Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

By : Mark Polino
Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

By: Mark Polino

Overview of this book

Accounting systems like Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 hold a wealth of information. Excel 2013 provides a great tool for linking to, extracting, analysing, and presenting that rich data to help companies make better, faster, and smarter decisions.Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013 covers how to get the rich, detailed information contained in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and present it in an attractive, easy-to-understand way using Excel 2013. The book shows in detail how to build great-looking dashboards that enhance a company's decision-making process.This book shows you how to get at the rich, detailed information contained in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and present it in an attractive, easy-to-understand way using Excel 2013. This guide will take you from the basics of setup and deployment to creating secure, refreshable Excel reports. Using a whole host of tools available within Excel, this tutorial will show you how to visualize your data using simple conditional formatting techniques, easy-to-read charts, and allow you to make your data interactive with Slicers. Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013 provides a way for you to easily build that interactive dashboard that your CFO keeps asking for.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

SQL Server Management Studio


Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 runs on SQL Server 2008 SP3 or later and SQL Server 2012. Some companies, in particular those with advanced users, allow read-only access to Microsoft SQL Server to make it easy for users to get just the data they want. Often this access is provided through the SQL Server Management Studio. Management Studio makes it easy to get data from GP 2013 to Microsoft Excel.

To see how easy this is:

  1. Open SQL Server Management Studio.

  2. Connect to the SQL Server instance with Dynamics GP 2013 installed using either Windows Authentication or SQL Server Authentication with a user ID and password. If you have access to SQL Server Management Studio, the login method and credentials will be provided by your database administrator. The user's GP login cannot be used.

  3. Select New Query.

  4. In the large, white box on the right type Use TWO and hit Enter to select the sample TWO database.

  5. Type Select * from AccountSummary and click Execute to run the SQL query. The results will appear below the query:

  6. Choose Edit | Select All from the menu to highlight all of the results.

  7. Choose Edit | Copy with Headers.

  8. Open a blank Excel 2013 sheet. On the Home tab, click on the Paste icon in the upper-left to paste the data to Microsoft Excel:

    Tip

    There is a setting in SQL server that will export headers when copying, even if you forget to pick Copy with Headers. The setting is found in Tools | Options | Query Results | SQL Server | Results To Grid. To activate it, check Include column headers when copying or saving results.