Data import using data entities in D365

Description:-

The Data Management Framework of Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations – Enterprise Edition provides advanced data management capabilities, which makes the overall data export and import really seamless easy, for both standard Dynamics 365 data entities, as well as any custom entities that you might have developed for your business requirements. This framework provides an easy to use front end interface for data export and import management, so that regular pro-users of Dynamics 365 can interact with it, without requiring advanced knowledge of development and database.

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate how we can import data using data entities in Dynamics 365 for Operations.

Prerequisites:

·         Access to Dynamics 365 for Operations instance via remote desktop.

·         To be provisioned as an administrator for the instance.

Requirement:

Ability to import/migrate legacy business data to Dynamics 365 for Operations.

Process (Export):

To generate a data Import File, first we need to create an Export – Data Project. Which step we have discussed before in the “AX7-D365-Operations Data export using data entities” documentation.

The following steps are required to create an Import File from the Data Project area in the Data Management workspace:

·         Export/Job Details (field group)/Name/[enter a proper project name]/Target Data Format/[select a default file format e.g. CSV]/Entity Name/[select an appropriate Data entity from the drop-down e.g. Customer Groups]/User Sample File/[select No]/Skip Staging/[select Yes]/Select Fields/[select All Fields]/Click the Add Entity button/The Data Project should be created and automatically/successfully mapped.

·     Click the Filter button to open the Data Query Form. Here you can enter a specific/existing customer groups from the Criteria field drop-down and press the OK button. This process will auto-populate the Customer groups template with some relevant data, that can then be replaced by the customer groups data that will need to be imported into AX.

·         Click the Export button from the top tool bar to start the data export process.

·         Click the Download package button and select Yes to generate a data package as a ZIP file.

·       Open the zipped package file and you should be able to see a new CSV file listed in your local PC’s Downloads file directory.

·         You can now populate this file with your desired data for which you wish to import into AX.

Note: Remember that you can repeat this process for any data entity in Microsoft Dynamics AX 7 to separately generate relevant data Import Templates. The new CSV file should then be moved to your preferred directory/repository in which you retain all of your import files.

Process (Import):

The file that we created during the previous process can now be used to import data into Dynamics AX following these steps from the Data Management workspace:

·        Import/Job Details (field group)/Name/[enter a proper project name]/Source Data Format/[select a default file format e.g. CSV]/Entity Name/[select an appropriate Data entity from the drop-down e.g. customer groups]/Truncate Entity Data/[select No]/Upload Import Files (field group)/Upload Data File/Click the Upload button/Select the file that was create during the previous process/The Import Data Project should be created and automatically/successfully mapped

·       Click the Import button to start the import process into Dynamics AX.

Navigate to Workspaces > Data management > Import.

Enter job details as shown below. We have selected a custom data entity Customer Groups in this scenario. You can safely use any standard data entity instead.

Here I have selected source data format to CSV you can select which format data you want for import. After select Entity name and update csv file which you want to import. When you upload file then your project data automatically created like below.

After click on the View map button from the Project data to verify or modify the source mapping. Click View map to generate field mappings. On Map source to staging screen, click Mapping visualization. Define the mapping. Click Save.

Also you can see mapping details by clicking on mapping details tab.

Now select the process group and click on the import button from the action pane like below.

After clicked the message popup for your data job has been successfully scheduled. Click on the close button to close the message popup windows.

At the end of the execution, you should see the Execution summary.

Refresh the whole page to see how many records has been imported.

Click on the view execution log button form action pane to see the execution log.

Now click on the view staging data button from the project group.

You can see here customer groups which we have processed for import. 

Now click on the Validate button form the action pane to validate to target data.

Now click on the view historical runs to check the customer group’s data document logs. Which will display the how many records has been created, updated, number of staging records, error message, target start and end date time and legal entity.

You can verify the data loaded by navigating to the relevant form. In this case Customer groups details master form.

Author : Umesh Patel

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