Virtual Entities

in

Dynamics 365

Ashish Vishwakarma

Virtual Entity At a Glance

• Introduced in D365 V9.0 July 2017 Update
• Access External Data as Native
• Simplified Integration with External Systems

Need of Virtual Entities

• Configuraton over code
• Eliminate need of replicating data
• Realtime data access

Limitations

• External systems should know D365 lingo
• If not get them an Interpreter
• GUID should be used as primary key
• Performance relies on external system
• Read only as of now
• Organization owned only
• No auditing support
• No processes support (BPF, Workflow etc)
• No duplicate detection
• No rollup/calculated fields

Components Involved

• Data Provider
• Data Source
• Virtual Entity

Data Provider Example

Virtual Entity Data Sources

Creating New Data Source

Creating New Virtual Entity

OData V4 Data Provider

• Shipped out of the box
• Supports OData Types 
• Requires external API to support OData

Demo

OData V4 Data Provider

Azure CosmosDB Data Provider

• Preview feature as of Aug, 2018
• Available free at AppSource          (https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/dynamics-365/mscrm.documentdb_data_provider)
• Requires Azure subscription with Cosmos DB
• Azure Cosmos DB database type should be SQL.

Demo

Azure CosmosDB Data Provider

Custom Data Provider

• Coding required
• Plugins on Retrieve & RetrieveMultiple
• Must Implement QueryExpression or LINQ

Demo

Custom Data Provider

Conclusion

• Hope CRUD feature arrives soon
• Performance may affect from external systems
• OData V4 Data Provider is recommended 
• CosmosDB Provider looks promising
• Custom Data Provider is good for 3rd party vendors
• ...
• Any points from audience?

Dynamics
365
India

Thank You!