Overview
How it works
Your orders and resources already live in Business Central. What Business Central does not give you is a planning surface: a place to see who is available, drag work onto a timeline, and commit to a schedule. That is the gap the back office connectorConnectorAn integration that links Dime.Scheduler to a back-office system, routing data in and scheduling decisions back out. closes.
The connector keeps Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dime.Scheduler in sync, both ways. Business Central stays the system of record and feeds the data (resourcesResourceAn entity that can carry out work - a person, vehicle, tool, or room - that you schedule on the planning board., orders); Dime.Scheduler does the planning and sends the resulting appointmentsAppointmentA task scheduled to a resource for a specific period - the scheduled instance you see on the planning board. straight back to Business Central. The planner never re-keys an order, and Business Central never falls out of step with what was actually scheduled.
The connector keeps both systems in sync continuously, both ways: Business Central feeds the data, Dime.Scheduler returns the schedule.
Installation
Once your Dime.Scheduler instance is up and running, four pieces have to meet: the extension inside Business Central, the link from BC to DS, the link back from DS to BC, and (optionally) the security and background processing that make the connection production-ready. Work through them in order:
- Install the extension in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Connect BC to DS by running the FastTrack Wizard in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Connect DS to BC by adding a connector in the multi-back-office setup in Dime.Scheduler that points to the desired BC instance.
The last two steps are optional, but skip them and you are running without authentication and pushing data synchronously. For anything beyond a quick trial, configure both:
- Configure security in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Configure the Job Queue in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
The result is the following workflow:
Install the extension
Install the Dime.Scheduler extension in Business Central - from AppSource for cloud, or the extension package on-premises.
Modules
Dime.Scheduler taps into many sources in Business Central rather than forcing your data through one narrow pipe. The extension is versatile and extensive without compromising on usability, and it builds on standard Business Central solutions wherever possible. That keeps the connector lightweight and extensible, and means it does not break existing functionality you already rely on.
Each module covers one corner of Business Central you can plan from. Click a card to learn how that module maps into Dime.Scheduler and to start planning:
Service orders
Jobs
Assembly orders
Production orders
Resources
Work centers
Machine centers
Sales orders
Absences
Quick start
The fastest way to see the two-way connection for yourself is to run Business Central locally. The Docker quickstart guide walks you through running Business Central in a Docker container and establishing a two-way connection with Dime.Scheduler, so you can watch data move both ways before touching a real environment.