It's easy to get insights into your Business Central data with Power BI - a data visualization system from Microsoft. Power BI retrieves Business Central data so that you can build dashboards and reports based on that data. Power BI provides a flexible alternative to reports built in Business Central, enabling you drill down and customize the visualization, and even merge data from different companies in Business Central. Some Power BI reports can also be embedded in Business Central and viewed without leaving the system. More complex dashboards are better experienced from the Power BI web site.
What you can do with Power BI and Business Central
Business Central includes multiple Power BI features. Some things you can do from Power BI, while other things are done from Business Central. Also, some features are only available with Business Central online, not on-premises. The following table gives you an overview.
Feature
Description
Online
On-premises
Learn more
Use built-in Power BI apps for Business Central
Business Central publishes many different apps for Power BI on Microsoft AppSource. These apps create detailed reports and dashboards in your Power BI service for viewing Business Central data.
You can use your data from Business Central in reports in Power BI. Business Central online includes many Power BI reports. Or, your organization might have some custom reports.
View Power BI reports in the Business Central client.
Power BI reports that display Business Central data can be embedded directly in parts Business Central pages. You can switch the part to display any report that is made available to you.
Create reports and dashboards in Power BI that display Business Central data.
Use Power BI Desktop to create your own reports and dashboards. You can publish the reports to your own Power BI service or share them with others within your organization.
There are a few tasks that must be done before you can start using Power BI with Business Central. The tasks depend on your role in your organization and what you want to do with Power BI:
As a user, you want to view Power BI reports in the Power BI service or Business Central.
As an administrator, you're responsible for managing the organization-wide settings that control how Business Central and Power BI work.
As a report creator, you want to build custom Power BI reports to share with other users.
Are you going to use Power BI to create reports for Business Central? If so, this learning path will discuss how to build a dataset, build a report, and work with Power BI and Business Central.
Demonstrate methods and best practices that align with business and technical requirements for modeling, visualizing, and analyzing data with Microsoft Power BI.
Get insight, business intelligence, and KPIs from your Business Central data with Power BI using [!INCLUDE [powerbi-service-name](includes/powerbi-service-name.md)].
Learn how to set up the connection to Power BI. With Power BI reports, you can get insights, business intelligence, and KPIs from your Business Central data.
