5 things to consider when using SmartConnect with Dynamics 365 Business Central

April 15, 2021

One of my customers recently switched to Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) as their business management solution.  Our customer had extensive integration between their old ERP system and Dynamics 365 CRM.  My team translated those integrations for BC/CRM using SmartConnect.  Here are 5 items to consider:

    1. Develop a good relationship with your BC expert! You will need their help.
    2. Use BC API queries as map sources instead of default pages:
      1. Avoids the locking issues that are possible with pages.
      2. Avoids out of memory errors – Default pages often have many fields. The more fields and records you retrieve, the more likely you are to get a “System out of memory” error.
      3. API queries can retrieve fields not returned by the default page. For example, API queries can retrieve the “Created on” date, which isn’t normally included in the fields returned by a default page.
    3. BC has strict data rules, so restrict your data source to match BC:
      1. BC phone numbers cannot contain letters, and email addresses must be in the right format (someone@something.com).
      2. Make sure your text fields don’t exceed the lengths allowed by BC. You may need to reduce the length that your data source allows or truncate the value when sending it to BC.
    4. Become familiar with BC:
      1. Learn how to adjust number series (if your credentials give you permission to do so).
      2. Learn how to find option set values.
      3. Be careful not to make inadvertent changes – data is saved automatically in BC.
    5. Warning about option sets:
      1. If an option is Yes or No, you must map a value to it; either Yes or No must be chosen. BC will not allow you to leave it unmapped or pass a blank value to it.    
      2. If the options are Yes, No or blank, then you can leave the field unmapped.

     

Maureen Franz
About the Author

Maureen Franz
Access Programmer

Maureen has been a developer at HBS for 6 years.  During her time here, she has worked with several different technologies and has recently expanded into integrations using SmartConnect with multiple data sources/destinations, including Great Plains, CRM, SAGE, SQL Server, etc.

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