Analyze Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server and Dynamics 365 Business Central ADO.NET Provider to build dynamic dashboards from live Dynamics 365 Business Central data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Dynamics 365 Business Central, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
2. Select "Dynamics 365 Business Central"
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

   To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must provide the User and AccessKey properties.

   To obtain the User and AccessKey values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the User and AccessKey connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

   To connect to data, specify OrganizationUrl. If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the Company to indicate which company you would like to connect to. Company does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

   

Add Dynamics 365 Business Central Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
2. Select the Dynamics 365 Business Central connection
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the Dynamics 365 Business Central Connection and Resource(s)

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Dynamics 365 Business Central data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Dynamics 365 Business Central (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in tools that consume OData APIs.