Data Export Service

Article
05/08/2017

Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online)

Data Export is an add-on service made available as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) solution that adds the ability to replicate Dynamics 365 (online) data to a Microsoft Azure SQL Database store in a customer-owned Microsoft Azure subscription. The supported target destinations are Microsoft Azure SQL Database and Microsoft Azure SQL Server on Microsoft Azure virtual machines. Data Export intelligently synchronizes the entire Dynamics 365 schema and data initially and thereafter synchronizes on a continuous basis as changes occur (delta changes) in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) system.

The Data Export service provides an interface for managing configuration and ongoing administration of this service from within Dynamics 365 (online). For more information, see TechNet: Data Export. This topic explains the corresponding programmatic interface and issues for this service.

Prerequisites for using the Data Export Service

Because this service requires access to an external Microsoft Azure SQL Database from Dynamics 365 (online), a number of prerequisites must be satisfied before you can successfully access this service. The following perquisites are more fully explained from an administrator's perspective in the section TechNet: Prerequisites for using Data Export Service.

Your Dynamics 365 (online) service must be configured so that:

You must have December 2016 update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) or a later instance with the original or full data copy. For more information, see Copy an instance.
The entities that will be exported are enabled with change tracking. For more information, see Use change tracking to synchronize data with external systems.
Code is run in the context of a user with the System Administrator security role.

Note

Note that programmatic access to this service does not require the installation of the associated Data Export managed solution.

The target Azure SQL Database must be configured so that:

The subscription must support the volume of data being replicated from your Dynamics 365 instance.
Firewall settings must allow access from the IP address of your Data Export service. For more information, see Configure an Azure SQL Database server-level firewall rule using the Azure Portal.
It is recommended that option “Allow access to azure services” be enabled.
The database user, specified in the data export connection string, must have the proper create and alter permissions on the target database. At minimum these include: CRTB, CRTY, CRVW, CRPR, and ALUS. For more information, see Permissions (Database Engine).
At least one user have extensive permissions on the schema. The following script creates such a new user.

USE MASTER;
CREATE LOGIN NewUser WITH PASSWORD='newpassword';

USE DESTINATIONDATABASE;
CREATE USER NewUser FOR LOGIN NewUser
GRANT CREATE TABLE, CREATE TYPE, CREATE VIEW, CREATE PROCEDURE, ALTER ANY USER to NewUser
GRANT ALTER, REFERENCES, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT, EXECUTE ON SCHEMA::dbo TO NewUser

For online solutions and services, Azure provides a Key Vault service to safeguard cryptographic keys, passwords, and other secrets. To use Azure Key Vault, this customer-owned service must be configured so that permission is granted to "Dynamics 365 Data Export Service", which is used to safely store the SQL Azure connection string. To perform this configuration with a PowerShell script, see TechNet: How to set up Azure Key Vault. Alternately, this service can be managed through its REST API; see Key Vault management.

It is also advised that you add the domain https://discovery.crmreplication.azure.net/ to the trusted sites list in your browser and to enable pop-ups for this site.

Programming for the Data Export Service

The Data Export Service exposes a REST-based API that is divided into two groups: a set of Metadata operations for exploring Dynamics 365 organizational structure, relationships, and connection information; and a set of Profiles operations for configuring and managing each data replication. This API is fully defined and documented at the following Swagger URLs:

Swagger endpoint	Description
https://discovery.crmreplication.azure.net/swagger/docs/2016-01-01	JSON definition of the Data Export Service API for use by developer tools and dynamic processes
https://discovery.crmreplication.azure.net/swagger/ui/index#	The user-friendly version of this API for developer reference

API Quick Reference

For the reader's convenience, these interfaces are summarized in the following tables.

Metadata operations (https://discovery.crmreplication.azure.net/crm/exporter/metadata/)

Resource	Methods	Description
organizations	GET	Get organizational details for all organizations that the current user belongs to
discover	GET	Get organizational details for the specified organization
connector	GET	Get connector details for the specified organization
entities	GET	Get all exportable public entities for the specified organization
relationships	GET	Get all exportable relationships for the specified organization
hasorgacceptedprivacyterms	GET	Check if the associated organization has accepted the privacy terms
acceptprivacyterms	POST	Accept the specified org for data access

Profiles operations ([Organization-URI]/crm/exporter/)

Resource	Methods	Description
profiles	GET, POST	Get all profiles for specified organization, create a new export profile
profiles/{id}	GET, PUT, DELETE	Get, update or delete a specific profile
profiles/{id}/activate	POST	Activate a profile, which starts replication of both the associated metadata and data
profiles/{id}/activatemetadata	POST	Activate profile for metadata replication only
profiles/{id}/activatedata	POST	Activate profile for data replication only
profiles/{id}/deactivate	POST	Deactivate a profile
profiles/{id}/test	GET	Perform test operations on an existing profile
profiles/validate	POST	Perform test operations on a profile description before creating it
profiles/{id}/failures	GET	Get the connection string to a blob that contains failure details for a given profile

Gain Access

Because only Dynamics 365 System Administrators are authorized to perform data export operations, these APIs enforce caller authorization through the use of Azure Active Directory (AAD) security tokens. The following code snippet demonstrates generating such a token for a web application by using the administrator's name and password. You must replace the AppId, crmAdminUser and crmAdminPassword with values appropriate to your service. This approach can be used for development and testing, but more secure means should be used for production, such as the use of Azure Key Vault.

//Reference Azure AD authentication Library (ADAL)  
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory;
   . . .
    string yourAppClientID = "[app-associated-GUID]";   //Your AAD-registered AppId 
    string crmAdminUser = "admin1@contoso.com";  //Your CRM administrator user name
    string crmAdminPassword = "Admin1Password";  //Your CRM administrator password; 
    //For interactive applications, there are overloads of AcquireTokenAsync() which prompt for password. 
    var authParam = AuthenticationParameters.CreateFromResourceUrlAsync(new 
        Uri("https://discovery.crmreplication.azure.net/crm/exporter/aad/challenge")).Result;
    AuthenticationContext authContext = new AuthenticationContext(authParam.Authority, false);
    string token = authContext.AcquireTokenAsync(authParam.Resource, yourAppClientID, 
        new UserCredential(crmAdminUser, crmAdminPassword)).Result.AccessToken;

For instructions on how to obtain a AppId see Authorize access to web applications using OAuth 2.0 and Azure Active Directory. For more information about Azure user security, see Authentication Scenarios for Azure AD.

Error handling and failure processing

Once a profile is correctly configured, the synchronization process is typically highly reliable. However, if a record fails to synchronize, the following failure processing is applied:

After the configured retry interval, another attempt is made to synchronize the record. This is repeated up to the configured maximum number of retries.
The record is marked as processed.
A corresponding failed record entry is written to the error log.
The next record is processed.

Because the record is marked as processed, no future attempt is made to synchronize the record until its value or schema changes. (Note that writing identical values back into an entity instance also marks it as modified.)

The entries in the error log are write-only. Future successes or failures during synchronization of the same record do not result in the alteration of past entries for this record. For example, a failure entry will remain in the error log even after the record has been successfully synchronized during some later synchronization cycle.

Caution

This error processing logic is subject to change in future releases of this service.

These failure entries can be retrieved through the Get the failure details for a given Profile request. The response returns a URI to an Azure blob that contains the failure information. Each line has the following comma-separated fields (newlines added for clarity):

Entity: <entity-name>, 
RecordId: <”N/A” | guid>, 
NotificationTime: <datetime>, 
ChangeType: <sync-type>,
FailureReason: <description>

For example:

Entity: lead, 
RecordId: N/A, NotificationTime: , ChangeType: Trigger Initial Export, FailureReason: There is already an object named 'hatest201_lead' in the database.
Entity: account, RecordId: b2a19cdd-88df-e311-b8e5-6c3be5a8b200, NotificationTime: 8/31/2016 6:50:38 PM, ChangeType: New, FailureReason: Invalid object name 'dbo.hatest201_account'.

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