Dynamics CRM custom field and entity support

[jukka]

Currently the Microsoft Dynamics CRM connector for Power BI contains a dataset (called "Dynamics CRM Sales") that includes a selection of 10 standard CRM entities. While you can create a nice demo of CRM sales analytics with these out-of-the-box records, most customers will not be able to use this for actual reporting on their sales pipeline. This is because pretty much anyone who really uses CRM for managing their sales process will have expanded the data model with custom fields and entities. Right now there is no way to add these into the dataset you get when installing the Dynamics CRM connector. Sure, I could build a custom dataset with Power BI Designer by referencing the CRM Online OData feed and retrieving the custom entities and fields via this. However, since it is not possible to use the Schedule Refresh feature with these type of datasets that the user uploads to Power BI, that would make the information presented on the Power BI dashboard stagnant. This kind of defeats the whole purpose of Power BI for a Dynamics CRM customer, since the metrics presented would be just the same as on a static Excel workbook, unless someone downloads it to their PC and runs the Power Query data source refresh for the OData feeds. Since we're essentially talking about a data source that comes from a system built and managed by Microsoft (Dynamics CRM Online), I wonder what the risk would be in enabling the Scheduled Refresh support for OData feeds with the *.dynamics.com URL? This would allow each customer to create the dataset from their customized CRM data model and build dashboards that truly deliver information that their business users are interested in seeing. Compared to the default dataset in the current Connector, there would be essentially no difference in how the data moves from one MS cloud service to another. Ever since Dynamics CRM Online was launched in 2008, customers using it have been in a disadvantaged position compared to the on-premises CRM server users when it comes to the reporting options available to them (due to limitations with SSRS reporting in CRM Online). What Power BI offers today would seem like the perfect opportunity for MS cloud customers to leapfrog into the next generation of business analytics applications available to power users and not just report developers. The business case for supporting CRM Online in real life scenarios would seem quite obvious to me, and I assume that there must be some plans for making this finally happen. However, until we have something publicly announced by Microsoft, I encourage all the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers to show their support for making this happen by voting on this suggestion here. Thank you!

[kmartinez]

I agree with this one, as far as I can tell we can only access "sales" oriented features, I would love to be able to access custom entities as well.

[fbcideas_migusr]

It would be great to be able to download the dataset Microsoft is providing into Power Query/Excel so that the custom entities could be added. Microsoft has done most of the work combining datasets into one Activity set as well as adding a date set. Now just let us connect in Power Query and take their initial start and let us run with it!

[lloyd_jefferie2]

I have been able to query custom entities using the oData designer and then rather than inputing the organization service URL put in the specific query that you need, you are then free to play with this as you need. its not perfect but it does work:)

[Ribban]

Hi, I also want an easier way to show graphs on dashboards in CRM.

[hkobierzewski1]

I can see entities, including custom ones but there is no way to retrieve option sets

[rh5]

I would like to have the ability to take the basic datasets from the native Dynamics CRM definition and add custom fields and additional (may be custom) entities. As previous users have commented; the framework provided in this native connection would give a quick wow-factor when using customer data, but in a longer term it would require a bottom-up development, as each customer would have specific needs on custom fields and entities. Having the ability to adapt the existing dataset would help a lot.

[Marc_lelijveld1]

I think this will be an necessary add to get full integration between Power BI and Dynamics CRM! I'm working on a Power BI proof-of-concept by using Dynamics CRM data. Unforntunatly I experienced many issues by using the OData link. Some of my problems listed below. I'm curious if others are experienceing the same issues. 1. Loading time of Dynamics CRM entities are way to long! Sometimes loading keeps about 5 or 6 hours for 15.000 rows. Loading my complete dataset took over a a week! Now I'm loading data in Excel and import the Excel file in Power BI. This saves a lot of time and performance! 2. Once I've created an Power BI file above 250MB, One day later, I couldn't open the file. Created on the same machine. Power BI Support couldn't help me and didn't have any other Power BI users experiencing this issue. Later I've upgraded the internal work memory of my machine from 8 to 16Gb. Now I can open the file. In other words, Power BI uses a lot of your internal memory which can give you problems. 3. Power BI can only work with one active relation between tables. I've created the datamodel in Excel en imported the file in Power BI. Power BI made some relationships inactive. When I make a visual in for the dashboard, and filter it with a slicer, the visual don't filter at all. That's because of the inactive relationship. When I show a table with the associated ID value and the related value, the filtering on visualisation works fine. So Power BI requires you to show the ID value to make a filter possible. But I don't want to show the ID values at all for the end user. If some of you experiencing the same issues, please let me know so we can add your experienced problems to the support cases.

[dpoggemann1]

Hi Miquel, You can not pull in custom entities as far as I l know, only the entities that are published with the connector currently. Did this just get added?

[pierre-olivier_]

Miguel, if you make the test you will find that the connector is limited to 10 system entities, and very often the most valuable information is within the custom CRM entities and fields.

[Ribban]

Is it yet possible to show the data in a dashboard inside CRM?