Enable automatic linking of identity records to customer accounts

Article
03/08/2024

This article describes how to enable automatic linking of identity records to customer accounts in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce.

The Commerce automatic linking feature is used in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) site flows to allow approved customers to sign up to a Microsoft Entra B2C tenant and be automatically linked to their existing customer record. The identity record automatic linking feature can also be used in B2C site flows to automatically link users who sign up to a Microsoft Entra tenant to their customer account record created earlier in Commerce through point of sale (POS), call center, or Commerce headquarters.

Warning

The identity record automatic linking feature should be used with Microsoft Entra ID B2C as the identity provider. In the "sign up and sign in" user flow, the local account sign up page layout should retain the default setting of the Email Address user attribute with the Requires verification option set to "Yes." This configuration ensures that the email verification functionality persists for the sign-up flow when using the automatic linking feature.

Commerce works with identity provider services such as Microsoft Entra B2C to store a user's authentication credentials such as username and password. The user's identity provider record is referenced by a linking table in Commerce to associate the authenticated user to a customer account in Commerce.

Enable the automatic linking feature in Commerce headquarters

To enable the automatic linking feature for your environment in Commerce headquarters, follow these steps.

Go to System administration > Workspaces > Feature management and select the All tab.
Search for the feature named Local Identity Record and Commerce Customer automatic linking.
Select the feature, and then select Enable now in the properties pane.

Note

For automatic linking to be successful, you must run the 1010 (Customers) distribution schedule job before the customer signs in to the website. Once enabled, the automatic linking feature is enabled for all channels in your environment, which is important to be aware of if you are hosting different types of sites within your environment.

Automatic linking on B2B sites

A B2B site is a Commerce site connected to an online store with the Customer type property set to "B2B" during channel creation. For B2B sites, automatic linking of identity records to customer accounts is critical to the customer approval and sign-in process. Customer records are created when a B2B record is approved, or when a B2B administrator creates the user record. Once the customer record exists, the user can navigate to the B2B site and sign in. Once then user is directed to the Microsoft Entra B2C sign-in experience, they can then proceed to sign up. When sign-up is complete, the user is redirected back to the B2B site. On this return call, Commerce reviews the automatic link options for the customer's initial sign-in.

The email address used as the user's Microsoft Entra B2C user ID is searched for across all of the B2B customer records within the legal entity. The Commerce automatic linking feature reviews customer records of type person where isB2B is set to "true" and then matches against the primary email address configured for the customer record.

For B2B sites, automatic linking performs the following checks:

If only one customer record within the legal entity meets the matching condition, the user signing up is automatically linked to that record.
If no customer records within the legal entity meet the matching conditions, Commerce generates a CommerceIdentityNotFound error with error code Microsoft_Dynamics_CommerceIdentityNotFound.
- To send a user-facing message when the CommerceIdentityNotFound error occurs, in Commerce site builder, open your site's header module fragment, and then in the outline view, select the header module. In the properties pane on the right, for Error message if customer not found, enter a message (for example, "Your sign-up was successful, but your business user record hasn't yet been approved. Please try signing in at a later time or you may sign in once instructed your account has been approved."). Then save and publish the fragment.
If more than one customer record within the legal entity is found to have matching conditions, Commerce generates a CustomerServiceMultipleCustomerAccountsFoundErrorOccurredWhenAutoLinking error with error code Microsoft_Dynamics_Commerce_Runtime_MultipleCustomerAccountsFoundWithSameEmailAddress.
- To send a user-facing message when the CommerceIdentityNotFound error occurs, in Commerce site builder, open your site's header module fragment, and then in the outline view, select the header module. In the properties pane on the right, for Multiple customers found error msg, enter a message (for example, "Your sign-up was successful, but there's an issue associating to the business user account. Please try signing in at a later time."). Then save and publish the fragment.

Automatic linking on B2C sites

A B2C site is a Commerce site connected to an online store with the Customer type property set to "B2C" during channel creation. For B2C sites, the automatic linking feature reviews if a single customer account with the email address used for sign-up exists within the legal entity.

The email address used as the user's Microsoft Entra B2C user ID will be searched for across all of the B2C customer records within the legal entity. The Commerce automatic linking feature reviews customer records of type person.

For B2C sites, automatic linking will perform the following checks:

If only one customer record within the legal entity meets the matching condition, the user signing up is automatically linked to that record.
If no customer records within the legal entity meet the matching condition, Commerce generates a new customer record that is linked to the identity provider record.
If more than one customer record within the legal entity meets the matching conditions, Commerce generates a CustomerServiceMultipleCustomerAccountsFoundErrorOccurredWhenAutoLinking error with error code Microsoft_Dynamics_Commerce_Runtime_MultipleCustomerAccountsFoundWithSameEmailAddress.
- To send a user-facing message when the CommerceIdentityNotFound error occurs, in Commerce site builder, open your site's header module fragment, and then in the outline view, select the header module. In the properties pane on the right, for Multiple customers found error msg, enter a message (for example, "Your sign-up was successful, but there's an issue associating to the business user account. Please try signing in at a later time."). Then save and publish the fragment.

Note

The Commerce notifications module can be extended to display error messages to users when error conditions are met.
Social identity provider records set up in Microsoft Entra ID B2C will also automatically link to the same customer records with matching conditions if a single record is found. A Commerce customer account can be linked to both a local identity record and a social identity record simultaneously.