Finance and operations data on Common Data Model and Microsoft Dataverse

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The Common Data Model lets you bring data from multiple systems and applications together. When you need to bring data from multiple places, this process can be expensive and time consuming. The Common Data Model allows you to bring your data together in a simplified process by providing a shared data language for business and analytical application to use. The Common Data Model metadata system makes it possible for data and its meaning to be shared across multiple platforms and business processes like Microsoft Power Platform applications.

The Common Data Model includes extensible data schemes that are predefined and can be used as needed. The schemas include entities, attributes, semantic metadata, and relationships that represent commonly used concepts within organization such as Account, or Case. You can use the standard entities, extend the standard entities to fit your needs, or create custom entities.

Scenario

Your company has recently decided to implement Dynamics 365 for Finance. Outside Finance, your organization also uses Dynamics 365 Sales. Because each of these applications is independent from each other, they have different structures that represent an entity, for instance, Account. These may be similar in each of the applications but not exactly the same. By using the Common Data Model, you can build your data in a standardized format. Each of the applications can then use the same data.

The Common Data Model and finance and operations apps

The Common Data Model includes data that is available in finance and operations apps. You can build downstream application and extensions using the Common Data Model, allowing you to integrate with other Microsoft application and services. By using Common Data Model and finance and operations apps, you can use analytical tools like Power BI to combine data with other apps.

All data in finance and operations apps, including tables and entities are described in the Common Data Model. This will enable you to combine data from multiple applications seamlessly and easily within a broadly accepted set of standard entities. To learn more about creating and working with entities for the Common Data Model, refer to the Get started with Microsoft Dataverse module.

Dataverse and dual-write

If you are using both model-driven apps in Dynamics 365, and finance and operations apps, dual-write lets you seamlessly integrate data between the two applications. For example, you may be using Dynamics 365 Sales, and finance and operations apps. Both applications store your customer data. By using dual-write, when a new customer record is added in Sales, the customer record will also be added in finance and operations apps in near real time. The direction of the data flow is synchronous and bidirectional. This means you can have data going in and out of both applications.

The dual-write framework is also extensible to allow for organizations to modify the functionality to work according to their unique processes. You can use custom entities, and add extensions to existing entities to enable full use of the Dataverse and tools for your organization. To learn more about dual-write, go to Dual-write overview.

Enable dual-write in finance and operations apps

To use and configure dual write, you start by linking your finance and operations apps environment to the Dataverse by using the Dual-write wizard, and then enable the entity maps.

To configure dual write in finance and operations apps, follow these steps:

1. Log in to finance and operations apps.
2. Navigate to the Data management workspace.
3. From the Data management workspace, select the Dual Write tile.
4. Select New link to environment. This will launch the Setup link to Dataverse wizard.
5. On the Choose environment page, you will select the environment to link to. This page will display all the Dataverse environments that the signed in user is an administrator for.
6. Select your legal entities to link. A health check will then run to verify that your system meets the requirements for enabling dual-write.
7. A summary will display. Review the privacy notice and content, and then select Create. A link is now created between your finance and operations app and the Dataverse environment.
8. Now, you can apply the dual-write application orchestration solution.
9. In the Dual-write page in finance and operations apps, you select Apply solution to apply the entity maps that you downloaded when the link was created between the environments.
10. After you apply the solution, you will see the default entity maps are published.