Embedded Power BI in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017

Power BI in the NAV 2017 Client!

You will have seen from our previous blogs that a number of our team are currently at Directions EMEA finding out all of the latest information about the most recent releases. One of the new releases that we mentioned in the Dynamics NAV 2017 New Features Overview was that Power BI dashboards will now be available from the Role centre in the Windows Client. Here we will discuss the new features in more detail.

Availability for Users

The new integration works with both free and paid versions of Power BI, allowing users to have interactive reports on their Windows client role centre. They are fully capable for personalising on a person or role level – when access is given to a report the data associated with the report can be seen.

Power BI in NAV 2017 Setup

There is a new Power BI assisted setup wizard which only needs to be configured once by an admin. The Active Directory set up wizard maps an AD account to a NAV account to allow the NAV Power BI setup to communicate with what it needs to. It registers your NAV application in Azure services which generates an application ID and key.

When a user logs on to NAV, they will be presented with a 'Get Started with Power BI' message in the role centre. The user registers their NAV login with their Office365 account, they can then select the published reports from a list that they have security access to.

Using Power BI Reports in NAV 2017

Once selected, a Power BI report embedded in the role centre is interactive. You can filter using the available slicers etc. From here you can navigate to other tabs on the report / dashboard.

The report data is refreshed as per the Power BI refresh settings (daily on free version, or hourly for paid version, or it can be updated manually). The Pro-version of Power BI, for example, is $10 / month.

Getting Started

You can sign up for an account at https://powerbi.microsoft.com, and there are content Packs available for NAV and Dynamics 365. As a word of caution, the connection fails if no data is returned, and the KPI web service will return “no data” unless you select system calendar instead of using the UK accounting periods.

There is a Power BI desktop application, enhancements and updates are only added to this application, and not to the Excel Add-ins as per previous versions.

You can create your own dashboards from all common data sources (SQL, Web Services, Excel, CSV etc.), and you can use data from different data sources for one content pack. You add visualisations into the content pack from the gallery of visualisations.

Find Out More

This is obviously just a quick overview of what to expect from the new version of NAV 2017. To find out more and to see the new tools in action, why not join us at the Business Software Showcase, the free event in November. We will be going over the latest updates for Microsoft Dynamics, with keynote speaker Robert Pope, the UK Dynamics NAV Channel Manager from Microsoft.

Register for Free >

Jesse Lawrence

Jesse is our marketing manager, keeping an eye on the latest news in the market as well as having worked on the GDPR legislation.