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Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
Suggested answer

Example for using Dimensions in business

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Posted on by 370

Hello,

I fully understand what Dimensions are and how they work.

What I will need, good example use-cases for this. I understand this is a more business-oriented question, depending on industry, business model / proces and business needs (what data/information/reports do they need so they can make decisions).

However, I also believe here is good BC community using Dimension heavy in production and if you can share some use good (business) case examples.

How many dimensions? Which of them are global? Do you set them as default to customers, or items, or manually entry? Do you use them for purchase, and sales and manual G/L entries etc.

Of course, I expect to use them for reporting using Power BI and analysis of data to make business decisions.

So, from your experience, let's look at several industries and business cases and when it is good practice and suggested to use dimensions, how/when they are used.

I am interested in the industry of an IT company (or could be telco business), which also resells the hardware, the software, but also provides its own services from IT experts as work hours. Please provide some guidance and experience of which dimension you will create, and where you will put the default use etc.

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  • Suggested answer
    MahGah Profile Picture
    15,529 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    Hi

    I am an end user but I do my best to explain our usage for dimension.

    We know we have 2 global and 7 shortcut dimension and we cannot increase them. But each can have many dimension value. Let's for a moment just agree that dimension is for "report" purposes only and has no other functions. Then the shortest answer is how you want to slice and dice data? In your example how much details of each category ( software, hardware, service) you want to show? In the other words, how much drill down you want to provide? Something like Software -> Software Sub Category -> Software Maker -> Software Version  etc. Then based on your answer you can determine how many dimension or dimension value you need.

    Also, if you divide business into Purchasing - Operation - Finance - Shareholders - Employee -  Sales - Support (as an example) then how much details for each section you want to collect? Like for purchasing you want to use Vendor Geo (like USA, Germany, etc ) -> Vendor Type (MFG, Distributor , etc ) -> Vendor  to collect such a data through dimension or you want it through different method.

    Same question for other parts of business.

    Then you can go back to 2+7 dimension and see how you can create these.

    After that you need to see where transaction happens that require collecting data. For example if PO created and you need to collect certain dimension for vendor and item to report back then dimension should be added to vendor and item.

    If you make manual transaction then dimension manually or using G/L should be added.  

    As you mentioned this is different for each company and industry. Also, change in management also can cause change in dimension (new manager may need more detailed data)  

  • Hrvoje Kusulja Profile Picture
    370 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    Thank you, I think I am stack that I have currently one dimension (global 1) , "Cost Center" but will need to rename it to "Profit Center" since all sales will also be posted under those names.

    Also, editing the dimension value, causes the impact on database and updating the data, Will the some history will also be created?

  • Suggested answer
    MahGah Profile Picture
    15,529 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    Hi

    You can test this in sandbox. But if you rename dimension then it will rename all history but be prepare for long waiting time.  and do not do it on working day since it will cause database lock and etc.  

    That being said the hardest part is if you want to change history for specific item.

    My suggestion is if you are trying to fix all dim and have a plan for it then use app such as below to do this project.

    appsource.microsoft.com/.../PUBID.dynamicsnavaddon|AID.dimensionmanager|PAPPID.93678dd0-af16-46ec-a58b-a89808fba8f7

  • Suggested answer
    Dallefeld Profile Picture
    193 User Group Leader on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    You want to, as much as possible, have your dimensions populate into your transactions based on customer, vendor, item resource, job....some master record that is used in the transaction so the user does not have to 'think' about or chose the dimension. Having the dimensions default based on other data will give you more consistent and accurate data for reporting.

  • Hrvoje Kusulja Profile Picture
    370 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    Thank you, so we are talking about implementing not per-customer, but more per-customergroup (segmenting the customers) etc. , this sounds good, yes.

    Also, since I am new to BC, i expected that it will be possible to report using power bi, based on g/l entries, but based on customer, vendor etc., but it seems this is not possible, so using customergroup dimension or vendorgroup dimension is necesery. And if you want to filter to specific vendor or customer, it seems it is not possible, please confirm?

    Also, do you use one dimension "customergroup" and "vendorgroup" seperate, and them as regular (not global) with default dimension setting?

  • Suggested answer
    MahGah Profile Picture
    15,529 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    Hi

    You can report and use dimension in Power BI. Also, even without dimension you can go to vendor and customer ledger entry and report for them. But if you have a group of vendor that you want to report under one category then with dimension you can have that group and then use the group in Power Bi instead of adding those vendors together. It makes your Power Bi report more dynamic since anytime new vendor added you do not need to go to your bi and add vendor to that category.

    I am not clear on this question "And if you want to filter to specific vendor or customer, it seems it is not possible, please confirm?" you can filter to any vendor from vendor ledger entry.

    Again all depends on situation and your goal. We for example have two shortcut dimensions. Customer and Vendor. Then for Vendor we have about 15 different value. For customer about 30 value.

    Then we assigned those value to each customer or vendor. And as Kim said the rest is automated.

  • Hrvoje Kusulja Profile Picture
    370 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    my goal is to use general ledger entries, not customer or vendor ledger entries. Maybe this is the way that simply BC works, and is not possible on G/l Account level get the information about particular customer and/or vendor. But it would be very usefull.

    When using Power BI, all categories are also stored in BC so it is all refreshed at the same time.

    In your example case, it is very hard to do analysis inside detailed and more specific end-customer or vendor, since you use dimension but based on group of customers. :/

  • Suggested answer
    MahGah Profile Picture
    15,529 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    I wonder which G/L account you have in mind.

    For example in Account Payable you can see Vendor No. In Account receivable you can see customer No.  But if you work with COGS and Revenue then yes you cannot find customer or vendor info there directly. That is a use of dimension

    In my company we have the same setup, then in Power BI for drill down we pulled all customers and their dimension in table in BI then linked here and hence we can see those details in drill down.

  • Hrvoje Kusulja Profile Picture
    370 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    Tx for the info. Yes, COGS is used.

    If I create "customer group" dimension and segment the customers, I will have info, but only on a group level/category. Which is ok also for Power BI. But what is missing when using dimension the way to see all traffic for particular customer and not just the group. But ok, thank you for the hint.

    How do you connect in Power BI tables from specific customer with G/L entires at the end?

  • Suggested answer
    MahGah Profile Picture
    15,529 on at
    RE: Example for using Dimensions in business

    We created custom API since it was much easier then linking and doing it in Power BI. But you need to publish a few pages from BC that I cannot remember now.  But you can create custom API then pull all the data you need to create a link then publish that for Power BI 

    Look into  https://www.hougaard.com/designer/ 

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