Microsoft Power Platform integration with Business Central via virtual tables

Business Central Virtual table, which is published on AppSource, is a virtual data source in Microsoft Dataverse, and enables create, read, update, delete (CRUD) operations from Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Power Platform. By definition, the data for virtual tables doesn't reside in Microsoft Dataverse. Instead, it continues to reside in Business Central. To enable operations on Business Central tables in Microsoft Dataverse, tables must be made available as virtual tables in Microsoft Dataverse.

Prerequisite reading

To work with Business Central virtual tables, you must understand how Microsoft Dataverse and virtual tables work. Therefore, the following documentation is a prerequisite:

• What is Microsoft Dataverse?
• Table overview
• Table relationships overview
• Create and edit virtual tables that contain data from an external data source
• Overview of creating apps in Power Apps

Virtual tables for Business Central

Open Data Protocol (OData) APIs exposed through API Pages in Business Central can be consumed in Microsoft Dataverse and virtual tables can be generated.

Virtual tables in Microsoft Dataverse acts as regular tables and therefore also in Power Platform. Makers can now build experiences in customer engagement apps with data directly from Business Central with full CRUD capability and without copying to Microsoft Dataverse, and apply all the logic already residing in Business Central.

Using Custom APIs as basis for virtual tables

Since the virtual tables depend on APIs exposed on Business Central, custom APIs can also be used for generating virtual tables. For more information, see Developing a Custom API.

Known limitations

There are known limitations with Business Central virtual tables including:

• Virtual tables can't be used in Charts. Microsoft Dataverses doesn't support virtual tables being using in Charts.
• Attachment and Images/Pictures aren't supported for virtual tables.
• BLOB to multiline support isn't supported.
• Advanced search has some limitations. Each query designed translates to an OData query against Business Central.
  • The following predicates aren't supported: Does Not Equal, Does Not Contain, Does Not Begin With, Does Not End With, Does Not Contain Data, and Contains Data.
  • Combining And and Or groups across columns.
  • Filtering on related tables.

See also

Overview - Integrating Business Central with Microsoft Dataverse
Table Modeling
Application Lifecycle Management for Solutions that use Virtual tables
Business Central and Microsoft Dataverse Admin Reference
FAQ
Developing a Custom API