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Report and Its Run & Run Model

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Posted on by Vijay R

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Hi All,

We received a requirement to develop the Report in Power BI already the Report Developed in Business central.

Since Business Central does not provide an option to expose reports directly via API, we planned to send the required data from Business Central to Power BI through an API.

As reports cannot be published as APIs in Business Central, we decided to run the report logic in Business Central and store the calculated values in a custom table. This table will then be exposed through an API for Power BI consumption.

In Business Central, it is possible to run a report without previewing or saving it as PDF, Excel, or Word by using Report.Run() or Report.RunModal( ). This allows the report to execute its business logic and populate the custom table without generating or saving any output file.

Therefore, the above approach is technically feasible and recommended for this scenario.

Regards,

Vijay R.

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Dynamics 365 Business Central

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André Arnaud de Cal... 303,716 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Moved the question from the Dynamics 365 General to the Dynamics 365 Business Central forum.

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TAHER_El_Mehdi 836 on at

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You can also consider an alternative approach:
Instead of storing calculated values in a custom table, you can save the report output as an encoded Base64 string using AL. This allows you to expose the report directly via an API and then decode it back into a PDF.

For reference, here’s a detailed guide on how to implement this in AL: https://yzhums.com/56542/

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Dhiren Nagar 2,898 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi,

You are correct, in Business Central you can run the report without layout i.e. Processing only reports to store data into custom table after running logics of your report.

You have correctly exposed the data through API in order for PowerBI to get the data.

Now for calculating the report you have options of either running a job queue, where at recurring time which you set, system will run the report and store the data, which then you can get as API.

Another option is creating a bound action to the same API page, which runs the report and gives a success message in reponse, to which you can run the GET data from the API to get the data. It gives you option of running the report when you want and then getting the data quickly with success or failure details.

Here you can see how to create bound actions - Dynamics 365 Business Central: How to use Standard/Custom API Bound Actions | Dynamics 365 Lab (Use API, do not use OData).

Regards,

Dhiren.

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OussamaSabbouh 12,878 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hello,

What you described works, but it’s generally not the recommended pattern for Power BI with Business Central unless you truly need complex, report-only logic. BC reports cannot be exposed as APIs, and while using Report.Run() to populate a custom table and then exposing that table via an API is technically valid, it adds extra processing, scheduling, and maintenance overhead. The preferred approach is to expose queries, API pages, or base tables and let Power BI handle aggregations and calculations, which is what it’s designed for. Only use the “report logic → custom table → API” approach as a last resort when the logic cannot be reproduced in Power BI or performance requires pre-aggregated data in BC.

Regards,
Oussama Sabbouh

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