Dynamics 365 Business Central

Step 1: Fetch BC Item Categories

Use the “Find records (V3)” action from the Business Central connector. Configure it to query the item categories table:

• Table name: itemCategories
• Select columns: code,description,parentCategory

This returns all item categories with their codes, display names, and parent relationships. A category like “Chairs” would come back with its code (e.g., CHAIRS), its description, and its parent category code (e.g., FURNITURE). Top-level categories have an empty parent value.

WooCommerce (Power Automate for WooCommerce)

Step 2: Fetch Existing WooCommerce Categories

Use the “Find a list of the selected item type” action from the WooCommerce connector. Set the resource type to product_categories.

This returns all existing product categories from your store with their IDs, names, slugs, and parent references. Store these in a variable so you can check which categories already exist and avoid creating duplicates.

Power Automate

Step 3: Sync Categories with Hierarchy (Two-Pass Approach)

This is the part that requires careful ordering. You need to create parent categories before their children, because WooCommerce requires the parent’s ID when creating a child category.

First pass – Top-level categories:

• Filter the BC results to categories where parentCategory is empty
• For each one, check if a matching WooCommerce category already exists (match by slug derived from the BC code)
• If not, use the “Create a new item of the specified type” action (resource: product_categories) to create it. Set the name from BC’s description.
• Store the new WooCommerce category ID for use in the second pass

Second pass – Child categories:

• Filter to categories that have a parentCategory value
• Look up the parent’s WooCommerce category ID from the first pass results
• Use “Create a new item of the specified type” (resource: product_categories) with the parent field set to the parent’s WooCommerce ID

For deeper hierarchies (three or more levels), extend this to additional passes. Most BC implementations use two levels at most.

Power Automate

Step 4: Store the Category Mapping

After syncing, you have a mapping of BC Item Category Codes to WooCommerce Category IDs. You’ll need this during the product sync to assign the correct category to each product.

Options for storing the mapping:

• SharePoint list: Simple list with columns for BC Category Code and WooCommerce Category ID. Easy to view and manually adjust.
• Dataverse table: If you’re already using Dataverse in your Power Platform environment, add a small table for the mapping.
• WooCommerce category meta: Store the BC Category Code as metadata on each WooCommerce category. Keeps the mapping inside WooCommerce itself.

Power Automate

Inline category assignment

1. Pre-create your WooCommerce Product Categories manually (matching your BC Item Categories).
2. At the top of your product sync flow, initialize a variable (type: Object) with the mapping of BC codes to WooCommerce IDs.
3. During the product sync loop, read each item’s itemCategoryCode from BC, look up the corresponding WooCommerce Category ID, and include it in the product update.

Mapping variable example:

{ "FURNITURE": 10, "CHAIRS": 15, "DESKS": 16, "LIGHTING": 22 }

Lookup expression:

variables('categoryMapping')?[items('Apply_to_each')?['itemCategoryCode']]

Then in the “Update an item of the specified type” action (resource: products), include the category assignment in the product data. Since WooCommerce supports multiple categories per product, you can assign both a parent and child category if needed.