How to Add Power BI Dashboards to your Dynamics GP Homepage

This blog will teach you how to connect your GP environment to Power BI, so that your users can add favorite reports right to their GP home page.

Not familiar with Power BI? Power BI is a Microsoft business intelligence tool that allows users to connect their data from various data sources and create reports and dashboards. Your reports and dashboards will help you bring your important KPIs to one place, and give you the real-time insight you need to make informed business decisions.

To surface your Power BI reports on the homepage of Dynamics GP, you’ll have to confirm the following pre-requisites:

• You have access to Power BI and at least one Power BI report is available
• You are able to login to the Power BI site and view a Power BI report
• You are creating your own Power BI reports and visuals
• You are using the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 desktop client (not Web Client)

Once confirmed, follow these steps to add your Power BI dashboards to your GP home page:

1. From within GP, go to Tools > Setup > System > Reporting Tools Setup > Select the “Power BI” Setup Tab from this window.
2. There are two options to enter data into the Power BI setup:
   • Power BI Site URL – this is where you will add the Power BI site – for example, https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/dashboards.
   • Client ID – to obtain your Power BI Client ID, visit this website – your Client ID will then allow GP to access your Power BI site.
3. Once you’ve entered the proper information in the Reporting Tools Setup window, click “Refresh” or “Ok.” GP will now attempt to validate your information.
4. The first time you validate your Power BI information, you should be prompted to login.
5. You may receive an error message that says “This login failed. Attempt to login again or contact your system administrator,” which means that you might not have a valid login or permissions.
6. If your login was successful, then you have officially configured GP to connect to your Power BI site.
7. To begin adding reports to your GP homepage, navigate to the homepage and click on “Customize this page…”
8. You will now be able to add a “Power BI” section to your homepage by marking the Power BI checkbook in the Customize Home Page window.
9. Click the blue arrow next to the Power BI checkbox to open the Power BI Details window. From this window, you can select the available reports that you wish to add to your GP homepage.
10. Once you’ve added your reports, the “Power BI” section should be added to your GP homepage.

Once your Power BI reports have been added to your GP homepage, you can scroll through your reports, you can expand your window size, and you can click on your reports to open them in the Power BI Web Browser (you’ll need to disable your pop-up blocker for this). Keep in mind: you cannot manipulate or edit the Power BI reports from your Dynamics GP home page. You’ll need to visit the Power BI Web Browser to make any changes or manipulations.

For your Technical Team: The SY40800 table in the Dynamics Database will continue to hold all of your setup information for the “Reporting Tools Setup” window. You will find that the following tables added to this table: PowerBISiteURL and PowerBIClientID.

For more information about adding Power BI dashboards to your Dynamics GP homepage, contact Tidestone Solutions today! info@tidestonesolutions.com or 207-956-6635