Integrate Business Central with other applications
Outbound and inbound
Business Central integrates through several channels: OData/REST APIs (API pages and API queries), SOAP web services (legacy, exposing pages and codeunits), business events and webhooks, Power Automate and Logic Apps connectors, Azure Functions, and direct HttpClient calls.
API pages: PageType = API with APIPublisher, APIGroup, APIVersion, EntityName, EntitySetName and ODataKeyFields; fields still need DataClassification. The resulting URL is:
https://api.businesscentral.dynamics.com/v2.0/{tenantId}/{environment}/api/{publisher}/{group}/{version}/{entitySet}
and a specific company is addressed with ?company={name}. Use an API query when the entity is read-only and needs joins a table cannot express.
Authentication: Microsoft Entra ID OAuth2. Register an app, grant Business Central API permissions, and use the client credentials flow for service-to-service calls or a delegated flow for user context.
Webhooks: subscribe with a notification URL that must be validated; you then receive notifications only for entities that raise business events. The payload tells you something changed - you call back to read the data.
Outbound: HttpClient with JsonObject/JsonArray; handle timeouts, retries and non-2xx status codes explicitly rather than assuming success.
Rule of thumb: memorise the API URL shape - questions frequently ask which segment is wrong or which property produces it.
Traps: an API page cannot be based on a temporary table and must expose a key; the API version is unrelated to the application version; a webhook fires only when a business event is raised, not on every table write; SOAP is not the answer for new cloud integrations.