Getting your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central solution hosted has so many advantages, including a much easier way of integrating other applications. One of the most common questions we get is “how do you get access to the data so it can be used in PowerBI, Tableau or Excel”.

Getting data into PowerBI

PowerBI has a wide range of connections to different applications, Dynamics 365 Business Central is one of them. While there are a few pre-prepared PowerBI Apps, there is probably more specific data that our customers want to see.

With any reporting solution the connection is the easy part. The area which slow down many companies or – at worst creates misleading reports – is knowing where in the database that data is residing.

This is an area of vital importance, getting this wrong means you will never get trustworthy data regardless of who builds the dashboard or report.

This is why one of our favourite options is to present that data via a tailor-made OData Web Service, published via a “Query”. A query is very flexible and powerful way to create a trusted data source that hides all the complexity of databases and presents an intuitive data set that any PowerBI designer / Data Analyst can understand and use to create the dashboards your managers and business needs.

Business agility from trusted data

This makes your whole business much more agile and can get your designers delivering to the business fast and confidently. No time wasted reconciling reports, frustration using trial and error to check data, etc. Just fast reports that keep pace with the changing questions managers can ask.

By working with us, we can create a number of trusted data sources that each department can use with impunity. Once created you can own how that data is presented and to whom, keeping control in your business or you can continue to work with us and we deliver the reports you need.

This approach works really well with the new features around data certification in PowerBI 2019 Wave 2 release

Please note that the above vidio is set to start at the data certification point.

Would you like to learn more about PowerBI and Business Central?

If you feel your managers and users would be better served with data they can immediately trust and use to deliver fast insight, please feel free to Chat or call 03300 882 515 to talk to one of our friendly team members.