Setting Up a Dynamics 365 Customer Insights REST Connection Manager
The REST Connection Manager is an SSIS connection manager that can be used to establish connections and facilitate data integration with REST based APIs and services such as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, among many more.
Integration for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is enabled by the following two components:
- Dynamics 365 Customer Insights REST Source Component
- Dynamics 365 Customer Insights REST Destination Component
To add a new connection, right-click the Connection Manager area in your Visual Studio project and choose "New Connection..." from the context menu. You will be prompted the "Add SSIS Connection Manager" window. Select the "REST (KingswaySoft)" item to add a new REST Connection Manager.
The REST Connection Manager contains 2 pages of configuration:
- General
- Advanced Settings
General page
The General page allows you to specify connection properties and login credentials for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights REST service:
- Service Name
-
The REST service that will be connected to.
- API Throttle Rate
-
The API Throttling Rate will limit the number of requests that can be sent per second.
- Subscription Key
-
The Subscription Key would be available from your subscription of the instance.
- Authentication Mode
-
There are three authentication modes:
- Authorization Code
- Client Credentials
- Certificate
OAuth Authorization Code
Generate Token File
This button allows you to log in to the service endpoint and authorize your app to generate a token.
Here you can enter the Client ID and Client Secret which you would be getting from the OAuth setup on the API side. The Redirect URL would be the one that you had specified in the App settings.
- Use Default Browser to Sign In: When this option is checked the Sign In and Authorize button will open your default web browser to complete the OAuth authentication. When this option is unchecked, the Sign In and Authorize button will complete the entire OAuth authentication process inside of the toolkit.
- Sign In and Authorize: This button allows you to log in to the service endpoint and authorize your app to generate a token.
- Path To Token File
-
The path to the token file on the file system. Please note that this field supports both file system paths as well as Azure Blob Storage Shared Access Signature (SAS) URL path.
Note: The component supports Azure Blob Shared Access Signature (SAS) URL in the token file path.
- Token File Password
-
The password to the token file.
- Client Credentials
-
Tenant
The Tenant information for your instance can be specified here.
Client Id
The Client Id option allows you to specify the ID (in GUID format) of the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD or AAD) application you have created for application authentication.
Client Secret
The Client Secret option allows you to specify the client secret once you have selected or created an application in Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD).
- Certificate
-
Certificate Location
The Certificate location can be either a Store or File system.
Certificate Thumbprint
The Certificate Thumbprint option allows you to specify the thumbprint of the certificate created for the application you have created.
Path to Certificate
Provide the path to the certificate file to use for authentication. Click the ellipses button to browse their file system for the certificate. This option is available when you choose File System as Certificate Location.
NOTE: The component supports Azure Blob Shared Access Signature (SAS) URL in the certificate path.
Certificate Password
Provide the password to the certificate file. This option is available when you choose File System as the Certificate Location.
- Test Connection
-
After all the connection information has been provided, you may click the "Test Connection" button to test if the user credentials entered can connect to the selected REST service.
Advanced Settings page
- Proxy Mode
-
The Proxy Mode option allows you to specify how you want to configure the proxy server setting. There are three options available.
- No Proxy
- Auto-detect (Using system-configured proxy)
- Manual
- Proxy Server
-
Using the Proxy Server option allows you to specify the name of the proxy server for the connection.
- Port
-
The Port option allows you to specify the port number of the proxy server for the connection.
- Username (Proxy Server Authentication)
-
The Username option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user account.
- Password (Proxy Server Authentication)
-
The Password option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user's password.
Note: The Proxy Password is not included in the connection manager's ConnectionString property by default. This is by design for security reasons. However, you can include it in your ConnectionString if you want to parameterize your connection manager. The format would be ProxyPassword=myProxyPassword; (make sure you have a semicolon as the last character). It can be anywhere in the ConnectionString.
- Timeout
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The number of seconds a request should wait before timing out.
- Retry on Intermittent Errors
-
The retry on intermittent errors option determines if requests will be retried when there is an error. If this option is checked requests will be retried up to 3 times.
- Ignore Certificate Errors
-
This option can be used to ignore those SSL certificate errors when connecting to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights servers.
Warning: Enabling the "Ignore Certificate Errors" option is generally NOT recommended, particularly for production instances. Unless there is a strong reason to believe the connection is secure - such as the network communication is only happening in an internal infrastructure, this option should be unchecked for best security.