Getting Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Data into Power BI

This is the first video in a series of videos I plan to make demonstrating how I use Power BI to analyse Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement data.

Although I've been aware of Power BI for a while now I've only just started using it. One of the frustrations I found getting started was that most of the demo's and guides showed you how easy it was to connect it to D365 using the sales and customer service applications available. This works great when you're reporting on the standard D365 attributes but not if you want to run report on any custom fields.

I eventually figured out how to connect the two using an OData feed but there were problems with option set fields and the labels of these fields not showing. It was when I was investigating a solution for this using a different plugin for the Xrm ToolBox that I stumbled across the Power Query (M) Builder plugin. This is by far the easiest way I've found to get Dynamics 365 data in to Power BI.

The steps to do this are as follows -

1. Download the Xrm ToolBox and install the Power Query (M) Builder plugin from the store - https://www.xrmtoolbox.com/

2. Open the plugin and connect to your D365 Organisation

3. Generate the service URL's and add these as blank queries in Power BI

4. Load the entities, select the required entity and choose the view or column set you require

5. Generate the FecthXML

6. Add the generated FetchXML as a blank query in Power BI

This video shows how this is done using the All Opportunities view.

I'm always happy to receive feedback so if there is a better way of doing things please contact me and I'll update, this post or video accordingly if I deem it necessary.