Let's take a deeper look into the Talent integration into Finance and Operations.

Dynamics 365 for Talent Integration Deep Dive

With Talent, you can now do some advanced HR functions which is all well and good, but what can we do with that data once we have it? Integrate it to Finance and Operations, of course! First, review this to get an overview of what we'll be discussing. We'll be discussing integrating data from Talent to Finance and Operations, or F&O for short. First, let's just call out the basic diagram that MSFT provides:

Credit: Microsoft

As you can see, we have a robust set of data coming from Talent. Specifically this is coming from CDS. For folks that have been in Talent, it looks a lot like F&O. I suspect that is because it is F&O's kernel with different app deployed on top of that in an Azure service fabric cluster. I'll have to look more into how this is deployed in Azure and I'll report anything that I find. This is important to note as the data exposed in CDS is not that same data that Talent uses - it a processed copy of some sort. I have ran into a few issues with that but that's for another post. Once you create an integration project, it will look like this:

We're going to focus on the overall project that integrates data. When you create an integration project, it will create a project with 13 tasks in it that represent everything you see in the above image. We'll go through each in greater detail so you can get a better idea of what it is doing.

What Will I See In Talent If I Integrate?

Absolutely nothing at all. Talent being integrated to anything will be transparent to the user. No interaction changes need to occur for your users. They can use it as they normally would. Some important links are below:

PowerApps Portal - be sure to select the correct environment! This is where you can interact with the CDS data for Talent

PowerApps Admin Center - This is where you will create an manage your integration project(s).

What Will I See In F&O If I Integrate?

First and foremost, your data (duh - but also, hopefully!). You will see all of the items below being created, updated and deleted in F&O. Depending on how your data are structured, you may run into several issues that prevent some data being integrated. I'll be posting another article on advisory items to help prevent issues. Second, you will see some new Data Projects in Data Management.

We'll also see some job execution history records for each project.

As you can see, we have a few warnings as well as errors for some data project runs. That's fine. The errors that F&O records also get sent back to CDS. We'll review those in a later article.

Job Functions to Compensation Job Function

This will copy the CDS data entity "job functions" to F&O data entity "Compensation Job Function". 

Departments to Operating Unit

This will copy the CDS data entity "Departments" to F&O data entity "Operating Unit". Notice the map type for OperatingUnitType. The provides a default value of "department".

Job Types to Compensation Job Type

This will copy the CDS data entity "Job Types" to F&O data entity "Compensation Job Type". The map function converts enums to text equililents.

Jobs to Jobs

This will copy the CDS data entity "Jobs" to F&O data entity "Jobs". The map function for AllowUnlimitedPosititions converts true/false to yes/no.

Jobs to Job Detail

This will copy the CDS data entity "Jobs" to F&O data entity "Jobs Detail"

Position Types to Position Type

This will copy the CDS data entity "Position Types" to F&O data entity "Position Type". The map function for Classification will convert the enum values for your instance to the string equivalents for F&O. I'm not sure if the enum values for each instance will be different but I suspect that they will be similar to CRM/CE.

Job Positions to Positions

This will copy the CDS data entity "Job Positions" to F&O data entity "Positions".

Job Positions to Positions Parent Job Assignment

This will copy the CDS data entity "Job Positions" to F&O data entity "Positions".

Workers to Worker

This will copy the CDS data entity "Workers" to F&O data entity "Worker". All function map types convert enum values to text equivalents to load into F&O ( ie s123456789 to value "Female" ).

Employments to Employment

This will copy the CDS data entity "Employments" to F&O data entity "Employment". The WorkerType map converts enums to text values. If your company codes do not match between your Talent and F&O instances, you will need to modify the mapping function for "LegalEntityId". For instance, If you are integrating from Talent legaly entity of "100" to F&O legal entity of "001", you will change this function to reflect that.

Employments to Employment Detail

This will copy the CDS data entity "Employments" to F&O data entity "Employments Detail". Similar setup as Employments to Employment with enums and the LegalEntityId mapping.

Position Worker Assignment to Position Worker Assignments

This will copy the CDS data entity "Position Worker Assignment" to F&O data entity "Position Worker Assignments"

Worker Addresses to Worker Postal Address V2

This will copy the CDS data entity "Worker Addresses" to F&O data entity "WOrker Postal Address V2". All mapping functions are converting enum values to text equililents.