Scott has a great opening slide for this deep-dive reporting session:

It’s so true that many times BI is described in terms of the final output, but much of the work goes into building the underlying data model. For D365FO, data for high volume transactional reporting is exported to an “Entity store” or “BYOD” database.

Entity Store – A Data Warehouse that Microsoft Manages

The Entity store is a repository for reporting aggegated data. Power BI using Direct Query is the only mechanism to report off Entity store data.

Power BI Embedded in Workspaces is only available using the Entity store.

Bring Your Own Database – A Data Warehouse the You Manage

The alternative to the Entity store is using the Data Management framework to extract denormalized data into an Azure SQL database in your Azure subscription. One of the primary advantages of BYOD is more flexible than the Entity store.

Data tools possible with BYOD:

• Power BI using Direct Query or Import
• SSAS Cubes
• Consuming data from systems other than D365FO
• Third party data tools

Reporting tools possible with BYOD:

• Power BI
• SSRS
• Third party reporting tools

Summary

Great session providing a deeper dive into the technical details of using the new D365FO tools. Reporting is a complicated but critical area to understand for any D365FO implementation.