Connecting Power BI with Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations

Producing analysis dashboards, by exploiting and turning data into actionable insights, is an essential step during every business scenario.

Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations is fully customizable and complimented with different apps, services and Tools such as Microsoft Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow to make it more personalized, but also unlocking new ways of measuring, acting and automating workflow processes.

In this article i will cover main steps needed to connect with Power BI and pin interactive tiles in a custom Dynamics 365 For Finance Operations Worskpace.

Power BI with Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations … Better together

Comparing to last versions of Dynamics AX 2012 / AX2009, Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations with Power BI representing together a great cloud-based services potentials to businesses if they are correctly integrated, to benefit from unqiue solution (Embedded BI and Strategic ERP data).

Rich Scenarios

The idea behind building analytics in D365 F&O is it when a customer want to analyze products data on Product Information Module for instance, can easily read KPIs and interact with visuals to Apply filters and made transformations.

With Power BI integrated we can easily realize create custom dashboards adapted for each D365 F&O worskspace.

Easy steps

Register your app in Power BI Developer Center.

Easy Sign in 🙂

• First thing to start with is sign in directly with your existing account to : https://dev.powerbi.com/apps

Register your Application

1. Once signed in, Enter an App Name, (ex:  » EUK Power BI App « )
2. Select Server-Side web application as an Application Type
3. for the Home Page URL: it’s the client URL of Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations ( Example : http://contosoax7.cloud.dynamics.com)
4. Redirect URL: D365 Client URL and the OAuth suffix, (Example: http://contosoax7.cloud.dynamics.com/oauth)
5. Power BI permissions propose a list of actions on a user’s behalf, we can choose Read and write APIs as a permission and select :
   1. « Read and write all datasets »
   2. « Read and write all dashboards »
   3. « Read and write all reports »
   4. « Read and write all workspaces »
6. Click Register

Application Succesfully Registered

Once your application resgistered, an Application ID and Application Secret wil be generated. it’s the two IDs we will use later to configure Power BI integration for Workspaces in Dynamics 365 F&O.

Note: You can retrieve the Client ID from the Azure portal, if needed. If you lose your client scret, you’il be in need to create a new one.

Back to Azure portal

Just after the Power BI registration step, you can check all informations related to your application on the Azure portal: Home > App registration (Client ID, Application Type, URLs, Permissions, Owner..).

PowerBI.com configuration in Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations

In order to start using Power BI tiles, reports, dashboards and pin interactive visuals into into Worskpaces, we need to specify an important settings, in the Power BI configuration page, by defining the 2 IDs already generated (Application ID and Application Key)

On the Power BI configuration, we need to specify:

1. Application ID / Application Key : Values generated from Power BI app registration tool.
2. Enable Power BI Intergation for Dynamics 365 F&O.
3. Yes/No to Apply a filter per Company

 

Create custom Workspace

Using workspace provide an oriented activity page designed for specific and custom business uses, in Dynamics 365 F&O we can create a new workspace and add different items, among them we can Power BI dashboards.

We can create a workspace, by right-clicking on any item on main page,

A new custom Worskspace will be created, now we can start personalize the form.

• by adding a new custom field

• Allowing Power BI controls, in the form

Once Power BI controls are allowed, we can start using, adding/ removing tiles.