Power BI ❤️ Dynamics 365 Sales!
Report Templates and ALM Solution Examples

These report templates are built to demonstrate using Power BI to report on Opportunities in Dynamics 365 CE Sales.

These templates are intended to be easy to deploy examples of Dataverse Data Modeling for Power BI - and highlight some Power BI features that you can 'steal' to make your own reports shine.

The data model of the report follows best-practices from my documentation: Power BI modeling guidance for Power Platform. I would encourage you to use that document as a companion piece to understanding some of the approaches used in the design of this report.

Quick Demo

Note: if you're testing this in the desktop, remember to hold down the key when clicking on bookmarks, but not slicers. - Once published to the service, both bookmarks and slicers work with a single click.

Software:

1. Access to a Dynamics 365 environment with sales data (See below for entities in scope)
2. Current version of Power BI on your Desktop for editing (With "Field Parameters" enabled in Options/Preview.)[^1]:
   
3. Only the free version of Power BI is needed to view and even publish to the service for your own use. If you'd like to share the reports with others, some version of Power BI Pro/Premium-per-user/Premium would be needed.
4. Optional: Bravo - for updating the calendar or modifying/adding time intelligence measures
5. Optional: SSMS - SQL Server Management Studio
   
   

Report assumptions/requirements:

1. Custom fields and entities are entirely out of scope for the template, but nothing blocking a user from add custom fields to the existing queries/reports
2. Opportunities owners (either users or ownership teams) have a manager for roll-up reporting
3. Opportunity customers (specifically accounts) are assigned a Sales Territory for roll-up reporting
4. Territories may have a parent territory for grouping / roll-up
5. The DatesTimes are adjusted from GMT based on a single parameter (number of Hours) - e.g. Central timezone in the US is GMT "-6" hours (Or -5 hours during Daylight Savings Time.) The datetimes in Dataverse are stored in GMT timezone but displayed in a user's local time based on their user settings, so this adjustment is needed to help offset date drift due to user's timezone delta from GMT.
6. The “Contoso Sales - Synapse - Opportunities with Product Lines” report additionally assumes: An Opportunity’s estimated and actual values are only calculated as the sum of line-items
7. All Open opportunities will be imported, but only opportunities that have closed within the past 'X' number of months will be imported. Selecting a smaller number of months of history will avoid longer refresh cycles or timeouts, especially with large datasets using TDS. - (It's helpful to include 1 more month than you plan to display. This gives the month-over-month calculations a baseline for the first month you display.)
8. The report will initially ask for authentication and then ask you to approve running native database queries. - Click 'Run' to approve running each of these read-only queries.
   
   
   

Data Model

These reports follow a traditional Star Schema with the Opportunity serving as the Fact table and the Campaign, Owner (Combination of Users and Teams), and Customer (combination of Accounts and Contacts) with an additional related dimension of 'Territory.' Measures are organized within the 'Sales Measures' table.

You'll notice that there are several field parameters and a what-if parameter in the model used for added flexibility in the reports. These, along with many of the internal-use fields have been marked as 'hidden.' The user is presented a clean list of the fields they are most likely to select as filters or use when creating their own reports in Power BI or Excel.

Report Variations:

Dataverse TDS Endpoint based report

Try out the Dataverse TDS Endpoint version of the report for the easiest setup.

• TDS - Based\Contoso Sales.pbit
• TDS - Based\Contoso Sales - Customer.pbit -Example of Direct Query

Additionally, There are two solutions that allow you to load this into a Dynamics 365 Sales org in minutes. - Neither solution modifies existing data,schema,forms or views - but adds an app with all relevant entities for ease of exploration/demo. The managed version also allows you uninstall all components with a single click.

• TDS - Based\ContosoSalesDemo_####.zip
• TDS - Based\ContosoSalesDemo_####_managed.zip

Requirements

1. TDS Endpoint needs to be enabled and you need read access to the following entities: Territories; Accounts; Contacts; Opportunities; Campaigns; System Users; Teams
2. Edit these three parameters in the report to meet your needs/environment
   
   • GMTOffset - set this to the difference (in hours) from GMT for the report datetime adjustments.
   • TDSEndPoint - The server url/name for the Dynamics 365 environment. (without the https:// prefix)
   • MonthsOfHistory - Number of months of closed opportunities to import. (For TDS-Based reports, start with 13 months and test whether the number of opportunities that includes results in a TDS query timeout or not. - You can raise or lower this parameter as needed.)
     
     
3. The Contoso Sales - Customer report is designed to be embedded in the Account Form and be filtered to the current record. When adding it to the form, use a JSON query (see the file "Contoso Sales - Customer - JSON Query.txt") to pass the GUID of the current record to the report.
   
   

Dataverse Azure Synapse Link for Synapse-based reports

If you have an Azure Synapse Link deployed, use these versions to report on much larger datasets.

• Synapse Link - Based\Contoso Sales.pbit
• Synapse Link - Based\Contoso Sales - with Product Lines.pbit -Example of more complex data model with header/line items.

Requirements

1. Azure Synapse Link is operating, and you can connect to it with SSMS & Power BI.

2. Synapse Link is set to export (using default: append = no) with at least the following tables[^2]:
   Territories; Accounts; Contacts; Opportunities; Campaigns; System Users; Teams
   The “Contoso Sales - with Product Lines.pbit” report also needs: Opportunity Products and Products

3. Edit these four parameters in the report to meet your needs/environment:
   

   • GMTOffset - set this to the difference (in hours) from GMT for the report datetime adjustments.
   • SynapseSQLEndPoint - The server url/name for the Synapse Workspace SQL endpoint. Open the workspace and click on Manage - Under SQL Pools, click on Built-in to open the properties - copy the Workspace SQL endpoint to the SynapseSQLEndPoint variable.
   • SynapseLakeDatabase - This is the lake database name in the Synapse Workspace. Open the make.PowerApps.com Portal and under Dataverse / Azure Synapse Link highlight the listed Synapse Link, then from the ribbon choose Details to open the Azure resource details page. - Copy the Azure Synapse Analytics database name (Note: you only want the text displayed, and not the underlying url.)
   • MonthsOfHistory - Number of months of closed opportunities to import.
   • EnvironmentURL - The Dataverse Environment URL (without the https://) such as: myenvironment.crm.dynamics.com - (This is used to construct the drill-through to records hyperlink.)
     

Skills needed to Modify or Extend

1. T-SQL – (Nothing deeper than Select/Join/Case/IsNull is needed)
2. Power Query / Basic DAX / Power BI Data Modeling / Power BI Report development
3. Familiarity with Dataverse / Dynamics 365 sales entities
   
   

Legal Notices

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Notes

[^1]: Note that if you see an alert telling you that the report can't be opened because it's is in a newer version, as long as you're on the latest released version you can continue opening the report, there should be no incompatible/unreleased features in this report.

[^2]: To ensure the report doesn't encounter read-contention during refresh cycles, it queries the '_snapshot' version of the tables. Be aware that these tables/views are not created in Synapse if the corresponding table in Dataverse is completely empty. Ensure at least one record is in the source tables for each of the selected entities to trigger the sync to setup these snapshot views.