One of the most common questions I get when setting up Power BI with Business Central is: do I need a paid Power BI license? The short answer is yes. But let me explain exactly why, and what happens if you do not have one. There Are Two Ways Power BI Works with Business Central … Read More →
When you need to expose data from Business Central, the first question is not how, but what kind of interaction you need: Are you writing data into the system, or reading data out of it? That single distinction determines whether you should use an API page or an API query. Both expose data over HTTP … Read More →
This week I had the opportunity to present a session at the Global Dynamics 365 Bootcamp. The session was called: Beyond the Ledger: Explore Business Central’s Data Analytics with Power BI The title already says quite a lot about where we are as a community today. Clients are no longer satisfied with a working ERP … Read More →
I was recently asked how to share Power BI reports both internally and externally. Power BI offers several options—each with different levels of security, flexibility, and licensing. In this post, I’ll break down six key sharing methods and when to use them, complete with official Microsoft links and a quick-reference. Just a quick note: This … Read More →
Managing Power BI resources directly from Business Central is now easier than ever with the Power BI Monitor extension. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the complete installation and configuration process, from Azure AD setup to your first data refresh. What You’ll Need Before we begin, make sure you have: Business Central version 25.0 … Read More →
For years, I’ve wondered why we can run our entire business from Business Central… except Power BI. Refreshes failing? Open another portal. Dataset status? Another page. Errors? Another rabbit hole. So I set out to fix that — and Power BI Monitor is my first attempt to make that happen with an app that brings … Read More →
Some time ago I was asked to blog about the possibility to create multi-language Power BI reports. It’s been a while and I did not find much time to research and blog because I was delivering a lot of trainings and working on the content of our plataan.tv trainings. So the question is, I have … Read More →
You can easily create a slicer in Power BI Desktop with the Dropdown Style: But can you also add a Search in the slicer, so you can search for a specific value if the dropdown is a long list? Yes you can. Simply click on the dots to select More Options for your slicer, and … Read More →
When you create a Power BI Dataflow with the Business Central connector, you might get the following error: The OData connector failed with the following error: We cannot convert the value null to type Duration. The error mentions a conversion of null into a type Duration. This got me thinking. Let’s have a look at … Read More →
What are Power BI Dataflows? Power BI Dataflows are a cloud-based ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) service provided by Microsoft Power BI. They allow users to easily create and manage data pipelines, which can be used to extract data from various sources, transform and clean the data, and then load it into a destination where it … Read More →
Kennie Pontoppidan started writing some content and guidance on the topic of data extracts. It is currently on BCTech: https://github.com/microsoft/BCTech/tree/master/samples/ExtractData The focus is on how to extract data as there is tons of content on what to do once you have data in a staging area. The topics discussed in this page are: Extracting data … Read More →
The Areopa webinar “Why are dataflows so interesting for Power BI and Business Central?“, is now available on YouTube: 20221219 – Why are dataflows so interesting for Power BI and Business Central – YouTube It was an honor to be asked by Luc van Vugt to host a webinar, thanks Luc for the opportunity! If … Read More →
Recently I had a situation where a job queue failed in Business Central. Actually, it had been failing for a few days, and in Business Central, as far as I now, there’s no way, out of the box, to get a notification about that. So, I got thinking, could I be able to ‘create something’, … Read More →
You might have noticed that on some pages in Business Central where before there was a Power BI Report FactBox, it has now disappeared, like for example on the Item List. Normally you could then go into the menu and ‘activate‘ it. However, since the changes in the menu/actions in version 21 of Business Central, … Read More →
As from today, Microsoft Dataflows support Business Central, out of the box: What is a Dataflow you might think? Well a Dataflow is basically Power Query online. All tasks you typically perform in Power BI Desktop with Power Query (ETL) you can do in a dataflow and the dataflows are stored online, in the … Read More →
Do you want to learn how to create Power BI reports consuming the standard out-of-the-box API’s in Business Central? Ever wanted to know what you can use the BC API’s for in Power BI without the need for any AL development? Then have a look here: Create Stunning Power BI Reports Using the Standard BC … Read More →
A question I recently received is: I created a Power BI report with Business Central data from my Business Central tenant and now I want to publish the report to the tenant of the customer, how does that work? Let’s start with an example report. In this report I will connect to the Customers … Read More →
If you are using Business Central Telemetry in Azure Application Insights, then you might be very interested in this amazing Power BI report: BCTech/README.md at master · microsoft/BCTech (github.com) Use this link to install/update the template app: https://aka.ms/bctelemetryreport The report comes with sample data. To connect the report to an Azure Application Insights resource, you need … Read More →
In Power BI Desktop, and in the Power BI Service, Maps and Filled Map visuals might show up as follows: Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with your report, it’s a new setting, announced in October last year. Back in October, we announced that we were introducing a tenant-level setting to enable or disable Bing Maps … Read More →
In almost every PowerBI report at some point you will require time intelligence. You might want to display information on a timeline or create time based measures using DAX time intelligence functions. For that to work properly it’s a best practice to always create your own Date (or Calendar) table in the Power BI … Read More →