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The Missing Link: No-code Reporting from Azure Synapse Analytics

insightsoftware -
May 27, 2022

insightsoftware is a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions, empowering organizations to unlock business data and transform the way finance and data teams operate.

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Microsoft’s new, recommended approach for extracting D365 F&SCM data for reporting is to export it into Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS). ADLS offers speed and scalability for data storage, but due to its unstructured nature, can be tricky to extract data from for reporting. For large organizations faced with the challenge of querying big data sets, sometimes 60 million rows of data or more, the process is complex and time-consuming. When it comes to visualizing your data in Power BI, expensive and hard-to-find technical experts are required to write every new report and this is causing delays.

There are several different options to improve the process, for example:

Option 1. If you previously exported data entities from D365 into a build-your-own database (BYOD), you can replicate this process by copying the entities into ADLS. However, these entities typically contain duplicated data, which racks up storage costs and creates data silos for reporting against. As a result, you’re left without a single source of truth.

Option 2. You can read data from the data lake directly into Power BI. However, you must implement all your business logic in Power BI through complex data joins and manual data manipulation that is beyond the skills of all but the most competent data experts, which then needs to be duplicated in each report.

Option 3. Create a SQL Pool, or modern data warehouse, which transforms information into a format optimized for reporting with Power BI and implements your business logic. This requires considerable effort and can take months of time from the most expensive data experts in IT.

Option three offers clear advantages and this is where Jet Analytics can de-risk and accelerate your BI projects. Start with our prebuilt projects for each Dynamic’s ERP, then make customizations with our complete E.T.L. tool which removes the need for manual coding or learning new skills. Overall, this will help you see results in days instead of months.

With more Microsoft customers moving to Azure Data Lake, a newer option is being posed – synapse as a service. Synapse is wired to help organizations extract data by splitting it up into pieces. It’s then distributed into multiple servers, reorganized, and returned to you more quickly than would be possible through a single server. When you query with 60 million lines of data or more, this process offers incredible time savings.

A major challenge this poses is synapse services require extensive knowledge of SQL – and hiring an SQL expert is costly. Without proper data management, synapse is just an expensive way to get messy data faster.

Did You Know Atlas Can Also Fix Your Reporting Challenges?

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Jet Bridges the Gap Between Your Synapse Services and Reporting

Jet Analytics data management capabilities prepares your data for reporting. And not just ERP data, it connects to all your other data sources as well. Once Jet Analytics automatically aligns your D365 data, Jet Analytics provides a familiar drag and drop interface to boost the ease of deep analysis.

Jet Analytics offers a non-coding solution to help you build the data sets you need. Its data warehouse comes pre-loaded with a data set for an out of the box head start. For many firms this will fulfill 80-90% of their complicated reporting needs. When compared to the default options for getting your ADLS data into Power BI, Jet Analytics offers far faster time to value, much higher flexibility for customizing and the easiest ongoing data model maintenance.

When the time comes to analyze your data, Jet Analytics provides corporate analytics that brings your data together, making it easy to create and maintain a complete data warehouse or SQL pool. Jet Analytics connects to a variety of different data sources, including ERP and non-ERP data, and offers flexible integration options to connect to your D365 and synapse/ALDS data sources.

  • Jet Analytics uses point and click and drag and drop – and not coding
  • Cost savings – make sense of data for a fraction of the expense of hiring an SQL expert
  • This allows data configurations to be performed 5-7 times faster than hand-coded solutions and can be easily managed in-house
  • Jet Analytics fits into the Microsoft Azure solution supporting both Data Lakes and Synapse or Azure DW / Tabular ‘Cubes’ models as standard. No proprietary languages or coding
  • Jet Analytics includes a prebuilt data model for D365 and AX customers. It includes both Power BI and Excel based Jet Reports and a library of nearly 200 pre-built Power BI dashboards and reports
  • Jet documents the data model automatically, so you don’t have to

Jet Reports is included with Jet Analytics and offers high performance connectivity to Synapse/Azure Data Lakes, BYOD, SQL or your Cubes and Tabular models. It provides robust and reliable reporting that your business users will love. Remove the shackles of reliance on scarce technical resources and start to self-serve your own valuable business insights. Jet Reports complements Power BI to support your needs, right in Excel. Refresh in seconds for up-to-date analysis.

Jet Reports provides easy to use financial reporting in Excel for Dynamics ERP data that can be refreshed near real-time, on demand, with the click of a button. Easy-to-configure, pre-built templates get users up and running fast without having to understand complex Dynamics data structures. Access, share, and organize reports on the web to have the accurate answers you need, anywhere, anytime.

For D365 F&SCM customers, Jet Reports offers:

  • Fast, flexible reporting, inside Excel. Built in ERPSmarts empower users to access the data they need and create their own reports, without technical skills.
  • An easy-to-configure interface and pre-built templates mean shorter reporting cycles with less effort.
  • Custom Data Entity Packs means you don’t need IT to help you build your reports. No hard coding or programming skills required.
  • Drill down to transactional level data from the comfort of Excel. Access and run reports from anywhere on the web with the Jet Hub.

Solutions like Jet Analytics and Jet Reports help you make the most out of your D365 or ADLS data. By removing the need for technical input you can free your team to autonomously analyze the vast quantity of data at your fingertips.

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