Which Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations data source should you use?
This article covers the Fabric / OneLake connector for Timextender Data Integration. Use it for cloud Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O), where data is exported to a Fabric Lakehouse or Data Lake Gen2 using Microsoft's Link to Fabric or Synapse Link, rather than read from a SQL database.
Other options:
- SQL Server data source →: Direct connection to a self-managed Finance & Operations database.
- Classic (AX Adapter) →: The same source for legacy Timextender Classic projects.
The Timextender OneLake Finance & Operations data source connects to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations data in Fabric Lakehouse. You can use it with Ingest instances on Data Lake Gen2 or Fabric Lakehouse storage, and with Prepare instances on Fabric Lakehouse or Fabric Warehouse storage.
Storage Options
Ingest Instance Using Data Lake Gen2 Storage
When you use Data Lake Gen2 as the storage type, the data source behaves as a standard data source, with no special configuration needed.
Ingest Instance Using Fabric Lakehouse Storage
When you use Fabric Lakehouse storage, tables are virtual. This means that data is not copied into the Ingest instance. Instead, the Prepare instance reads the data directly from where it already lies in OneLake. The Prepare instance can use either Fabric Lakehouse or Fabric Warehouse storage.
For both Data Lake Gen2 and Fabric Lakehouse storage, company filtering and options logic are supported.
Configuration Settings
The following sections describe the configuration settings available for the Timextender OneLake Finance & Operations data source.
1. Connection Settings
This section contains the information required to connect to the data source.
- Tenant ID: The Tenant ID obtained from the app registration. This is used to authenticate and authorize access to resources within the tenant.
- Application ID: The Application ID associated with the app registration. This ID represents the client application requesting access to the resources.
- Client Secret: The client secret from the app registration. This is used together with the Application ID to authenticate the application.
- Workspace: The name of the workspace associated with the data source connection. This defines the scope of the connection within the environment.
- Lakehouse: The name of the lakehouse connected to this data source, serving as the storage location for data.
- Execution Lakehouse: The name of the lakehouse where the notebook content will run. If left blank, the value of Lakehouse is used.
- Username: The username used to authenticate the connection.
- Password: The password associated with the username.
- Connection Timeout: Time in seconds before the connection attempt times out if there is no server response.
- Command Timeout: The maximum time in seconds allowed for a command to execute before timing out.
2. Companies
These settings determine how the data source handles companies.
- Companies: A list of companies to be included or excluded, based on the Include All Companies setting.
- Include All Companies:
- Enabled: All companies are included except those listed in the Companies property.
- Disabled: Only the companies listed in the Companies property are included.
- Compare Companies Case-Insensitive: Converts company names to lowercase for uniform comparison.
- Company Table Name: Name of the table containing company data, typically
dataarea_partitioned.
3. Options Behavior
Configure settings for extracting and applying option labels.
- Enable Options: Enables the extraction of options from the data source.
- Option Table Name: Name of the table containing option data, often named
GlobalOptionsetMetadata_partitioned. - Apply Option Labels on Tables: When enabled, a new column with option labels (postfixed with "_Label") is added for each option column.
- Option Localized Label Language Code: The language code for retrieving localized option labels. Defaults to 1033 if left blank.
- Create Localized Option Table: When enabled, a table with all options and labels is created, and an entity name column is added to each table to simplify joins.
4. Metadata Settings
Options for caching and managing metadata.
- Cache Metadata: When enabled, local metadata is cached to improve performance.
- Metadata Cache Tolerance: The duration in minutes for which the metadata cache remains valid before a refresh is required.
- Metadata Cache Location: The local folder path where metadata cache files are stored.
5. Execution Settings
Settings for managing file storage locations and notebook parallelism.
- Local Work Location: The local directory for temporarily storing downloaded parquet files.
- Max. Notebook Parallelism: The maximum number of threads for concurrent notebook execution.
6. Debugging
Settings to facilitate debugging by retaining generated notebooks and working files.
- Enable Debugging: When enabled, generated notebooks and working files are kept in both the local work location and on Fabric for debugging purposes.
