In this blog article, we will explain about the new updates of Power BI related to Dropdown slicer, Matrix Conditional Formatting and Hierarchical axis. Dropdown slicer: In Slicer, earlier there were only one option to show the data i.e. list. But now we have one more option as dropdown. Means now we have two option on Slicer as List and dropdown. This slicer is very useful when we have lots of category items in our slicer. When we create a normal list slicer, we can change it into drop down by using dropdown option. After selecting the dropdown option, the slicer will look like below: And after click on Drop down arrow Matrix Conditional Formatting: Matrix Conditional Formatting is a new feature. Using this feature we can change the various setting like we can change the colour of cell based on the value. We can set different colour to lowest and highest value in particular category. Refer the below figures for better understating. After click on Conditional formatting you will get the below window than choose whatever colour you want for minimum and maximum value and then click on ok. Once you click ok, you’ll see the formatting applied as below. Hierarchical axis: Hierarchical axis allows us to clearly see the hierarchy within the visual. We can use hierarchical labels by turning off the label concatenation in the formatting pane. Below figure show result when the concatenation label is on. To turn off the concatenation label select visualization and then click on format then expand the X-axis. After turning off the concatenation label you will see the formatting applied as below.  

In this blog article, we will explain you on how to connect dynamics 365 financials service connector inside of Power BI. Below are the steps to connect over Financial OData: Open the Power BI.com online account Select Get Data option from the bottom menu Click on the Get service option Select dynamics 365 financial from the list and click on “Get it Now” New Connection window appears which asking for OData URL to connect financial account. So for getting OData url we need to connect our D365 financial account in browser window and then search for web service. Select Power BI report selection Url from list of objects. Copy this url up to “Cronus” company name into powerbi connection window. Your password is the web service access key of the Admin user and you can get it from users tab. So, after connecting to the financial ODATA services we will get readymade dashboard created for financials. And now we can embedded this dashboard inside of Dynamics financial account. So list of reports appear and we can select required one from that. Note: As of now, Microsoft allow us to show only one graph/tiles inside of Financial embedded page, we hope more updates on this features.

This blog explains how to set Pagination with fixed number of rows per page with table headers repeated on every page of SSRS report. Steps: Insert a Tablix on report and set table Headers. Set Row Data for Tablix Create a “Parent Group” on Tablix by Expression as below Note: We have set number of records per page as 10 in Ceiling Function. Open Group Properties of “Group1” and change Page Breaks settings as below Delete existing Sorting settings of Group as highlighted and click “OK” Delete Column with header “Group1” with option “Delete columns only” from Tablix Set below Data Expression in SR.No. column of Tablix Run Report and it renders as below  

Fetch XML based SSRS reports which are deployed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM online. Case: In Report, you want to sort the Tablix date as per the date field in descending order. (In the below example “Date” column). When you deploy the report and run the report, it is observed that date order is not as expected. Resolution / Work around Steps: Login to CRM and verify the default formatting for Dates. (Settings -> Administartion -> System Settings -> Formats. Check how the Short date is displayed. (By Default todays date will be displayed) Here the format is MM-dd-YYYY. So we know that the data is stored in what format of Date. Also as a best practice, we should check if the date field is empty and handle the same and format the date field. I used below expression to achieve this. =IIF(ISNOTHING(Fields!cf_calibrationdate.Value) Or Fields!cf_calibrationdate.Value = “”, ” “, Format(Cdate(Fields!cf_calibrationdate.Value), “MM-dd-yyyy”)) Now Go to Report designer in SQL Server Date Tool and Go to Tablix Properties and Go to Sorting. You need to add the sorting options through expressions. Now the trick is since it’s a date, we will sorting using the value field as below. You can run the report in preview window and verify if the Tablix data is sorted as per the date field.

In this article, we will be going through the steps for installation of BizTalk Server 2016. Below steps are for installation of BizTalk Server (Standard Edition) 2016 with Microsoft SQL server 2016 Standard edition. The environment is Windows Server 2016 on Azure. Windows Server configuration is as below: If your computer name is longer than 15 characters, BizTalk Server configuration fails. You can rename using power shell or from Server Manager (Dashboard -> Local Server -> Properties) Before installing BizTalk Server 2016, we will need to install the SQL Server. Below are the steps for the installation of SQL Server 2016 Standard edition. Here we are installing BizTalk server and SQL server on same machine. If these are on separate machine, additional pre – requisites steps are required. What are the pre-requisites for BizTalk server 2016 installation? Account should be part of administrators group, with which you are doing the installation. IIS should be enabled. WIF (optional) If you intent to use SharePoint Services Adapter. SMTP Server (optional), EXCEL 2013 (optional), SQL Server Database Mail (optional), If you intent to use BAM Alerts (Business Activity Monitoring) Visual Studio 2015 (Optional) (For creating BizTalk Projects) During installation these pre-requisites components gets auto installed: Microsoft SQL XML 4.0 with Service Pack 1 Microsoft Office Web Components Microsoft SQL Server 2016 ADOMD.NET Setup runtime files for AMD64 platform Setup runtime files Enterprise Single Sign-On Server Enterprise Single Sign-On Administration Microsoft Document Explorer 2008 Installation of SQL Server 2016 (Standard Edition) File Size – 2.1 GB Installation of SQL Server 2016 Download SQL Server 2016 from msdn. After the download is completed, mount the ISO file and select setup.exe to install. Run as administrator to start the installation. Accept the License Terms. Click in Next Install setup files – SQL server setup files are installed in system in this step. Time Taken – 32 Min In Features Selection, select only as ticked below. Provide a name to the names Instance. If you choose Default Instance, it defaults the Instance ID as MSSQLSERVER Named instance CFS_BIZTALK Provide the Account name and Password for the SQL services. You can choose either to have windows authentication Mode or Mixed Mode (SQL + Windows Authentication Mode) Specify the SQL server administrator. Click on ACCEPT in tab for “Consent to install Microsoft R Open”. Click Next. In “Ready to install” tab — click on Install. You will need to separately download SSMS as its not part of the installation setup. ** Download and Install SQL Server Management Studio version 16.5  (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238290.aspx) File Size – 894 MB Download the BizTalk server 2016 Standard Edition from MSDN. (File Size – 727 MB) Mount the downloaded file en_biztalk_server_2016_standard_x64_dvd_9503266.iso (Right on file and select the “Mount” option. Accept the License terms and conditions Below is the list of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016 Components that will be installed. BizTalk EDI/AS2 Runtime Documentation Server Runtime Windows Communication Foundation Adapter Windows Communication Foundation Administration Tools Administration Tools and Monitoring Enterprise Single Sign-On Administration Module Additional Software Enterprise Single Sign-On Master Secret Server Business Rules Components BAM Alert Provider BAM Client BAM-Eventing Project Build Component It may be necessary to stop one or more system services during installation. For information on the affected services, click Help. You can add or remove additional components after this installation using the “Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016” entry in the Add/Remove section of the Control Panel. During installation, you may be prompted for server reboot. To ensure you get automatically logged in you can provide the credentials using the set option. During installation, the first component is the SQL XML 4.0 SP1. It gets fails and comes back with error message as below. For resolution, if you download and install Microsoft SQL XML 4.0 with SP1, you will again get error as below. Error indicates that it is looking for .Net Framework version 2.0. (This error comes even though your system has 4.5 or higher version of .Net Framework. Resolution: Install the .Net Framework 3.5 Features (Includes 2.0 and 3.0) from Windows server manager -> Roles and Features -> .NET Framework 3.5 Features -> .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) Select the components for installation as below: Finally, we get the window as below indicating we have installed Microsoft BizTalk Server Successfully. Tick the box for “Launch BizTalk Server Configuration” Configuring BizTalk Server 2016 Select the Custom configuration and provide the user name and password. All BizTalk services will run under these credentials. You will be greeted with below pop info window message if you choose the same windows user with which yoo installed the BTS2016. This is important step, you need to provide the encryption password and reminder text. Default location of Backup location is as below: Back up file location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Enterprise Single Sign-On\SSO056B.bak If this is first installation, you will be creating a new BizTalk Group. After Group creation, you will be registering the run time components by selecting options as below. You can configure Business Activity Monitoring alerts in this option. (Since I have not configured the SQL Mail, I am skipping this step). This is the final and important configuration step for configuring EDI and AS2 protocol for message exchange. You will see configuration wizard with success message. Open the Overview tab, you will see as below indicating successful configuration. (I have not configured BAM Portal) You can check the version of the BizTalk server installed through Registry key at path “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0” At the end of installation, you can also review the log file for detail of installation or troubleshoot any error or warning during installation process. It is advised to export and back up the configuration of BTS2016. (Default path of back up is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016”)

In this blog article, we will explain about the new updates of Power BI related to Date Slicer, Top N Filter and Data label improvements. In Date slicer, earlier there were only one option to show the data i.e. list. But now we have four option as before, after, between and list. Means we will show data by choosing the date range as between, after, or before selected date. Also, we can move the slider to set date. Date Slicer: While using date slicer we can use either slider to set the dates or pick the date using a calendar or also we can manually insert date: – The following are the four option that we can choose on date Slicer: Between Before After List We can change the mode to before or after if we only need to control the last or first date used on reports page. Or also we switch back to the standard List view Top N: Earlier we had only two filtering condition these are Advanced filtering Basic filtering But now there is one more option i.e. Top N By using this filtering condition, we can display the Top or Bottom N records. We will find the top N filter in the filter pane as a filter type option for the category field we want to filter down. Top N filter is use to retrieve the top or bottom N records. In this we can specify the numbers of items to show or display. For example:  select Top or Bottom from option set and specify value as 10 Then it will retrieve Top or Bottom 10 records from the table with specified value. Data Label improvements: In data label, there added several new data label capabilities to column, bar and waterfall charts to help our design for our visuals with labels. For column charts, now we have the option to change the orientation of the data labels between horizontal and vertical. This will help to fit longer data labels when we have skinnier columns. Also for column, bar and waterfall charts we can change the position of the data labels. We have the following option to set the position of data labels: – Inside End Outside End Inside Center Inside base  

TIBCO Cloud Integration AX Connector is compatible with Dynamics 365 Operations. Connecting to D3fO is similar to that of Microsoft Dynamics AX. Prerequisite: Dynamics 365 Operations Development environment. TIBCO Cloud Integration Subscription. Global admin credentials in Azure: Registering ERP application in Azure. Steps: Login to TIBCO Cloud Integration URL: https://app.scribesoft.com/ Create a new connection by selecting the connector type as Microsoft Dynamics AX. Fill in the required details. OData Service URL: This URL must end in /data. Process to get the Client Id and Authentication URL. Steps: Login to Microsoft Azure URL: https://portal.azure.com In the left navigation bar, select Azure Active Directory Select App Registrations Click on Add. Fill in the details. Enter the name of the app. Select Application Type as Native Redirect URI: https://login.microsoftonline.com/domainname.com This redirect URI is the Authentication URL required in TIBCO Cloud Integration AX Connector. On creation, the registered app details will be displayed The Application ID in the Registered app is the Client Id required in TIBCO Cloud Integration AX Connector. Click on Required permission in the settings. Click on Add Select Microsoft Dynamics ERP (Microsoft.ERP) Select all three Delegated Permissions. For more details, check this link. Click on Grant Permission. Global Admin credentials are required for the same.  

Scribe Insight is widely used for Integration between On-Premise and Online Applications. (Example Microsoft Dynamics CRM online 2016 and AX 2012) Scribe is also used for data migration between CRM systems. (Example CRM 4.0 On-premise to CRM 2016 Online) Below are the list of the useful tips and tricks that can be handy while you are working with Scribe Insight. If you have Scribe DTS file (.dts) from another environment and want to see the fields mapping without the hassle of creating similar source/target connections, then you can use “Open Offline” feature of Scribe Insight. This will open any DTS file and you can view the mapping logic. When we set up “Multi-Company Parameters” for integration between CRM and AX System with multiple legal entities, we need to ensure below settings. (i) Go to Configure Steps -> Data Objects -> Ensure the option “This connection can receive command line switched” is ticked on. (ii) In Scribe Console, ensure the DTS Parameters are correctly set. Verify the XPath is correct as per the source XML\Schema. (iii) Under connection settings for AX web service, Go to DTS Connection Settings, ensure the option “Keep this connection open if it was used in the previous DTS” is NOT ticked. ( This was recommended by Scribe Support personnel while working on issue related to Multi company parameter.  I have found that Scribe works even if you have this option as ticked ON). Whenever you make any changes in the XML source file and Schema file and you want to test the same, always close and reopen the DTS file. Scribe shows the cached values even after the XML source file is updated in source path. While working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM connections, Scribe hides some fields like “CreatedOn”. In order to see such hidden fields, Go to Scribe Menu Bar and select the option “View” -> Hidden Data Objects and Fields -> Select the option. Whenever you use jumpstart provided by Scribe Insight, always ensure the schema file by name “SharedTypes.xsd” is present in the path \\Machine-Hostname\Collaborations\Dynamics AX to Dynamics CRM Jumpstart If you are creating your own scribe DTS, its advised to copy this schema file in your working folder. Sometimes you get error related to Incorrect DBLOOKUP formula after you update the same in DTS, even though the formula is correct. Simply close the DTS and re-open the same. I am not sure why Scribe this, but it is what I do and works always for me. Sometimes you notice that even though you add new updated Schema file with new fields and Update the XML source connection, you still don’t see the new fields in Scribe for field Mapping. Check the scribe XML connection for Source XML file and Source Schema file. Scribe by default if you don’t supply the schema path, takes the XML file as the schema file. Then no matter you much time you replace the schema file, it does not get reflected in the DTS. Always provide the SourceKey Fields in the source connection. This is useful during error troubleshooting. If you want to enable “re-try processing of XML messages in Scribe In queue”, in configure steps, under Exit Status , ensure radio button for “Retry” is selected. In Integration process, specify the re-try count. This ensure if the initial processing is failed, scribe will re-try that message the number of times, the re-try count is specified. If you need to create a new Integration process in Scribe Console, always create new integration process under the specific “Collaboration” in which rest of other Integration Processes are present. Scribe support service has been updated from “email support “ to “web Support”. If you need any scribe related support, you need create support ticket / case from url http://success.scribesoft.com/ You will need to supply the below details during ticket creation, Scribe Insight version and serial number details Version of applications that you are integration using Scribe Insight Scribe DTS Detailed description of error issue. Scribe Work Bench Tracelog files.  

As a BI resource you may often be asked to design and develop SSRS reports. While these SSRS reports development is straightforward, sometime we get host of issues that irritates and create bad impression of report developer. Below is one such issue that I came across and resolution to get around it. Issue 01: When the report is run and user does “export-as-pdf”, the pdf file consists of blank pages. Cause of the issue: This issue is usually result of default option “Keep Together” that by default is set to “True”.  (Indicates whether to keep all sections of the data region together on one page.) Other issue could be related to mismatch in the width of the report. Resolution: (1) In the report designer, open the properties tab of the container that you are using in the report to display the data. Go to General section of the report and check the value for property “Keep Together”. Its value should be “False”.   Resolution: (2) If the default value for “Keep Together” is False and you still get the issue, then do as below. Go to Report à Report Properties à Page Setup à Note the Width and Margin Details. (Example Here Width = 8.27 in (Inches) Left Margin = 0.25 in Right Margin = 0.25 in Now Go to actual report body and note the size of the report Body. Calculate the Width occupied by the Report as below: Body Width + Left Margin + Right Margin < Report Width 7.73 in + 0.25 in + 0.25 in <  8.27 in Always ensure that above width and margin sum is less that the report width. This would ensure there are no blank pages during report rendering or when user exports the report as pdf.  

Prerequisite: Latest CRM Update1 version environment account (purchase account not in trial account), Power BI account Purpose of the setup: Embed Power BI tile in CRM dashboard. Procedure: Here we have a CRM Update1 purchase account where I will be demonstrating the new feature in CRM where we can embed Power BI tiles in CRM dashboard. Before we actually start embedding Power BI Tile into CRM dashboard we first need to do some setting for enabling Power BI tile option in toolbox. Note: Only available in Purchase account with CRM Update1 Feature.     Once we are done with these basic setting we can start creating Dashboard in CRM. For that click on the hamburger menu -> goto Sales Area -> click on Dashboard Entity. Then click on ‘New’ option in the ribbon at the top. On clicking on ‘New’ option it will ask the type of layout you need.   Select the type of Layout you need among the options provided. Give appropriate name to the dashboard. Now after the enabling of Power BI tile in CRM dashboard we can see a new option to import Power BI tile in our dashboard. Click on the POWER BI TILE option in the ribbon. A new window will appear which will contain the list all dashboards and related tiles. Select the Power BI Dashboard you want and then select the Tile from that dashboard. The selected tile will be displayed below in the same window. Once you get the appropriate tile you need click on OK. You can see the Power BI Tile in the CRM dashboard. Note:  We need to have Power BI account linked with this CRM account to get the dashboard and tiles details. Similarly, go on repeating the steps to get other tiles in the CRM dashboard. When done with designing the dashboard click on SAVE. Your Dashboard will be saved. Now, if you want to view the Dashboard again then follow the same steps Hamburger menu -> Sales Area -> Dashboard Entity. Click on the dashboard list and in MY Dashboard type we will get the dashboard created by us.   The created dashboard will be displayed.