Create companies and set up synchronization
DYCE Time Tracking and DYCE Project & Resource Planning use companies and environments. For each company in Business Central, a company can be created in the DYCE Connect Platform. The users can freely switch between the companies as long as they are set up in the chosen company.
Create new companies
New companies for DYCE Connect are created from Business Central. One company in DYCE Connect corresponds to one company in Business Central. To create a new company and connect it to one in Business Central, the DYCE Synchronization Setup Wizard must be called from Business Central. The wizard performs the onboarding and hereby all necessary steps and prepares the company in DYCE Connect. It can be accessed via the DYCE Setup Synchronization page or by the search (Alt+Q). In this process, the Enterprise application DYCE (with the application ID 5ac2d7d3-ff4d-4a8a-a1ff-204580a4696e) is added in Microsoft Entra.
The user who will be running the wizard will need to have the appropriate permissions and roles. Specifically, they will need a Business Central license, sufficient user permissions, and the Application Administrator role (in Microsoft Entra).
The user who created the new environment in DYCE Connect is automatically set up as a user. Additional users must then be added manually and assigned the appropriate roles.
Once the wizard has been run and the DYCE Connect environment is ready, two things should be done. First, synchronization should be turned on (set Automatic Synchronisation enabled to YES) and the corresponding entries in the job queue should be checked. It must be verified that the status of the DYCE Sync Task (70921505) and DYCE Task Watchdog (70921489) entries is set to Ready. Please check the Earliest Start Date/Time, as well. Second, a Full Sync is always to be carried out to synchronize the existing data from Business Central to DYCE Connect. The continuous synchronization process will start shortly after the creation of the company is finished.
A Full Sync can either be initiated manually in the DYCE Synchronization Setup page or at the end of the onboarding wizard.
Full Sync
A Full Sync sends every synchronized record from Business Central to DYCE Connect and reconciles the two systems, so that DYCE Connect reflects the current state of Business Central. It runs at the end of the onboarding wizard and can be started again at any time from the DYCE Synchronization Setup page, for example when the data differs between the two systems.
During a Full Sync, Business Central re-sends every synchronized record. DYCE Connect matches these against its own data and reconciles the two systems: records that still exist in Business Central are updated, records that Business Central no longer has (for example a project, resource or customer that was deleted there) are removed from DYCE Connect, and data that both systems maintain (such as time recordings and work orders) is kept and re-sent to Business Central.
In practice, a Full Sync cleans up and re-sends the following data:
- Updated in DYCE Connect, or removed when no longer present in Business Central: projects, project tasks and project planning lines, resources, customers, calendars, skills, and Time & Travel models.
- Re-sent to Business Central: time recordings, work orders (with their lines, events and statuses), absences, billing dispositions, and supporting lists such as areas, locations, sprints and sub-types.
In general, users may keep booking time recordings and creating work orders while a Full Sync is running, and records created or changed during the run are preserved. Because a Full Sync also reconciles master data that no longer exists in Business Central, it is best run during periods of low activity: an entry created against data that is being removed in the same run (for example a project, resource or customer deleted in Business Central) may afterwards be incomplete and need to be reviewed.
Synchronization setup
In the DYCE Synchronization Setup page in Business Central, the synchronization setup can be edited and a Full Sync can be triggered. In the page, the interval between sessions and the number of queries per session can be edited. If Sync Task enabled is changed to NO, the execution of the synchronization via the Job Queue (codeunit 70921505) will also be stopped.
If automatic synchronization is enabled, the synchronization is executed in the background via the Job Queue. Three job queue entries are relevant for the synchronization:
- DYCE Sync Task (Codeunit 70921505): This task is responsible for sending and receiving data from DYCE Connect. It restarts itself and runs continuously, waiting for new messages to process.
- DYCE Task Watchdog (Codeunit 70921489): The watchdog checks whether the synchronization task is running and reactivates it if this is not the case.
- DYCE Purge Log (Codeunit 70921482): This task cleans up the processed incoming and outgoing messages that are older than 30 days. Unprocessed messages or messages that are in error state are not deleted.
In the Unprocessed outgoing Messages field, it is possible to see how much data has not yet been sent to DYCE Connect. As soon as a record is created in Business Central, it is displayed in this field until it has been sent. If the synchronization is complete, the data will be marked as processed successfully and not be shown anymore.
The state that data is not sent at all should not occur. It is an indication that synchronization is not enabled or a problem has occurred in the Job Queue.
In the Unprocessed incoming Messages field, you can see how much data was received from DYCE Connect which could not be processed correctly. Clicking on the number will open the affected records. Unprocessed messages can be corrected and processed again.
If received data is reprocessed, the order in which the record was updated must be kept. If the records are processed in a different order than they were received the content of the data may be changed. The Time Stamp can be used to determine the order, in which the messages where received. The Create operation must be carried out before an Update. Delete should always be the last operation to be performed.
If the data differs between DYCE Connect and Business Central, the Full Sync action can be used to synchronize the data.
A complete list of log entries can be accessed in the Logs menu group. In the Statistics info tab you can see when the last heartbeat was sent and received.
In the administration area, the unprocessed records of the DYCE Connect Platform and Business Central can be viewed and edited.
There is more than one way to accidentally interrupt synchronization. These must be avoided.
- Creating, deleting or modifying data with configuration packages
Non-validated data is potentially not synchronized, because it skips all validation logic. The DYCE Connect Platform uses the System Id as a reference between records. The System Id is not imported in Business Central, but is newly created. E.g. Importing time recording with the Time & Travel Model line Id will fail, if the Ids do not match the ones in the Time & Travel Model. - Delete a Business Central Company (with a DYCE Connect environment), create a new one with the same name and run the Onboarding wizard.
The new Business Central Company will reconnect to the existing DYCE Connect environment. - Retry processing Not processed Messages in the wrong order
For example, if a Time Recordings is changed twice in Time Tracking and not processed automatically in Business Central, the user can trigger the processing again. If the second update is processed by the user before the first, the Time Recordings will be overwritten with an old state.