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Power BI modelling of Business Central - Dimensions, DimensionSetLines, and DimensionValues

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Posted on by CU08121905-0

I am working on a BI project where we need to create a Power BI model for BC data. It is for financial reporting in Power BI.

We pull data into a data warehouse using the BC Standard APIs. I understand that Dimensions, DimensionValues, and DimensionSetLines are the core of BC for reporting purposes. We need to somehow model these "dimensions" in Power BI, and create a connection from these dimensions to the generalLedger, salesInvoiceLines, salesOrderLines, etc.

My question is how to do this modelling? Just so we are clear on what I mean by this: There was an "old" way of doing this dimension modelling using something called "Dimension Set Entry" as this article explains very well: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dealing-dimensions-hooking-power-bi-up-microsoft-marghi-cpa-cga/.

In the article, you can clearly see how dimension set entry and values are used. This method has clearly changed.. what is the new method? How exactly am I to do a similar thing as shown in the article, but using the new method? "DimensionSetLines" is clearly something new that I assume has to be used.

I will not be using Web Services, which has the old method - I need to use Standard APIs and the new method.

If anyone can explain or perhaps even show images of how the modelling works, I'd be grateful.

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Dynamics 365 general

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Steven Renders 5,672 Moderator on at

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Here's some documentation:

Dimension Set Entries Overview - Business Central | Microsoft Learn

Design Details - Table Structure - Business Central | Microsoft Learn

For transactions (documents, journals, ledgers) look for the DimensionSetId field and link it to the DimensionSetEntry table. For master data look in the Default Dimension and Dimension Value tables.

I usually create Query APIs for all the data I require in Power BI, one query per table, so then you can easily build the star/snowflake model in PBI.

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Valentin Castravet 31,481 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Just so we are clear on what I mean by this: There was an "old" way of doing this dimension modelling using something called "Dimension Set Entry"

This hasn't changed. The system still uses the DimensionSetID field in transaction tables and the DimensionSetEntry table which you can use in Power BI.

Valentin Castravet
Work: Zander ERP Services
Blog: Dynamics 365 Business Central Insights
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/valentin-c-0500a247/

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YUN ZHU 95,718 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi, Since NAV, there has been no change and it has always been the following model.

Thanks.

ZHU

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