Integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new Dynamics 365 Business Central connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:d365businesscentral: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     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.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Dynamics 365 Business Central JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar

     Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

     When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:d365businesscentral:OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.D365BusinessCentralDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add Dynamics 365 Business Central Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

1. Add the Dynamics 365 Business Central source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT accountid, Name FROM Accounts
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Accounts table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.