One of the biggest enhancements in Dynamics 365 for Operations (or should I call it as Dynamics 365 for Financials and Operations?) is the out of the box integration with the leading exchange rate provider OANDA. To be honest, I got this requirement way back in 2012 when we were doing a multi country roll out for an Insurance and Medical services provider enterprise. At that time, Dynamics AX 2012 had introduced the exchange rate integration just then and personally I was hesitant to roll that out. Cut the scene to this day and I find it very impressive that Microsoft made a big leap forward to roll this out as part of the package itself.

So how do we get started with using the OANDA exchange rates? Let me walk through those here! Remember that this is only for testing purposes that I’m walking through the steps and actual integration may require additional steps. Perpetual integration with OANDA would require a subscription and should be purchased by the customer.

1.  Setup a developer/test account with OANDA here – > https://www.oanda.com/fx-for-business/free-trial . It is a fairly simple process all you need is a valid email address (preferably use a corporate one). Just the below form as you see. This trial is valid for 30 days.
2. After you get the registration done, you’d get an email as below with an API key/code.
3. You can make some adjustments to the configurations if you click on the ‘Test Drive’ link.
4. You can also see the data/exchange rates generated below if you click on the “Send request” button.

Now to the fun part in Dynamics 365.

1. Navigate to General Ledger -> Currency -> Configure exchange rate providers, click on “New” and select “Foreign Exchange Rates Powered”. You’d have 2 other providers, Central Bank of Europe and Central Bank of the Russian Federation as options.
2. Enter the API key that you received in the email from OANDA.
3. Now run the exchange rate import process from General Ledger -> Currencies -> Import currency exchange rates.  You can choose to download the data to  the exchange rate type that you require and some additional parameters of whether you’d want to import for that day or for a date range.
4. You can set to Run in the background or just run for once.
5. I just chose to run it for once and after the process is complete, you can see the exchange rates for 3rd July being imported into the “Default” exchange rate type. 

This is a pretty easy way to use the out of the box integration with OANDA. Stay tuned to my blog as I would touch upon technical implementation of other exchange rate providers.