Skip to main content

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 following pieces of information:

  • Identifier of the back-office system (the 'Source App')
  • Turn on/off the connector
  • URL
  • Login and password
  • Name (optional)
  • Description (optional)

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

Web service URL​

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://{yoururltobc}/WS/Page/Appointment. This value goes inside the 'Web Service URL' field in the connector entry.

Credentials​

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises​

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

  • This guide walks you through the process of obtaining a web service access key.
  • The traditional way is to use the user name and password of the service account that can access BC.

Dime.Scheduler supports two authentication protocols to establish a connection with BC:

  • Basic authentication
  • Windows (NTLM/Kerberos)

By default, Windows auth is used. To explicitly specify the authentication type, prepend a prefix to the login field value:

  • Use basic= to authenticate with Basic authentication.
  • Use ntlm= to authenticate with NTLM.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central online​

As of BC20, the OAuth2 authorization protocol must be used for SOAP and OData web services. To establish a connection with Dime.Scheduler, please follow the guidelines as instructed below. The official documentation provides additional information.

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.
  • Connector setup.

Create a Microsoft Entra ID application for authentication to Business Central​

  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: API permissions

Set up the registered application in Business Central​

After you create the application registration, the next task is to configure the Business Central tenant 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, 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. In the User Groups section, add D365 Basic ISV to the relevant company.
  4. In the User Permission Sets section, add the following permission sets:
    • D365 Basic ISV
    • Dime.Scheduler
    • Local
    • Optionally: any required permission set to access your custom objects

Setting up the connector​

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:

Client secret

The only remaining task is to create a connector in Dime.Scheduler for the BC SaaS/Online back office type.

  • In the login field, use the Directory (tenant) ID.
  • In the password field, take the following string and replace CLIENTID and CLIENTSECRET with the corresponding values from the app registration: client_id=CLIENTID&client_secret=CLIENTSECRET

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

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.

Send appointments​

When disabled, Dime.Scheduler will not send the planned appointments back to Business Central for this connector.

Name and description​

These are for informational purposes only, and might prove helpful in the diagnostic process.