Data reporting and visualisations are powerful features of Dynamics, and provide organisations with the visibility of how the business is performing at a granular level. There are scenarios where a business will need very specific information, presented in a unique way that makes sense to them. This is where Power BI shines and can be integrated with your Dynamics system to present beautiful, insightful presentations of your data that you can act on.
Prerequisites
Power BI Pro requires a licence, which starts at £7.50 per month, per user. This licence entitles you to modern, self-service analytics to visualise data with live dashboards and reports, and share insights across your organisation. For advanced features such as bigger data models and AI features, you may need Premium. Pricing and feature comparisons can be found on the Power BI website Pricing & Product Comparison | Microsoft Power BI.
Importing Power BI dashboards into Dynamics
If you are looking for a new Power BI dashboard to show inside your Dynamics app, navigate to Dashboards on the left-hand side and select New + on the top menu.
You can choose to create a Power BI Dashboard on its own. You can also display multiple reports and other Dynamics data by clicking Dynamics 365 Dashboard
When you select ‘Power BI Dashboard’, a new window will surface, enabling the user to choose pre-configured Power BI reports that they have access to.
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When the user clicks save, this will open the report and be saved in Dynamics for this user to return to. The default report landing page (usually a summary) will appear but can be explored by double-clicking the page, which will open the full report.
The report tabs sit along the bottom of the window to explore specific insights.
You can also share your dashboard with other Dynamics users and control how they can use it.
By selecting Share Dashboard on the top menu, you will surface a window allowing you to add and change user's permissions for the dashboard, such as Read and Write.
How to create Dynamics Power BI Reports.
If you are new to Power BI and producing data visualisations, there are off-the-shelf data reports specifically for Dynamics that you can use to connect to your data.
Login to Power BI and navigate to ‘Apps’ on the left-hand menu.
This will display a window for you to search third-party report templates.
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Search for Dynamics, and you will see Microsoft-produced reports such as Sales Analytics or Customer Service. Choose one and select ‘Get it now’
You will now be able to see the full report using sample data.
To use your Dynamics systems data, you will need to connect and authenticate using your instance URL and user name by following the instructions in the window. This should now use your systems data to gain meaningful insights into your business's operations.
We have posted some helpful Microsofts Power BI Dynamics 365 template links for you to get started:
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Analytics
Dynamics 365 Marketing Analytics
One of the key strengths of Power BI is its exportability. You can share with your colleagues in a variety of methods such as PDF, Microsoft Teams, embed into Web Portals, include it in your Dynamics Dashboard and so on. This can make collaboration and meetings more productive and able to make better decisions.
Most organisations will want to build their own reports to get a customised view of their business data. At Serversys we can support you with this and are available to help you get the visibility you require.
