Data Integrator and Prospect to Cash templates are now Generally Available in the Common Data Service!

Today we are very excited to announce the General Availability of the Dynamics 365 Data Integration feature and our first set of Templates for the Prospect to Cash scenario!  We’ve heard from many of our customers and partners that getting end-to-end views over your data in Dynamics 365 can be costly and complicated and so we’ve built this feature to make your life easier! 

Data Integrator

At the core of our announcement today is the general availability of the Data Integrator.  The Data Integrator is a feature of the Common Data Service designed to help you build end-to-end views of your business data, as well as make your Dynamics 365 data available in the Common Data Service to build new apps against.  At GA, customers can configure data integrations using the Data Integration templates and Projects.  Customers can set data integration projects to run on a recurring schedule.  Data integrations flow data through the Common Data Service (CDS) to enable application creation using PowerApps, Flow, and the CDS SDK.

At the moment, data that is synchronized into the CDS by data integrator is read-only.  Our focus is currently to enable extension scenarios where you want to extend the data entities that are synchronized in to the CDS for building your apps.  Over time we will add support for true read-write capabilities over synchronized data.  

Prospect to Cash

What’s more, Data Integrator can be used to synchronize data across your Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations or Dynamics 365 for Sales instances via the Common Data Service.  The first of these cross-service scenarios we’re lighting up is for the Prospect to Cash business process.  The Prospect to Cash templates available with the Data Integrator enables the flow of Account, Customer and Product data between Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Dynamics 365 for Sales. When selected, the templates configure the Data Integrator to transit customer information in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, and back. Other entities such as Quotes, Sales Orders and Sales Invoices are still in preview, but will also be generally available shortly.  Additional templates for scenarios such as Project and Field Service are also in our plans for the future.

What’s next?

Our Data Integrator is the first major step forward in integrating Dynamics 365 products in a built-in and more cohesive way.  Once your data is in the Common Data Service, users of all skill levels can build new apps and extend your business processes!  In the coming months, you’ll see more templates being released to make your task easier and easier.  Eventually, we will even have this process automated so your data is just there!  The Microsoft Dynamics 365 data integration feature is available to customers who have Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.  For detailed instructions and documentation, see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/common-data-service/entity-reference/dynamics-365-integration
 
Happy Data Integration!
Lance