Microsoft Dataverse Custom API General Availability

We are happy to announce that the Custom API for Microsoft Dataverse has reached general availability status.

Custom API is a new code-first approach that provides developers a better way to create APIs in Dataverse to perform operations on the server.

Before Custom API, developers could only use custom process actions to define an API. But they were limited by the underlying technology. The main goal of custom process actions is to provide a no-code experience to create an API. Developers frequently used this to only define the API signature, but then implemented all the logic using plug-ins.

Custom API recognizes this pattern and makes it first class experience for developers. Without the requirement to support logic defined in a designer, developers can create APIs in a manner similar to how Dataverse APIs are created.

Some of the key advantages of custom API are:

• Implement your logic on the main operation stage rather than on stages before and after the main operation.
• Block other developers from registering additional steps on your API to change the behavior.
• Custom API cannot be disabled as a custom process action can.
• Create a custom API using code.
• Easily edit the files in a solution to create or modify a Custom API.
• Mark your custom API as private to show that you don’t support other developers using it.
• Create a Function that you can invoke using GET with the Web API.
• Set a privilege that a user must have to use the custom API.

For more information comparing custom API with custom process actions, see Compare Custom Process Action and Custom API.

There are still a few rough edges that we expect to have worked out soon, but they don’t impact the core scenarios for using Custom API. More information: Known issues with Custom APIs.

One of the capabilities that wasn’t enabled at the beginning of the preview is the ability to use ‘deep insert’ with the Web API to create a Custom API with one request from Postman. This makes it very easy to quickly iterate on changes to a Custom API. You can quickly create one, then if it isn’t right, delete it and re-create it with your changes. See the example here: Create a Custom API using the Web API and use the Postman environment described here: Set up a Postman environment.

All the documentation has been updated since the preview. Please take a look and see how custom API will work for you.

Create your own messages
Create and use Custom APIs
Create a Custom API in the maker portal
Create a Custom API with code
Create a Custom API with solution files
CustomAPI Table Columns
CustomAPIRequestParameter Table Columns
CustomAPIResponseProperty Table Columns