Using Power BI for Real Time Reporting: Part I

Posted on: May 17, 2017 | By: Jarrod Kraemer | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365

Authored by: Craig Leska – Senior Technical Consultant

With Power BI, you can have real time reporting in your on-premise AX or any other database using the Power BI Enterprise Gateway. There are a couple of caveats you need to be aware of.

A Power BI Pro subscription is required.  The subscription for Power BI Pro is $9.99 per month per user. You can get a 60-day trial subscription to try this out and evaluate for your needs. No credit card or any other payment is required for this trial.

A little on the Power BI Gateway:

The on-premises data gateway acts as a bridge, providing quick and secure data transfer between on-premises data (data that is not in the cloud) and the Power BI, Microsoft Flow, Logic Apps, and PowerApps services.  You can use a single gateway with different services at the same time. If you are using Power BI, as well as PowerApps, a single gateway and be used for both. It is dependent on the account you sign in with.  Note: The On-premises data gateway implements data compression, and transport encryption, in all modes.

Source

The Gateway is installed on a server in your environment and configured to connect to your database. You then use the Power BI Desktop to build your queries and publish them. Once they are published you are ready to generate reports in real time, unlike the personal editions where the data is updated daily.

 

The May 2017 Power BI update contains some nice features.

Report View:

       Relative date slicer

       New table visual

       Combo chart data label enhancements

       More URL support in table and matrix visuals

       Mail to links in textbox

 

Analytics:

       Report level measures for live connections to Analysis Services tabular models and Power BI service datasets [blog]

       Two new quick measures

       Bin by count

 

Data Connectivity:

       Combine files – ability to reference First File as example

       New data connectors: • Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights

 

 

Query Editing:

       Two new transforms: • Extract text before/after/between delimiters

       Unpivot only selected columns

 

In Part II, I will walk through on creating a connection into our on-premises database using the gateway and report off it in real time.  

For additional information please feel free to reach out to us at info@loganconsulting.com or (312) 345-8817. 

All the best! 
Logan Consulting 
www.loganconsulting.com



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