Dynamics 365 Business Central: save report dataset to Excel

Dynamics 365 Business Central version 18.3 introduces a new interesting feature for report developers or consultants: the ability to export a report dataset to an Excel file for data inspection.

Why should you use this feature? Because in this way you can inspect the data that is generated for a given report dataset and you can optimize your report data processing and the relative performances or it can help you on troubleshooting.  The feature is also useful for end users for exporting report data to Excel for further processing, like filtering or pivoting.

How to use this feature?

Using this new feature is very simple. Just go to the report’s request page and select the Send to menu.

Here you have a new option now: Microsoft Excel Document (data only):

When you select this option, the report will be rendered to include data only (data without the layout) and the raw dataset will be presented in an Excel file:

The Excel file contains the value of each field and the value of each variable and caption defined in the report. The exported dataset is the same dataset that is streamed to the reporting engine component of Business Central. If you have binary data inside the report, this is not exported into Excel (obviously) but it gives you an indication of the byte size. It works also for reportextension’s data.

Consider it as a “report inspector” for devs and consultants

Users must have the Allow Action Export Report Dataset To Excel permission assigned (you can assign the Troubleshooting Tools or Export Report Excel permission sets to them).

P.S. could be interesting to have the report data exported also as XML, this could open lots of interesting scenarios.