Dataflows help organizations unify data from disparate sources and prepare it for reusability. You can use dataflows to ingest data from a large and growing set of supported sources including Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Azure SQL Database, Excel, SharePoint, and more. You can then map data to standard entities in the Common Data Model, in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Ingesting data can sometimes be tedious and time consuming, especially when the schema between the source and destination is different.
A dataflow template can expedite this process by providing a predefined set of entities and field mappings to enable flow of data from your source to the destination, in the Common Data Model. A dataflow template commoditizes the movement of data which in turn reduces overall burden and cost for a business user. It provides you a head start to ingest data wherein you don’t need to worry about knowing and mapping the source and destination entities and fields – We do it for you, through dataflow templates.
This month, we are releasing a set of dataflow templates that help you unify data from popular CRM apps such as Dynamics 365 for Sales and Salesforce.
| Dataflows template | Description |
| Leads and opportunities (Dynamics 365 for Sales) | Use this template to build your sales leaderboard and get visibility over your sales pipeline. Sales managers can use the data to monitor their sales team performance including lead conversion and opportunity closure rates. Salespersons can get visibility over their top opportunities and leads. |
| Quotes, orders, invoices (Dynamics 365 for Sales) | Connect to quotes, order and invoice data in Dynamics 365 for Sales to analyze quote closure rates and product line performance. |
| Lead to cash (Dynamics 365 for Sales) | Get actionable insights by analyzing data from Dynamics 365 for Sales. Whether you are a sales executive who is looking for visibility over the sales leaderboard or your top opportunities or a sales manager who wants to review your team performance or a VP of sales looking for revenue from deals, this template helps connect to the sales data you need. |
| Accounts, leads, opportunities (Salesforce) | You store your accounts, leads and opportunities in Salesforce – No problem! Gain insights by analyzing lead conversion and opportunity closures from Salesforce. Note: Salesforce trial accounts are not supported at this time |
Creating a dataflow using the Dynamics 365 for Sales Lead to cash template
Start by creating a new dataflow and choose the Lead to cash template from the “Choose data source” screen in Power Query Online
Provide your Dynamics 365 for Sales instance that you want to connect to
Provide credentials to your Dynamics 365 for Sales instance
The ‘Edit Queries’ screen shows you the predefined entities for the Lead to cash template with your source data
By clicking on ‘Map to standard’ in top menu, you can note that the source data fields have already been mapped to the Common Data Model
Save and close your new dataflow to start the query validation process to ensure that data can be loaded
That’s it – Provide a name and save your dataflow. You just successfully created your dataflow using a dataflow template
Once you’ve created a dataflow, you can use Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service to create datasets, reports, dashboards, and apps that leverage the power of the Common Data Model to drive deep insights into your business activities.