Build Dynamics 365 Visualizations in Tableau Desktop

About Dynamics 365 Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Microsoft Dynamics 365 data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

Read and write data in the full Dynamics 365 ecosystem: Sales, Customer Service, Finance & Operations, Marketing, and more.

Extend the native features of Dynamics CRM with customizable caching and intelligent query aggregation and separation.

Authenticate securely with Dynamics 365 in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.

Use SQL stored procedures to manage their Dynamics 365 entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dynamics 365 connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources)or analyze live Dynamics 365 data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).

Getting Started

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics 365, allowing you to easily build visualizations from live Dynamics 365 data in Tableau without installing connectors. As you build visualizations, Tableau generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Dynamics 365, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Dynamics 365 data.

Configure Dynamics 365 Connectivity for Tableau

Connectivity to Dynamics 365 from Tableau is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Dynamics 365 data from Tableau, we start by creating and configuring a Dynamics 365 connection.

Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection

Select "Dynamics 365" from the Add Connection panel

Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Dynamics 365.

Edition and OrganizationUrl are required connection properties. The Dynamics 365 connector supports connecting to the following editions: CustomerService, FieldService, FinOpsOnline, FinOpsOnPremise, HumanResources, Marketing, ProjectOperations and Sales.

For Dynamics 365 Business Central, use the separate Dynamics 365 Business Central driver.

OrganizationUrl is the URL to your Dynamics 365 organization. For instance, https://orgcb42e1d0.crm.dynamics.com

Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)

Click Create & Test

Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Dynamics 365 Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.

On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.

Give your PAT a name and click Create.

The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Dynamics 365 data from Tableau.

Visualize Live Dynamics 365 Data in Tableau

To establish a connection from Tableau Desktop to the CData Connect Cloud Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.

In Tableau Desktop, open a new book. Under To a Server, select More, then Microsoft SQL Server.

Selecting Microsoft SQL Server as the connection type.

Enter your credentials:

Server: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint and port separated by a comma: tds.cdata.com,14333
Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect Cloud data source you want to connect to (for example, Dynamics3651).
Authentication: select Use a specific username and password.
Username: enter your CData Connect Cloud username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect Cloud interface. For example, [email protected].
Password: enter the PAT you previously generated.
Require SSL: leave this selected.

Configuring the connection to the Virtual SQL Server API.

Click Sign In.

Select the Database (Connect Cloud connection) you wish to work with and opt for a Live or Extract Connection type.

Select the table(s) you wish to visualize. If you select multiple tables, define the relationship between the tables using the appropriate columns.

Selecting tables to visualize (Salesforce is shown)

Select the fields to visualize.

Visualizing live data (Salesforce is shown).

Real-Time Access to Dynamics 365 Data from Data Applications

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