Category: Power BI

New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2: Use Advanced Settings In The Power Bi Connector

Ian Grieve4 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 3rd of the new functionality in the Reporting and data analysis section is use advanced settings in the Power BI connector.

Advanced users of Power Query can now fine-tune the use of the Power BI connector for Business Central in their semantic models. The introduction of new parameters to the Power BI connector for Business Central enhances the flexibility, performance, and user experience of data integration and analysis, while still ensuring the default values are optimal in the majority of cases. These parameters empower users with more control over their data interactions, leading to more efficient data processing, better performance, and an improved user experience.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Starting in this release, the Power BI connector for Business Central now supports several advanced properties that you can set in your Power Query queries:

  • AcceptLanguage: This parameter allows you to specify preferred languages for responses, ensuring users receive messages and translatable strings in their desired language. This improves user satisfaction and makes the data more accessible and relevant.
  • ODataMaxPageSize: By limiting the number of entities per results page, this parameter allows for more flexibility when connecting to large datasets or using complex queries. It ensures efficient and responsive data retrieval, leading to faster insights and decision-making. You can’t exceed the maximum page size defined on the service.
  • Timeout: This parameter defines the maximum duration for a request before cancellation. It helps manage system resources effectively and prevents long-running queries from impacting overall system performance. Users experience minimal delays and interruptions, ensuring a smoother workflow. You can’t exceed the timeout defined on the service.
  • UseReadOnlyReplica: This parameter determines whether requests target the primary database or a read-only replica. Offloading read operations from the primary database can significantly boost performance. This leads to faster data retrieval and improved system stability, especially during peak usage times.

Click to show/hide the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 Series Index

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New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2: Use Embedded Power Bi Reports Out Of The Box

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 1st of the new functionality in the Reporting and data analysis section is use embedded Power BI reports out of the box.

It’s easier than ever to leverage your business data to get insights into your operations. You can analyze your business data with out-of-the-box Power BI reports for finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, and projects.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Business Central comes with many options for reporting, business intelligence (BI) dashboards, and data analysis. This release wave adds a lot of new reports for finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, and projects.
Specifically, the following Power BI reports are available:

  • Finance: 14 reports
  • Sales: 12 reports
  • Purchasing: 13 reports
  • Inventory: 7 reports
  • Manufacturing: 11 reports
  • Projects: 6 reports

You can also embed the Power BI Metrics scorecards you use to track your important KPIs directly inside Business Central.

My Opinion

It’s good to see some Power BI reports being made available as default. It will give clients implementing Business Central a starting point with reporting.

Click to show/hide the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 Series Index

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What is the Microsoft Power Platform?

Ian Grieve4 minute read0 comment

Power PlatformI’ve been posting about working with Power Automate in general and using it with Business Central for a while now, but I’ve never really explained the Power Platform, of which Power Automate is a part (although I did introduce Power Automate itself).

The Power Platform is a low-code platform for rapidly building customised end-to-end business solutions. Power Platform includes four main products, which can be used individually or together:

Power AppsPower AutomatePower BIPower Pages

  1. Power Apps – allows apps to be created which can be run on a browser or mobile device, they can be used by internal users.
  2. Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) – automation of tasks and activities acorss numerous services using integrated or custom connectors.
  3. Power BI – business intelligence solution which provides interactive data visualization BI tools to help users visualize and share data and insights across their organization.
  4. Power Pages (formerly part of Power Apps until 2022) – secure, secure, enterprise-grade, low-code software as a service (SaaS) platform for creating, hosting, and administering modern external-facing business websites.

While Microsoft bill all parts of the Power Platform as low-code, I think that developers, or at least people with experience in programming, will find the logic patterns required to build flows easier to manage than someone without experience.

Certainly with Power Automate there are development principles which should be followed, such as Application Lifecycle Management which requires the use of solutions, separate environments for development, testing and production and use of child flows.

The other areas of Power Platform are very similar; organisations which allow a free for all in Power Platform are storing up a lot of trouble for the future.

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MADIC dynamics Knowledge Hub Webinars: Reporting with Business Central

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

MADIC dynamicsIn our most recent webinar here at MADIC dynamics, we took a look at Reporting with Business Central.

If you want to catch up on this webinar, you can do so here.

  1. Introduction
  2. List Pages
  3. Standard Reports
  4. Financial Accounting
  5. Jet Reports
  6. Jet Analytics
  7. Power BI
  8. 3rd Party BI
  9. Conclusion

Introduction ^

In this webinar we took an introductory look at the reporting tools which come with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as standard, such as list pages, standard reports and financial reporting, as well as then taking a look at the commonly used third-party reporting tools which include Jet Reports and Power BI.

Continue reading “MADIC dynamics Knowledge Hub Webinars: Reporting with Business Central”

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Upcoming Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Knowledge Hub Webinars (Feb-Apr 2024) from MADIC dynamics

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

MADIC dynamicsEvery month, on the third Tuesday, at MADIC dynamics we will be presenting a Knowledge Hub Webinar on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related products; I will be presenting the first few webinars, but in future other consultants will be getting involved, so there will be a variety of presenters through time.

We aim to have the next three monthly Knowledge Hub Webinars scheduled and details of them available; the webinars are open to everyone, not just customers of MADIC dynamics. The next three webinars, starting this month, are:

No february-2024 events found.

No march-2024 events found.

No april-2024 events found.
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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1: View a Power Automate Visual in a Power BI Report

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1.

The 3rd of the new functionality in the Cloud Flows section is view a Power Automate visual in a Power BI report.

This feature helps you translate insights to action. With Power Automate visual, you can run an automated flow from a Power BI report. Furthermore, the executed flow can be data contextual, passing in dynamic data based on the filters you set.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: –
Early Access: –
General Availability: Apr 2024

Feature Details

When you create a Power Automate visual in a Power BI report, your users can run an automated flow, just by selecting a button in your report. The flow can be data contextual, meaning that the flow inputs can be dynamic, based on the filters the users set.

You can later edit the flow with different data fields to use as data inputs. You can also change formatting, such as button text, font color, font size, or fill color of the button. You can enable permission for any user to edit the flow, in addition to running it.

This feature is currently in public preview and documented in Create a Power Automate visual for Power BI (preview).

With the general availability update, you can see flows outside the Default environment and support for all regions Power Automate is available in.

My Opinion

This sounds interesting. It gives the users to initiate a flow from a Power BI report or dashboard. The linked article from the Power BI side shows how it can be setup and configured.

Click to show/hide the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2024 Wave 1 Series Index

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Recent ISC Software Webinar: Business Intelligence with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

ISC Software SolutionsIn our most recent webinar, we took a look at Business Intelligence with Microsoft Dynamics GP. In this webinar, we covered how business intelligence can be used with Microsoft Dynamics GP. If you want to catch up on this, or any other, webinar, you can do so here.

  1. Introduction
  2. What is Business Intelligence?
  3. What is Jet Analytics?
  4. Reporting options with Jet Analytics
  5. What is Power BI?
  6. Reporting options with Power BI
  7. Conclusion

Introduction ^

I think this webinar was the first one in which we didn’t even open Microsoft Dynamics GP. This because this webinar focused on how business intelligence can be used with Microsoft Dynamics GP. We focused on two business intelligence products which can be used to quickly build required dashboards and reporting for business intelligence.

The two products we looked at are complimentary and can be used both together or independently. They are Jet Analytics and PowerBI

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Microsoft Dynamics GP PowerBI Content Pack

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics GPMicrosoft Dynamics GP 2018 RTM has recently been released. and I have been taking a hands on look at the installation (and soon the new functionality). The series index for the Hands On series of posts is here and will automatically update as posts go live.

This post is not part of the hands On series, mainly because I currently have little experience with PowerBI (Perfect Image have a Business Intelligence team who do most of the PowerBI work).

It was announced some time ago that there would be a Microsoft Dynamics GP content pack for PowerBI available. I’ve not seen any blog announcement on it, but Pam Misialek did tweet back in December 2017 that it was now available.

Click to show/hide the Hands On With MDGP 2018 RTM Series Index

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Dynamics GP Tech Conference 2017: Power BI Enhancements

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics GPMicrosoft Dynamics GPThis post is part of the series I am doing on the Dynamics GP Tech Conference 2017.

Power BI is more the area of Belinda Allen or Mark Polino than mine, but I’ll be getting more of a look at it soon as I have one of my team about to take a more in depth look, so it is nice to hear there will be more new stuff coming in the next version of Dynamics GP:

  • Support for paging in OData Services
  • Support for filtering in OData Services
  • Support for OData v4
  • GP Power BI Content Pack – I need more information on this, but it sounds like a set of pre-packaged reports which will be welcome.
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MDGP 2016 R2 Feature of the Day: PowerBI On The Web Client Home Page

Ian Grieve1 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics GPThe Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP blog has started a series Feature of the Day posts for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 R2; as the most recent versions have been, these posts are in the form of PowerPoint slides; I am reposting them here so they can be read more easily.

The series index for this series of posts is here.

The twentieth Feature of the Day is PowerBI On The Web Client Home Page.

Power BI on GP Web Client Home Page

Click to show/hide the MDGP 2016 R2 Feature of the Day Series Index

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