Power BI is a great tool for turning data into clear, interactive reports and the best part?  It works smoothly with Business Central, right out of the box.  You just need to set it up, and you can start viewing powerful reports right inside within Business Central dashboard.  Microsoft provides several ready-made reports, grouped into different apps, so you can pick and install only what you need.  Once set up, these reports help you track key business insights without switching between systems.  In this blog, we’ll walk you through how to set up and use Power BI reports in Business Central to make smarter decisions. References Introduction to Business Central and Power BI Install Power BI apps for Business Central Configuration Open your Business Central and search for “Assisted Setup”. Click on “Connect to Power BI” Once the set up page opens, click on Next. Fiscal: A 12-month calendar that begins in any month and ends 12 months after. Standard: A 12-month calendar that begins on January 1 and ends on December 31. Weekly: A calendar that supports 445, 454, or 544 week groupings.The first and last day of the year might not correspond to a first and last day of a month, respectively. Specify the time zone. Specify the working days. Here, it asks for configuring individual apps for Power BI. You can skip this for now as we’ll be back at this later. In the next screen, specify the environment name and the company name. Now, we’ll install the “D365 Business Central – Sales” app in Power BI. Go to your Power BI dashboard and click on Apps.  Search for Business Central Open the relevant one and click on “Get it now” Then click on “Install” Wait for a few seconds till the installation is complete. Now, when you open the report for the first time, it’ll show the report with sample data. To view it with your own data, we need to connect the data to Business Central. Enter the company and environment name. Specify the authentication method to OAuth 2.0 and click on “Sign in and connect” After a few minutes, the refresh will be completed and you’ll see your data. Once this is done, search for “Power BI Connector Setup” In the relevant tab, Sales Report for this example, click on “Power BI Sales” field’s drill down. Select the app that you installed. Now go back to your Business Central dashboard and scroll down to the “Power BI” section. Click on the “Get Started with Power BI” and keep clicking on Next till the end of the setup. If there are any selected reports, you will see the relevant report. If not, you’ll see the following-  In either case, click on the drop-down next to Power BI or click on the “Select reports” Scroll down to find the appropriate report and click on “Enable” and then click on Ok. You will see your Power BI report on the dashboard. You can enable multiple reports and cycle through them by clicking on the “Next” and “Previous” buttons. You can also expand the report to see it as a full page within Business Central by clicking on the “Expand” page. You can further view it in Fullscreen as well. If you want to see multiple reports on the same page, we can create a custom role center and add multiple reports to them. For example, I’ve created a “Power BI dashboard” role center. In this way, we can have n number of reports on our dashboard. Source Code – BCApps-PowerBIDashboard Setting up Power BI in Business Central is a simple way to bring your data to life.  With just a few steps, you can connect your reports, see real-time insights, and make better business decisions all without leaving Business Central.  Whether you need sales trends, financial reports, or custom dashboards, Power BI makes it easy to track what matters most. If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your Business Central and Power BI Integration, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.

Real-time dashboards are essential for monitoring live data and gaining instant insights into business operations. Azure Stream Analytics and Power BI provide an efficient way to process and visualize streaming data. In this blog, we will walk through the steps to build a real-time dashboard using these tools, with illustrative images to guide you. Why Real-Time Dashboards Are Needed In today’s fast-paced world, businesses need to make decisions quickly based on live data. Real-time dashboards enable organizations to: Use Cases for Real-Time Dashboards Real-time dashboards can be applied across various industries, including: Prerequisites Before we begin, ensure you have the following: Step 1: Set Up Your Data Source

Introduction Building efficient Power BI reports can be challenging, especially when working with large datasets. One common issue Power BI users encounter is the “stack overflow” error, which can disrupt the report-building process. I In this blog I will share some performance optimization techniques that you can use in building power BI report.  When using power query or importing data you might have got this error –  “Expression.Error: Evaluation resulted in a stack overflow and cannot continue.”  This error occurs when there’s a large amount of data is being imported or not enough memory available memory available for Power BI to complete the operation.  This issue can be resolved by increasing the Memory and CPU cores that can be used by Power BI while querying or evaluations.  There are two settings that we need to keep in mind –  By default, the maximum number of simultaneous evaluations is equal to the number of logical CPU cores on the machine and Maximum memory used per simultaneous evaluation is 432 MB.  Personally, I have kept these values in between or close to maximum value depending on my requirement and system.      Also, here is link to recommendations by Microsoft for managing Power BI workload and evaluation configurations –  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-evaluation-configuration  Conclusion Optimizing performance in Power BI is crucial for handling large datasets and preventing issues like the “stack overflow” error. By adjusting settings for simultaneous evaluations and memory allocation, you can significantly improve report processing and responsiveness. We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com

Hi All, I’m going to show a useful feature that you can leverage to view and create instant Power BI visuals that is generated automatically based on the current view. Documentation Link Just an example: How it looks Steps to achieve this: Step 1: You need to enable this feature in Model-Driven App itself Edit Model-Driven App -> Settings -> Features -> ‘Enable Power BI quick report visualization on a table‘. Save and publish the settings Note: You also need ‘TDS endpoint‘ enabled in the environment feature settings Step 2: Refresh your browser and navigate to any table records view ( I took cases in the example) Step 3: Click the ‘Visualize this view‘ button on the command bar Note: You need to add the necessary columns in the current view if you want to show those columns in Power BI Reports Step 4: You can now see the Report generated automatically within a few mins. You can save these Reports if all necessary information is displayed here. Hope this helped you get faster Business Insights with auto-generated Power BI visuals.

You Might have seen the other ways to create the DateTable in Power BI using m query by adding two Custom columns such as startdate and enddate and then using DateRange function you can populate the dates between startdate and enddate However, in this blog, we will see the M query that enables you to create the datetable on user define the start and end date using parameters Step 1: Open the Power BI desktop application and then select the option Transform Data Step2: Click on the new source. then select the Blank query option from the dropdown Step3: Click on Advanced editor and paste the below query Step 4: After clicking on ok you will see the input fields to enter the start and end date Step 5: Enter the dates required and then click on Invoke You can see the new table is create for given date range Hope this helps you!! Thank You

Thinking of full outer join in Power BI what comes first in your mind? How can we achieve full outer join in Power BI? Common Answer will be the “Use Merge Query” Option in Power Query Window. However, I would like to tell you that we can use DAX to achieve Full Outer Join. Full Outer Join = left Outer Join + right Anti Join Customer Table: Order Table: Click on new table and write the below DAX: DAX for Full Outer Join of Customer and Order Table: Result: Hope this helps!! Thank You!!

In Power BI Desktop app and when we edit the report on Power BI workspace, page tab visible at bottom, but when we publish the report on to the Power BI Service then it is visible on left side. We can change the Tab Position in the Power BI web as well, to do that we can follow below steps. 1.Go to report setting 2.Enable the option of Pages Pane enable the button and save the changes. And when we open the report tabs will be visible at the bottom. Hope this helps!

Hi in this blog we will see how we can add rows to power bi dataset for a given date range. For example if you have a dataset which has start and end date and you want rows for each date between this range then this blog will help you. Step 1: Open Power BI load your dataset and go to transform data. Right click on your from date column and change its type to date. Step 2: From add columns click on custom column Step 3: In custom column formula add following code: { Number.From([From])..Number.From([To]) } Step 4: Expand this column to new rows to get your result. Step 5: Change the datatype of this column to date. In this way you can prepare your dataset for all the dates present in your From and To column. Hope this helps.

Open Power BI and Click on Get Data and Search for Azure Databricks and click on connect.  It will ask for below details,  Server Hostname  HTTP Path    Now we will see, how to get above details,  Go to Azure Databricks and click on Clusters  Once clusters is opened the go to Advanced setting > JDBC/ODBC. Under this we can get Server Hostname and HTTP Path, which can be used in above steps.  Fill the details and click on OK, It will ask for user credentials, after that it will open a pop up  asking to select the from List of Tables. Select Tables and click on load  In this way we can create Power BI report based on the current data received from Azure Databeicks.  In this way we can create Power BI report and create fields above it. azure BI

Hi everyone in this blog we will see the different DAX that are used to define or use the relationship between two tables. In Power BI there are two type of relationships                 1. One to One  (1:1)                 2. One to Many   (1:*) Now lets look at the DAX functions that we can use with these relationships. USERELATIONSHIP-  Specifies the relationship to be used in a specific calculation as the one that exists between columnName1 and columnName2. Syntax  USERELATIONSHIP(<columnName1>,<columnName2>) Where, columnName1         The name of an existing column, using standard DAX syntax and fully qualified, that usually represents the many side of the relationship to be used; if the arguments are given in reverse order the function will swap them before using them. This argument cannot be an expression. columnName2         The name of an existing column, using standard DAX syntax and fully qualified, that usually represents the one side or lookup side of the relationship to be used; if the arguments are given in reverse order the function will swap them before using them. This argument cannot be an expression. Key Point The function returns no value; the function only enables the indicated relationship for the duration of the calculation. Example = CALCULATE(SUM(ISales[SalesAmount]), USERELATIONSHIP(Sales[ShippingDate], DateTime[Date])) Limitations           USERELATIONSHIP can only be used in functions that take a filter as an argument. USERELATIONSHIP cannot be used when row level security is defined for the table in which the measure is included. RELATED – Returns a related value from another table. Syntax RELATED(<column>) Where, column        – The column that contains the values you want to retrieve. Key Point A single value that is related to the current row. Example FILTER( ‘Sales_USD’, RELATED(‘Territory'[TerritoryCountry])<>”United States”) RELATEDTABLE Evaluates a table expression in a context modified by the given filters. Where, tableName – The name of an existing table using standard DAX syntax. It cannot be an expression. Key Point A table of values. Example = SUMX( RELATEDTABLE(‘Sales_USD’)       , [Amount_USD])  Limitation The RELATEDTETABLE function changes the context in which the data is filtered, and evaluates the expression in the new context that you specify. This function is a shortcut for CALCULATETABLE function with no logical expression. This function is not supported for use in Direct Query mode when used in calculated columns or row-level security (RLS) rules. Hope this helps.