Sunday, October 8, 2017

How to get the field type/size and mandatory fields out of data management import/export project

Whenever we do data migration tasks, there always a need to know the field type/size out of the data entities that will be used, and also to identify which fields are the mandatory ones. Unfortunately in Dynamics 365 for Operation, there is no easy way to get this information from the data management workspace.

I found out that there are "legacy" DMF forms from AX2012 that were upgraded to Dynamics 365 for Operation, however they are not exposed through menus or buttons. These particular forms contain the entity "attributes" and here are the steps to access the forms:

  1. Open D365O and in the url, replace the mi value to DMFDefinitionGroup
    Usually when you first open D365O, the url will be like
    https://<axurl>/?cmp=USMF&mi=DefaultDashboard
    This needs to be changed into
    https://<axurl>/?cmp=USMF&mi=DMFDefinitionGroup
  2. It will then show a form where you can select the import/export project (or back in AX2012 it was called DMF definition group). Select the record and click the "Entities" button
  3. Highlight one of the data entities in the project, and click the "Entity attributes" button
  4. You will then see a form that displays all the entity fields, and shows the field type and size, as well indicate which fields are mandatory