Taking your Power-BI-in-Dynamics demo to the next level, literally

Analytics –which I’ll use generically to cover dashboards, reports, and visualization — can be the source of two of the biggest mistakes I see in demos:

1. Showing a bunch of analytics without ever finding an insight that can be used to start a story; and
2. Waiting too long to get to analytics so that they’re either rushed, and/or the attention of the senior-most executives is long gone.

#2 isn’t an issue if you can fix #1

Obviously, if you use analytics to kick off your demo story, there’s no chance of running out of time or losing executive attention. I believe most Presales engineers would love to have colorful, compelling visualizations that highlight an obvious insight that can be used to kick off the story we tell in our demos. After all, exotic visualizations are a key ingredient in a sexy demo. So why doesn’t that just happen every demo? Because it’s a lot of work to massage data so that the analytics can tell different stories for different demos.

In late September, the Power BI group hosted a virtual “DevCamp” led by Scott Sewell, a Principal Program Manager with the Power BI CAT team. The topic was: “Developing Power BI for Dataverse + Power Apps and Dynamics 365 CE.” If, like me, you feel like you’ve learned a lot about Dynamics and a lot about Power BI, but not that much about how Power BI works specifically with Dynamics, this webinar will be helpful. You can watch the replay here.

For me, though, the presentation was both inspirational and aspirational. It highlighted how vapid my current Power BI demo is within Dynamics. I admit that even though I’ve got the Sales Analytics, Marketing Analytics, and Customer Service Analytics Power BI dashboards installed and running off the actual data in my demo environment for authenticity. So why do I think my Power BI demo “lacks flavor, zest, animation, or spirit”?

1. I have not invested the tremendous amount of time it would take to create enough data to generate insights I could use to start my story; I’m basically just showing that the dashboards exist and talking to their value, but without tying them into the demo story.
2. I only show it from the Dashboards menu option at the application level, without ever showing how it can be integrated elsewhere within Dynamics (e.g. an account-level dashboard such as an Account 360°).
3. I can click in a report to see the interactive filtering, but I don’t have any drill-down or drill-through to show that second or third level of analysis that users want.
4. I use the provided dashboards that don’t really take advantage of some of the more “exotic” visualizations like Key Influencers, Smart Narrative, Play Axis, custom icons, etc.
5. I’m not using the new Goals functionality in Power BI.
6. I’d like a report or dashboard that integrates a Power App or triggers a Power Automate flow to spark a discussion about the Power Platform as a whole, but I currently have no way to take action from any of my reports.

Am I being a little hard on myself? Maybe. But my 7th Commandment discusses the importance I place on analytics in any deal in any software category.

Spreadsheet templates for quickly manipulating Power BI reports for Dynamics Sales

Back to the Power BI DevCamp presentation. The main deliverable from the webinar was an account-level dashboard with instructions for exposing it on an Account form. I quickly realized I needed something like that in my demo — not just because an account-level overview report is useful (it is, but it’s hardly revolutionary), but because of what it represents. Application-level dashboards are part of every vendor’s CRM story, but showing dashboards elsewhere in the application starts to really talk to Power BI as a standalone BI tool that you can embed anywhere that analytics would be useful.

Specifically, the account-level dashboard reminded me of the Account 360 report that Microsoft has for all of its named accounts in its CRM system (MSX IYKYK), but which I’ve never seen replicated in a demo environment. The webinar included a link to download the Power BI template (here) as well as instructions for setting it up.

Also, if you demo Microsoft Dynamics Sales, you might want to reach out to Scott and see if he has any other tools that might make your life easier…

Extra Credit: the “work/life balance demo” vs. the “workaholic demo”

Power BI is always going to be more impressive on a computer than on a phone. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid Power BI on mobile. Assuming you plan to follow the best practice of starting your demo with analytics, you could ask your audience: “Do you want me to start this demonstration as someone with proper work/life balance, or as a workaholic?”

The “work/life balance demo” starts with your protagonist arriving to their desktop computer at work with their cup of coffee and opening up their favorite dashboard.

The “workaholic demo,” on the other hand, starts with your protagonist viewing the report on their phone at any hour of the morning via a scheduled email in their Inbox or on the Power BI mobile app. This TikTok pretty much nailed me.

One benefit of showing Power BI on mobile is that, if you don’t have other mobile stuff to show, you can still toggle on the “Mobile” button when calculating your Demo Sexiness Score™.