Friday, October 28, 2011

OLAP for Dynamics GP

Many users and partners often overlook the fact the Microsoft delivers prebuilt OLAP cubes for Dynamics GP.  Another name for the OLAP cubes is Analysis Cubes.  The cubes provide a data warehouse of Dynamics GP data.  The data warehouse can be used for reporting in Excel or through other reporting tools.  Until recently, these cubes were somewhat limited.  However, we the latest release of Analysis Cubes for Dynamics GP 2010 R2, Microsoft removed the passwords from the SSIS packages. 

Now partners or customers may make modifications to the SSIS packages in order to change how data is acquired from Microsoft Dynamics GP and brought into the data warehouse.  While these modifications are not supported by Microsoft, it still allows customers to add additional information they may need to create their specific reports.

Also with the latest release, Microsoft added a cube for Analytical Accounting.  This provides another method of reporting against Analytical Accounting codes.




One way to access the cubes is through the PivotTable Creator.  TOOLS - ANALYSIS CUBES - CREATE PIVOTTABLE REPORTS.

One the Report Filter, Report Rows and Report Values are set, the Pivot Table can be opened in Excel.

Once the PivotTable is open in Excel it can be further modified.  Users can now go directly to Excel to run the PivotTable as it is directly connected to the OLAP cube.

However, it is important to remember that reporting against OLAP cubes is not real time.  The information is only as current as the cube.  Usually scheduled jobs are created and set to run on a nightly basis to refresh the data.

Hopefully this gives you some information on using the latest OLAP cubes with Dynamics GP.

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