External Data Sources

About this article

This article will explain what External Data Sources are and how these can be made available in Templafy. Connecting to External Data Sources works for any of the Data Connectors and any Open Data Protocol API (OData) to fetch publicly available data sources. A Data Connector must be enabled and configured before External Data Sources can be set up and utilized in template configuration.

Sections in this article:

• What is an External Data Source?
• How to create an External Data Source in the Admin Center?
• Schemas and items inside External Data Sources
• Configuring templates with External Data Source references

Prerequisites

What is an External Data Source?

An External Data Source is a list of data hosted in an external system, e.g. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or any publicly available data source. This means that you can reference data that is hosted in external systems and use it when configuring templates and ultimately upon creating a dynamic document, which can then be populated with content coming from External Data Sources. 

Use case example

The document you generate requires live currency prices. Upon generation, Templafy queries the external system and inserts up-to-date data into the document.

How to create an External Data Source in the Admin Center?

1. Navigate to Resources section 
2. Go to the tab External Data Sources
   
   
   
   
3. Fill in the required fields: 
   • Connector: choose the Connector type from the dropdown. The Data Connector would need to be set up in advance. 
   • EntityDataSet: choose which dataset you wish to add from the external system you're connected to. The datasets displayed here are pulled in from the external system.
   • Name: give the name-column of your data source a name
   • Description: not a required field, but you can add a description if you'd like
     
     
     

Schemas and items inside External Data Sources

You can view schemas and items added to the External Data Source. However, you don't have edit access, since this data is hosted in the external system it's retrieved from. 

• View items: opens a sample of the items inside the data source (view access only)
• Edit: lets you edit the description of your data source
• Delete: lets you delete the data source, unless it's being used in template configuration

Configuring templates with External Data Source references

1. Open up Dynamics Designer
2. Go to the Forms tab
3. Add a Form field
4. Choose Data Connector (only enabled and configured Data Connectors will show)
5. Choose from the list of available External Data Sources
6. Click Save
7. Go to Element tab to create the Form binding referencing this form field. 
8. Create a Form binding, e.g {{Form.DataSource.Column}}

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