Virtual Entities

Virtual Entities is a feature in the Power Platform which makes it possible to display data from other systems in our model-driven apps without having the data stored in the Microsoft Dataverse.

The concept of Virtual Entities consists of a Virtual Entity, a Data Source and a Data Provider. Either you can use one of the two built-in data providers (an OData v4 provider or an Azure Cosmos DB provider), or you can develop a Custom Data Provider if your source requires that.

History

The July 2017 update for Dynamics 365 (online) introduced Virtual Entities. The upcoming Release Waves after that did not bring any news whithin this area, but during a session at eXtreme 365 Matt Barbour said "Virtual Entities are not dead". In the 2020 Release Wave 1 plan it was presented that Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations entities will be available in the Common Data Service as Virtual Entities. In July 2020 at Microsoft Inspire Vitural Entities was on the map again when it was included in Charles Lamanna's session Build agile business processes with the Power Platform – Focus on CDS, Power Apps, Power Automate + RPA and it was included in the Roadmap for Key Capabilities for 2020/2021.

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Microsoft Resources

• Finance and Operations entities in Common Data Service as Virtual Entitites in the 2020 Release Wave 1 Plan
• Get started with Virtual Entities Virtual Entities in the CDS section under Power Platform
• Create and edit Virtual Entities Take a look at the On-Premises documentation to get a better understanding for the overall process
• Virtual Entities Blog Post from Microsoft 8th of September 2017
• Microsoft Power Platform integration with Finance and Operations

Community Resources

Articles

• Direct Query SQL Virtual Entities Article describing his SQL Virtual Entity Data Provider, by Michael Ochs
• CDS Virtual Entities with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations by Aurélien Clere
• Virtual Entities - Series of 4 Articles by Carina Claesson
• Virtual Entities - Series of 3 Articles by Ivan Ficko
• Creating a Custom Virtual Entity Data Provider by Jason Lattimer
• Virtual Entities work-arounds by Ahmed Elsawalhy
• Dynamics 365 working with the Virtual Entities by Alex Shlega
• Virtual Entity : Chapter 1 – Definition and Usage by Imran 2019-09-08
• Virtual Entity : Chapter 2 – Create a Custom Data Provider for a Virtual Entity by Imran 2019-09-08
• Virtual Entity : Chapter 3 – Translating an advanced find query to a query understood by the Data Source by Imran 2019-09-08
• Virtual Entity : Chapter 4 – Pulling API Endpoint Settings from Data Source Entity by Imran 2019-09-08
• Virtual Entities Revisited: using embedded canvas app for updates by Alex Shlega 2020-12-06
• Virtual entities revisited: setting up a virtual entity by Alex Shlega 2020-12-06
• Virtual entity revisited – let’s see how far we can push them by Alex Shlega 2020-12-05
• Dynamics Virtual Entities – ODATA V4 Data Source – Using Request Parameters by Simaranjit Bhalla 2018-08-19
• Using Virtual Entities to query metadata by Natraj Yegnaraman
• Virtual Entities for tracking recently used items by Natraj Yegnaraman

Videos

• French HowTo #9 - Dynamics365 F&O CDS Virtual Entities in Frensh, by Aurélien Clere

Custom Data Provider Samples

• SQL Virtual Entity Data Provider by Michael Ochs
• Custom Data Provider for the SpaceX Rocket Launch API by Carina Claesson
• D365 Custom Data Provider by Jason Lattimer
• Custom Data Provider by Imran