Dynamics 365 Business Central: linked Power Platform environment

In the last days, a new Linked Power Platform Environment option is appeared in the Administration Center of your Dynamics 365 Business Central tenant:

This new option introduces the ability to link a Business Central environment to a Power Platform environment. Linking environments will let the Business Central environment inherit settings from the linked Power Platform environment and will provide a default target environment when setting up integrations from Business Central to other Dynamics 365 and Power Platform products. This simplifies the integration process and reduces the need to specify the target environment for each integration.

More in details, this capability provides the following benefits:

• The Business Central environment will inherit settings that are enabled on the linked Power Platform environment in the Power Platform admin center, such as customer-managed encryption keys.
• The linked Power Platform environment will provide a default target environment for any integrations set up between Business Central and other Dynamics 365 and Power Platform products, such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Power Automate.

Business Central environments can only be linked to Power Platform environments that are in the same Azure geography and are of the same type (production or sandbox). Linking environments isn’t a permanent operation, meaning it’s possible to unlink and relink environments. Environment lifecycle operations, such as updating or deleting an environment, on each of the linked environments is administered separately.

Remember that it is possible to unlink the Business Central environment from the Power Platform environment from the Business Central administration center. Unlinking an environment disables any settings the Business Central environment inherits from the Power Platform environment, but does not disable any integrations set up between the two environments 

Initially, the only setting that will be inherited from a linked Power Platform environment is Customer Lockbox. With Power Platform Customer Lockbox, Microsoft provides an interface for the customers to review and approve (or reject) data access requests in the rare occasion when data access to customer data is needed. It’s used in cases where a Microsoft engineer needs to access customer data, whether in response to a customer-initiated support ticket or a problem identified by Microsoft.

In the rare occasion when Microsoft attempts to access customer data that’s stored within Power Platform (for example, Dataverse), a lockbox request is sent to the Global administrators and Power Platform administrators for approval:

The approver signs into the Power Platform admin center and approves the request. When the request is approved, the Microsoft engineer obtains the elevated permissions that were initially requested and fixes your issue. Microsoft engineers have a set amount of time – 8 hours – to fix the issue, after which, access is automatically revoked.

Customer Lockbox for Business Central is administered in the Power Platform Admin Center and requires the Business Central environment to be linked to a Power Platform environment. If the Business Central environment is linked to a Power Platform for which Lockbox is enabled, Lockbox will automatically also be enabled for the linked Business Central environment. Lockbox requests for the Business Central environment can only be approved or rejected in the Power Platform Admin Center by users with a Global Administrator or Power Platform Administrator Entra role assigned.

The Dynamics 365 Business Cenral link to a Power Platform environment can also be managed via Admin Center API by sending a POST request to the following endoint:

POST /admin/v2.21/bap/applications/{applicationFamily}/environments/{environmentName}/linkEnvironment?powerPlatformEnvironmentId={id}

where:

• applicationFamily is the family of the environment’s application (for example, “BusinessCentral”).
• environmentName is the name of the Business Central environment to link.
• id is the ID of the Power Platform environment to link the Business Central environment to.

A similar request can also be sent for unlinking the environments:

POST /admin/v2.21/bap/applications/{applicationFamily}/environments/{environmentName}/unlinkEnvironment?powerPlatformEnvironmentId={id}