A Tool To Generate Data Entity Relationship Diagram In Simplified Way In D365 FO
This blog post walks you through the process of generating ERD diagrams for data entities within Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. In order to overcome the difficulty of manually generating data model for data entities, I have created a tool for generating ERD diagrams to simplify your work. Lets understand the business scenario and why this tool is required.
Business Scenario:
Simplified Solution Inc. has asked the implementation and architect team to generate ERD diagram for D365 FO data entities to understand the data entity data model. This will serve the purpose of smoother implementation experience for reporting, integration and data migration teams.
Problem Statement:
This is a
common requirement asked by the architects and knowing that the standard ERP
product does not provide an easy way to extract this information directly from
the system, it becomes difficult and sometimes time consuming to list down all the
relationships between data entities, crucial data entity properties and field level information. Even for knowing a simple property of public collection name of
data entity (used for OData calls), a developer has to navigate through Visual
Studio to get this information thus creating more time & efforts for developer.
Solution:
To overcome
this problem statement, I have created an automated tool which not only provides script
for entity relationships diagram for data entities but it also provides some additional information which will
surely help the implementation team to get the required ERD information in an efficient manner saving both additional efforts and time. And the cherry on the top is that you can deploy this tool Tier 1, Tier 2 and onwards environment as well. Below are the list of information generated
out of this tool:
1) Data entity names with some crucial
properties like description, is public property, public collection name and so
on
2) Data entity fields with data type
and identification of primary index fields
3) Entity relationships between data
entities
Pre-requisites:
Following
are the pre-requisites to get this tool ready for action:
1) Download the deployable package from
GitHub
2) Install the deployable package in
your D365 FO environment (Detailed instructions available in GitHub for installation and uninstallation of the tool)
3) dbdiagram.io online free tool to render the
relationship schema generated from D365 FO
Execution:
It’s time
to get into action once the above pre-requisites are complete. Following are
the steps to be performed for generating the data entity relationship diagram:
1) Navigate to System Administration >> Inquiries >> 'Generate data entity relationship schema' to open generate data
entity relationship schema dialog
2) Either select the data entity
manually one by one from the lookup on 'data entity' field OR paste a list of
data entities (technical name) in 'data entity list' field (each data entity to be on
different line without any separator)
3) Click on 'Add data entities' button
to add the entity in the 'Selected data entity list' grid below
4) There are 2 options available to
generate entity relationship schema
a. Use 'Entire Data Model' to generate
schema displaying all the fields on the data entity available
b. Use 'Limited Data Model' to generate
schema with limited fields on the data entity which are pertaining to primary
index fields or are being used for relations with another entity
5) Once the required option is
selected, a schema file will be generated to be downloaded to local repository
6) Open the downloaded file in a
notepad
7) Navigate to dbdiagram.io in a separate browser and click on 'Create your diagram'
8) Delete the dummy script and copy the
contents of the notepad into the script section of dbdiagram.io
9) Voila your ERD diagram is generated
and ready for use
10) The additional properties of data
entity will be displayed once you hover over the specific name of the data
entity in the diagram
11) In worst case scenario, incase if
you see any errors on the generated script, resolve the same manually by
providing additional information / deleting problematic line in the script
section to display the ERD diagram
Conclusion:
Now you see how easy it is get the required data entity relationships diagram in D365 FO. Hope this will prove to be helpful to you in real life scenarios. It surely helped me during implementation.
Feel free to suggest any improvements / enhancement for this tool.
Please don't forget to share this blog with your friends and colleagues as well.
Happy to connect one to one on LinkedIn.
Until next time, See You!!!
👍
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