Reporting and Analysis Tools

Microsoft CRM offers several reporting and analysis tools:

• Entity views and the Advanced Find feature

• Dynamic Excel files

• SQL Server Reporting Services

• Filtered views

• Third-party reporting tools

Each of these tools provides a unique set of benefits and drawbacks, so you should determine the most appropriate tool for each type of analysis. As you can see from the list of reporting tools, Microsoft CRM even allows you to integrate third-party reporting tools into the user interface. Table 7-1 summarizes the reporting tools and their features.

Table 7-1: Reporting and Analysis Tools in Microsoft CRM

	Entity views and Advanced Find	Dynamic Excel files	SQL Server Reporting Services	Filtered views	Third-party reporting tools
Report output	Microsoft CRM grids	Excel Pivot-Tables and PivotCharts	Web-based reports that can be exported to additional formats such as Excel, PDF, and CSV	SQL Server database view	Varies
Skill level required to create or modify reports	Beginner	Beginner	Advanced	Advanced	Varies
Can schedule reports for e-mail delivery	No	No	Yes	No	Varies
Supports charts and graphs	No	Yes (with Excel charts or Pivot-Charts)	Yes	No	Varies
Report results can be cached for better performance	No	No	Yes	No	Varies
Supports sub-reports and drill-through reports	No	No	Yes	No	Varies
Can include data from multiple entities in results	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Can include data from multiple entities in the report query	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Supports report snapshots	No	No	Yes	No	No
Can prompt users to enter parameters before running reports	No	No	Yes	No	Varies
Allows for user access restrictions	Yes	Yes	Yes	Does not apply	Varies
Respects Microsoft CRM security settings by default	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Reports can run contextually from an entity list or form	No	No	Yes	No	No
Users can access from Reports list	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

SQL Server Reporting Services reports clearly offer the most benefits and functionality, but they also typically require an advanced user to author new reports. In addition, Reporting Services reports might take additional time to configure and manage compared to the simpler reporting tools. The entity views and dynamic Excel tools offer less functionality than Reporting Services, but any beginner user can quickly and easily author new reports. Let's review each of these reporting tools in more detail.