Dynamic365 Data Export Service

If you’ve moved to Dynamics CRM/365 Online then the likelihood is that you’ve come up against the limitation of not being able to query the SQL database directly to perform more complex reporting or for custom integrations. Many on premises deployments rely on querying the backend databases and in the past this has been a blocker to moving to the cloud – or at least it has meant a complex and costly integration to copy the data from Dynamics 365 to a on prem SQL database.

The introduction of the Data Export Service is a real game changer with the possibility to replicate your data from Dynamics CRM/365 online to an Azure SQL database in your own Azure Subscription. Once you have your data in a SQL Database you can then using PowerBI, integrate with other systems and create a data warehouse. I’ve found that the speed of the replication is impressive, being minutes/seconds and not hours.

There are a number of perquisites to enabling this which you can read about in msdn: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt744592.aspx

• Azure Active Directory linked to Office 365
• Azure SQL Database and user with correct permissions
• Azure KeyVault created (using PowerShell script provided)
• Dynamics CRM Online 8.1 or later
• Data Export Service solution installed from App Source
• Change tracking enabled for custom entities you want to sync
• You must be a System Administrator to create the export profiles

The PowerShell script requires that you install the Azure cmdlets – see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/powershell/azureps-cmdlets-docs/

Here is a video that demonstrates this new service and how to set it up

Original Post https://develop1.net/public/post/2016/12/09/Dynamic365-Data-Export-Service