Skip to main content

Walk through of PowerBI

On 24th of July Microsoft announced the release of PowerBI. With that comes a lot of new features and I have to say it is a lot simpler to use.

In this post I will walk you through what I did to get my first report done in 10 minutes.

Download PowerBI Desktop and install it. (No need to show installation steps as it was super simple to follow the wizard).

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/desktop

Once that is done, I signed up on the website with my work email (we are already on Office365).

First thing to do is give it a data source. In my case I chose OData to get AX data.

image

You will get the list of data sets available in AX.

image

I selected one of them and manipulated some of the columns. Usual thing you would do is rename the columns, maybe do filtering or grouping. You may add additional data to link to. Then next thing you do is click on the Load (Close & Load button).

image

Once it is loaded, you can start creating the report.

I did a basic pie chart. You then can click on the Publish. However you can save a local copy as *.pbix file.

image

It will launch your browser and take you to PowerBI site. Same report will be available there.

image

Next thing to do is create a Dashboard (won’t give screenshot as it is obvious).

But the not so obvious thing was the little pin at the top right hand side. Click on that to pin the report to a dashboard.

image

Now if you navigate to the dashboard you will see all your reports in there. You can rearrange and then share your dashboard.

image

I installed PowerBI on my mobile. Signed in and this is what I got. Very cool.

image

One final note, if you want to schedule a refresh you need PowerBI Personal Gateway.

More information on scheduling a data refresh is on the PowerBI support site.

This wasn’t a useful report but just to illustrate how the technology is really simple to use. The hard part is making something useful and meaningful.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

AX - How to use Map and MapEnumerator

Similar to Set class, Map class allows you to associate one value (the key) with another value. Both the key and value can be any valid X++ type, including objects. The types of the key and the value are specified in the declaration of the map. The way in which maps are implemented means that access to the values is very fast. Below is a sample code that sets and retrieves values from a map. static void checkItemNameAliasDuplicate(Args _args) { inventTable inventTable; Map map; MapEnumerator mapEnumerator; NameAlias nameAlias; int counter = 0; ; map = new Map(Types::String, Types::Integer); //store into map while select inventTable { nameAlias = inventTable.NameAlias; if (!map.exists(nameAlias)) { map.insert(nameAlias, 1); } else { map.insert(nameAlias, map.lookup(nameAlias) + 1); } } //retrieve fro...
Read more

AX - How to use Set and SetEnumerator

The Set class is used for the storage and retrieval of data from a collection in which the values of the elements contained are unique and serve as the key values according to which the data is automatically ordered. You can create a set of primitive data types or complex data types such as a Class, Record or Container. Below is sample of a set of records. static void _Set(Args _args) {     CustTable       custTable;     Set             set = new Set(Types::Record);     SetEnumerator   setEnumerator;     ;     while select custTable     {         if (custTable && !set.in(custTable))         {             set.add(custTable);         }     }     if (!set.empty())     {    ...
Read more

Approve Workflow via email using template placeholders #Dyn365FO

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations has placeholders which can be inserted into the instructions. Normally you would want this to show up in the email that is sent. One of the most useful ones is the URL link to the exact record that you are approving. In the workflow configurations use the placeholder and build up your message. Towards the end it has workflow specific ones. The URL token is %Workflow.Link to web% . For the technical people the token is replaced in this class WorkflowDocumentField. This is what I inserted into my email template. <BODY> subject: %subject% <BR> message: %message% <BR> company: %company% <BR> for: %for% <BR> </BODY> Should look like this. The final result looks like this. If you debug these are the place holders that are put together.
Read more