Dual Write Overview

A. What is Dual Write?

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, seamless data flow between applications is key to driving efficiency and collaboration across departments. Enter Dual-write, a groundbreaking, out-of-the-box infrastructure designed to bridge the gap between customer engagement apps and finance and operations apps, enabling near-real-time interaction.

Imagine a world where information about customers, products, employees, and operations moves fluidly across your systems. With Dual-write, this vision becomes a reality, empowering every department in your organization to make informed decisions and work more cohesively.

At its core, Dual-write offers a tightly coupled, bidirectional integration between finance and operations apps and Microsoft Dataverse. Changes made in finance and operations apps are instantly reflected in Dataverse, and vice versa. This automated synchronization eliminates silos and ensures that data updates happen in real-time, delivering a truly unified user experience across platforms.

For businesses aiming to streamline processes and foster collaboration, Dual-write is more than just a feature—it's a transformative tool that simplifies operations and drives smarter, faster decisions.

Dual-write has two aspects: an infrastructure aspect and an application aspect.

Infrastructure:

These features combine to provide a powerful, flexible, and reliable integration solution for enhanced business operations which are as follows - 

Synchronous and Bidirectional Data Flow: Ensure consistent and real-time data synchronization between connected applications, eliminating silos.

Flexible Synchronization Modes: Take advantage of play, pause, and catchup options to maintain system stability during online, offline, or asynchronous operations.

Initial Data Synchronization: Easily synchronize existing data between applications to establish a solid foundation for integrated workflows.

Centralized Logs for Data Admins: Access a consolidated view of activity and error logs, streamlining monitoring and troubleshooting processes.

Custom Alerts and Notifications: Configure alerts, set thresholds, and subscribe to real-time notifications to stay informed and proactive.

User-Friendly Filtering and Transformation Tools: An intuitive interface makes it easy to apply filters and transformations for precise data management.

Table Dependency and Relationship Management: Set and view table dependencies and relationships to ensure a clear and organized data structure.

Extensibility for Customization: Adapt and extend functionality for both standard and custom tables and maps to meet unique business needs.

Reliable Application Lifecycle Management: Dependable lifecycle management ensures smooth updates and consistent performance over time.

Pre-Configured Onboarding Experience: New customers can quickly get started with a seamless, out-of-the-box setup process.

Application:

The following features empower businesses to deliver a seamless, integrated experience across various operations and touchpoints between customer engagement apps and finance and operations apps:

Integrated Customer Master Data: Centralize customer information for seamless access and management across systems.

Customer Loyalty and Rewards Integration: Effortlessly manage customer loyalty cards and reward points for a better engagement experience.

Unified Product Mastering: Streamline product data management for consistent and accurate product information.

Organization Hierarchy Awareness: Gain insights into your organization’s structure to support efficient decision-making and operations.

Integrated Vendor Master Data: Maintain a unified view of vendor information to streamline procurement and supplier management.

Access to Finance and Tax Data: Seamlessly retrieve finance and tax reference data to ensure compliance and accurate financial transactions.

On-Demand Pricing Engine: Leverage a real-time pricing engine for precise and dynamic pricing decisions.

End-to-End Prospect-to-Cash Integration: Streamline the customer journey, from lead management to order fulfilment and invoicing.

Field Service for In-House and Customer Assets: Enable field agents to efficiently manage both internal assets and customer-owned assets.

Integrated Procure-to-Pay Workflow: Simplify procurement and payment processes with a fully connected procure-to-pay experience.

Consolidated Customer Activities and Notes: Keep all customer-related activities, notes, and document interactions in one unified system.

Inventory Availability Insights: Quickly check on-hand inventory details to support efficient order fulfilment and planning.

Project-to-Cash Lifecycle Support: Manage the entire project lifecycle, from initial setup to revenue recognition, with ease.

Party-Based Address and Role Management: Handle multiple addresses and roles for entities using a robust party concept for enhanced flexibility.

B. Why Dual-write is a must-have for Microsoft Dynamics 365

Dual-write serves as a powerful data integration framework that connects Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications, allowing diverse business solutions to operate seamlessly together. Here's why Dual-write is transforming the Dynamics 365 ecosystem:

Seamless, Near-Real-Time Integration: Dual-write delivers tightly coupled, bidirectional synchronization between finance and operations apps and customer engagement apps. This makes Microsoft Dynamics 365 the ultimate all-in-one platform for business solutions. Organizations currently using Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management alongside non-Microsoft CRM solutions are increasingly migrating to Dynamics 365 for its superior dual-write capabilities.

Automatic Data Flow to Dataverse: Information related to customers, products, operations, projects, and IoT devices flows effortlessly into Dataverse through dual-write. This seamless connection is particularly advantageous for businesses looking to expand their capabilities using the Power Platform.

Low-Code/No-Code Extensibility: Following the no-code/low-code approach, dual-write requires minimal engineering effort to customize. Extend standard table-to-table mappings or create custom maps with ease, making it accessible for teams with varying technical expertise.

Online and Offline Mode Support: Dual-write operates efficiently in both online and offline modes, offering unmatched flexibility. Microsoft stands out as the only provider delivering dual-write support for both operational scenarios, ensuring uninterrupted functionality.

With these benefits, dual-write empowers businesses to achieve seamless integration, streamlined workflows, and the flexibility to scale across Dynamics 365 applications.

Unlocking Seamless Integration with Dual-Write

Dual-write automates the data exchange between finance and operations apps and customer engagement apps, creating a unified system for seamless collaboration. This integration relies on two AppSource solutions installed on Dataverse. These solutions expand the table schema, plugins, and workflows within Dataverse, enabling it to handle ERP-scale data efficiently. To ensure a successful implementation, developers and architects of customer engagement apps must familiarize themselves with these changes and collaborate closely with their finance and operations counterparts.

Schema Enhancements for Dataverse: To align Dataverse with finance and operations apps, dual-write introduces significant schema changes. Understanding these modifications upfront can help avoid unnecessary design and development rework later.

New Concepts: Company and Party: When the dual-write AppSource package is installed, Dataverse incorporates new concepts such as company and party. These additions enable applications like Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Field Service to integrate seamlessly with finance and operations apps, improving overall data flow and functionality.

Unified Activities and Notes: Activities and notes are enhanced to serve both C1s (system users) and C2s (customers), fostering consistency and better engagement across platforms.

Enhanced Currency Data Handling: To prevent data loss during currency transactions, dual-write allows the currency data type in customer engagement apps to support up to 10 decimal places. Existing rows are auto-translated to this extended state at the metadata layer, converting currency values from money to decimal data types. This feature is opt-in, meaning organizations requiring no more than four decimal places can skip activation. For detailed guidance, see Currency Data-Type Migration for Dual-Write.

Date Effectivity Support: Dual-write introduces date effectivity to Dataverse, enabling tables to manage past, present, and future data within the same structure. see Date effectivity.

Product Unit Conversions: Support for unit conversions is extended to products, quotes, orders, and invoices, ensuring accurate and flexible handling of product data across processes. see Unit conversions.

With these features, dual-write transforms Dataverse into a robust foundation for seamless integration, ensuring a consistent and scalable experience across Dynamics 365 applications.

Thank you for your time, in the next blog we can take a look at how configure dual-write between Finance and operations and customer engagement apps.