Virtual Table Creation Wizard

What are virtual tables?

It is a custom table in Microsoft Dataverse that contains data from an external data source. Virtual tables can be used within the app as regular tables, but the data is from another datasource like SQL, SharePoint etc.

Earlier you had to make a connector or plug-in to integrate data from other sources. But now this process is much simpler and easier with virtual tables.

How to create virtual tables?

Virtual tables must be created within a solution explorer.

You can create virtual tables within an existing solution or by creating a new solution. For this example, I am going to create a new solution in my environment.

Now that I have created a solution, the next step is to create a connection reference to the data source that you want to use for virtual tables. In my case, I have some demo data in SQL server, so I will be using the SQL connector to create a connection reference.

Before we proceed any further, Microsoft recently announced Virtual Table Creation Wizard. If you have missed the news, you can find it below.

So, I will be creating a virtual table using the wizard instead of going to the advanced setting in your environment and creating a table from the classic view.

Inside the solution, you choose + New > Table > Table from external data.

And voila! you see thew new connection wizard.

In your case, if you haven't created a connection, you can create on here or also manually configure connection reference like what I did. After which it asks you for a bit more information about the connection details.

After this we get to the data part in the wizard. Here you can manually configure tables and column names that will be used in Dataverse, or you can stick to the external database names.

I have selected the configure table option. Here you configure the table and column details. You can choose your primary field and primary key from the respective dropdowns. And you cannot modify the schema name for the primary key that you have selected

And now the last step is to review and finish the process.

And here we have it.

And in the solution, you can see two new assets, a table, and a virtual table data source. Keep in mind that you cannot delete the virtual table data source without removing its dependencies.

Now I can go ahead build apps on top of the table. You can edit the record from the virtual table from the power platform and that will be synchronized with the external database and vice versa.

What are the limitations?

1. At the moment, with wizard we can only have SQL server or SharePoint as an external data source.
2. If you want to use other data sources, then you must create virtual tables without the wizard and using the advanced settings menu.
3. On top of these two, you have the standard limitations of virtual tables.