Microsoft Dynamics AX includes the following options for creating and viewing reports of your business data:

• Standard reports:Microsoft Dynamics AX includes hundreds of reports to help you analyze your business data. Standard reports are located in the Reportsfolder in each section. Standard reports are created using X++.

• Ad hoc reports:Ad hoc reporting enables technical users to dynamically create, customize, and run reports. Ad hoc reporting is a powerful tool for day-to-day business analysis. There are two ways to create ad hoc reports:

  1. Use Report Builder, a report-authoring tool in SQL Server Reporting Services.

  2. Use Excel for ad hoc analysis of OLAP cubes.

• Production reports:Production reports are created by developers from Microsoft Dynamics AX using Microsoft Visual Studio and Reporting Services. Production reports give you advanced reporting capabilities that are not available in the ad hoc reports. Production reports give you the ability to create reports with transactional information, analytical information, or both in the same report.

The most important planning consideration for standard reporting is report access, in which you determine who can view and print standard reports by granting permissions to the report when you create user groups. For more information on managing permissions, see System and Application Setuphelp from the Helpmenu.

Consider the following when planning your ad hoc reports:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX security also applies to these ad hoc reports.

• Understand the business requirements for ad hoc reports and only grant the report authoring permissions to selected and trained power users.

• Understand the default perspectives provided within the Microsoft Dynamics AX application.

• Determine additional perspectives that need to be created or enhancements that need to be made to the default perspectives to fulfill the ad hoc reporting requirements.

• Determine the best possible schedule for report model generation. The report model is generated during the Microsoft Dynamics AX initial configuration and every time you change your perspectives.

• Determine if you need to replicate the Microsoft Dynamics AX database for ad-hoc reporting. For details on workload considerations, see Reporting extensions and Analysis extensions topology.

Consider the following when planning your ad hoc reports for business analytics:

• Determine if users will access analytics data using role centers, SSRS production reports, or ad hoc access through Excel.

• For more information on considerations in planning OLAP cubes, see the "Planning OLAP cubes" section below.

The following list provides some important considerations in planning production reporting.

• Plan proper security for the production reports. Production reports can access transactional data from the Microsoft Dynamics AX application as well as OLAP data from Analysis Services simultaneously. Access to the transactional data is determined by the user's Microsoft Dynamics AX user group. Access to analytical data is determined by the user's Analysis Services role. You need to make sure proper security is applied in SQL Server Analysis Services for OLAP cubes.

• Production reports provide more flexibility and functionality than ad hoc reports. However, you need a developer to create production reports.

• Understand the business requirements for production reports and resulting effort in creating these reports. Production reports use the Application Object Tree (AOT) and do not use the report models that are generated for the ad hoc reports.

• Production reports require SQL Server Reporting Services, Visual Studio, reporting extensions and reporting tools. For more information on production reports, see Reporting extensions and reporting tools.

Consider the following when planning your ad hoc reports for OLAP cubes:

• The security mechanism for SQL Server Analysis Services cubes differs from Microsoft Dynamics AX security. You need to understand and apply security properly to limit users to accessing only the data that they need to do their jobs.

• Understand the business analytics and business intelligence requirements that can help you look deeper into key performance factors such as your most profitable customers and most efficient vendors.

• Microsoft Dynamics AX provides default or out-of-the-box OLAP cubes when you deploy analysis extensions. These cubes are used in the role-specific business views in the Enterprise Portal role centers. For a list of the default cubes provided by Microsoft Dynamics AX, see Business Intelligence Cube Reference. Determine if the default cubes and business views meet your requirements. If not, you may need to enhance existing cubes or create additional cubes.

• Determine additional perspectives that need to be created or enhancements that need to be made to the default perspectives to fulfill the analytics requirements. Determine if any customizations need to be made to the existing cubes using the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS). For more information on perspectives or customizing cubes using BIDS, see Developer documentation on MSDN.

• Determine the schedule for processing your cubes from the SQL Server Management Studio.

• Determine if you need to deploy SQL Server Analysis Services on a dedicated server. For details on workload considerations, see Reporting extensions and Analysis extensions topology.