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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Finance | Project Operations, Human Resources, ... / What checklist do you ...
Finance | Project Operations, Human Resources, ...
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What checklist do you use to decide if a report is PowerBI or SSRS

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Posted on by zkasmani 89

I had an interesting conversation with a D365 Lead Developer today and I thought I'd ask the experts here.

We have a number of operational reports (not printed - most are on screen inquiries) to build for a project and as part of the requirements gathering I assessed that most of the reports could be PowerBI. They were operational but we don't want to build customizations to the forms to display the data as a report is less impact. The one caveat was quite a few of them are required to be in real-time so they would need to use directquery.

The Lead Developer made a statement "PowerBI is only for analytics and decision-making. Directquery is not good at large volumes of data or aggregations and calculations as it takes a long time to execute. Those operational reports should be done in Embedded SSRS not PowerBI. Also a PowerBI report can take just as long to build as an SSRS report, or longer".

I know we can use entity store for 'near real-time' data but that is not part of this conversation. Also i do think building the reports in PowerBI would deliver all the reports faster than doing them as SSRS reports (while offering more benefits to end users)

So here are my questions:

1. How do you define "analytics"? The only reason I can see to use D365 for a report is if you need print management (email of a pdf or excel sheet where output is important, as PowerBI doen't handle export well). If a user wants to see information on-screen, even if it is operational data, aside from printing and print management i see no reason why SSRS would be a first choice (although a D365 developer who is not comfortable with PowerBI may prefer this option). 

2. What rules do you use to decide SSRS v/s PowerBI for a report? Do you have a checklist you use where you say "Oh based on these rules we cant use PowerBI and have to use SSRS (eg for directquery this is too complex and will take too long)?"

3. I'm not an expert but at this time I completely disagree that a PowerBI report will take almost just as long as SSRS to build. Even with building an entity that doesn't exist to support the PowerBI report, i do think the added overhead still makes a PowerBI report a preferred choice. However I am open to feedback of why I may be incorrect (even though the Lead Developer disagrees with me).

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  • Suggested answer
    Sandeep Chaudhury Profile Picture
    Sandeep Chaudhury 3,303 on at
    RE: What checklist do you use to decide if a report is PowerBI or SSRS

    Zahir,

    If you have not already, I recommend you read through this standard documentation from Microsoft on reporting in F&O. This documentation is pretty good and talks about various scenarios.

    docs.microsoft.com/.../information-access-reporting

    I would also like to share my personal opinion on this. If the reports the business is looking for are purely operational transaction based and meant for internal use only, I would evaluate 2 things. First the complexity of the data requirements on the report and then the user base for the report. If the report involves complex business logic to pull data (Such as Reserved inventory cost), Those are not good candidates for for a BI tool. The Power BI development for those can become expensive.

    Approach to reporting and analytics is again a culture within the organization. You really have to look at the user base who will consume the report most and decide what works best. If the reports are more for back office staff such as accounting and warehousing staff, i see customers inclining to SSRS. If it is for front line employees who prefer modern analytics and the data requirements are not super complicated, Power BI is preferred.

    I have worked with customers who has a young workforce majority of which prefer modern reporting that is more accessible. They are okay with near real time data, they prefer Power BI as the first approach for any reporting. (Dont get me wrong, when people say they need absolute real time report for operational data, they need to rethink. Most of the time that is not true, Near real time works).

    Performance and load on underlying data source  is also a very valid concern when you deal with DirectQuery. There are also additional limitations of DirectQuery which requires you to evaluate it carefully. The query fails when your source returns more than 1 Million rows. It is not unusual to have that many rows in operational data :)

    Hope these helps.

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