Migrate from GoCanvas to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

GoCanvas submissions with a company name or organization identifier map to Dynamics 365 Account records. The company-level data collected in the form (business name, address, industry, employee count if captured) populates the corresponding Account fields. If the submission is primarily a person record with no organization data, it maps to Contact instead.

Submissions where the form collects individual contact details (first name, last name, email, phone, job title) map to Dynamics 365 Contact. The Contact is linked to its parent Account if a company name was also captured in the same submission. Unmatched accounts are created as placeholder Account records.

Because GoCanvas submissions contain form-specific field data that has no natural home in standard Account/Contact fields, we create a Dataverse custom table (e.g., InspectionSubmission_cd or Submission_cd) to hold the flattened field values. This table has a lookup to the primary Account or Contact, preserving the link between the form data and the CRM record.

Form fields that capture standard contact properties — first name, last name, email address, phone number, job title, department — map directly to the corresponding Contact fields in Dynamics 365. Field type coercion is applied: phone number strings validated for E.164 format, email strings validated for RFC 5322 format before write.

GoCanvas form fields that do not map to a standard Dynamics field — for example, inspection checklist items, condition ratings, barcode scans, or dropdown values specific to the form — become Dataverse custom columns on the Submission_cd custom table. Field type is inferred from the GoCanvas field type: text becomes nvarchar, number becomes decimal, date becomes datetimeoffset.

GoCanvas Reference Data spreadsheets (used to auto-populate dropdown lists or validation tables in forms) become either Dataverse custom option sets (if the list is small, e.g., condition ratings) or lookup tables (if the list is large, e.g., equipment models). We map the Reference Data rows to option-set values or lookup records and populate the corresponding custom column on the Submission_cd table.

GoCanvas generates a PDF for each completed submission. We download the PDF and attach it as a Note annotation on the corresponding Dynamics 365 record (Account, Contact, or Submission_cd table). Dynamics 365 enforces a 25MB per-file limit — PDFs exceeding this are split or stored in SharePoint with a Note containing the link.

Photos captured in GoCanvas forms are extracted from the submission payload and rehosted as Note attachments or uploaded to the connected SharePoint document library. Each photo is linked to the parent record by creating a Note record with filename, mimetype, and the documentbody (base64) or a sharepointurl reference. Inline photos embedded in the submission PDF are preserved via the PDF attachment.

GoCanvas users are matched to Dynamics 365 users by email address. The email address on the GoCanvas User record is used to query the Dynamics 365 User table (systemuser) for a matching internalemailaddress. The matched Dynamics User GUID populates the OwnerId field on the migrated records. Unmatched users are flagged before migration for admin action.

GoCanvas Groups manage form access and submission routing. Dynamics 365 Teams serve a different purpose (security roles and record sharing). GoCanvas Group membership is preserved as a custom field on the Submission_cd table (Group_Name__c) for reporting, but the access-control semantics do not translate to Dynamics Teams.

GoCanvas Dispatch assigns submissions to specific users or devices for field completion. Dispatch records are translated into a custom Task record or a custom Dispatch_cd table linked to the Submission_cd record. Dispatch status (assigned, in-progress, completed) maps to a custom option-set field.

GoCanvas Workflow chains define sequential handoffs, approval gates, and conditional routing between form submissions. These cannot migrate automatically — the automation logic, trigger conditions, and action steps have no equivalent in Dynamics 365. We export the workflow definitions as a structured JSON document that your Power Automate developer can use as a rebuild specification.