Combining Dynamics CRM Online and Power BI Preview

I am a strong believer of the concept of “in-context analytics” and as I outlined in Mindful apps – putting people at the center supported by data I consider analytics and business intelligence to be essential in providing business value. So I was quite interested when I first learned about the Power BI preview with it’s built in support Dynamics CRM Online  (For a great write up about it check out Previewing the New Power BI Experience with Dynamics CRM).

When I started playing around with it I was surprised that it seemed to do things quite differently from Power BI for Office 365 since I thought it was simply the next release of the existing Power BI for Office 365 offering. Apparently this is not the case.

Power BI Preview seems to be quite different from Power BI for Office 365 - for a detailed description of differences check out Power BI vs Power BI Preview: what’s the difference – here’s a quick summary:

• Power BI for Office 365 is based on technologies such as Excel and SharePoint and is an integrated part of Office 365, whereas Power BI Preview is built on a separate platform. 
• Power BI Preview is using the browser the Power BI Designer as design tool for creating dashboards and reports whereas Power BI for Office 365 mainly relies on Excel as a design tool.
• Power BI Preview also exposes an API which allows you to push data into the Power BI service – for more information check out the Power BI Developer Center. For a good introduction check out Developing for Power BI Overview (Video). This is something which I think is the key enabler for real-time analytics on your data. To stay up to date make sure that you follow the Power BI Development blog
• Power BI Preview has some new data visualizations available such as single number card tiles, combo charts, funnel charts, gauge charts, filled maps and tree maps (Check out Visualization types available in Power BI Reports)

If you check out the official documentation Use Power BI with Microsoft Dynamics Online (Technet) – it seems to focus on the new Power BI Preview but the Microsoft Dynamics CRM templates for Power BI that you can download for free from PinPoint - listed in the second section of the page - seem to be based on Power BI for Office 365. (Use Google Chrome to see the download link – I did not see it when using Internet Explorer 11)

When you actually try to use it in practice together with Dynamics CRM Online you will however encounter some serious limitations which are hopefully resolved by the summer release:

• The Microsoft Dynamics CRM content pack for Power BI preview only exposes a limited set of 10 entities and associated measures – please vote for Dynamics CRM custom field and entity support if you think this should be extended. There exists a workaround where you will export you Dynamics CRM Online data in Excel and then use Excel data in Power BI (See screenshot below for the available entity sets)
• At the moment it is not possible yet to pass in filters to the Power BI Dashboards which seems like an essential requirement for truly embedded analytics in Dynamics CRM using Power BI – you can however vote for this feature on the Microsoft Power BI Support site – Pass filters in URL.
• To make matters even worse, it simply is not possible for the moment to embed Power BI Preview at all into Dynamics CRM – a feature which is available in Power BI for Office 365.

My guess is that the way forward will be Power BI Preview (or name it Power BI 2.0) and it will replace Power BI for Office 365 – you already see it appearing in the license management section of Office 365 (see screenshot below). But for the moment it is still a Preview and no specific release date has been made available so go for Power BI for Office 365 at the moment.

References:

• Connecting to on-premises organizational data from Power BI
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM content pack for Power BI
• Microsoft CRM Online & Power BI Tutorial (Power BI for Office 365)
• Power BI vs Power BI Preview: what’s the difference
• Power BI Workbook Size Limitations

Tags van Technorati: Power+BI,visualization,Office365,analytics,CRM,Dynamics+CRM

Getting to grips with Dynamics CRM releases, updates and build numbers

Since a couple of weeks I have been working with Dynamics CRM. One of the things which is always challenging when starting to learn a new product is getting to understand the different versions and the changes between versions. When Microsoft was still on a 3-year release cycle for their products, this was quite easy to understand but most Microsoft products are now on a more much more frequent release schedule and Dynamics CRM is no exception.
Updates and improvements to Dynamics CRM are released twice a year – in what is commonly referred to as the spring and fall release – see Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Roadmap for 2015. Given the new “Cloud first” credo of Microsoft these updates can be a cloud only release as was the case with the Spring 2015 (Carina) release.  For Dynamics CRM Online you are required to be on the current version ( n )  or the prior version ( n-1 ) but you have the choice to skip an update – see Manage Dynamics CRM Online Updates. Dynamics CRM on premise follows the standard lifecycle that you are accustomed to  (see Microsoft Dynamics Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ and Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search for Dynamics CRM)

To make things a little more interesting the Dynamics CRM product team seems to have chosen to use stars and constellations as code names for the different releases. Code names of the same genre are also used for closely related products to Dynamics CRM such Dynamics Marketing, Social Engagement and Parature Knowledgebase.
Recently Microsoft also changed the naming conventions for their updates and explained the version/build numbers that they are using now and for future releases – check out New naming conventions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM updates. The tables below summarizes the different versions for the moment. As outlined in Greg Olsen his blog post – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Roadmap – the next version for Dynamics CRM is code named Ara – another interesting tidbit -  “Not confirmed by Microsoft, but it is likely that On-Premises installations will have to wait for the CRM ‘ARA’ release during the Fall Wave in order to get the Carina new features and others.”

Product Name	Version description	Version number	Release or Update	Code Name
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	Fall ‘13	6.0.0	Major release	Orion
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	Fall ‘13	6.0.1	Incremental Update	-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	Fall ‘13	6.0.2	Incremental Update	-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	Spring ‘14	6.1.0	Minor release	Leo
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	2015 Update (Fall ‘14)	7.0.0	Major release	Vega
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	2015 Update 1 (Spring ‘15)	7.1.0	Minor release	Carina
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	t.b.d.	t.b.d.	t.b.d.	Ara

Table1.  Releases Microsoft Dynamics CRM online

Product Name	Version description	Version number	Release or Update	Code Name
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	2013	6.0.0	Major release	Orion
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	2013 UR1	6.0.1	Incremental Update	-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	2013 UR2	6.0.2	Incremental Update	-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	2013 SP1	6.1.0	Minor release	Leo
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	2015	7.0.0	Major release	Vega
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	2015 Update 0.1	7.0.1	Minor release	Carina
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)	t.b.d.	t.b.d.	t.b.d.	Ara

Table 2. Releases Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on premise)
References:

• Dynamics CRM – Get ready for the next release
• Manage Dynamics CRM Online updates
• Customer Driven Updates in CRM Online 2015 Update 1 (Video)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015, 2013, and 2011 updates: release dates, build numbers and collateral
• Quick tip: determine the version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Dynamics CRM Roadmap – Spring 2015 and beyond
• A few notes on Convergence 2015 Announcements
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Roadmap for 2015