Establishing a connection with BC

To establish a connection with a back-office system, you need to create a record in the connector setup in Dime.Scheduler and provide the right configuration that Dime.Scheduler can use to successfully write back to the system of your choice.

Quick link

👉 The connector setup page is located here (production environment) and here (sandbox environment).

Connector setup

This page builds on top of the knowledge accumulated in the connector setup docs, and only provides a few additional instructions specifically for Business Central.

Web service URL

The standard extension for Dime.Scheduler in Business Central supports two types of web services:

• SOAP web service
• REST API page

In the connection setup, the API Type field will be enabled, allowing you to select the preferred method:

The two sections below guide you how to obtain the web service URL for each type. This value goes inside the 'Web Service URL' field in the connector entry.

SOAP

Navigate to the 'Web Services' page in Business Central, locate the Dime.Scheduler Appointment Card page, and copy the SOAP URL value. The value will look like something like this:

https://{YOUR_URL_TO_BC}:7047/WS/Page/Appointment

API page

The API page can be accessed using the following format:

https://{YOUR_URL_TO_BC}/api/dimeSoftware/dimeScheduler/v1.0/companies({COMPANY_ID}})/appointments

The variables obviously need to be replaced by the actual values of your BC administration:

• The URL to BC

• The company ID is the GUID:

  

You can test the URL by simply navigating to it in the browser.

For BC cloud, the URL might look like something like:

https://api.businesscentral.dynamics.com/v2.0/{{USER_DOMAIN_NAME}}/{{ENVIRONMENT_NAME}}/api/v2.0/dimeSoftware/dimeScheduler/v1.0/companies({COMPANY_ID}})/appointments

Authentication

Supported authentication types

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises

There are a few ways to authenticate to a BC instance:

Method	SOAP Web Services	API page
Basic authentication	✅	✅
Windows auth: NTLM and Kerberos	✅	❌
OAuth2	✅	✅

All but the last are deprecated by Microsoft. The REST service does not even support Windows authentication. This should make it easy to make a decision if you're not sure which authentication method to go for.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central online

With BC cloud, the only supported authentication method is OAuth2. See below for instructions.

Basic/Windows auth

The process to configure these authentications are very similar. In the Authentication section of the connector card, select the preferred authentication type, and provide credentials of a BC service account which Dime.Scheduler can use to authenticate with.

OAuth2 using MS Entra ID

There are a number of hoops to jump through to use OAuth2 with Business Central and extensions such as Dime.Scheduler. The process revolves around the creation of an app registration in MS Entra ID.

To enable service-to-service authentication, you'll have to do three things:

• Register an application in your Microsoft Entra ID tenant for authenticating API calls against Business Central.
• Grant access for that Microsoft Entra ID application in Business Central.
• Configure Dime.Scheduler to authenticate to BC using OAuth2.

Official docs

The official documentation provides additional information on how to set up MS Entra ID with other services such as Business Central.

Guide

We wrote a guide to set up OAuth2 between Dime.Scheduler and BC on-premises via Docker. Check it out if you'd like to try it out before configuring your test or production environments.

Step 1: Create a Microsoft Entra ID application for authentication to Business Central [MS Entra ID]

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. Register an application for Business Central in Microsoft Entra ID tenant.
   • Specify a name. For example: "Dime.Scheduler for Business Central"
   • Select the supported account type
3. Add the following Application API permissions to the app:
   • Dynamics 365 Business Central: app_access
   • Dynamics 365 Business Central: API.ReadWrite.All
4. Grant admin consent to these permissions. When done, the permission set should look like this in the portal:

Step 2: Set up the registered application [Business Central]

After you create the application registration, the next task is to configure the Business Central instance to use it. You'll need the following information about the application registration: application (client) ID, directory (tenant) ID and client secret.

1. In the top-right corner, choose the search icon, enter Microsoft Entra Applications (Azure AD applications for older versions), and then choose the related link.
2. Create a new application. In the modal window, provide the following information:
   • Paste the Microsoft Entra ID App Client ID in the Client ID field
   • Provide a description: "Dime.Scheduler"
3. Assign the permission sets to the company you want to plug Dime.Scheduler into:
   • D365 Basic ISV to the relevant company.
   • Dime.Scheduler
   • Optionally: any required permission set to access your custom objects

Step 3: Setting up the connector [Dime.Scheduler]

Back in the Microsoft Entra ID App, we need to create a client secret. Navigate to the 'Certificates & secrets' section of the app and click 'New client secret'. Fill out the details and copy the client secret:

The only remaining task is to create a connector in Dime.Scheduler. In the Authentication section of the form, fill out the following fields:

• Authentication type: MS Entra ID
• Tenant ID: this is the tenant id in Azure. In the app registration, you'll find this under the field Directory (tenant) ID.
• Client ID: the client id of the app registration that you just created
• Client Secret: the client secret of the app registration that you just created

Save the record and you have successfully set up the connector for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central using OAuth2.

Source App

The source app must be the same as the value that's specified in the Dime.Scheduler FastTrack Wizard in Business Central. The source app identifies which back-office system resources, tasks and appointments belong to.