A comprehensive, practical guide to plan, implement, customize, monitor, and troubleshoot Dual-write (Dataverse <> Finance and Operations apps) for real-time business data.

Contents

1. What is Dual-write?
2. Architecture at a Glance
3. Prerequisites & Readiness Checklist
4. Core Concepts You’ll Use Every Day
5. Step-by-Step Setup
6. Data Design & Mapping Guidance
7. Customizations & Extensions
8. Operations: Monitoring, Errors, Performance
9. Security & Compliance
10. Cutover & Migration Playbook
11. ALM: Dev/Test/Prod Strategy
12. FAQ
13. A–Z Glossary
14. Sample Runbook Snippets
15. Governance & Best Practices
16. Conclusion & Meta

What is Dual-write?

Dual-write provides near real-time, bidirectional data sync between Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) apps (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, etc., built on Microsoft Dataverse) and Finance & Operations (F&O) apps (Finance, Supply Chain Management, Project Operations for resource/non-stock scenarios). It ships with vetted templates (“maps”) that align common business entities—accounts, contacts, products, customers, vendors, orders—so front-office and back-office stay in lockstep.

Who should use it?

• Organizations running both CE and F&O that want a single source of truth without custom integrations.
• Businesses migrating in phases (e.g., CE first, F&O later) needing continuous data consistency during the transition.

Architecture at a Glance

Dual-write runs as a platform capability:

• Dataverse holds CE tables; F&O holds enterprise data (e.g., CustTable, VendTable, EcoResProduct).
• Templates (maps) define table pairings, field mappings, transforms, and filters.
• Company context (msdyn_company in Dataverse) aligns with F&O legal entities.
• Initial sync loads historical data; live sync streams ongoing changes.
• Health, error, and pause controls are available in both environments.

Prerequisites & Readiness Checklist

• Licensing: Valid licenses for the CE app(s) and F&O app(s) you’ll integrate.
• Environments: Linked CE & F&O (Dev, Test, Prod). Use LCS to associate F&O with your tenant and link to Dataverse.
• Access: Global admin or equivalent to set up links; appropriate roles in Power Platform and F&O.
• Solutions: Ensure required Dual-write solutions in Dataverse (installed during linking). Party/Global Address Book solutions are recommended when syncing addresses across systems.
• Networking: Traffic allowed to Microsoft endpoints (no custom firewalls blocking platform traffic).
• Data quality: Clean duplicates, standardize addresses, phone formats, and country/region codes before initial sync.

Core Concepts You’ll Use Every Day

Step-by-Step Setup (Dev → Test → Prod)

1. Link environments: In F&O (System administration > Setup > Microsoft Power Platform integration), link to your Dataverse environment. This installs Dual-write solutions in Dataverse if missing.
2. Enable legal entities: Select which F&O companies will sync. Ensure each has matching company records in Dataverse.
3. Review templates: Start with foundation maps—Company, Currency, Unit, Country/Region, Payment terms, Customer group/vendor group, Address roles.
4. Run initial sync for foundation maps: Validate data volumes and errors. Fix duplicates and missing references, then rerun.
5. Activate business maps: Account/Contact ↔ Customer/ContactPerson, Product ↔ Released Product, Vendors, Price lists/UoM conversions, Quotes/Orders.
6. Pilot live sync: Turn on live sync for a subset (one legal entity, one BU) and validate end-to-end (create in CE, post in F&O, round-trip updates).
7. Harden & extend: Add custom columns, value maps, and plugins where necessary. Keep transforms minimal inside templates.
8. Promote via ALM: Move the configuration and solutions through Dev → Test → Prod with proper change control and freeze windows for cutover.

Data Design & Mapping Guidance

• Party & Address model: If using synchronized addresses, adopt the party/global address book solutions so CE Accounts/Contacts align to F&O Party/Postal addresses cleanly.
• Keys & Numbers: Decide source of truth for customer and vendor numbers (F&O number sequences versus CE auto-numbers). Avoid generating competing numbers on both sides.
• Option sets & enums: Ensure CE option sets map to F&O enums (add value maps). Keep a shared reference table when necessary.
• Company scope: For company-specific data (products, prices, customers), always set msdyn_company in CE and the legal entity in F&O.
• Products: Align released product variants/attributes with CE product family/variants. If CE catalogs differ, add a cross-reference table.
• Orders: Capture sales intent in CE; financial posting remains in F&O. Use order status transitions that both systems understand.

Customizations & Extensions

You can safely extend Dual-write without breaking the core:

• Custom columns: Add to both sides, then extend the template mapping.
• Value conversions: Use value maps for simple translations (e.g., Prospect ↔ CustGroup).
• Business logic: Prefer F&O extensions for finance logic; use Dataverse plugins/Power Automate for CE workflow logic. Keep template transforms lightweight.
• Conditional sync: Template filters can limit which records/companies sync.

Operations: Monitoring, Error Handling, Performance

Where to monitor

• F&O Dual-write workspace: Health, errors, pause/resume, replays.
• Dataverse Dual-write app: Template state, map details, initial sync progress.

Common errors & quick fixes

• Duplicate key / already exists: Align keys before initial sync; use merge or remap.
• Missing reference (e.g., currency/UoM): Run foundation maps first; re-order initial sync.
• Auth/permission failures: Revalidate connections; ensure app users/roles in both environments.
• Throttling: Stagger maps, run outside business peaks, and batch initial sync in segments.

Performance tips

• Initial sync in waves (by legal entity or BU). Archive logs frequently.
• Trim columns to only what’s needed. Disable unused maps.
• Avoid heavy synchronous plugins on synced tables; switch to async where possible.

Security & Compliance

• Least privilege: Assign only required roles to service principals/app users.
• PII/GDPR: Minimize synced fields; use field-level security and attribute masking as needed.
• Audit: Turn on auditing for critical tables. Monitor failures and replay logs.
• Change control: Promote template changes via managed solutions and documented runbooks.

Cutover & Migration Playbook

1. Freeze window: Announce a read-only window in CE and/or F&O.
2. Foundation sync: Ensure currencies, units, payment terms, groups exist on both sides.
3. Historical load: Migrate customers/vendors/products first, then balances (if required).
4. Initial sync: Run for all business maps; reconcile counts and spot-check samples.
5. Turn on live sync: Start with a pilot legal entity; monitor; then roll out globally.
6. Fallback plan: Document how to pause maps, revert data changes, and replay after fixes.

ALM: Dev/Test/Prod Strategy

• Branching: Keep Dual-write solution changes in version control alongside CE/F&O extensions.
• Config as code: Document template settings, value maps, filters, and keep a change log.
• Automated checks: Pre-flight tests to validate required reference data before enabling maps.
• Smoke tests: Create Account in CE → becomes Customer in F&O; update Address in F&O → reflects in CE.

FAQ

Does Dual-write replace middleware?

For core CE↔F&O synchronization, yes. You may still use Azure Integration Services for non-Dynamics, B2B EDI, and analytics pipelines.

How “real-time” is it?

Typically seconds. It’s event-driven, not batch. Throughput depends on load, plugins, and map volume.

Can I sync custom tables?

Yes—create a custom map. Keep schemas symmetrical and plan keys and company scope.

What about multi-company?

Use msdyn_company to route records per legal entity. Create data policies to avoid cross-company contamination.

How do I handle deletes?

Decide per table. Many customers use “soft delete” or business deactivation to preserve financial audit requirements.

A–Z Glossary (Quick Reference)

• A – Account/Customer: CE Account ↔ F&O CustTable pairing.
• B – Business unit: Use for scoping pilots and security.
• C – Company context: msdyn_company links to legal entities.
• D – Dual-write workspace: Monitor, pause, replay.
• E – Enums: Map to CE option sets via value maps.
• F – Foundation maps: Company, Currency, UoM, Country/Region.
• G – Global Address Book: Party model parity with CE.
• H – Health: Template status and error trends.
• I – Initial sync: One-time historical data load.
• J – Journeys: End-to-end tests CE→F&O→CE.
• K – Keys: Choose master for numbers, avoid collisions.
• L – Live sync: Near real-time event processing.
• M – Maps: Prebuilt templates you can extend.
• N – Number sequences: Typically mastered in F&O.
• O – Orders: CE intent, F&O financials/posting.
• P – Party: Person/Organization with addresses.
• Q – Quality gates: Pre-flight checks before go-live.
• R – Replay: Fix, then replay failed records.
• S – Security: Roles, least privilege, audit.
• T – Transforms: Keep simple; push complex logic to apps.
• U – UoM: Sync units and conversions early.
• V – Vendors: CE Supplier ↔ F&O VendTable.
• W – Wave approach: Rollout per entity/company.
• X – X-functional team: CE, F&O, infra, security.
• Y – “Y” not syncing? Check references & throttling.
• Z – Zero surprises: Runbook, rollback, comms plan.

Sample Runbook Snippets

1. Pre-flight: Confirm solutions, connections, security roles, service principals, reference data counts.
2. Enable order: Foundation maps → Party/Address → Customers/Vendors → Products → Orders.
3. Smoke test: Create Account in CE with company; verify in F&O as customer. Update address in F&O; verify in CE.
4. Monitoring: Watch error rates < 0.5% and replay queue empties within SLA.
5. Fallback: Pause affected maps, fix root cause, replay, reconcile counts, resume.

Governance & Best Practices

• Start small (one legal entity, one region), then scale.
• Keep customizations minimal inside templates—move complexity to app layers.
• Use managed solutions and document every mapping change.
• Train support on error categories and replay procedures.
• Align CE & F&O release calendars; avoid conflicting changes on mapped tables.

Conclusion

Dual-write can unify your customer and financial worlds in days—not months—when you follow a disciplined rollout: prepare foundation data, pick the right master for keys, pilot with a narrow scope, then expand with strong monitoring and ALM. With the A–Z reference above, you have a ready-to-run playbook for a safe, scalable implementation.

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