Announcing Dual Write Preview
We are super excited to announce that we will be starting to roll out Dual Write (Preview) to all our customers! Huge thanks to customers and partners from our Insider program without whom we wouldn’t have reached so far! It has been a great journey with lots of learning along the way.
We have just started, so you should see it as we roll out gradually for all tenants. The Preview Early Access Program (PEAP) customers who have access to the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Platform Update 27 (App version 10.0.3) can access it right away. Please be advised that we are following the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations ring based deployment schedule and it would take some time for this feature to be available in your environment.
Preview restrictions apply
- Preview features aren’t meant for production use and may have restricted functionality.
- Preview features are available before an official release so that customers can get early access and provide feedback.
- We expect changes to this feature, so you shouldn’t use it in production. Use it only in test, demo or development environments.
- Microsoft doesn’t provide support for this preview feature. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Technical Support won’t be able to help you with issues or questions
- Preview features aren’t meant for production use and are subject to a separate supplemental term of use
What is Dual Write and how does it help your business?
Customers use and monitor their sales processes with the strength of Dynamics 365 for Sales (uses the Common Data Service to store and secure data) while all aspects of fulfillment and invoicing take place using the rich functionality of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. These applications do not share the same data. Ex: An account created in Dynamics 365 for Sales is not readily available for creating orders in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations – These are the challenges we aim to solve with Dual Write.
Dual Write provides a tightly coupled near-real time and bi-directional integration between the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and the Dynamics 365 for Sales. Once an entity is enabled for Dual Write, any create, update change in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations results in writes, in near-real time, to the Common Data Service and vice versa. Ex: A change in the Customer entity in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is reflected in near-real time in the Account entity in the Dynamics 365 for Sales and vice-versa. While all this happens with minimal setup, we also provide an advance user interface for all your customization needs.
Dual Write allows our customers to not think about these applications as different systems to write to independently; rather, the underlying infrastructure makes it seamless for these apps to write simultaneously.
System requirements
Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Platform Update 27 (App version 10.0.3)
*IMP* Please review additional prerequisites mentioned here before you can enable Dual Write
Key features
- Near-real time and bi-directional integration
- Out of the box experience in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
- Simple and intuitive user interface to enable and administer Dual Write
- Support for standard and custom entity (map)
- Ability to customize entity (map) and field mappings
- Ability to filter and do basic transformations
- Consolidated view to review entity (map) activities and errors
Near-real time and bi-directional
Dual Write provides a tightly coupled near-real time and bi-directional integration between the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and the Common Data Service. Any create, read, update change in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations results in writes, in near-real time, to the Common Data Service and vice versa – Ex: Creating a customer in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations creates an account in the Common Data Service and vice-versa.
Embedded experience in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
Customers can enable and administer Dual Write from within the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations user interface that they already use on daily basis
Enabling Dual Write is easy
Once you launch Dual Write from under Data Management in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, you select a Common Data Service environment that you want to link to, select legal entities and as a final step, validate your selections – that’s it! You are then provided a list of entity maps, out of the box, that you enable for Dual Write.
We will keep adding to the list and continue to provide more out of the box entity maps.
Ability to customize entity and field mappings
Every business is different and so we provide you a way to modify and customize entity and field mappings
Ability to filter and transform data
With Dual Write, we are providing you the ability to filter data along with basic transformation
There are additional knobs to customize the direction of field assignment as well
Consolidated view of activities and errors
In the event you run into an issue during or after enabling entity maps for Dual Write, you can click on the entity status for a consolidated view of all the activities for that entity map, including error logs. Our goal is to provide you a single view of activities on an entity map which would aid you during your troubleshooting.
Step by step documentation
For details on how to enable Dual Write and customize entity and field mappings, please review our step-by-step documentation here
Feedback
We would love to learn about your experience and improve based on your feedback
Once again, we appreciate your time and thank you for previewing our new features. As always, we would love to hear more from you, learn from your experience and improve based on your feedback. It would be great if you could please drop a line regarding your experience and any issues you may have encountered at CDSDataIntegrationPreview@service.microsoft.com
Thank You!