Comparing the three main ways to get Dynamics 365 data into Power BI

There are a few different ways to get your Dynamics 365 data into Power BI. Now that the Common Data Service connector has come out of preview and is generally available, I figured it would be a good time to have a look at the different methods and how they stack up.

The different direct methods are:

• Dynamics 365 Online connector
• Common Data Service (CDS) Connector
• FetchXML (via Power Query Builder for XrmToolBox)

You can also use OData directly, but since this option doesn’t have any benefits over the other three, I am going to leave it out. The Data Export Service does have some benefits, but I will have to leave that for a different blog post.

The Dynamics 365 Online connector is probably the most commonly used option as it is the result you get when searching for “Dynamics 365” in Power BI’s Get Data dialog.

The Common…