Dataverse Integration

The easiest way to connect Dataverse / Dynamics 365 with WordPress.

Getting Started

Get acquainted with the plugin, learn how to install and configure it properly and learn about its features and capabilities.

Get your Dataverse / Dynamics 365 organization ready

Dataverse Integration is a WordPress plugin that makes WordPress and Dataverse / Dynamics 365 work together. It is not a stand-alone solution.

If you don’t have a Dataverse / Dynamics 365 organization yet, you can sign up for a free trial at powerapps.microsoft.com for Dataverse or at trials.dynamics.com for Dynamics 365 trial.

Get the plugin

Enter your WordPress Admin Area and go to Plugins > Add New. Enter “Dataverse Integration” into the search box, hit Enter. Locate the plugin, click Install Now, then Activate. Alternatively, go to WordPress.org and download the latest version of the plugin and install it manually.

Get credentials

Dataverse / Dynamics 365 supports several deployment and authentication scenarios. This tutorial assumes Dataverse / Dynamics 365 Online and Server-to-Server authentication with an application user.

To create application id and client secret or certificate you need to complete the following steps:

  1. Register an app in Azure Active Directory. During the registration select Accounts in this organizational directory only as Supported account types. Stop the walkthrough after the step when the app is registered, do not add redirect URI or change platform settings. Copy Application (client) ID and set it aside.
  2. Add client secret credentials. You can use either client secret or certificate. If using the secret make sure to copy and set it aside. If using certificate, make sure you have a certificate file (.cer) and its password protected copy (.pfx).
  3. Create an application user in Dataverse by following these instructions. Make sure to assign roles to the user. Add the WordPress App User Role role. This role will be enough to manage the contact table. But to manage custom tables, create a WordPress Extended Role in which you mark all tables necessary for work. You will always be able to modify this role and add other tables.

You can use field level security to control access to specific fields. This functionality is available for the default fields on most out-of-box entities, custom fields, and custom fields on custom entities. Read the details how to start work with field level security. Add your app user into the WordPress Site Password profile. Click Users and add the application user, which you created previously. In the Field Permissions section you can manage access to different fields.

As an alternative option to not to work with Microsoft Azure through UI(steps 1, 2), you can create app and add secret through command line. This is the link with the latest version of the of the Azure CLI

You can use next commands:

  1. az login --user <myAlias@myCompany.com> --password <myPassword>
    to login to Microsoft Azure For example, az login --user myUsername@company.com --password SecretPassword@1
  2. az ad app create --display-name <appName> To create app (analogue Azure Active Directory-> App registrations -> New registration) For example, az ad app create --display-name mytestapp2
  3. az ad app credential reset --id b4d8eb36-5431-4a7a-b32c-647dbb1b568d To add client secret to this app (analogue Sertificates & Secrets -> Client secrets -> New client secret) For example, az ad app credential reset --id b4d8eb36-5431-4a7a-b32c-647dbb1b568d

If you need to delete this new application, you can use this command az ad app delete --id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 For example, az ad app delete --id b4d8eb36-5431-4a7a-b32c-647dbb1b568d

Set authentication keys

By default, Dataverse Integration use a Wordpress AUTH_KEY constant for encryption purposes. To ensure maximum security you may want to create specific authentication constants to use by the plugin:

  • ICDS_AUTH_KEY - Used to encrypt sensitive data such as application secret.
  • ICDS_FORM_AUTH_KEY - Used for safe forms processing.

These constants can be defined in your wp-config.php file, for example

define('ICDS_AUTH_KEY', 'TfsFu)- pF\"6KNx@VT,FV@*`lM;Ls(nRy0/e:h^TnJ6/Ee$-cm@o2o;6U{#;;n+R');
define('ICDS_FORM_AUTH_KEY', 'ny%:T/j@I>/sMm8Unyi{+~oS/]PQKp3ZXIXb/)iLU|V]Q7gh^e4!fmka3xz[zpgN');

To generate a suitable key you can use an online generator provided by Wordpress at https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.0/. If you generate key this way you should save this key (go to Dataverse Integration -> Status tab -> at the end of the page Advanced Settings, paste the key here, one of key - ICDS_AUTH_KEY, when you reload link and get key one more time - ICDS_FORM_AUTH_KEY).

Connect the plugin

Once you got required credentials, it’s time to connect the plugin to CRM.

Go to your WordPress Admin Area and access the Integration Dataverse menu. Switch to the Connection tab and choose the authentication method. Then follow these steps:

For OAuth 2.0 / Shared Secret authentication method

  1. Enter the Organization URL – for example, https://contoso.crm.dynamics.com
  2. Select the Deployment Type – Online
  3. Select the Authentication Method – OAuth 2.0 / Shared Secret
  4. Enter the Application ID and Client Secret (from client secret value column) which you set aside previously
  5. Check whether the credentials are OK by hitting the Verify Connection button
  6. Upon successful test, click Save settings to establish a connection to CRM

For OAuth 2.0 / Certificate authentication method

  1. Enter the Organization URL – for example, https://contoso.crm.dynamics.com
  2. Select the Authentication Method – OAuth 2.0 / Certificate
  3. Enter the Application ID and Client Secret which you set aside before
  4. Upload or manually specify the path to the .pfx certificate on your hosting server
  5. Enter the passphrase of the certificate
  6. Check whether the credentials are OK by hitting the Verify Connection button
  7. Upon successful test, click Save settings to establish a connection to CRM

Now the plugin is connected to CRM, and you can start building the integration.

Create a Contact Us form

The plugin provides a Gutenberg block, “Dataverse Plain”. It accepts Twig code and renders it as HTML at front-end. To create your first form, you can use the custom form syntax. It allows creating HTML forms and capturing submissions into your Dataverse or Dynamics 365 organization.

Custom forms allow creating new Dataverse / Dynamics 365 records, as well as updating existing records. reCAPTCHA is supported to protect your forms from spam.

{% form entity="lead" mode="create" recaptcha=true %}
<form>
    <div class="form-group">
        <label>
            First Name:
            <input class="form-control" name="firstname">
        </label>
    </div>
    <div class="form-group">
        <label>
            Last Name:
            <input class="form-control" name="lastname">
        </label>
    </div>
    <div class="form-group">
        <label>
            Email:
            <input class="form-control" name="emailaddress1">
        </label>
    </div>
    <div class="form-group">
        <recaptcha>
    </div>
    <div class="form-group">
        <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Send</button>
    </div>
</form>
{% endform %}

The {% form %} Twig tag lets you configure the form settings, such as target entity, submission mode (create or update), etc. See custom forms documentation.

Form control name attributes refer to the corresponding entity attributes, such as firstname, lastname and emailaddress1. Put the <recaptcha> placeholder where you want to put reCAPTCHA control if you enable reCAPTCHA on your form. Before you use reCAPTCHA, please configure it in plugin settings.

Install Premium Features

Additional features are available in the premium extension. Premium

Create Application Password

  1. Sign in into your WordPress site.
  2. Select a user with admin privileges (user with the role System Administrator) or create a new one for Dataverse to connect back to the site.
  3. Click Edit Profile.
  4. Type password name in New Application Password Name text box and click the Add New Application Password button. It will be application password.

Configure Dataverse Solution

  1. Download latest Dataverse solution.
  2. Sign in into https://make.powerapps.com.
  3. Select Solutions then click Import solution and import downloaded solution(from step 1) into your Dataverse / Dynamics 365 instance.
  4. Select Apps then select WordPress.
  5. In the app, from lhe left menu select WordPress Sites tab.
  6. Select + New and enter the following information:
    • Name: <your WordPress site name>.
    • URL: <your WordPress site URL>.
    • Is Default?: Yes.
    • Login: login name or email of the admin WordPress user you selected earlier.
    • Password: application password you created earlier.
  7. Save the record (at the top of the page you will see “Successfully connected to the site” message).

Install WordPress Premium Solution

  1. Sign in into WordPress as admin user.
  2. Select Dataverse in the left-hand side navigation.
  3. You should see the message about the premium plugin being available. Click Download & install link.
  4. Activate the plugin once it’s installed.