Connect apps establish a point-to-point connection between Dynamics 365 Business Central and a 3rd party solution or service and is typically created using standard REST API to interchange data.
For most of IT professionals (including Consultants) without Developer/Technical skills, this "dense" language is the first blocker to stop to learn more about using APIs in Business Central.
This post will describe some Tips & Tricks to start your journey to use API to integrate with Business Central SaaS.
Pre-Requirements:
1. Business Central SaaS tenant ready
2. Access to Business Central SaaS tenant as User
3. Postman tool installed (or use have an account to use Postman online)
Step 1 - Enable API for Business Central
If you search online by this topic, you will find this post: Enabling the APIs for Dynamics 365 Business Central - > https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/api-reference/v2.0/enabling-apis-for-dynamics-nav.
But this post is only applies to Business Central On-Premises. So if you are starting your journey with Business Central SaaS, you can ignore this first step. After having a Business Central tenant and per default and out-of-box the API usage is enabled and ready to be used.
Step 2 - Configure your user to connect to Business Central externally
If you search online by this topic, you will find this post: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/webservices/web-services-authentication.
There are several options to authenticate externally but even if it is announced to be deprecated, I would propose to start with Basic Authentication. I will publish another post to detail the authentication using OAuth (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/webservices/authenticate-web-services-using-oauth)
For now, just follow these steps in order to generate a Web Service Access Key assigned to the user to be used to connect externally.
Search Users in Business Central, and then open the user account that you want to edit.
In the Web Service Access section, select the Web Service Access Key field (ellipsis button).
In the Set the Web Service Access Key window, if you do not want the key to expire, select the Key Never Expires check box. If you want the key to expire, set the Key Expiration Date field to the date.
Choose the OK button. The access key will be automatically generated. If you're signed in as the user that you modified, the key appears in the Web Service Access Key field. Otherwise, the key is masked so only asterisks (*) are shown.
For external Basic Authentication the two critical fields are: User Name and Web Service Access Key. It's User Name and not Authentication Email.
Step 3 - Identify Endpoint [BC Tenant_ID]
In order to connect externally, it is required to identify the [Tenant_ID] before starting to use a simple GET API example.
To identify the [Tenant_ID], login in Business Central SaaS and copy and paste the following address:
More detailed information here -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/api-reference/v2.0/endpoints-apis-for-dynamics
Step 4 - Identify the standard API to be used
Out-of-box Business Central has some dozens of APIs. The list can be found here -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/api-reference/v2.0/
Step 5 - Use Postman to connect externally to Business Central
After login in Postman, create a Workspace for your tenant and a Collection.
As an example, the first instruction will allow to get all the companies.
Create a new Item (GET Companies for example)
Populate the syntax get all companies (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/api-reference/v2.0/api/dynamics_company_get for example)
Change the type for Basic Auth (as detailed in Step 2)
Populate User Name and Password. The Password is the Web Service Key generated automatically in Step 2. Use Copy and Paste.
Just click Send button.
And that's it: At bottom, you will see the list of the companies (Body tab).
Try yourself and stay tuned for the next posts.
Next posts will describe other BC standard APIs and also other available properties like CREATE, UPDATE and DELETE. All no-Code.