Introduction

One of the main strengths of the Dynamics 365 platform is its capability to easily integrate with other systems. Integration is an appealing feature that makes the platform a true enterprise contender. Most Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365 implementations I have worked on in the public sector require a degree of integration with another system. Portals, batch processing, and data synchronization are some of the typical integration examples.

With integration comes challenges. Some systems are only available on-premise, whereas others are exposed to the public but have strict security restrictions.

In this chapter we will look at a few design patterns that address different scenarios. We will target Dynamics 365 online however, most patterns are also applicable to Dynamics 365 on-premise or IFD instances.

We will start with the client/server pattern where a fat client application (.NET or Java) connects to Dynamics 365 as its backend, as depicted in the following diagram. The arrows...