Creating a Modern Analytics Platform using the Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Common Data Model / Dataverse combined with your legacy data for historical analysis

The Legacy Historical Data Dilemma •     In the past, as companies converted from their legacy ERP to our Dynamics products, they had the dilemma of either paying for a very expensive data conversion of historical non-general ledger data that was fraught with errors or not having historical data for their reporting. 

•     Now, our clients have a similar issue when they are migrating from older versions of AX unless they do not make changes to their configurations and lose the opportunity for improvement.  What is the Common Data Model (CDM) and how can we leverage it? 

•     Replication of D365 F&SC DW objects into an Azure Data Lake Gen2 storage o     Finalized Data Warehouse data o     Represented in “Cubes” •     Part of the Microsoft data metaverse o     Power Apps o     Other D365 offerings  How Power BI and out of the box cubes help? 

•     Build on the out of the box cubes to develop cubes that are customized for our clients. 

•     Bring in historical data to tables directly from the legacy system with a one-time import. o     These can either be transformed during the import. 

•     Or they can be left in their original table structure and have a mapping that is used for report development. 

•     This can be done for AX 2009, AX 2012 or any other legacy system. 

Flexibility in Report Development 

•     By using the Data Lake tables and cubes in conjunction, we can develop reports that may require fields that are not in the cubes but joining the cube with the tables to allow flexibility and not requiring every new field to be a cube development effort. 

•     This is especially useful when these new fields may only be needed in one or two reports. Power BI Development Scenarios to take your Analytics to the next level 

•     Scenario 1:     Power BI direct to Dynamics 365 F&SC 

•     Scenario 2:     D365 F&SC to Data Lake Gen 2 and Power BI read CDM Directly from DL 

•     Scenario 3:     D365 F&SC to Data Lake Gen 2 with ETL into Electronic Data Warehouse 

•     Scenario 4:     D365 F&SC to Data Lake Gen 2 and Power BI read D365 tables Directly from Data Lake  Takeaways 

•     There are many ways to include D365 F&SC and historical legacy data and Power App based data 

•     The Common Data Model / Dataverse are a more modern approach to sharing Microsoft Data 

•     The Common Data Model / Dataverse can be adapted into a Modern Analytical Platform utilizing the four scenarios above.