In the previous post we had a look at setting up the demo VM to get the reports model in PowerBI desktop. In this part let’s have a look at refreshing the model with data. In the entity store approach data is moved across from the transactional database so that users can enquiry on the data and the load is off the transactional database. The tables/views that are created in the entity store database are in a star schema and this is modeled from the measures in the D365 development environment. So the data needs to be updated to the entity store on a regular basis. It’s important that users understand this because if the data isn’t refreshed then they will be looking at old data from the entity store.

There is an important parameter in PowerBI desktop that you will want to set in PowerBI desktop for some of these report models to display correctly. You can find it under File\Options\DirectQuery. The option is called “Allow unrestrictred measures in DirectQuery mode”. If you don’t set this on you will find a number of the report models won’t display all the content. You will see this set in the video.

D365 July 2017 Update 8 (7.0.4565.16211)

You can find the next part on this post.

Cheers

Lachlan