Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 - Second Edition

By : Mark Polino
Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 - Second Edition

By: Mark Polino

Overview of this book

Microsoft Dynamics GP is a complete ERP solution that is extremely beneficial for small to midsize organizations in helping them grow exponentially. The book shows you in detail how to build great-looking dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP that enhance a company’s decision-making processes. This guide will take you from the basics of setting up and deploying to creating secure, refreshable Excel reports. Using a whole host of tools available within Microsoft Dynamics GP and Excel, this tutorial will show you how to visualize your data using simple conditional formatting techniques and easy-to-read charts, and allow you to make your data interactive with slicers. We will also cover core topics such as Business Analyzer, Microsoft SQL Reporting services reports, BI360, and more. You will find out to use Power BI, share and refresh data and dashboards in Power BI, and use Power BI Query Editor. By the end of this book, you will have all the information required to build interactive dashboards using Dynamics GP.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Getting data from files


Getting data from a file, such as Excel, CSV, XML, or text, is the most straightforward method of getting data into Power BI. We'll start here with an Excel file. Download and install the Power BI Desktop from www.PowerBI.com before you begin.

Note

Your Power BI Desktop may look a little different than mine, based on when you downloaded it, although the foundation will remain the same. A new version is released every month.

Using Excel reports in Power BI

Our goal here is to solely connect the data in an Excel file to the Power BI Desktop and import the data into the in-memory data model for Power BI. This will allow the data to reside in Power BI for use with its many visuals:

  1. Open Microsoft Dynamics GP SmartList and export the default SmartList Customers Balance * to Excel and Save:

  2. Open Microsoft Power BI. Upon opening it, you may receive a Getting Started window. This window contains links to the last few dashboards you've built, such as POWER BI BLOG, FORUMS, TUTORIALS...