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Building Power BI reports for displaying Dynamics 365 Business Central data

  • Artigo

You can make your Dynamics 365 Business Central data available as a data source in Power BI Desktop and build powerful reports about the state of your business.

This article describes how to start using Power BI Desktop to create reports that display Dynamics 365 Business Central data. After you create reports, you can publish them to your Power BI service or share them with all users in your organization. When the reports are in the Power BI service, users that are set up for it can view the reports in Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Get ready

Note

You could get the data from various companies in a single report with OData web services. However, starting with Business Central 2021 release wave 2, only ODataV4 is supported. ODataV4 doesn't export data from multiple companies. The $expand function in Power BI that you might think would be an alternative way to create a multi-company report can't be used either. It creates a column with the company name but doesn't populate it with the company data after a refresh.

Add Business Central as a data source in Power BI Desktop

The first task in creating reports is to add Business Central as a data source in Power BI Desktop. Once connected, you can start to build the report.

  1. Start Power BI Desktop.

  2. Select Get Data.

    If you don't see Get Data, select the File menu, then Get Data.

  3. On the Get Data page, select Online Services.

  4. In the Online Services pane, do one of the following steps:

    • To connect to Business Central online, select Dynamics 365 Business Central, then Connect.

  5. Sign-in to Business Central (one-time only).

    If you aren't signed in to Business Central from Power BI Desktop, you're prompted to sign in.

    • For Business Central online, select Sign in, and then choose the relevant account. Use the same account that you use to sign into Business Central. When done, select Connect.

    Note

    After you connect to Business Central, you won't be prompted again to sign in. How do I change or clear the account I'm currently using to connect to Business Central from Power BI Desktop?

  6. When connected, Power BI contacts the Business Central service. The Navigator window displays the data sources that are available for building reports. Select a folder to expand it and show the available data sources.

    These data sources represent all APIs and web services that are published for Business Central, grouped by environments and companies. With Business Central online, Navigator has the following structure:

    • Environment name
      • Company name

        • Advanced APIs

          This folder lists advanced APIs published by Microsoft, like the Business Central automation APIs and APIs published by other organizations (these APIs are called Custom APIs). Custom APIs are further grouped in folders according to the APIPublisher/APIGroup properties of the API source code.

        • Standard APIs v2.0

          This folder lists the data APIs exposed in the Business Central API V2.0. You use these APIs to read data from the Business Central database, such as master data (customer, vendor, item, and so on), transactions (general ledger entries, customer entries, and so on), or setup data (dimensions, payment methods, unit of measure, and so on).

        • Web services (legacy)

          This folder lists pages, codeunits, and queries that are published as web services in Business Central. It is discouraged to use this legacy method for reading data from Business Central. Instead, we recommend that you use APIs.

  7. Select the data source or sources that you want to add to your data model, and then select the Load button.

  8. If later you want to add more Business Central data, you can repeat the previous steps.

Once the data is loaded, you can see it in the right navigation on the page. At this point, you're connected to your Business Central data, and you can begin building your Power BI report.

Tip

For more information about using Power BI Desktop, see Get started with Power BI Desktop.

Creating accessible reports

It's important to make your reports usable for as many people as possible. Try to design reports so that they don't require any special adaptation to meet specific needs of different users. Make sure the design lets users take advantage of assistive technologies, like screen readers. Power BI includes various accessibility features, tools, and guidelines to help. To learn more, go to Design Power BI reports for accessibility in the Power BI documentation.

Creating reports to display data associated with a list in Business Central

You can create reports that display in a FactBox on a Business Central list page, and change when different rows are selected in the list. Creating these reports is similar to other reports, except there are a few things to do to make sure the reports display as expected. To learn more, go to Creating Power BI Reports for Displaying List Data in Business Central.

Using the Business Central report theme (optional)

Before building your report, we recommend that you download and import the Business Central theme file. The theme file creates a color palette so you can build reports with the same color styling as the Business Central apps, without requiring you to define custom colors for each visual.

Note

This task is optional. You can always create your reports, and then download and apply the style template later.

Download the theme

The theme file is available as a json file on Microsoft Power BI Community Themes Gallery. To download the theme file, do the following steps:

  1. Go to Microsoft Power BI Community Themes Gallery for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
  2. Select the download attachment Microsoft Dynamics Business Central.json.

Import the theme on a report

After you download the Business Central report theme, you can import it to your reports. To import the theme, Select the View > Themes > Browse for themes. Learn more at Power BI Desktop - Import custom report themes.

Publish reports

After you create or modify a report, you can publish the report to your Power BI service and also share it with others in your organization. After you publish a report, it's available in Business Central. The report also becomes available for selection in Business Central.

To publish a report, select Publish on the Home tab of the ribbon or from the File menu. If you're signed into the Power BI service, the report is published to this service. Otherwise, you're prompted to sign in.

Distribute or share a report

There are a couple of ways to share reports:

  • Share a report from your Power BI service (recommended)

    If you have a Power BI PRO license or use Power BI Premium Capacity, you can share the report directly from your Power BI service. To learn more, go to Power BI - Share a dashboard or report.

  • Distribute reports as .pbix files.

    Reports are stored on your computer as .pbix files. You can distribute the .pbix file to users, like any other file. Then, the people you shared the file with can upload it to their Power BI service. To learn more, go to Upload reports from files.

    Note

    Distributing reports in this way means that refreshing data for reports is done individually by each user. This situation might impact Business Central performance.

How to develop cross-company or cross-environment Power BI reports

The Business Central API endpoints all have the prefix https://api.businesscentral.dynamics.com/v2.0/<environment_name>/api/v2.0 followed by /companies({company_id})/accounts({id}) (here we use the accounts API as an illustration). You can use this structure to create PowerQuery queries that load data for multiple companies or multiple environments if the user who is reading data can access them.

To set up a query to load data for multiple companies, follow these steps:

  1. Take the PowerQuery query that loads data for a single company. Convert it to a custom Power Query function that takes the company ID (or maybe the environment name) as parameters. To learn more, go to Using custom Power Query functions.
  2. Now use the new custom function in a PowerQuery query, where you map the function over a list of companies and then merge the datasets using the Table.Combine Power Query function.

Advanced: Customize language, timeout, database replica, or page size for your Business Central data source

The Power BI connector for Business Central supports several advanced properties for connecting to a Business Central data source that you can set in your Power Query queries. The following table describes the parameters.

Parameter Description Default Learn more at
AcceptLanguage This parameter allows you to specify preferred languages for responses, ensuring users receive messages and translatable strings in their desired language. It sets the language in which the Business Central API session runs. It influences the language of error messages, formatted values in AL, and other values that depend on language or culture.

Setting this parameter improves user satisfaction and makes the data more accessible and relevant.		 not specified Use locale values in multiple-language Power BI reports.
ODataMaxPageSize This parameter limits the number of entities per results page, which allows for more flexibility when connecting to large datasets or using complex queries. It sets the maximum number of records to return for each page when calling an API. For example, if your table Customers has 13,000 records and ODataMaxPageSize is set to 5000, Power BI makes 3 API calls to get your customers. The first call gets 5,000 records, the next one gets 5000 more, and the last call gets the remaining 3000. This option can't be higher than the maximum page size enforced by Business Central, which is 20000.

Setting this parameter ensures efficient and responsive data retrieval, leading to faster insights and decision-making. You can't exceed the maximum page size defined on the service.		 5000 ODataPreferenceHeader.MaxPageSize Property
Timeout This parameter defines the maximum duration for a request before cancellation. It sets the timeout for each single API call to Business Central. Its value can't exceed the timeout enforced on the Business Central service, which is currentæy 10 minutes (00:10:00).

Setting this parameter helps manage system resources effectively and prevents long-running queries from impacting overall system performance. Users experience minimal delays and interruptions, ensuring a smoother workflow.		 00:08:00 OData.Feed
UseReadOnlyReplica This parameter determines whether requests target the primary database or a read-only replica. Offloading read operations from the primary database can significantly boost performance.

Setting this property leads to faster data retrieval and improved system stability, especially during peak usage times.		 true

Configure the advanced parameters

  1. Start Power BI Desktop.

  2. Complete the step that suits your scenario:

    1. Select File > Open.
    2. Browse for and select the report (.pbix).
    3. In the ribbon, select Transform Data to open the Power Query Editor.

  1. In Power Query Editor, select Advanced Editor from the ribbon.

  2. In Advanced Editor, locate the line that starts with Source =:

    Source = Dynamics365BusinessCentral.ApiContentsWithOptions(null, null, null, null),

  3. In the line, replace the fourth parameter of Dynamics365BusinessCentral.ApiContentsWithOptions with a comma separated list of properties and values you want to set, for example:

    Source = Dynamics365BusinessCentral.ApiContentsWithOptions(null, null, null, Dynamics365BusinessCentral.ApiContentsWithOptions(null, null, null, [UseReadOnlyReplica = true, Timeout = Duration.From("00:07:00"), ODataMaxPageSize = 10000, AcceptLanguage = "it-it"])

  4. Select Done to close Advanced Editor.

  5. Select Close & Apply to save the changes and close Power Query Editor.

Fixing problems

"Expression.Error: The environment 'Production' does not exist." error when specifying a Business Central environment

APPLIES TO: Business Central online

When you connect to Business Central online from Power BI, or when you install a Power BI Desktop app from Microsoft AppSource that uses Business Central data, you might be prompted to input the Business Central environment you want to connect to.

If you get an error similar to "Expression.Error: The environment 'Production' does not exist.", follow these steps to troubleshoot:

  1. Make sure you're using the right credentials to access Business Central. These credentials might not be the same credentials you use to access Power BI. How do I change or clear the account I'm currently using to connect to Business Central from Power BI Desktop?
  2. If your environment is an embed ISV environment, you need to specify the embed ISV name in parenthesis as part of the environment name. For example, if you want to connect to an environment named Production from the embed ISV named Fabrikam, you have to specify "PRODUCTION (fabrikam)" as environment name.

"Can't insert a record. Current connection intent is Read-Only." error connecting to custom API page

APPLIES TO: Business Central online

By default, reports that use Business Central data connect to a read-only replica of the Business Central database. In rare cases, depending on the API design, you might get an error when you try to connect to and get data from the API. The error looks like this:

Dynamics365BusinessCentral: Request failed: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request. (Can't insert a record. Current connection intent is Read-Only. CorrelationId: [...])".

If you're using a custom API, we recommend you rework the AL code to make sure it doesn't make database modifications when it's just reading data. But in case your scenario requires it, you can configure the connector to use a read-write connection instead.

Enabling Your Business Data for Power BI
Business Intelligence
Getting Ready for Doing Business
Importing Business Data from Other Finance Systems
Setting Up Business Central
Finance
Quickstart: Connect to data in Power BI Desktop

Find free e-learning modules for Business Central here