Virutal Entities

Virtual Entities helps us to get data from External network without any client-side and

server-side approaches. It helps admins and system customizers in administration and

configuration.

Virutal Entities is an existing feature in D365 V 9.0, which is now part of Common Data Service (CDS).

Virtual Entity looks in D365 or CDS to user as a regular entity but contains data that is sourced from external data system

What is Virutal Entity:

Virtual Entity is an Entity in D365 platform metadata without the associated physical

tables for entity instances created in D365 V9.0 or CDS database.

How it works:

During runtime, when an entity instance is required, its state dynamically retrieved from

the associated external data source. Each virtual entity is associated with a “virtual

entity data provider” from an associated virtual entity data system.

Pros:

• End users can be able to view the records created by Virtual Entities in fields, grids and search results.

• System Customizers can create these virtual entities without writing any code.

Limitations:

• Data retrieved by Virtual Entity is “Read-Only” (as of now).

• Only Organization-owned entities are supported.

• Field level security is not supported.

• Auditing of data is not supported.

• Once created, we cannot change a virtual entity to non-virtual entity (standard entity) and in the same way we cannot convert non-virtual entities to virtual entities once created.

Refer this document for full list of limitations.