Build Dynamics 365 Business Central-Connected Dashboards in Redash

Redash lets you connect and query your data sources, build dashboards to visualize data and share them with your company. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Dynamics 365 Business Central and build visualizations from Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Redash.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Dynamics 365 Business Central, allowing you to easily build reports from live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Redash — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Redash generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Server pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Login to Connect Server and click Connections.
2. Select "Dynamics 365 Business Central" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

   To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must provide the User and AccessKey properties.

   To obtain the User and AccessKey values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the User and AccessKey connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

   To connect to data, specify OrganizationUrl. If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the Company to indicate which company you would like to connect to. Company does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions.

With the virtual database created, you are ready to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Redash.

Visualize Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Dynamics 365 Business Central database in Connect Server and building a simple visualization from the data.

Create a New Data Source

1. Log into Redash, click on your profile and click "Data Sources"
2. Click the " New Data Source" button
3. Select "Microsoft SQL Server" as the Data Source Type
4. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Name: Name the data source (e.g. Dynamics 365 Business Central (CData Connect))
   • Host: The full URL to your CData Connect instance (e.g. https://connect_server_url)
   • Port: The port of the CData Connect SQL Server endpoint (e.g. 1433)
   • User: A CData Connect user
   • Password: The password for the above user
   • Database name: The name of the virtual database for Dynamics 365 Business Central (e.g. D365BusinessCentral1)
   • Click the checkbox to Use SSQL
5. Click Create
6. Click the "Test Connection" button to ensure you have configured the connection properly

With the new Data Source created, we are ready to visualize our Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Create a Dynamics 365 Business Central Data Visualization

1. Click Create -> New Query
2. Select the newly created Data Source (you can explore the data structure in the New Query wizard)
3. Write a SQL statement to retrieve the data, for example:
   SELECT accountid, Name FROM Accounts
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Dynamics 365 Business Central data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Dynamics 365 Business Central data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Redash. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining SQL access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Redash, refer to our Connect Server page.