Virtual entities are a feature that was added to Dynamics 365 with version 9. Their sole purpose is to allow the presentation of data from external sources in Dynamics 365 in a read-only manner. This feature is to be used in two main scenarios:
- Data resides in an external system – most probably a legacy system – and needs to be presented to users in Dynamics 365
- Data is highly sensitive and should not be stored in Dynamics 365, but needs to be taken into consideration in typical scenarios handled by Dynamics 365
For these situations, virtual entities are created to simplify the process of presenting this data.
In Dynamics 365, virtual entities are custom entities that appear as regular entity records to users. These records are available in all clients, and an entity behaves similarly to any other custom entity. The data is presented in a read-only manner.
To configure virtual entities, there are two steps to be completed...
