Working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central customizations in PowerApps using CDS and OData

In this article, I will demonstrate how to fetch data from a custom table created in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central into PowerApps using the Common Data Service (CDS) and OData.

The table that was created in Business Central was fetched into a custom entity (MatchingLists) created in CDS. This allows for the creation of a local database in PowerApps for storing the entity data with OData to fetch and integrate the data. MatchingList is a custom table that I created and which I wanted to use with PowerApps. In this article, I will explore how I used CDS and OData to get that custom table in Business Central aligned with PowerApps and hopefully it will help other users to get a sense of how customizations in Business Central can be consumed in PowerApps.

Steps

1. Create a custom entity within CDS whose data you want to retrieve from Business Central.

2. Add the fields required in the table along with their respective data types.

3. Publish the custom table in Business Central as a Web Service and make a note of the OData V4 URL that will be needed later for OData integration. At this time there are no permissions associated with it.

4. You can use the OData URLto check the data in the table in Business Central.

5. In PowerApps, go to the entity list and select your entity, click on the Get data button to provide the OData integration details that allow us to retrieve the data from Business Central. With this step we will associate the custom table created in Business Central with the entity that is created in PowerApps.

6. After clicking on 'Get data', select the source using which you want to fetch the data. In this case we make use of OData as the format when fetching data from Business Central.

 7. In this step we enter the OData URL of the custom table from Business Central and the organization credentials and click on the next button.