RSMUS.comWhen writing reports against data for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, I am often faced with limitations of writing dataset queries using Fetch XML. One such limitation I recently faced was trying to get the total value for a set of records. Normally totals are not an issue. The thing that made this situation difficult was that I was linking to a subset of records having a many-to-one relationship. This meant the value that I wanted to sum in the report was being duplicated any time multiple child records were found.
In this blog, I am assuming knowledge of writing FetchXML based SSRS reports using BIDS, including how to create and use subreports. Due to the sensitive nature of my client’s data, I will not be using screenshots or the actual queries used. I will instead display sample FetchXML and illustrative tables.
The FetchXML for my report looks similar to this:
Picture the data using the amount columns looking something like this:
Picture the data using the amount columns looking something like this:
The desired result in my report was to display the Payment Amounts on a single row, the month representing the column headers. My expected results would look something like this:
Instead of seeing 4500 for my total, I was getting 10500. This was confusing until I realized it was due to the Loan Amount being duplicated for every payment.
I was able to get around this was by creating a subreport in BIDS that calculated only the total for Loans. The dataset for the subreport was copied from the main report; however, I removed the link in the FetchXML to the child records.
The subreport FetchXML looks similar to this:
I placed the subreport in my main report where the total had once displayed incorrectly. The design view of the main report’s table would look similar to this:
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By: Jon Angell – Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner
