In a previous post series we had a look at creating a aggregate measurement. In that example we published the measure to the entity store. Data needs to be moved to the entity store on a schedule basis and users will to the enquiry on that. That has some benefits in that you can move data from the transactional database and hence do that at a time when there is less transactional work going on and the users enquiries will be off the transaction DB.

In some cases you might still need aggregated data but you need to do it in real time. You can do this with the use of the Aggregate Data Entity. This object essentially exposes the aggregate measurement via OData. This will then allow users to access that via a service call which they can do in Power BI for example. Building a Aggregate Data Entity is pretty quick but the key is that you need to have the measure first.

Here is a quick overview.

D365 July 2017 Update 8 (7.0.4565.16211)

Cheers

Lachlan