Accessing Analytical Workspaces and Reports on 1Box environment

INTRODUCTION

This article describes the process for enabling Analytical Workspaces & Reports in Dynamics 365 for Operations 7.2 Release on a 1Box environment.  This information is intended for partners, VARs, and ISVs that wish to showcase Analytical Applications using a 1Box environment.  As described in the Power BI Embedded Integration article, the hosted service used to deliver embedded analytics is only available on High-Availability deployments.  The Power BI Embedded service is not configured for 1Box environments.  As a result, the embedded Analytical Applications only available in High-Availability environments.

The following describes a *hack* that can be used to access the Analytical Workspaces & Reports on a 1Box environment.  To utilize this solution, you will need to deploy resources using the Azure portal on your subscription including an Azure SQL Server Database Premium (P1) edition to host the Entity Store.  To keep costs at a minimum, be sure to turn on the Azure services only when needed.

Note:   This configuration process an only be performed on a 1Box environment.  The service configuration settings are inaccessible in multi-box deployments.

OVERVIEW

In short, to access the Analytical Applications on a 1Box deployment, you'll need to deploy your own Power BI Embedded Service and Entity Store Database.  It's simple to do.  However, you'll need Administrative access to an Azure Subscription and a Dynamics 365 for Operations 1Box environment.

Essentially, this process includes the following steps:

  1. Deploy the Power BI Embedded service on your Azure subscription
  2. Deploy a SQL Database on your Azure subscription
  3. Publish the Entity Store database on your Azure subscription
  4. Configure the local 1Box environment to point at your Power BI Embedded service

Here's a screen shot of an Analytical Workspace in the Application Suite

The first step, is to Deploy the Power BI Embedded service on your Azure subscription.