Configuring Electronic Reports

In this second post of the Electronic Reporting Series, we will see how to configure this tool in 3 simple steps and import a report from the global repository. Let's go!

In the previous post, we talked about how this reporting tool works, and today we will configure it.

We start the work with ER (Electronic Reporting) with the configuration of the module. Here we will concentrate on getting everything ready to start making our reports.

Electronic Reporting Workspace.

To start working with ER, we must navigate the Electronic Reporting workspace. As is typical in Dynamics navigation, we will have three options to access. From the Workspaces Menu -> Electronic reports. We can also access it from the workspaces in the start menu, and finally, we will also have access from the Organization Administration module.

No matter which of the three routes we take, we will always arrive at the same form.

It is important to mention that the configuration we will carry out here is cross-company; it does not matter which legal entity we enter. All the companies will share these parameters.

Upon entering the workspace, we will see the following.

To the left of the form are the report configurations, in the center the configuration providers, and to the right are the related links.

Our first step is to create a new configuration provider.

Create a configuration provider.

Being the first time we enter the workspace, we will see that there is only one active configuration provider, Microsoft.

This provider prevents us from creating our reports since it only shows the repository of statements made by Microsoft which we can import into our environment.

To be able to create and modify reports, it is necessary to create a new one and activate it. So we go to the "Configuration Providers" link and create a new one:

Simply with a name and URL, we are ready. Once created and returned to the workspace, we activate our provider:

Create a configuration repository.

The repository is used to host the configurations of the reports that we create. We will see the option to enter the repository within our configuration provider.

Inside the repository, we will create a new one. Here Dynamics gives us three options:

LCS. Like the Microsoft one, the configuration repository will be created in Life cycle services. When creating this type of repository, it will be associated with a project made in LCS, and the report configurations will be stored there.

Note: Although it was the friendliest, this option is being retired and will be replaced by RCS. When creating an LCS repository, it will give us a warning.

RCS refers to Regulatory Configuration Services, a mandatory service for certain countries. Unlike the previous one, this repository is associated with an RCS environment with our Dynamics 365 instance. In this way, the report configurations can be hosted on this RCS environment and imported to the related Dynamics 365 instances.

Operations Resources. This last case points to the reporting configurations present in this instance of Dynamics 365.

Note. If RCS or LCS repositories are created, we will see they need to be associated with the respective environment. It will send us a message requiring us to make this association.

In my particular case, I will use Operations Resources. Although the best option currently is to create an RCS resource and have the report configurations hosted so they can be distributed later.

We're ready to start working with the reports with our repository created.

Importing a Report from the global repository.

As mentioned, Microsoft offers us a global repository of electronic reports to import and reuse.

As the last step in our post, we will import the electronic report of Purchase Order Confirmations in Excel into our environment from the global repository.

Here, we go to the "Microsoft" vendor repositories and open the Global repository.

This is the time to take a breath. The global repository list can take up to 10 minutes to load. So it's time to grab some coffee and continue.

After you complete the upload, we will find an extensive list of electronic reports you show us on the left of the form.

In this list, we will find all the components of each report. As we saw in the previous post, we need three components, Data Model, Model Assignment, and Format. In our case, we will focus on the following:

These three components are the ones that complete the configuration of the report, so to import it to our instance, we stop at the format node, as seen in the image above, and click on import:

It will give us the following alert.

This message lets us choose whether to import all format-dependent components (i.e., Data Model and Model Mapping) or the format. We will bring all the elements, giving it "YES".

Once the action is processed, we already have our report in our instance.

We return to the workspace and go to report settings to see it.

Summary

Following this guide, we could configure the electronic reports, creating a configuration provider and its respective repository. Finally, we imported a report from the global repository offered by Microsoft to our instance.

In the next post, we will detail the report configuration and how to edit the report we imported.