dynamics day 2014: microsoft dynamics ax - business insight leveraging analytics

Douglas Daley, Solution SpecialistAnna Tarasoff, Business Intelligence Practice Manager

Dynamics AX

Business Intelligence Insights

Traditional BI in Dynamics AX

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Type of web partsNavigation

Links

Reports

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Type of web partsAction

Work List

Cues

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Working with datesRelative date functions

Function Parameters Example

day relativeDays (day(-1)) = yesterday

dayRange relativeDaysFrom, relativeDaysTo (dayRange(-6, 0)) = last 7 days (inc today)

greaterThanDate

relativeDays (greaterThanDate(0)) = greater than today

lessThanDate relativeDays (lessThanDate(0)) = less than today

monthRange relativeMonthsFrom, relativeMonthsTo

(monthRange(-1,-1)) = last month

yearRange relativeYearsFrom, relativeYearsTo (yearRange(-2,-1)) = last 2 years (not including current)

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Type of web partsScorecard

KPIs

Indicators

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Type of Web PartsReports and charts

High Speed Charts

High Speed

Reports

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Types of Web PartsOther commonly used web parts

AX Report Viewer

SSRS Report Viewer

SharePoint

Library

iFrame

Modifying role centres

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Modifying role centresPersonalisation

“Personalisation”

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Get out of jail free.aspx?.........&contents=1

Adding a web part

can break a role

centre page.

This is how you

recover:

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Modifying role centresDevelopment“Development”

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Modifying role centresYou are updating this layer

Import into the AOT to add as

a “customisation”

This way it becomes an

“upgradable” object.

Power BI

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Demand Forecasting and Planning in the Cloud

Simple and Fast

Mobile Access

Interactive Dashboards

Near real time inventory levels reports

Stay connected with your business

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What is Microsoft Power BI for Office 365

Share in Power BICreate Insights in Excel

Analyze Visualize

Share Find

Q&A

MobileDiscover

Microsoft Power BI for Office 365

Self-service BI with the familiarity of Office and the power of the service

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Data Management Gateway in Power BI

Enable a discovery with data search across on premise data

Monitor data usage across your organisation

On-Premise Data Access

Enterprise Data Search

Data Usage & Telemetry

Enable manual or scheduled data refresh for reports in Office 365 to on-premise sources

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Power BI Solution Conceptual Architecture

Power BI for Office 365

Corporate Data Sources (AX, CRM, etc.)

Data Management Gateway

Corporate Data Catalog

Team sites, Interactive Dashboards, Q&A

Cloud Data Sources (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Analyst

Executive

Publish data sources or expose them as OData feeds

Automated Data Refresh

Data Refresh

Import data, Publish report and dashboards

Desktop and Mobile

Consume interactive reports, ask questions

Import Data

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Data Refresh Process from Power BI Sites

Data Management

Gateway

Excel Workbook in SharePoint

OnlineGateway

Cloud Service

(1) Data refresh is triggered from Power BI Sites

(2) Connects to Gateway Cloud Service

(3) Checks whether user is authorized to perform a refresh

(4) Sends command (SQL statement, connection string) to on premise Gateway

(5) Sends SQL to SQL Server

(6) Return Results

(7) Compress, chunk and return the data

(8) Returns data to Excel Workbook

Advice:

Power BI is an add-on to Office 365 and requires an additional subscription on top of Office 365 subscription. The subscription is per user per month. You can assign these licenses only to the users who require an access to interactive dashboards.

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Secure Mobile Access

Requires add-on subscription

Access to your business data from anywhere

Consider data volumes

Stay connected with your business

Power BI Key Considerations

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BI Architecture

AX DB (Replica)

CRM DB (Replica)

Data Warehous

e

Custom Cubes / Reports

Standard AX Cubes

Data Manageme

nt Gateway(DMG)

Step 2: ETL from OLTP data sources via SSIS.

Standard AX cube processing from OLTP AX database.

Step 3: Custom cube processing / report generation off data warehouse.

O365 Power BI

AX DB (OLTP)

CRM DB (OLTP) Step 1:

Replication of OLTP database.

Step 1: Replication of OLTP database.

Note: Standard AX and CRM SSRS reports would continue to execute against the OLTP databases.

Power BI and Replication

Email: anna.tarasoff@intergen.co.nzdouglas.daley@intergen.com.au

Twitter: @TeamIntergen

Thank you

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