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Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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What's the preferred method of customizing reports?

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Posted on by 24

Hey all, new to the Business Central platform and Power BI reporting. My company has just gone live with Business Central for finance, inventory, and warehousing and its a pretty simple setup. The issue is that the native reports in BC are lacking what they are looking for and I'm trying to figure out the best way to modify the data sets and layouts to give them what they need. I've read quite a few posts and articles but it looks like they might be outdated at this point, so I'm turning to the community to help point me in the right direction.

Specifically, one report I'm looking at right now is the Customer Sales Statistics. I was able to download the layout files for it, but I'm struggling to find the .al file to see if I can expand on the data its gathering and presenting. The report currently shows the first couple months of sales by customer, then has a single column at the end that basically says "and beyond", where they need all 12 months of sales in separate columns.

1. Is downloading the docker container and running the on-prem version still the best/only way to get everything I need to start modyifying reports?

2. Is there a repository some where of customized reports that people have put together, something I can grab and customize?

3. Editing in VS Code or Power BI Report Builder the best way to work through this?

Appreciate any help you can offer!

  • Tricon916 Profile Picture
    24 on at
    RE: What's the preferred method of customizing reports?

    This helped a ton, thank you!

  • Suggested answer
    JAngle Profile Picture
    95 on at
    RE: What's the preferred method of customizing reports?

    1. I’d skip the docker part. You can have 3 sandbox environments in your tenant. Develop with one of those. Copy production to create it - better for report testing. This video helps with report extension development: https://youtu.be/HxixMUEqEmE

    and this one to explain basics: https://youtu.be/JZcwk8UHr_8

    2. For examples try this blog: https://thinkaboutit.be/

    To avoid doing development yourself you may consider paying for an app which helps facilitate it. Check out simple object designer on appsource. Great for other things like if you decide to progress with PBI then you can publish more datasets without doing the development yourself

    3. Depends on skill set and required user outcome. Need none BC users to have access and have a PBI paid for license? I’d consider PBI vastly ahead of BC reporting wise.

    From version 20 there are excel report layouts which will be nicer to work with in some scenarios

  • Tricon916 Profile Picture
    24 on at
    RE: What's the preferred method of customizing reports?

    Forgot to mention, we are on Business Central in a D365 Cloud instance.

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