Episode 520: Reports, Dashboards, and Scorecards: A Complete Guide to Reporting in Business Central

Opening And Reporting Teaser

SPEAKER_00 0:00

More layouts with the work layout, Excel layout, RDL layouts. We have Power BI. We have the uh built-in financial uh reports, we have the uh analysis fuse on list page.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome to another episode of Dynamics Corner. What is the story of RDLC? I'm your co-host, Chris.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

And this is Brad. This episode is recorded on May 21st, 2026. Chris, Chris, Chris. RDLC reports, power BI, training. What you can you do as part of your business center implementation? With us today, we have the opportunity to speak with Steve Randis. Hello.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Hello, good afternoon. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Very well. Very well. Very well. How are things in uh you know fancy office?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Great.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Great, great.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Um you're in the Riverside Studio. I like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

It's it's it's the uh it's it's the lobby, it's the new lobby that we have we put together for the podcast. Is it really comfortable that's good? We we we invested a lot in those coaches and um and and the

Conferences And Getting Outside

SPEAKER_02 1:48

like. And it's been a crazy spring, I think. Uh early the beginning of the year. I know that Directions Asia just uh wrapped up. And shortly before that was Directions North America, which uh we had the opportunity to attend. Did you go to Directions Asia?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Uh no, no, not this time. I've been there a couple of years ago, but uh this year I'm not doing uh many conferences these these months uh because I'm doing a few tournaments uh with our little tennis team. We're not really good, but we're doing a few tournaments and then uh it was difficult. I had to choose between one or the others.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

I would say it might be a good choice. I mean, the business central, I love the product, I love all the events, but I think if you can have some fun uh playing tennis and traveling, playing some tennis, it's it's nice to get away from business central. I have to start doing that myself. I spend if with AI and and all the additions to the product this spring, and even last wave, uh it's not easy to get away because it feels like my days are consumed, so it's good that you'd you're playing tennis. Where are you headed for your tennis tournament?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Anywhere in no, no, it's it's it's local. Uh um the clubs here here around, we really play in low level. But we had a we normally we we practice a couple of times in the weekend, and we had this idea let's do some some interclub we call it, and then these are games against other clubs uh uh every of the other weekends.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

I need to find something to do. I wanted to start playing pickleball. Yeah, but even just this past weekend, everyone's been asking me why I never started playing golf. After working in this industry, uh consulting for so many years. Uh, early on, we used to travel a lot, and I've had many invitations to play golf, and I've never played. And most people told me that I probably don't have the patience and the personality for it.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

But I think I think you'd hit it too hard, man. Because like, you know, I I try to get into golf because my son plays golf. So I really tried. And I just you you're right, Brett. I just don't have the control. I could do like wedge and iron, it's pretty straightforward. But when you're doing that, you know, when you're just trying to smack it, it's it's hard. It's really hard to stay stay straight.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Well, I may try this weekend because when we talked about it the other day, someone had told me that if you don't like where the ball goes, just drop another one. And don't try don't try to be good. And if you just go out to walk around, get some exercise, enjoy the weather, it's good. But I think it's important. It's nice to hear that you're doing uh tennis, something outside of business central. And that's something I think a lot of us miss, is it a lot of individuals such as yourself, we see a lot that they do, we see uh what they share, what they post, what they present. But it's also nice to see some of the stuff that they do outside of Business Central to uh clear the mind a little bit or just stay active. So I like tennis. I tried playing tennis. Um I like it. I do like it.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

We're not so good, but but we enjoy ourselves and yeah, I think that's the approach.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

I think it's important to just uh it's not my profession, and I'm not uh winning tournaments. I'm not a professional player, but I'm getting out there and talking with others and getting some exercise as well. I could talk about personal stuff forever, but uh I I think we had some other things we wanted to

Meet Steven Renders

SPEAKER_02 5:17

talk about. Uh before we do that, you might tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Um my name is uh uh Stephen. Uh Steven Renders. I'm from uh from Belgium. Uh mainly speak uh well, some call it uh Dutch, we call it uh Flemish, but it's actually the same uh language. Um Belgium, we open uh we also speak French and German, so I speak a little bit of French, understand some uh some German and uh English too. Um been working in the let's say now vision worlds uh for uh since around 200 and 4. Uh before that I was mainly involved in um uh doing bigger projects, development projects at bigger companies. Uh I think CSC was uh was the name. Um they changed their name, I think, so uh a while ago. Um and then we basically developed uh systems from uh scratch, and I was uh I was a mix between a developer and analyst um and then in 2004 joined the uh NAV and Avision world, got to know the product. And then I was actually um uh hired uh by uh Platan, a company in uh in Belgium uh that was also just starting. I think they had been they started the company for about six months, and I joined them uh to to to deliver more technical uh sessions and trainings. Now my my first trainings had to uh think about were usually SQL Server uh related, uh so installation configuration and performance tuning, uh later also development and reporting, uh which which uh then became and still is a big passion of mine. Um so reporting and then related to uh business central, and in the past it was um mainly uh report objects and RDLC uh layouts, and the latest years it's been uh Power BI and also all of the new bells and whistles that we almost see in the uh in the product.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Yeah, that's quite a bit. It is quite a bit, and uh when we had spoken before, uh that's uh it sort of framed what we wanted to talk about because you have been working with Business Central for a long time, just like Chris and I have, and many others, and then there's also many that are new to it, and there's been a lot of changes to it. And there's two things that interest me and some of the things that you've done, and I've been able to follow things that you do as well is the the training aspect and also reporting and the changes of reporting and how to report within Business

Training Built Around Real Cases

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Central. So Business Central, they announced uh during the keynotes at the conferences that Business Central, I think, is over 55,000 uh uh implementations now. And that seems to be quite a bit more and it's accelerating over the past previous years. So there's a lot of new uh individuals using the application in these organizations, and it's not the type of application that you just click install and a couple buttons and start running. It has a lot of features, it has a lot of functionality, and it can do a lot for many businesses, and businesses can uh set it up to fit their needs specifically versus having to say this is a general process and it can do many things with it. And I am hearing a lot of people talking about training. Like, how do I start? Where do I begin? How do I get training? If someone was looking for that type of information, I know there's a lot online, there's a lot to do. Uh, how do you think they should approach training or seeking out someone for training or how to do training and structure that?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Um very good question. Uh, because there is uh there was a lot of information out there. For example, there are many blogs, and you have the Microsoft Learn, Microsoft uh docs, you have uh a lot of YouTube channels and videos. Um and what I usually say is try to do it in a structured way. Similar on how you, for example, would tackle a project at a customer or like to learn how to play tennis. So where do we find uh uh good uh training? And if I put on my my commercial hat, that would be at us, for example, for example, at at Latan. And what makes us different is that we did the same exercise a couple of years ago on how can we differentiate ourselves, how can we create good uh uh trainings, and then we uh started thinking about training isn't only about um uh transferring knowledge and skills, it's also making it really applicable in in the real world. So um what we have in in our let's say offering are uh real life case-based scenarios that we then use and then we build our trainings around it. So following and we call that a learning journey. Um it it's a mix of of content, so we have a few uh trainings, uh development functional idea, and so on on a learning management system where you're gradually going to learn uh some uh some concepts and that will be written out texts, uh, some videos that we uh prepare to demo and explain, and actually also more than 50% uh assignments within also the solution and help of the instructor of support uh afterwards. Well, basically different from, for example, what you find on Learn because there you also have some assignments, is that here are really case-based. So uh we went back and we uh we I had some technical uh equilibriums on projects, uh my colleagues had functional project management, other equilibriums on projects, and we started thinking around whether the typical use cases customers uh uh ask you or have asked us in the past to to implement. How can we use that as kind of an umbrella to attach our training uh uh to and that's what really makes it uh interesting? It it's a a mix of learning new uh stuff, but also immediately seeing how it can be applied in real life and linked to real ads and life business cases.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Yeah, I I think that is I I think that you hit a few key points with this because I pay I try to keep up with a lot of the information that's available and and Microsoft Learn is a great resource for information and it's evolving and they keep adding information, but some of it to me is rather generic. And I think from a user implementation, your suggestion for use-based training, so there may be general training for this is how you work and navigate through the application, this is how you set filters, but how you can structure the training unique to your organization and how you use the application makes adoption, I think, easier and learning it a bit easier. Uh and there's a difference between users who are upgrading from well, maybe even not, to be honest with you, from who may be upgrading from a previous version of the vision or dynamics nav into business central or from another product. It can feel overwhelming because they leave their comfort zone.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

And uh that's where I think training has always been one area that I find sometimes gets a shorter uh, for lack of better terms, budget or shorter focus.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah. And the value after afterthought is usually what that comes down to.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yes, it's yeah, it's part of the project, the project plan, but usually it comes right before or right after the the go live. Let's then do a little bit of training and everybody is uh is happy. Actually, I think it it should you should start with uh

Start Training During Analysis

SPEAKER_00 13:20

training uh in the analysis phase. Um when you're doing the the gap fit or the fit gap analysis and trying to understand the processes of the of the customer. If you already start with some basic training in Business Central, getting to know the user interface and the standards, um that also helps you understand again what might be missing, how are they doing business, uh, and then you're starting the training, and at the same time you're learning um how their processes uh work. And then later on you can follow it up with more specialized uh training for it.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

So that's a good point that you call that you know, following up with the specialized uh component, because a lot of people, what I've seen where they start the training very early, and then of course, when you start early, it's usually just the base, right? The base functionality, whatever you uh got from Learn, Microsoft Learn. And then later down the road, you have some customization or some add-on that would shift a lot. And then some people are a little bit more apprehensive in that component because it's like, whoa, that's not what I remember. And then they struggle a little bit. So there's got to be some sort of balance where you know, yes, you understand its current state. There is a you understand the limitation, just heads up, that process is gonna change because you may not end up doing that. It may be automated or some sort. But I think to your point, starting super early to get them comfortable with the navigation of the application, and then follow up, follow up with any specialized area and in their space. Um, so I think that's very important.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

It can it can also, let's say, uh save budgets in the end. Because imagine you're doing an implementation and you're analyzing uh requirements, and let's say there is this person that's saying, I want this report, and because I I use it to plan my the warehouse and the and and the pics and the put aways and then to organize all that. I need to report with all of this information. And then a lot of companies will try to do an analysis. Okay, what do you need in the report and where does the information come from? Oh does it need to be visualized and refreshed? Instead of thinking about, for example, the standards, because it was a uh a colleague of mine, uh Bernie, who recently uh told that that he experienced that. He started with some bad training in the application, and after a couple of weeks of training, the person realized, well, actually, uh, how the business process standard is going in the business central means that I don't need that report uh anymore because it's already in the product. And by not starting doing training in the beginning, we've completely missed it. And then try to build that uh that report which was in the end alternately necessary.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Training is an area and it it sounds like you have some methods that you suggest with it. It's not just instructional training, it's hands-on training to help reinforce the learning and coming up with a training plan that's focused on how you as an organization are going to do the processes within Business Central.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah, yeah. The two things we try to have a um a mix of different uh uh trainings. So we have our uh learning management system-based uh trainings, we call them boosters, uh where, for example, we have a development booster, a warehouse management, so really uncertain functionalities you would like to learn. And then we also have that in our learning journey, and the learning journey consists uh of the boosters but also expert sessions, which are usually instructor-led uh webinars of about one or two hours where a subject matter expert uh comes and explains a certain topic within some uh some Q ⁇ A. And then we also have some more classical uh uh trainings, uh, it could be one-day, two-day, multiple-day trainings, um, sometimes uh linked to certifications that have to be given in a certain way, uh, or it also go a little bit deeper theoretically and and uh and and certain uh areas. So that is one part, the mix of of the different contents. Some learners prefer uh to see something, some learners prefer to do something and try it out or to read, so we have we have all of that. And we try to put that in a learning journey, which is kind of a structure that helps you depending on on where you are. You might be completely new to uh or you might have quite a lot of experience, and then depending on uh the type of learner that you are, the learning journey will also uh adapt and will suggest you um expert sessions, boosters, uh webinars, depending on on your experience and the topics that you're interested in. And you don't really have to go and look around and what am I going to do? Uh it's already structured in the way that we recommend you to do uh to follow it.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

It is such an important part of an implementation, and as I had mentioned, I feel it's often overlooked or under budgeted or underanticipated the amount of time that it will take. Not to say that it should be a lengthy process or should take time, but I mean it will take a lot of time. I mean, it's it's all relative to the size of the implementation. Uh, if you're just using one small portion of the application, your your training time uh won't be as involved as maybe if you're using many different areas of the application. But it's so important, and you you you hit something that was uh it's a point. It's sometimes people do the training after they go live. And I don't understand how they could do that because how do you do testing? Because you can train as you're testing to make sure, and then also day one, when you make the decision of when you would like to go live with the application, you don't want the users to feel uncomfortable of the the users of the application to feel uncomfortable. You want them to feel comfortable right like they're at home and they can continue to process. It's running a business, it it's it's very important. Um so I think that it's um uh it's important as well. So I think it's a good training approach.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

And then the the different um aspects to it also on the one hand, uh you have uh projects and users that need to learn, on the other hand, there's also consultants, developers. Um and for example, a couple of years ago, uh uh Microsoft started with uh continuous integration, continuous uh delivery in terms of development. Well, uh in terms of learning, we we call it continuous learning. Uh it's it's not something that you upstart and then suddenly it stops, and at some certain moment you know everything because it continuously uh uh evolves. And that's also something that uh that we try to uh uh to offer. Uh so uh basically uh for for a fixed fee, you get access to do everything, you don't have to pay per uh training, everything is in there. Uh uh and whatever you're interested in and learning today, tomorrow or next week, it's uh uh it's available for uh and uh

SOP Ownership And Timing

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Stephen.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

What's what's the best approach in terms of you know, you have a lot of organizations maybe you know going into Business Central and they want to be able to document some of these training, maybe for the purpose of standard operating procedures or uh yeah, some SOPs that they want to maintain. What is the you know, who's responsible for creating that? Would that be a client side or would that be uh the implementers side when creating in uh when creating SOPs?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Um I think it should be both. Uh because on on the one hand, you have the the client and they really know their business and processes really, really well, but might not have so much experience in in uh documenting it and how to document it, and uh also how to make sure that once a document is created, someone will still be able to read it afterwards and will read it. And I think some uh consultants, functional consultants might might have that uh experience at how to uh create a document. So I think a combination of both is uh is the best in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

And from your from your perspective, uh you when you're creating those documentation along while training at the same time, would you create those documentations while you're training, or would that be something way towards the very end, or you know, maybe throughout the project? What what would be the best approach uh to do that?

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Um it's it's it's a difficult one. It really depends what what you would like to uh create training on. If it's, for example, a training you're created and it's really products related or a certain product will work. Uh Or if you're you're building uh customizations for uh for a customer and it's that you would like to create training and documentation on, um and you can't really start doing that completely when the product isn't ready yet. Because if if you would like to do some some recording, some screenshots, it has to be ready before you can do that. Um on the other hand, um you might already have a have a good idea on on what it will do and how it will work, so the the structure of that you're gonna already start to uh to prepare. That's that's another thing product focused or add-on-focused uh uh training.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

That's

Reporting Options In Business Central

SPEAKER_02 22:40

good. Training is such an important part, and uh another important part, not to shift so rapidly onto it, but uh it's what I really was excited to talk with you about is reporting. And reporting in business central is uh has always been unique and special, uh to say. And originally it started off, if you go back to the division days, you had the built-in report designer report layout, uh, which I liked, and then they moved to our DLC reports, and then now you have word layouts, you have Excel layouts, and you have uh custom report layouts, you have all these options and features that you have. Oh, and I can't forget, you can put in Power BI reports now. I guess do you call Power BI reports? Or do you call it call them dashboards? Or what's the what do you either one of you, what do you call it?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Um Microsoft would call it uh a data visualization tool. Um so you can get insights and learn from uh from uh from your data. But uh I call it differently. But I think the whole aspect has uh has changed. It's an in in the past um we really didn't didn't have that much choice. Uh um if you were able to create a report, it was the the report object, and then you had uh even the classic layout a long time ago. Uh and then our DLC uh came in, and it was really basically based on the uh the development object. So we have the report object, that's where you go what that's what you are going to use, and that's how we are going to think about uh uh reporting. Uh nowadays uh you have you have much more. We still have the report object with some some more layouts with the word layout, Excel layout, uh, RDL layout. We have Power BI, we have the uh built-in financial uh uh reports, we have the uh analysis views on on list pages, uh and and a few more uh possibilities. So now the question is actually uh completely turnaround.

Requirements Before Any Reporting Tool

SPEAKER_00 24:51

In in the past, you would simply say, Okay, but the data that you need, you would start building the report. Now in the beginning, you shouldn't even think about any technology when reporting is involved. It all starts by asking uh questions. Uh what do you need this uh report or the data for for to be able to take which kind of uh of decisions? Um need to be live data, um, how live or recent as the data needs uh to be? What are you going to do? Do you need to be able to print something, send something, you want to drill down, you want summarized aggregated data, and a whole bunch of questions, and that will then direct you towards which is going to be the best technology uh to use, and that can sometimes be power BI, which can nowadays also simply be the uh analysis mode on uh on list pages, uh which and user ski users can if you explain how that works, can already create uh uh themselves. And I see that also uh happening in in uh real life for customers where in the past I would make them a few power BI reports uh to aggregate a few ledger uh entries and group them by uh date monk here and then a few other dimensions. Uh nowadays users do that simply directly in uh in a list page, jumping into the analysis uh mode, and they can do it uh uh themselves. And that's a really, really big change. It's not really the technology uh anymore, but it's the requirement and then deciding what's going to be the best uh solution.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yeah, that's a good point. It's understanding the requirements and who the audience is going to be for that report, because you you're right. Sometimes you don't need a fancy report if you just want to do a quick analysis and you have the analysis mode. And one thing I've I've noticed too, with even from the analysis mode, you can export to into Excel, right? When you export to Excel and you have all the data points already, and it may be just a quick ad hoc, you can use Excel Copilot to generate additional components, and then you have a very good reporting tool that can possibly expose information that you wouldn't know until you export it to Excel and then using Excel Copilot. And then the other components is the Power BI. It's it's more of an interactive report where if someone likes to interact with some of the data sets or drill down into the data of what makes up that, you know, maybe a pie chart of some sort, then yeah, you can get that data in the back end and then perhaps uh use some of the features like Copilot to ask directly from your Power BI Visual as a tool, then get additional information on top of that. Like you to, again, your point, it doesn't really matter in terms of the tool uh in this sense. It's really understanding the requirements and then trying to figure out okay, what are you trying to get out of it?

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Um I think that is the important part. It's how is this data going to be used? Is what I'm hearing. Because you have printed reports, and and please correct me if I

Analysis Mode Excel And Copilot

SPEAKER_02 28:10

may uh think incorrectly, but I've started to come to the point, and I've been saying the analysis mode is my favorite feature that's been added to Business Center for as long as I can remember. A lot of great features in there. A lot of things have been added that I really enjoy, but you can only have one favorite by definition, in my opinion. And my one favorite is the analysis mode. It's determining which output to present. Because even now with Business Central 2026 Wave One, you can develop analysis views or modes that you can uh include in extensions that you develop, which is almost like allowing for another report to be added, which gives the uh user of that view the ability to manipulate it almost as I tell people, like a pivot table and to filter it, but with a could core group. Um we have reports with you can use RDLC, Word, and Excel, which I want to talk about more of those in a moment. We have Power BI, and all of those are within Business Central. I've started to come to the mode of if it's something that I'm going to print and give to somebody, then we would use a report, and that would be something like a sales invoice, a sales order, a packing slip, or the like. And then the other pieces would be if the user was going to need to manipulate it. I don't want to say manipulate it, um, work with it differently based upon external conditions, then you would want to go more with a Power BI data visualization. I like that, the Power BI data visualization and an analysis view and possibly an Excel layout. Yeah, exactly. Where they could have the data and put that into Excel.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, I also think think think about it in the same way. The the report object is more and more going to be a more document-style uh report. So it's a PDF or or that you would like to be able to print uh email out uh to communicate with with other uh departments or or customers and vendors, and for that we are still going to use the the report object.

Power BI Models Dashboards And Embedding

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Um Power BI also has two different aspects. Uh you have the the all of the visuals uh that you create in a Power BI report, which can have multiple pages, and which you can also then convert into a dashboard, a scorecard, uh, and so on. So you can really visualize and present the data in different ways, uh, make it ready to slice and dice and analyze. The Power BI also has the data model. So, for example, when you start building a Power BI report, you first model uh the data, which might be coming from different uh uh data uh of different tables in the business central, also combined with some other uh data sources. That data model you then upload in the Power BI service, and even without any um uh pages around it, that data model can also be managed and shared. I have that online in my Power BI service, which is secured, um and then users can, for example, use Excel and simply connect to that uh data model. We have all of the relationships and the measures and KPIs built in, and they can use Excel to report on that. Or they might use the Power BI report which I created that looks at uh at the data. That's also something which is uh sometimes uh forgotten that RBI is two things the data modeling, and then optionally also added the visualizations you can already create, but I can connect to a data model from Excel and also from from other tools. And on top of that, usually when the RBI fetches data from business central, uh I prefer to work with query objects. Um could also be page uh APIs. I prefer query APIs because they can pre-aggregate uh the data and by simply adding a little property in a query API, um you can also uh in the business central client find it via tell me or search API and then it opens automatically in the analysis model. Um and then you can also directly as as a as a user use the same APIs that Power BI is fetching for its advanced reports, but use it API and create your own view in Business Central itself.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

So you look at the reporting, we can embed Power BI views within Business Central to give the user the a dashboard or the ability to work with that layout in application. And then also Power BI uh as its own viewing area that accesses business central data via API or other means.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

In Power BI, you build your your data model. If nobody would like some information about the item ledger entry table, you would use that API and import that added information in my data model. I'm also going to get some items, some attributes, some other data in that data model, which you're then going to connect the dots, connect all of the tables. That data model is something that you can already upload and publish to the Power BI service, which is DD Online, the website, uh internet for an organization. Um it's connected data in a Star or Snowflake schema, which is optimized for reporting and totaling and subtotaling. That's something that already an Excel can connect to. So a Power user who knows uh his or her way around Excel and simply say get data from my Power BI online uh service. Ah, there is this Power BI data model that I'm going to connect to it, and I'm going to build my own Excel uh report. That's that's one thing. I can also build a Power BI uh report that connects to that data model, and then in the and with the Power BI visualizations, I create my view on uh uh uh on the data. Make it also available on the Power BI uh service, and then that Power BI report and/or dashboard and scorecards if you create them, those you can embed back into uh business central, into the client if you want to. And then the building stones, that's say the little blocks of Lego that you use to build the data model, the query APIs, um the little property insights, they can all they're also searchable from within the business central client by user. Um, and it opens them automatically in that uh page analysis model, or you can also create your own Python table.

Combining External Data With Power BI

SPEAKER_02 35:01

With with this, and I'm thinking of users coming to Business Central uh or implementations that may have other systems that they use. Uh Business Central can do quite a bit for an organization, can run uh a significant portion of the a business, if not all of it, but there are those cases where they may need to have an external system to do some functions that are uh specific to their organization. Using Power BI, can you so think of somebody upgrading, migrating, re-implementing? What do I do with all of my old data? Is always a question that I hear. How do I bring that forward? Is there a way maybe with Power BI, and even somebody that has an external system, so that now we can bring all of that data together within Business Central using Power BI? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

That's actually one of the decision, let's say, makers in choosing for Power BI, or maybe some other uh solution or reporting solution. And because Power BI can get its data from Business Central andor also connect to other systems that you are using, import that data to in the same uh uh data model and link it. And then in Power BI you can create your visualizations on top of the data coming from all of the different uh systems and embed that back into uh business central. Especially if you need a report which combines or needs to combine data from different systems that you're using, power BI is the ideal solution.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

And you can get that visualization within Business Central as well, not just Power BI outside. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

So what you typically build is a report, and you start with Power BI desktop, or nowadays you can even start in the browser too. You save it as a Power BI file, maybe EX, like Excel and XLX Power BI file. It's a report. You can have one or multiple pages with different views on uh on the data. A report on Zuploaded, you can embed that in a business sample. That's one thing. And if you have one or multiple reports that you have already created, you can create a dashboard, like a helicopter view, uh, on different uh reports. Um basically a dashboard is a collection of visuals that come from one or multiple reports uh below it. If in the dashboard you click on a visual, you will then be redirected to the page of the report where it comes from. And a dashboard you can create one on multiple. Dashboard, the dashboard is also something you can embed back into a business sample. And then power BI reports, dashboards show the data as it currently is in the Power BI data model. You can refresh that the schedule, and depending on the license that you have, once per day, eight times per day, and 48 times per uh per day. And you're looking at the data as it is right now in the business center, the SIS uh situation. Of course, if I'm going to import a whole bunch of uh ledger entries, I have my uh posting date, which uh has a month, a year, a day, so I can use that to filter uh the data on specific months, years, and I can look back at the last. But it's always the data as it is right now in business central. If I change something in business central, I sync the data again, then power BI will show it as it is currently in a business central. And the power BI reports and dashboards, they do that.

Scorecards For KPI Snapshots

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Sometimes you also would like uh we call it a scorecard in uh Power BI to take kind of a snapshot of a metric today, the next day, day after that, day after that. So you can see the snapshot that that metric evolving. That's something which you can do with a scorecard in Power BI. You can identify one of multiple metrics that you have, KPI, and it'll take a snapshot, a picture of it, uh, according to the schedule, once per hour, once per day, and you can see that evolving. And it gives you more information than what you currently see in business central. It also shows you how it was in the past. That's something you can visualize in a scorecard on a little chart or or with some conditional formatting if you are on target, below target, and so on. And a scorecard is also something you can embed back into uh business central.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

That is uh uh I I learned something new with everyone that I speak with everywhere, either on the podcast or outside. But scorecards and the ability to track that information that is often a requirement of individuals on the implementations, vendor scorecards, uh customer scorecards uh for different types of criteria. So utilizing Pow BI and the snapshots, you can track information over time outside of just the historical documents that are within Business Central. You can get the uh what I would call the trend the temporary data, but uh transactional um uh data. It's it's it's it's some of these, and this is weird. There's so much to the application that sometimes it's I was just in that directions North America, and uh and I had some conversations with many people after the conference, and even some people at the event, and they were asking me what I thought about the conference, and it's always a great conference. And this year, and you you're talking about this. I'll go off on a little tangent for a

Why Conferences Need More Stories

SPEAKER_02 40:40

moment. I apologize, but I do want to go back to talking about Word Reports, Excel reports, and RDLC. I think what hit me this year is these events need to stop being so uh academic and more instructional and um application use. Meaning, just like you had talked about, we can say you create a data model, you can now embed Power BI. Look how great this is. But now saying, how do we use the application? Let's let's have sessions, let's give keynotes, let's give presentations of real-world examples that help individuals think of how can I use all of this stuff? Because it's so great to see this new functionality saying that we can do it. But let's walk through a scenario. Let's walk through business cases of how a business would capitalize on using this feature, of how they could apply this technology. It's I don't know if it's just me getting old. I don't know if there's just a lot of things coming at us, but I was not alone in this event.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

And and I think that's what uh I think that's more important now because it's changes so much with AI Copilot, right? So you're you're you're being fed with so many information. To your point, Brad, I think a lot of the sessions moving forward should be more uh story driven. So when you when you tell it as a story, it slows everything down, it it makes it, it resonates with everybody. And you could bring up use cases. It's like, hey, you are a distribution company. Here's this new feature. How would you use that? Well, let me show you an example of what you would do as someone in that industry, and then it kind of creates that connection. So you have to tell that story. I think that's what's what we need more of because it allows you to slow down when there's so many information to take in. Um, but you're right. I I think uh I got the same feedback. I I think that's my feedback from these um current conferences we go to. Uh it's not just like, hey, here's a new tool, here's what it can do. It's awesome. But then not really like, okay, well, how does that affect me? I don't know anything about it besides visualization or whatever it can do. But what does it look like in my world, in my story, running a business? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Yes, the story. And that's what the session that Steve, not you, and I did, and that's what we did. And that's uh we had great feedback because that's what they said is it was a story, and I could visualize the story. And you talking about the dashboards and you talking about uh putting this all together brought me back to that conversation and to that moment of Papa BI is great. I can put a dashboard in great, but application-wise, I can do vendor scorecards because of the snapshots. I can put my historical data alongside my business central data and not have to do a big data conversion for it, or I can do some visualizations with my systems.

RDLC Vs Word Vs Excel Layouts

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Um so were RDLC, as we had mentioned, uh uh was the transition from The classic reports to RDLC when it went to Microsoft Dynamics Nav. And then now within Business Central, you can still create RDLC reports. You have Word reports and you have Excel layouts. Microsoft is working on moving a lot of the RDLC reports to the Word layouts. And I don't know if they have any default Excel layouts in there. But what is your suggestion on and your experience on which one of those layouts to use? When would I use an RDLC if I would should continue to use them? When should I use a word layout? When should I use an Excel layout?

SPEAKER_00 44:43

But I think it's also important to know the history. It was one of the reporting tools from Microsoft, and they also had many, many others. At a certain point, I think in Seattle, someone decided within Microsoft we are only going to have one reporting solution left. It became RDL, RDLC. And then, for example, the television team, the central team, had to use it as a reporting solution, and I think they did it in a good way. So then we had the classic reports, we had the RDL C reports. But since then I think 2016, we had the latest official version of RDLC or SQL Server reporting services, so there isn't much official support for it anymore. So we're using kind of old technology, it still works, but there isn't good support for it anymore. So it's time to phase it out. We are 2026 at uh at the moment. Um in the report object in Business Central nowadays, uh we have the RDLC layout, the word layout, and the Excel uh layout. RDLC was great uh to develop documents. So something that you need to print and you would like to position what needs to beware on uh uh on the page. Um and when you look at it in preview or design time, it's almost the same than how it looks like and menu print. So ideal for uh for documents. The capability of also being able to do conditional formatting um expressions in the layout to dynamically show or hide certain tables, text boxes, which is what you you need uh in many situations in in a document. The word layout was introduced as an alternative because it's easier for for users to use to create uh a layout. But it was more difficult and sometimes still is more difficult in the word layout to have those uh conditional formatting, conditional visibility uh uh expressions. Microsoft's um came with the words with a central add-in for words, uh which is now uh getting more and more uh functionality um and it will bring into the word layout uh typically the functionality that we're using uh uh in our DLC, but which is not available in the word layout. Currently it is uh the blank zero so being able to blank out a zero uh on a text box, a column, a row, uh table. I think in the future more and more of that functionality will uh be added into that add-in. Like for example, conditional visibility, conditional formatting, and then at some point we'll be with the word layouts, being able to do exactly what the uh RDLC layout was able to do in the past, and then we can migrate fully towards the uh the work layouts. Whether you see you can already try it, but there are sometimes difficulties in doing better things with the work layout that you currently do with uh the RDLC. Having said that, RDLC is something that will be obsoleted at some point. And I think Microsoft is already starting with that, with all of the layouts which are in the in the base up standard. The RDLCs are still there, but they're being phased out and moved towards uh either word uh layouts or Excel layouts, depending on what the report is uh is for. It's more something that needs to be printed, uh and it's going to be a word layout, it's more something uh uh which is going to summarize that, and it's going to be an Excel layout or the combination of uh of both. And I think in version 28 I'm already starting in version 27, um with almost all of the out-of-the-box reports from from the base hub. There is no besides the old RDLC layout, uh Word layout, and there we also already an Excel layout. Um and these are really really well designed, I think. They're looking really really nice. It's just uh a matter of getting to know them and getting to uh uh to use them uh them more. And I think RDLC is slowly going to be uh phased out, except for those reports where it's going to be really difficult. And especially, for example, in the US localization uh with the Czech uh reports. Haven't worked with it myself yet because we don't use Czechs in Europe.

The US Check Formatting Problem

SPEAKER_00 49:20

But that's something for which I I think it's going to be really difficult to have that replaced with a word or an Excel layout.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

We we did have uh a long conversation about that at the Directions North America conference, and I still do not understand why the US uses, I mean, I do understand why the US uses checks. I understand the banking system and all that, but and then on the other side is I don't understand why US organizations spend so much time formatting their checks. I think it would be so well served to say, here's a business central report that lines up on this check stock. Just use it. I mean, I've I've really, in the years that I've been working with Business Central, have seen organizations spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars getting a check to look a certain way because the the micer has to line up and have proper spacing. It like the check has to have the perfect layout for the banks to be able to process them, to be able to process them electronically. Right. It's just it it it's it's uh it's one of those things that I don't understand. And maybe that is the last RDLC report that's left in Business Central only for the US localization.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

I think at some point um yeah, we I think we're going to have to start preparing to be ready at some point to do this completely without RDLC.

unknown 51:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

That's good.

Where To Find Steven Online

SPEAKER_02 51:07

Well, sir, we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today. I could speak with you at length. We'll have to see if we can schedule you to come back on to do a little follow-up on some of these because I did want to uh see if we could talk more about the word uh add-in and some of the other changes that we had there. Uh so we do appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. If anyone would like to contact you to learn a little bit more about training or to discuss Power BI reports, word layouts, or any other of the great things that you're doing for the community, what's the best way to get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_00 51:37

Uh the easiest is to um have a look at my blog. It's called uh thinkaboutit.be. Uh and there you have all um the latest blogs, usually reporting uh uh related, and you have my contact details, and feel free to uh to contact me. You can also find me on LinkedIn, uh Steven Renders, and um I'm pretty easy to uh uh to find. Always happy to uh to help out.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

No, great, thank you again. I I do and I do also appreciate your blog. It is one on one of my feeds as well. So I appreciate uh the articles that you're creating and uh contributing to the uh business center community. I look forward to again to speaking with you soon. Thank you again and talk with you soon. Ciao ciao. Thank you, Steven. Thank you very much. Thank you, buddy. Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Thank you, Brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlife.com. That is D V L P R L I F E dot com. And you can interact with them via Twitter, D V L P R L I F E. You can also find me at Matalino.io, M-A-T-A-L-I-N-O.io, and my Twitter handle is Mattalino16. And see you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.