The Power BI Desktop application is a robust tool that delivers a contemporary method for generating reports using Dynamics GP data. Reports can be displayed right on your GP homepage, presenting the most up-to-date information whenever you click refresh. Within Dynamics GP 2018, Microsoft has included a couple of updates that will enhance the business intelligence abilities of GP, thanks to Power BI.
This is part 4 of our 7-part series, “What’s New in Dynamics GP 2018?”. In this post, we’ll discuss the new Business Intelligence enhancements rolled out in the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
OData Service
The OData service allows Power BI to consume your GP data through a published data source. It is a web service based data feed that you can subscribe to using an application like Excel or Power BI. Reporting over the web is necessary if you want your web-based applications such as Power BI to interact with your GP data. Also, you may have team members in the field that are not connected to your network but need to access data from remote locations. One of the requirements of OData is that you have a security certificate and an https website. In Dynamics GP 2018, Microsoft has added paging and filtering abilities to the OData service.
Power BI Content Pack
The Power BI Content Pack highlights the capabilities of Power BI and serve as a good point of reference for developing your own Power BI reports in GP. The newly released Power BI Content Pack includes sample reports for Sales, Financial, Inventory, and Purchasing data. The reports leverage the associations created between GP tables and Filters used to feature the data you are most interested in. The Calculated Columns provide examples for including various calculations on your Power BI reports like Net Debit/Credit, Profit and item Sales amounts.
The Microsoft Dynamics GP Power BI Content Pack enables powerful insights into Dynamics GP data, while the OData service allows users to access that data from anywhere.
Next time, we’ll provide an overview of the new financial enhancements rolled out in the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics GP. If you missed any of the previous posts in this series, you can check them out here.
