See how easy it is to create a Power Apps canvas app that can scan a business card which then saves data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM solutions (otherwise known as CE) as a new contact and to Dynamics 365 Business Central as a new customer. The whole solution leverages Power Apps, Power Automate (formerly called Flow) and AI Builder.

Pre-requisites

• Power Apps and Power Automate License
• AI Builder License
• Dataverse (formerly Common Data Service) environment
• Business Central environment

For more information about Power Apps Licensing, click here. For more information about AI Builder Licensing, click here.

Required Role

You need the Common Data Service user role to use the business card reader. NOTE: This article does not tackle how to provision Dataverse and Business Central environments.

Power Apps Canvas App + AI Builder

• In the Power Apps maker portal, create a new app and start with a blank Canvas app:

• Insert a Business Card Reader component:

For more information about the Business Card Reader AI builder component and its Key Properties, please click here.

• Add labels and text input boxes for each key properties/fields you are interested in capturing from the business card and to be displayed on the screen. NOTE: Follow proper naming convention for the objects.
• Add a Save button.
• Make any layout changes to the screen as desired.

• On the Default property of each of the Text Inputboxes, set the value to be [FieldName] where FieldName is the name of the field you want to display on the screen.

Example: BusinessCardReader1.CompanyName

• Set the DisplayMode of each Text Inputbox to be editable so that users will have the chance (if needed) to correct the information before saving the data:

• Add the Contacts table as a data source to the canvas app. NOTE: Use Contacts – Common Data Service Current Environment.

• On the OnSelect property of the Save button, add a formula to save the information to the Contacts table in Dataverse. In this case, I am using the Patch function to save each of the Text Input box values and mapping them to the Contacts’ table field names:

• Save the canvas app.

Power Automate Flow to Save Data to Dynamics 365 Business Central

We will be using a Power Automate flow to push data from the contacts table (when a record is created as the trigger) to Dynamics 365 Business Central as a new customer.

The flow basically has 2 steps and will look like below:

• Use Common Data Service Current Environment when the Contacts table gets triggered on Create.
• Use the Business Central connector, make a connection to BC environment and select the Company Name and Customers as the table name to Create a record.
• Map the desired CDS Contact fields to the Business Central Create record action.
• Save the flow.

Now it’s time to test the Power Apps canvas app!

Scan or upload an image of a business card and press the Save button:

Check that the new contact got saved successfully in Dynamics 365 for Sales and Dynamics 365 Business Central:

Now you have a mobile app that can scan a business card and push Contact details to Dynamics 365 for Sales or Dynamics 365 Business Central. It can be any other system really by using one of the Power Platform data connectors (aka.ms/connectors) that would fit your destination.

To add these components to a solution, please see this blog when working with solutions in Power Apps.

Please contact us if you have any questions about this article or about the Power Platform.