Huge Download Times

[Budfudder]

Am I missing something? I'm trying to use Power BI Desktop with our production CRM system. I connect to it, no problem. And then I select the table(s) I want to work with - and they take literally hours to load. Right now I'm trying to load our Contacts table (we have about 400,000 Contacts) and it's taken three hours so far, and still going. From my knowledge, once it's downloaded and I go in and I go in and edit the query...it will have to take the same time to refresh.

We're not a terribly big company - I cannot imagine 400,000 Contacts is a huge number in the scheme of things. So how do people with databases of similar size actually use Power BI Desktop without waiting hours? Am I doing something wrong?

[elliotdixon]

Hi @Budfudder are you using Direct Query or Import?

This does indeed seem like far too long - especially if you are querying the data with the PowerBI dekstop program from within the same network.

[Budfudder]

I'm using direct query. Just to note, our CRM is online.

[elliotdixon]

Hi @Budfudder I was looking at bringing my CRM stuff into Power BI as well.

Just noticed that

"An account with less than 100k records in any of the tables. Note if the account has access to more than 100k records the import will fail."

under System Requirements

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-content-pack-microsoft-dynamics-crm/

So I gather you just have too much data unfortunately.

Rgds.

ED.

[Budfudder]

Thanks for your reply. I have to say that that restriction makes Power BI for our CRM effectively useless. We're not a big company - if we're going over 100,000 rows in our CRM, I have to think a great many other companies will, as well - making Power BI pretty useless for them, too.

[elliotdixon]

That was just with the servicepack for CRM that Microsoft provides. I can't see an issue with using direct query or import with the BI desktop program. It should just work there. I have tables with millions of rows and it runs fine.

[Budfudder]

Then I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Not to worry, we've already abandoned Power BI because of the lack of support for other DB formats.