How Do I: Add and Link a Power BI Report to a page in Business Central?

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Let’s get started.

In Power BI Desktop, select Get Data, More:

Authenticate using your Office 365 credentials (email & password), end then select a query:

In this case, I’m filtering the navigator on queries that contain the word item in their name, and then I select Edit to verify the query in the query editor:

Then I select the columns I’m interested in:

I then click Close & Apply to load the data.

Now comes the fun part, designing the report, by selecting some visuals and displaying the data:

Now comes the tricky part. You need to add a report filter containing the Pk (Item No), if you want to plugin this report on the Item List page:

And that’s it. Now save the report, and use the word Items in it’s name, because the list page probably filters on the report names containing Items, in the Power BI factbox on the Item list. (Customers if you want to do something similar on the Customer List)

Now, publish the report to your Power BI Service workspace:

Have a look at it:

Now go to Business Central, open the Item List and:

And voila:

To make sure it works correctly, I then added a card to the report, displaying the item description, and republished the report:

Edit:

And of course you can make them swim too…

How cool is that!!!

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Posted in: Dynamics 365 Business Central, How To, Power BI

13 Thoughts on “How Do I: Add and Link a Power BI Report to a page in Business Central?”

  1. Ajay on February 21, 2019 at 03:40 said:

    If a company has multiple users, One user has power bi account, so If this user developed and published the report. Can other users see this report On business Central.

    Reply↓
    • srenders on February 21, 2019 at 08:42 said:

      Hi Alay,
      yes and no 😉
      If you want to share, then you need a pro account and also everyone you share with also needs a pro account. Then they can embedd the reports in BC.

      Reply↓
  2. Laura on April 19, 2019 at 13:56 said:

    Is it possible to add Power BI reports in the factbox on other list-pages than Items, Customers, Sales Orders et cetera? For example I’d like to show a PowerBI report on the Lot No. Information List in Business Central

    Reply↓
  3. Aaron on June 4, 2019 at 20:40 said:

    Is there a way to have a Power BI that’s displayed in Business Central auto-recognize the Company that the User is logged into? If the Company using Business Central has multiple Companies for their different business entities, then it would great to have a Power BI recognize you are in the Cronus company and display that data. If the user switches to another company, then the report would display that company’s data.

    Reply↓
  4. Bernd on October 30, 2019 at 22:15 said:

    I tried this without success in BC SaaS V15 (item and customer list)

    is this still working in the current version?

    Reply↓
    • srenders on October 31, 2019 at 08:55 said:

      Yes it should, I tried it recently and it did.
      Did you give a good name to your report and publish it in your workspace?

      Reply↓
      • Bernd on October 31, 2019 at 11:38 said:

        thnx for the reply

        as far as I know I did give it a good name, added the PK as report filter and upladed the report

        I can select the report to put it in the factbox but the filtering is not working

        I also tried renaming the PK-field (because I’m not using “ENG”),
        but no success

        Reply↓
        • srenders on October 31, 2019 at 13:05 said:

          And do you use the “No.” (from Item or Customer) as the report filter you add to the Item or Customer List, or do you use a compound key ?

          Reply↓
          • Bernd on October 31, 2019 at 13:14 said:

            I did add “No.” to the report filter

            but I’m not sure what you are hinting with “compound key”, what do you mean + how to handle that case?

  5. srenders on October 31, 2019 at 16:02 said:

    In case you fetch data from multiple companies, you need to create a new unique key in your data model, in order to create relationships. Business Central is only able to link to the Pk, not a custom key.
    So, is your data coming from the same company?
    The solution for this is to customize the connection between the PBI factbox and the list, using the available events, and so create an extension that does that. I will try to blog about such an example in the near future.

    Reply↓
    • Bernd on October 31, 2019 at 17:20 said:

      I use different companies in BC, but the Power BI uses the same company as the company I’m testing in BC.

      I’ll give this an new try later.

      Anyhow, thanks for the info, and looking forward to future blogposts!

      Reply↓

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