This article provides a walk-thru for Application Developers seeking to add an analytical report to a Dynamics 365 application. For this scenario, we will extend the Reservation Management Workspace in the Fleet Management application to include a direct link to an analytical report authored against the Entity Store using Power BI Desktop.
OVERVIEW
Whether you are extending an existing application Workspace or introducing one of your own, analytical reports can be used to deliver insightful and interactive views of your business data. The process for adding an analytical reports is broken down into the following actions:
TASK #1 - Add the PBIX file as a resource to your model
TASK #2 - Introduce a Menu Item to control access to the report
PRE-REQUISITES
Access to a Dynamics 365 developer environment running on Platform Update 8 or later
Analytical report (.PBIX file) authored using Power BI Desktop with a data model sourced from the Dynamics Entity Store Database
IMPORTANT: Use the steps described here to enable Analytical solutions in a 1Box environment
Note: For detailed instructions on authoring Analytical Workspaces & Reports using Power BI Desktop take a look at the article Authoring Analytical Workspaces & Reports.
WALK-THROUGH
TASK #1 - Add the PBIX file as a resource to your model
To begin, you'll need to author or obtain the Power BI Report to embed in the workspace. For more information on creating analytical reports, review the Getting started with Power BI Desktop literature.
Use the following steps to add a PBIX file as an Operations Resource artifact:
Create a new project in the appropriate model
Select the Project in the Solution Explorer, then right + click and select Add > New Item
In the Add New Item form, select the Resource template under Operations Artifacts
Provide a Name to use when referencing the resource then click Add
Now, locate the PBIX file containing the Analytical report definition and then click Open
Now that you've added the file named AnalyticalReport.PBIX as a model resource called 'PowerBIReportName', you can begin adding menu items that reference the report.
TASK #2 - Adding link to Analytical Report from Reservation Management Workspace
Use the following steps to extend the form definition for the Reservation Management Workspace
Select the Project in the Solution Explorer, then right + click and select Add > New Item
In the Add New Item form, select the Display Menu Item template under User Interface
Provide a name to use when referencing the report in X++ metadata then click Add
Open the Menu Item designer for the new item
In the Properties window, set the Object Type value to Class
In the Properties window, set the Object value to PBIReportControllerBase
In the Properties window, set the Parameters value to the name of the new Resource (note: this item was created in Task #1 'PowerBIReportName')
Now, rebuild the project and open the application
You're done. You can now access the Analytical Report directly using the new application menu item. Either add the Menu Item to an existing Application Menu or business logic to embed the solution into your application.
