Project analytics in Business Central - the past, the present, and the future (2025 release wave 1)

In this post, I will discuss your options for built-in BI, analytics, and reporting in the Projects module of Dynamics 365 Business Central. Browse it to learn more about your options in different versions of Business Central.

But the real and devious intent behind the article is to involve users and functional consultants in what improvements we should do in this space for the 2025 release waves. Scroll down to get to that part. I mean it. Seriously. Without feedback from you guys, the best I can do is to guess on what matters and then improve that. And I don't work with the project module in Business Central as a customer, I'm just working with requirements for the product.

If you work with Business Central version 2022 release wave 2 (or earlier)...

then your options are limited to the standard reports and the WIP calculations that have been in Business Central for ages. You can find many of them in the Report Explorer:

As a recent thing, we documented all of these and added an overview article so that you know what is available.

For more information, see

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/project-reports

If you read some of that documentation and have input for improvements, then reach out to me. You are the expert; I am the novice. Let's work together to make the world a little bit better (in context of project reporting).

If you work with Business Central version 2023 release wave 1/2 or 2024 release wave 1...

then you have more options. Namely that you can take any list page into Analysis Mode and group/pivot your project data as you see fit. Directly in the client. And you can save any such analysis tab, get a copy in Excel, or share the analysis definition with a friend.

Most of the other functional areas of Business Central have an article with concrete examples of how to perform such ad-hoc analysis. For more information, see

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/ad-hoc-data-analysis-by-functional-area

But for projects, no such article exists (yet). If you have good scenarios to share that would fit such an article, do reach out. Then we can write it together (and you can get your name added to the article. Wouldn't that be cool?

If you work with Business Central version 2024 release wave 2...

then you are in for a treat (if you use the online version of Business Central). We just (in version 25.1 - the first minor update to this release) released a Power BI app for projects with 7 reports. The reports allow you to

• Get a high-level view of your organization's projects. View key metrics and track performance across them.
• View all projects and their tasks along with their costs and prices.
• Analyze the profit of each job and ensure you meet targets.
• View project completion statistics.
• Track the performance of each project and how they track toward their budget.
• View all sales entries for projects broken down by the sales line type.
• Analyze key sales information on projects based on the customers you sell to the most.

For more information, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/projects-powerbi-app

Another thing we added in this release was a query that you can use to perform more advanced ad-hoc analysis than what is possible with taking the project ledger entries page into analysis mode. One way to find the query is to use Tell me and search for

Project Ad-hoc Analysis

What about 2025 release wave 1???

OK relax dudes and dudesses. I'm not spilling the beans on those plans here, this is why we have release plans...

Having said that, here are my thoughts on what might happen within project analytics:

• All existing reports will get a teaching tip to improve the in-client help (and this will also link to the documentation article for the report).
• The report explorer for project reports will include all reports (I need to check if that is already the case).
• List reports might get new Word/Excel layouts and the RDL layouts might be deprecated.
• New Excel reports might surface to replace some of the standard reports (what would you like to get in this space?)
• The new Power BI reports might be improved (what would you like to get in this space?)
• New demo data for projects might surface (what would you like to get in this space?)

If you want to influence the scope (as a Microsoft partner for Business Central), then go to the Yammer site and join the discussion here:

https://www.yammer.com/dynamicsnavdev/threads/2989150400176128

If you want to influence the scope (as a Business Central customer), then connect with me here on LinkedIn and write me (or comment on this post).

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That's it for now. Thanks for reading along. Do comment on things that resonated with you when reading the article.

Want to read earlier posts in about reporting and analytics in Business Central. Maybe this series will interest you:

• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 1 (2020 release wave 1+2)
• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 2 (2021 release wave 1+2)
• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 3 (2022 release wave 1+2)
• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 4 (2023 release wave 1+2)
• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 5 (2024 release wave 1)
• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 5? (what happened to "getting access to all my data"?)
• Analytics, BI, and reporting in Business Central from 2020 until now - part 6 (analytics features in 2024 release wave 2)
• Built-in BI and Reporting tools in Business Central

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