Azure Functions for Business Central Integration

Azure Business Central Integration C#
January 5, 2026
3 min read
By Maksymilian Meller

Table of Contents

This is a list of all the sections in this post. Click on any of them to jump to that section.

The Integration Challenge

Modern businesses rarely rely on a single application. Your ERP system needs to communicate with e-commerce platforms, CRM tools, payment gateways, and more. Business Central provides robust APIs, but connecting them directly to every external service quickly becomes unmanageable.

Azure Functions offer an elegant solution: a serverless compute layer that acts as middleware between Business Central and the outside world.

Why Azure Functions?

There are several reasons why Azure Functions are a great fit for Business Central integrations:

  • Serverless — no infrastructure to manage, you only pay for what you use
  • Event-driven — trigger functions from HTTP requests, timers, queues, or webhooks
  • Native Azure AD integration — seamless authentication with Business Central APIs
  • Scalable — automatically handles load spikes without configuration
  • Multiple languages — write in C#, JavaScript, Python, or PowerShell

Architecture Overview

A typical integration pattern looks like this:

  1. An external system sends a webhook or event
  2. Azure Function receives the trigger and processes the payload
  3. The function authenticates with Business Central using OAuth 2.0
  4. Data is transformed and pushed to or pulled from BC via OData or API pages
  5. Results are returned or forwarded to the next service

This decoupled architecture means changes in one system don’t break others.

Setting Up Your First Integration Function

Let’s build a C# Azure Function that creates a Sales Order in Business Central when triggered by an HTTP request.

First, create a new Azure Functions project:

func init BCIntegration --dotnet
cd BCIntegration
func new --name CreateSalesOrder --template "HTTP trigger"

Then configure your local.settings.json with Business Central credentials:

{
  "Values": {
    "BC_TENANT_ID": "your-tenant-id",
    "BC_CLIENT_ID": "your-client-id",
    "BC_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-client-secret",
    "BC_ENVIRONMENT": "production",
    "BC_COMPANY_ID": "your-company-id"
  }
}

Authentication with Business Central

Use the Microsoft Identity Client library to obtain an access token:

var app = ConfidentialClientApplicationBuilder
    .Create(clientId)
    .WithClientSecret(clientSecret)
    .WithAuthority($"https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenantId}")
    .Build();
 
var result = await app.AcquireTokenForClient(
    new[] { "https://api.businesscentral.dynamics.com/.default" })
    .ExecuteAsync();

With this token, you can make authenticated requests to the Business Central API.

Error Handling and Retry Logic

Production integrations must handle failures gracefully. Consider these practices:

  • Use Azure Service Bus as a message queue for reliable delivery
  • Implement exponential backoff when BC returns 429 (Too Many Requests)
  • Log to Application Insights for monitoring and alerting
  • Use Durable Functions for long-running orchestrations

Key Takeaways

  • Azure Functions provide a scalable, cost-effective middleware layer for BC integrations
  • OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow is the standard for service-to-service auth
  • Always implement retry logic and dead-letter queues for production workloads
  • Application Insights gives you full observability into your integration pipeline