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Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 - Power BI Feature

In GP 2016 you can now add Power BI visuals to the Home page. 

Download the documentation HERE!

I'm not going to rehash the documentation here, so make sure to read through it prior to reading through the rest of this blog.  I do want to add some additional information that may help you get started.  You can navigate to the following site to sign up for a free trial of Power BI.  https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/

With a Free Trial of Power BI you can get GP connected and test out this new feature.  The instructions ask you to Register a client App with the Power BI App Registration Tool.  This will direct you to go to https://dev.powerbi.com/apps.  This is how you get a 'Client ID' which needs to be entered into the Reporting Tools Setup window.  Once you've signed into this site it is going to ask you for the following information.

App Name - You can name this anything you want.
App Type - Specify this as 'Native App'
Redirect URL - example: https://login.live.com/oauth20_desktop.srf
APIs to Access - I believe the minimum you need here is 'Read All Dashboards'.  I always check all the boxes when I set it up though.

Once you've provided the above information you should be able to click on the 'Register App' button and get your client ID.  This is what you will put into the Reporting Tools Setup window for Power BI.  You should record this ID somewhere else in case you need it again.  You will have to setup a new one if you lose it.

The other issue I'd like to talk about is the possibility of running into a Script error when loading the Power BI reports on the GP home page.  You will get something along the lines of:
An error has occurred in the script on this page.
Error: Invalid Character
URL: https://app.powerbi.com/13.0.1100.519/scripts/powerbivisualrenderer.min.js

When we request the Power BI visual from the Power BI site it has to run through the above referenced renderer.  This renderer delivers a picture of the report to us that can be loaded onto the GP Home page.  This renderer does not support every kind of report\visual that you could potentially load up to the Power BI site.  Full page reports, full fidelity excel tiles and models will not work.  If you pin an individual tile from a report it should work.

Comments

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  • Joe Critchlow Profile Picture Joe Critchlow 1,145
    Posted at

    Thanks for the information. I was able to get this working, but not it keeps telling me that the login fails on the reporting tool setup. I was able to create a new client id and I am able to access Power BI site with my credentials, but not GP. Any idea as to what may be wrong. I am on GP2016R2.

    Joe

  • Community Member Profile Picture Community Member Microsoft Employee
    Posted at

    I put together a template that you can use for Power BI, connecting to your GP SQL company database. This is one way to get started: dynamicserpnow.com/power-bi-standard-dynamics-gp

    These aren't beautiful, but you can make them so, once you've imported the template.

  • Community Member Profile Picture Community Member Microsoft Employee
    Posted at

    In all of these helpful tutorials on setting this up, everyone shows all these beautiful reports coming from Power BI on their GP home page. How do you get these, is there a deployment tool or a way to insert them into Power BI. The only object I see in my list for my home page is a report I worked on in OData and Power BI that looks like a 5 year old did it.

  • Chris Bulson Profile Picture Chris Bulson
    Posted at

    Thanks, Steve!  You're absolutely right, the Power BI site will not deliver all object types to us.  Individual tiles that are pinned from a report should work, but full page reports, full fidelity excel tiles or report models will not work.  If you load a report onto the GP home page and get a script error this is very likely the problem.

  • Community Member Profile Picture Community Member Microsoft Employee
    Posted at

    Reemphasize: Choose single graphs/tiles. A dashboard with multiple graphs/tiles will not work.

    This is really easy to do. If you haven't tried Power BI with GP data, do it now. And then connect it to GP 2016 when you upgrade.