Configure BCS from Office 365 to Azure PaaS SQL

In one of my earlier article we have discussed about setting up SQL in IAAS and PAAS, now let’s talk about consuming them in SharePoint Online Using BCS. This document explains the steps to configure BCS using Office 365 that can pull data from Azure PaaS SQL DB and also to configure firewall IP ranges and network possibilities.

Note: Please make sure to set an AZURE PAAS SQL before proceeding further.

Once you have AZURE SQL in place, the next is to set the secure store.

Create Secure Store Token ID

· Go to Admin site of the O365 tenant and open secure store tab

· Create a new secure store token ID with user name as SQL server username and password and SQL server password, as shown below in the image.

· Make a note of the secure store token ID.

Configure in SharePoint Designer 2013

· Create an external content type with external system as shown in the below image.

· While connecting to Azure PaaS SQL DB in the external System screen, switch to Open network. (If you’re corporate, may be your internal firewall might block the traffic)

· In the add connection wizard provide Azure SQL DB related field values along with secure store token as shown below in the image

· On click of ok button, error popup will be shown up, but this pop up is specific to your network.

· As a onetime activity add the IP specified in the popup to the firewall settings of the Azure SQL server firewall settings page. Along with that add 11 more IP ranges to the firewall settings page in Azure SQL server as shown below.

IP Ranges table

The above IP ranges may be updated based on Microsoft updates. This updates needs to be periodically checked across in this site.

· Next go back to SharePoint designer and click ok, now the connection will be stablished and DB will be created.

· Select any DB and create all operations, set parameters, filters and click finish

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· Click the save button at the top left of the designer to save the connection to external content type.

· Now navigate to the O365 admin site > BCS tab > click Manage BDC models and external content types.

· Newly created content type will be reflected there in the bcs screen. Select the content type and “set object permissions” and “set metadata store permissions” as shown below

ADD BDC Web part or External List in O365

· Create new web page and add Business Data List web Part as shown below

· Edit the web part and configure the external content type to the above created one as shown below

· BCS is configured and shown as below