D365FO-Data Management Framework – Part1

 Data Management Framework (DMF) is a standard tool in D365FO that can be used import, export, and copy data (setup, configurations, references, master, and document data) into legal entities. This tool is purposefully designed to assist data migration in D365FO.
DMF works with data entities (i.e., conceptual abstraction and encapsulation of underlying table) to quickly migrate reference, master, and document data from external systems to D365FO.

In addition to data migration, DMF can be used to copy configuration between companies/environments (i.e., D365FO) and creating real-time service-based integration or exporting data to reporting solutions to better analyze the data.

DMF can be reached via Workspaces > Data management or System administration > Workspaces > Data management. If it is first time that you open DMF as system administration, you need to “Refresh” entity list to fetch the entities into entity list so they can be use in import/export/copy function.

Once the data entity list is refreshed, you will get the list of entities on “Data Entities”. Each entity (i.e., entity type: Entity) has a target mapping that shows the mapping of staging table to target. It means that once you want to import data in D365FO via DMF you need to have a source file with heading that is like target fields. If the source file have correct data in regards to type of fields and type of data that each field must have (plus without any duplicate), data will be imported on staging table, then it will be checked if the data that is on each field can be imported into target table (e.g. if the value is found on related table). Therefore, you have possibility to overwrite (i.e., Update) and insert record into the target table.
Note: If on staging tables fields you have a value that is not found on related table, you will get an error message while import. You can either update the staging table with correct value or update related table with the value to import the data into the target table.

Note: Fields with start on top * on “Mapping visualization” means that the field is mandatory to be filled out.
Understanding data entities and their mapping provide a overview on how to import, export, and copy data in D365FO and how to troubleshoot issues take place in DMF processes.
DMF provides several functionalities that can be applied in both implementation and supporting phased of D365FO. In order to better understand functions following picture is provided to give a comprehensive overview:

I do hope you liked this post and will help you to get overview of data entities and DMF concepts. Please don’t hesitate to send related questions or feedback via using “Leave a Reply”.
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