Management Reporter Migration and Row Linking

It has been very well publicized that MR does not yet have row linking capability.  In FRx, you could design a report tree and have each branch of the tree use a different row format.  In MR, you can link to different GL links within a row format but not to different row formats.  Recently, though, I learned of a quirk with the migration related to row linking that I did not expect.

But first, a couple of good blog posts from the Dynamics Corporate Performance Management Team regarding FRx migration to Management Reporter and row linking.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dynamicscpm/archive/2012/05/23/migrating-to-management-reporter-2012.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dynamicscpm/archive/2011/08/09/management-reporter-advanced-reporting-scenarios-and-features.aspx

What I was surprised to learn is that when you have row linking on a tree in FRx, it impacts the migration in more ways than one.  Not only does it remove the row linking from the tree (which would be expected), it also does not migrate the GL linking in all of the row formats there were linked in the tree.  For example...

The tree has a summary and three branches:

• Summary
• Dept 1
• Dept 2
• Dept 3

In FRx, the three departments are linked to three different row formats as follows:

• Summary: Row format A
• Dept 1: Row format A
• Dept 2: Row format B
• Dept 3: Row format C

When the row formats are migrated, only Row format A would be migrated intact.  Row formats B and C would drop their GL links (when you open the row, there would only be descriptions) so that the row formats would be have to be rebuilt with the correct GL links.

And it is not enough to simply remove the row linking in the tree in FRx prior to migration, as unassociated rows will not migrate.  So you would have to associate the rows with another catalog for them to migrate properly.  A little prep work to consider if you use row linking in FRx.  Then you can address the report design (the blog post above on advanced reporting has some ideas) to achieve similar results to row linking.

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a supervising consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.