Alternate key

An alternate key in Dataverse is a defined uniqueness constraint on one or more columns of a table, enabling records to be identified by business-meaningful values (Tax ID, Email, Product Number, External System ID) instead of GUIDs. Once configured, inserts violating the uniqueness fail, and the Web API supports retrieval by the alternate key value rather than by GUID. Critical for integration scenarios — external systems can Upsert records by natural key without first looking up the Dataverse GUID. Common examples: Account by Tax ID, Contact by Email, Product by Product Number, Lead by external system ID. Activation requires existing data to be free of duplicates on the key columns.