web
You’re offline. This is a read only version of the page.
close
Skip to main content

Announcements

No record found.

News and Announcements icon
Community site session details

Community site session details

Session Id :
Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,... / Dynamics 365 Sales Das...
Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
Suggested Answer

Dynamics 365 Sales Dashboards vs PBI Strategy

(0) ShareShare
ReportReport
Posted on by TM-22011711-0 3
TLDR - has anybody developed a strategy for using Dynamics 365 Sales CRM native Dashboards, vs. External PBI and Semantic Models to stitch data. Guidance greatly appreciated. 
 
 
 
Looking for guidance and expertise on how people/ organisations define their analytics strategies, especially when it comes to Dynamics 365 Native Sales Dashboards vs. Developing external PBI Dashbloads (connecting to Dynamics).
 
I work for a small organization (150) and relatively new in role. A lot of the sales data, insights and analytics today is mostly managed via PBI and various dashboards (pulling multiple sources and leveraging semantics models). Sales teams and sales managers use these PBI as their first goto when analysing data (and not into the SALES CRM itself)
 
There may be some pressure from leadership to try to leverage more time in Dynamics 365 Sales CRM, and therefore use the Dashboards in D365 Sales CRM more and more. 
 
This direction / strategy is not yet set so I am looking for guidance, expertise and help in how others have approached this topic and the best strategy for managing insights with PBI or creating the native Sales crm Dashboards within Dynamics Sales. Any strategies with pros / cons greatly appreciated - I have no bias either way but will eventually have to present a business case either way. 
Categories:
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data
Dynamics 365 Sales
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
I have the same question (0)
  • Suggested answer
    Tom_Gioielli Profile Picture
    Tom_Gioielli 3,078 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    This is a great question, and it's an important one to define for your organization. I'm on the partner side of implementation, but I can run through what I typically give for guidance.
     
    CRM dashboards and reporting are fine for basic needs. They do a good job of getting people directly into CRM and the records they are working with, but they have some downside.
    • The visuals and tools are somewhat lackluster, since you can have either some basic chart types or grid views of records. Other helpful visuals like a matrix or interactive data is lacking
    • You often need to create system views if you want users to be able to filter what is on a dashboard (like Opportunities created past 30 days, past 90 days, etc.). This can cause your list of system views to balloon or lead you to try and use personal views which are difficult to manage
    • Relationships aren't always there in your data the way you need them to be which can cause some configuration needs to get the reporting to a usable state
    • You can't connect outside data unless you are using virtual tables or bringing the data into CRM, which can cause an incomplete picture of your data
     
    PowerBI gets around most of these issues but has the downside of additional licensing cost (even if it isn't too bad, small organizations like yours can be price sensitive). If possible, I usually recommend using PowerBI if you have any sort of desire for interactive dashboards or external data to connect to. There are a few things you can do to really integrate PowerBI into CRM.
    1.  You can embed PowerBI dashboards directly in CRM dashboards so users don't need to navigate out to the PowerBI service, which is great from a usability perspective
    2. You can also embed PowerBI reports directly into forms with context filtering, which is my preferred approach. Rather than have an overall dashboard, for example, you can create an Account level view of a customer that looks at CRM data along with external data and surface that right in the Account form. CRM allows you to pass the Account GUID into the PowerBI report, effectively filtering down the dataset so you are only seeing relevant records.
      1. Use Power BI Embedder  · XrmToolBox to help you embed reports, it only takes about 15 minutes once you know what you are doing
    3. PowerBI has a great and fast connector to CRM data, and I've created reports that consume hundreds of thousands of rows without significant performance issues by connecting directly to CRM (so no need for a Data Lake or Fabric)
    4. You can then also connect external data sources without needing to set up virtual entities or duplicate them in CRM, which opens all sort of other integration requirements that can cause extra complexity.
     
    A final option is using the new PowerBI visuals that are dynamically created when viewing a list in CRM. These are OK, but the consistency and configuration leave a bit to be desired from my perspective.
     
    At the end of the day, I also like to think about future proofing the reporting. I've been working in CRM for a little over 10 years now, and I can't recall any sort of meaningful updates to the dashboards in that time. The configuration and options are basically the same since I started with CRM 2011. I don't see Microsoft putting any additional effort or development into their functionality, whereas PowerBI continues to grow and expand. If you have the budget and the willingness to learn, I think PowerBI is the way to go.
     
    Hope this helps, but let me know if you have any other questions on any of this!
     
     
    If this response helped, please consider marking as verified so future users can see the resolution. If you have additional questions or problems, please tag me in the response so I receive a notification.
  • TM-22011711-0 Profile Picture
    TM-22011711-0 3 on at
    Dear @Tom_Gioielli - I really appreciate you taking the time to reply and thank you so much for your valuable insights! Much appreciated. 
     
    Whilst I start to prepare my story & proposal to the leadership team I will take on board everything you outline above. 
     
    I am wondering if any others can also reply / comment to provide 2 or 3 different perspectives.
     
    Just want to make sure my proposal to leadership is composed of multiple POV and perspectives, and I have some case study to back it up too. 
     
     

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

Quick Links

Introducing the 2026 Season 1 community Super Users

Congratulations to our 2026 Super Stars!

Congratulations to our 2025 Community Spotlights

Thanks to all of our 2025 Community Spotlight stars!

Congratulations to the February Top 10 Community Leaders

These are the community rock stars!

Leaderboard > Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights, CRM

#1
ManoVerse Profile Picture

ManoVerse 168 Super User 2026 Season 1

#2
NeerajPawar Profile Picture

NeerajPawar 65

#3
Jimmy Passeti Profile Picture

Jimmy Passeti 51 Most Valuable Professional

Last 30 days Overall leaderboard

Featured topics

Hide selecting Contact for potential customer when creating quote

Product updates

Dynamics 365 release plans