchase orders, and shopping carts. How can I enrich this data? Forgive me for the many questions.
  • SamikK Profile Picture
    111 on at
    I’ve looked into this before, and Customer Insights isn’t really designed to act like a public ingest API in real time. It’s more about pulling, unifying, and processing data rather than being the front door for event-based ingestion.

    If you truly need real-time (like order created and sent immediately), you’re usually better off going through Dataverse APIs or an Azure-based/event-driven setup. That’s the more typical pattern in the Microsoft stack.

    In one project, we went a different route because strict real-time wasn’t required - we used Skyvia to pull data from multiple sources into Dynamics on a schedule. It worked well and was much simpler to set up, but it’s more near real-time than true event-driven ingestion. You can find the available connectors here.

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