Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Events with Microsoft Logic Apps

The relationship between Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and business applications is changing at an ever faster rate. The need to communicate with business processes automatically is an important part of every ERP system and has been an overall core requirement from day one. This requirement is never going to change, but how businesses implement and accomplish business process automation is changing. Process workflow automation services like Azure Logic Apps are a big component of these changes.

Business events

So what is “business events”? In a nutshell, business events is a tool that lets external components receive notifications directly from D365 Finance and Operations. The external components can then perform additional tasks in response to the triggered business event.

When one of these business operations is initialized or completed within D365 Finance and Operations, a business event is automatically executed and generates a data load. Endpoints like Azure Logic Apps, Azure Service Bus, Microsoft Power Automate, or any tool within the Microsoft Power Platform can subscribe to these business events and get the data load to run additional automated tasks within and outside D365 Finance and Operations.

Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations comes with several business events already defined. These business events can be custom or new business events can be created to suit your needs.  The overall object of business events is to communicate with external systems endpoints so additional tasks can be executed automatically. The business events catalog can be found at System Administration -> Setup -> Business events

business events dynamics 365

Integration with Microsoft Logic Apps

To demonstrate business events, we will keep this Logic App workflow simple. We will design a workflow to send email notifications whenever a purchase order is confirmed. For this purpose, a business event is available out of the box in D365 Finance and Operations.

We will create a new blank Logic App template

For the Logic App trigger, we will choose “When a Business Event occurs” in D365 Finance and Operations.

logic app trigger business event

Configure instance, category, business event and legal entity. For a Logic Apps action, choose Send an email notification.

d365 logic apps email notification

Click Save. Let’s go to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations to raise and confirm a purchase order. As soon as the purchase order confirmation is posted, the business event is triggered in D365 Finance and Operations and Azure Logic Apps is able to listen and automate the intended action of sending an email.

This workflow was a very simple business task and requirement, but we could take this a step further and automate more complex tasks.  We could easily connect to other business apps such as SharePoint, Common Data Services, Dynamics 365 for Sales, and more to automate further business tasks.

We were able to do this without writing a single line of code. That is the power of the Microsoft Power Platform. The amount of process and task automation you can do is virtually endless.

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