D365 F&O Integration Best Practices, Patterns and Anti-Patterns

Scenario # 5 - High volume/availability e-Commerce pricing

High volume/availability e-Commerce pricing

  • Third party e-Commerce framework
  • Millions of customers
  • Hundred thousand products
  • Complex pricing / trade agreements

Patterns

High volume/availability e-Commerce pricing

  • Caching of price and discount data in a middle tier outside F&O
    • Variant 1: Middleware -> Example: Dynamics 365 for Commerce RCSU
    • Variant 2: Middleware -> Example: 3rd party pricing service
  • You must either duplicate the pricing logic or cache all permutations. This may be impractical if very complex.If pricing is too complex or volatile, then consider a near real-time pattern which does not block the UI.

Anti-Patterns

  • Real-time (synchronous) price lookups for all search results

  • High degree of coupling between ERP and e-commerce systems.

  • Routing of service calls to pricing service through F&O

  • Over-loading the ERP with item price OData queries. These could get throttled as well.Under load, blocking price lookups would make the e-commerce site seem slow.