Skip to main content

Notifications

Announcements

No record found.

Business Central forum
Answered

Business Central Virtual Entities or Virtual Table help needee

Posted on by 15,419

Hi

Can someone please let me know what is a different between Virtual Entities and Virtual Table in Business Central SaaS? Are they the same? 

Also, what "Business Central Virtual Table" does? Is this app uses all BC API to create virtual table in Dataverse? Or it sync all BC tables into Dataverse?

if I add to record in those Virtual Tables in Dataverse then those change sync back to BC? I mean let say I sync those tables in Dataverse with some other tables then do those changes write back into BC? 

Thanks 

appsource.microsoft.com/.../microsoftdynsmb.businesscentral_virtualentity

Categories:
  • MahGah Profile Picture
    MahGah 15,419 on at
    RE: Business Central Virtual Entities or Virtual Table help needee

    Thanks Anita75  this was really helpful. I thought CRM->BC is OOTB but looks like many functions are missing. I realized if I convert Quote to SO etc thentwo systems are not in sync any more.

    I wanted to use those table to link to other tables such as Salesforce in Dataverse and then sync them back to BC. Looks like this is possible but with lots of challenges

  • Verified answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    YUN ZHU 70,243 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    RE: Business Central Virtual Entities or Virtual Table help needee

    Hi, Sorry I haven't researched the backend, but I think it doesn't use standard APIs, it may use standard Dataverse connectors (TableType = CDS). This connector is bidirectionally syncable.
    Something like the following example
    https://yzhums.com/17065/

    Here is a description of the settings, you can test it.
    https://www.fajdiga.info/blog/2021/05/03/dynamics-365-business-central-and-microsoft-dataverse-virtual-entities/

    PS: As far as I know, this feature is still in the preview stage and may be available in the Production environment this year.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/powerplatform/powerplat-admin-reference

    pastedimage1680823131320v1.png

    Hope this helps.
    Thanks.

    ZHU

  • Verified answer
    Anita75 Profile Picture
    Anita75 1,159 on at
    RE: Business Central Virtual Entities or Virtual Table help needee

    Virtual tables in dataverse can be accessed and modified and the data will be synched backed to BC. However if you are looking it from a CRM point of view it's not easy to implement the logic since Dynamics CRM workflow and data structures differ from BC, for example sale quote in CRM contains versions and different status than in BC where it gets archived. Each time I customize the CRM -->BC I know I'm opening a can of worms

  • MahGah Profile Picture
    MahGah 15,419 on at
    RE: Business Central Virtual Entities or Virtual Table help needee

    Thanks yzhums

    This was really helpful. I wonder about those Virtual Table in Dataverse. Do you know if they use "standard" api (OOTB) or use something different? Also if we make change in Dataverse tables are they sync back to BC?

  • Suggested answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    YUN ZHU 70,243 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    RE: Business Central Virtual Entities or Virtual Table help needee

    Hi, as far as I understand, Virtual Table should refer to some tables with more than 2000000000.

    Virtual Tables: A virtual table contains system information. You cannot change the data in virtual tables. You can only read the information. Virtual tables are not stored in the database but are computed by Dynamics NAV at run time.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/virtual-tables

    Below is the point mentioned in Microsoft documentation:

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/developer/devenv-view-table-data#constraints

    pastedimage1680740853765v1.png

    In NAV:

    https://ksdconsultancy.blog/2015/08/11/how-to-list-virtual-tables-in-navision/

    And, In this wave (BC22), Microsoft also added a new virtual table.

    New virtual table to support Language selection

    https://yzhums.com/36738/

    But as you know, the meaning of this seems to have changed since the release of the Dataverse Integration.

    Integrating with Microsoft Power Platform -> Business Central Virtual Tables FAQ:

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/powerplatform/powerplat-faq

    Update a session in Business Central Launch Event 2023 wave 1

    What's new in Virtual Table for Microsoft Dataverse: https://app.hopin.com/events/business-central-launch-event-4eb37891-3940-40a3-a49d-b48c6350c82d/replay

    pastedimage1680769264431v1.png

    Hope this can give you some hints.

    Thanks.

    ZHU

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

Quick Links

Anton Venter – Community Spotlight

Kudos to our October Community Star of the month!

Announcing Our 2024 Season 2 Super Users!

A new season of Super Users has arrived, and we are so grateful for the daily…

Leaderboard

#1
André Arnaud de Calavon Profile Picture

André Arnaud de Cal... 290,572 Super User 2024 Season 2

#2
Martin Dráb Profile Picture

Martin Dráb 228,706 Most Valuable Professional

#3
nmaenpaa Profile Picture

nmaenpaa 101,148

Leaderboard

Featured topics

Product updates

Dynamics 365 release plans