Power BI

Dynamics 365 & PowerPlatform Conferences in 2023

Marko Totovic Business Central, Conference, CRM, Dynamics 365, Dynamics AX, ERP, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Power BI, Power Platform , , , ,

We are close to the end of this, and we mostly have important conference dates for the following year. I would like to have all Dynamics 365 (and/or Power Platform) conferences in one place, with all dates planned for 2023. So, you can find them here and start planning your attendance as most of them have early bird:

  • Days of Knowledge US (September 2023 – TBD)

I hope I’ll se you on some of them.

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Dynamics 365 April ’19 Release Notes

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Today, the newest release notes for April 2019 has just been published. You can find details regarding all Dynamics 365 solutions, Power Platform and even more.

If you want to read all details, you can do it using the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/April19/. You can navigate there very easy and find what you are interesting for.

After this first document, you can expect the following until the April and release official announcement:

  • February 1st – Preview will be available
  • February 21st – Update of release notes
  • April 2nd – Virtual launch event
  • April 5th – General availability

For now, read it and enjoy…

Editing PowerBI Reports in Business Central

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Having embed PowerBI in Business Central is well known fact, but recently in Fall ’18 release, Microsoft made it even better because now you have already added PowerBI reports on all pages where they were planned to be. OK, it is nice to have and it can be time saver, because you don’t need to waste your time to add reports to page-by-page.

But what if you are not satisfy with it how these reports looks like? If you want to change something? Previously it was locked, but now… Now it looks amazing. You don’t need to leave your Business Central environment… everything you need, you will find in your Web Client (of course I’m speaking about cloud version 🙂 ).

Let’s show… Find some PowerBI report and choose Manage Reports command.

When you run this command, you will open PowerBI Management in Business Central (PowerBI Designer) and you can design your reports.

You can change your existed reports or eventually add new tab with new charts… you can do as you want.

When you finish, you just need to save it or to save this new report as a copy (if you want to keep original).

When you close it and open this report in Business Central, you will see that now you have your new report. Simply, right? Amazing job!

NAV TechDays 2016 Presentations

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NAV TechDays 2016 has just finished a few days ago. Unfortunately, I missed it this year. I wanted to be there with you in Antwerp and I already announced session with Steven Renders about Power BI, but I had to cancel my attendance. I know, Steven perfect prepared this session without me because he is an expert for this topic.

OK, life goes on. I really hope I missed only this year and I’ll be there the next year. Now, all sessions are already published and I want to have all of them on the one place. There are all of them:

The Power of Power BI and Dynamics NAV by Steven Renders

Office 365 for NAV Techies by Arend-Jan Kauffmann

Best Practices in Developing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 Extensions by Waldo

Real Life Source Code Management by Soren Klemmensen

Modern Developer Tools for Dynamics 365 and on premise NAV by Michael Hammond & Esben Nyhuus Kristoffersen

Bad Habits of NAV Developers by Waldo, Vjeko Babic and Gary Winter

Migrating to Events by Gunnar Gestsson

Building Cool Experience with NAV Everywhere by Horina Serbanescu, Eygo Kawatani and Andrea Tino

Design Patterns in NAV 2017 by Anders Larsen & Nikola Kukrika

JavaScript Architecture – Turning Pain Into Gain by Vjeko Babic

Get Some Smartness into Dynamics NAV / 365 with Notifications and Cortana Intelligence by Klaus Marius Hansen & Jesper Schulz-Wedde

Building the Dynamics 365 for Finacials Services by Kamil Koclega & Constantin Daniil

Enjoy…

My Session on NAV TechDays 2016

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Recently, I’ve published information about my sessions this fall. But now, I’m spreading a scope of my lecture to the end of this year. After Directions NA and Directions EMEA, where I’ll speak about choosing the best Azure platform for NAV and about using combined waterfall and agile project methodology, I’ll be lecturer on local Microsoft conference in Serbia – MS Sinergija. On this conference I’ll speak about differences between NAV 2017 and Project Madeira (Dynamics 365).

And finally, on the end of this year conference season, I’ll be lecturer on NAV TechDays. First I wasn’t sure if I have enough time to make session by my standards, but I decided to have common session with Steven Renders about, by my opinion very interesting topic – Power BI and NAV.

NAVTechDays.jpg

We chose the title: The Power of Power BI and Dynamics NAV. We will speak together and this will be the first time to have a common session with some colleague. I hope, Steven and I will synchronize everything very good and you will love this session. If you want to know more about topic, you can use link above.

But in short lines, you will see what it takes to develop a dashboard in Power BI Desktop. Starting from getting the data out of Dynamics NAV, we will create a data model. On one hand we will see how to achieve this using Power Query, which we will enhance with measures, calculated columns and tables using DAX. On the other hand we will use OLAP Cubes, connected to Dynamics NAV and other sources, to build the data model. How to create dashboards… what about DAX, M and R… how to compare using of OLAP cubes with ODATA Web Services based data…

See you there, soon.

NAV 2017 Roadmap

atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, Power BI, SaaS , , , , , , ,

In just two month, Microsoft will publish new Microsoft Dynamics NAV version. In the encounter of this event, month ago Microsoft published the last NAV roadmap on WPC in Toronto. Now, we can see what will be generally the main features in NAV 2017.

NAV2017_Roadmap1.jpg

We still cannot notice a lot of things (these thing are not so clear), but if we try to use Project “Madeira”, we can find a lot of some new features and that means, we can expect the most of them in NAV as well.

In the same time, Directions NA has already published agenda for this conference and now we can see the main topics, because NAV 2017 will be published in this period. See you there.

Microsoft Dynamics 365!

atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, Power BI, SaaS , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today, Microsoft published story about Microsoft Dynamics 365 on Partner Source and on their blog. And in the same moment, they’ve also published Microsoft AppSource. What is this?

MSDyn365.jpg

Microsoft says that this represents the end-to-end intelligent business applications in the cloud and it will be worldwide available in the fall of this year. Generally Dynamics 365 will bring the best of Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions and currently it is based on Project “Madeira” (but not only; we can expect the enterprise edition of Dynamics 365 based on AX) and CRM Online, but not only on them. It will provide the main business processes as Finance, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Operations, Marketing and Project Service Automation.

And even more. This is not closed system. This system is natively integrated with big data and IoT, Power BI, Cortana Intelligence, Microsoft Flow,… everything what you need and when you need. Classic Software-As-A-Service story, but very advanced. I think I don’t need to spend my words about integration with Office 365; this integration will be extremely deep (you already saw just a part of this in my previous article about using “Madeira” with Outlook).

Dynamics365.jpg

And of course, if you want to know something more about it, the best is to attend on WPC during the July. Microsoft will provide three session about this new solution. You can also see more about it on Summit this year (Scott Guthrie will speak about it) and I hope on Directions.

You can expect more from me about this soon. But this is just small the first introduction about new solution in the family; remember this name – Microsoft Dynamics 365.

NAV Gallery Image – PS Scripts Order

atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, Power BI, SQL , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This week I have training about NAV and Azure and I used some examples in NAV 2016 Gallery Image on Azure.

NAV90GalleryImage.jpg

This image is awesome, but sometime people doesn’t know what PowerShell script can be started before some others. For example, you cannot run “Use Azure SQL Database” and after that “Install Multitenancy”…

Because of that I wanted to make some small help to all people who want to use this NAV 2016 image. In the following, you can find a chart with order of using all PowerShell scripts. Now, you know how to configure all of them on the same VM.

NAV90GalleryImageOrder.jpg

Project Madeira and Power BI

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If you have demo Project “Madeira”, you can also try to use Project “Madeira” automated Power BI. You need to use the same credentials and log to powerbi.com

Then, you need to run Services and choose Project “Madeira” package:

PowerBiMadeira1.jpg

Choose “Connect” and put your OData Feed URL. You can find this URL in your Project “Madeira”. You need to find Web Services page using search and copy OData URL until your company name, as the following model:  https://[navserver]/[instance]/OData/Company(‘Sample%20Company’).

Wait some time and type your credentials, using the basic authentication method. You need to use your O365 username, but as your password, you need to use your “Web Service Access Key”. To create your “Web Service Access Key”, go to the your User card in Project “Madeira” and use “Change Web Service Key” command to generate your “Web Service Access Key”.

PowerBiMadeira2.jpg

After that, you need to continue with logging to your PowerBI. You don’t need to take care about certificates and similar; everything is already prepared. When you finish, you will get page similar as my. Then, you can check and try to make it funny…

PowerBiMadeira3.jpg

Pretty easy. Enjoy.

MS SQL is a Global ODBMS Leader

atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Power BI, SQL , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A few days ago, I’ve wrote about place of Power BI in Gartner survey about BI & Analytics solutions. Power BI was a global leader on Gartner Magic Quadrant. Now, we have new Gartner story about Operational Database Management Systems. For the first time, MS SQL is an absolutely leader and on better position in comparison with Oracle database.

ODBMS Gartner.jpg

The operational database management system (DBMS) market is concerned with relational and nonrelational database management products suitable for a broad range of enterprise-level transactional applications. These include purchased business applications, such as those for ERP, CRM, catalog management and security event management, and custom transactional systems built by organizations’ own development teams. Also included in Gartner’s definition of this market are DBMS products that support interactions and observations as new types of transaction. (from Gartner)

Microsoft deserves this position because they market its SQL Server DBMS for the operational DBMS market, as well as the Microsoft Azure SQL Database (a DBMS platform as a service), and the NoSQL DBMSs Microsoft Azure DocumentDB and Azure Tables.

It is very important that Microsoft continue with working on enterprise SQL Servers and on Azure SQL as well. And finally about NAV. Microsoft Dynamics NAV (from NAV 2016) works on both of these SQL versions and I think this cooperation between strong database and ERP solution will continue to deliver amazing business solutions.