Staging data imports
Most of the enterprise Dynamics implementations I have worked on require some kind of data migration from legacy systems. Dynamics 365 offers an out-of-the-box files import through its web interfaces. This conventional data import mechanism is typically criticized as laborious to set up and slow, especially if you have errors.
Recently, a point-and-click data loader web tool was introduced to enhance the old capabilities by allowing staging, error reconciliation, and batch processing. At the time of writing, the data loader tool is still in preview mode and is not recommended for production usage. It is also only available in North American Dynamics 365 instances.
In this recipe, we will create a simple data load using a contact CSV file.
Getting ready
To get the data loader working, you will need an Office 365 user as well as a Dynamics 365 user (not necessarily the same as the Office 365 one) with the correct privileges to read/write to the entities you are loading to...
