How to download Dynamics CRM Online data

One of the challenges with Dynamics CRM Online, and the cloud in general, is integrating cloud data with all your internal touch points and requirements.

If you want to do some detailed analysis of your account, contact or any entity data from Dynamics CRM, exporting a complete entity can take time and be laborious. Some companies like to have a 'backup' in case of extended outages.

Recently a client asked if he could download his 925000 row account table!

Step 1: Download and Install the Trial

Download and install the trial (you can currently do this using the trial edition up to 10k rows without registering!)

Step 2: Open DS3 Developer and connect to Dynamics CRM Online

Click the green 'Connect Data Source' on the left. Select the Dynamics CRM provider.

Enter in Dynamics CRM Online Details:

• Authentication: Federated
• URL: https://crm4.dynamics.com
• Pick your organisation then the entity name.

Step 3: Select the columns we want to download

We must tell DS3 which columns we want to extract from the entity. The more columns we include, the more data that has to be downloaded which is therefore slower (Dynamics CRM will bring down about 1000 records per second). If you want ALL of the available columns, check the tick beside the 'Columns' item in the columns tree view on the left.

Step 4: Use DS3 to create a CSV file for you.

In this step we use DS3 to create a CSV file with the same shape (columns) as your source entity. Click tools on the menu bar, then Select the ‘Create CSV File’. Enter in the destination of the CSV file. This creates a new CSV file and points the destination of the download to it.

Step 5: Compare and download the data

DS3 is more than just a download tool and is designed to synchronise two systems. In this case the CSV file is empty but we still have to compare it to the online entity. For performance you can change the Page Size in the CRM settings to be 5000 (the max permitted).

1. Compare. Click the Compare A -> B so that DS3 can determine what to add to the CSV File. DS3 will now download all of the data form the Dynamics Online Entity.
2. Synchronise. DS3 will prepare the synchronisation and present you with the 'Synchronise Data' Dialog.
3. Start. Click the start button and DS3 will now write the data to the CSV files.

When it has finished synchronizinga, all of the data will be written to the csv file. All your records will now be in the CSV files, for some more interesting downloads you can download to a SQL Table, an XML File , an XML Dataset, an Excel Sheet etc.

This can be automated now using the DS3's Server component to just incrementally download the changes.