Enabling Your Business Data for Power BI

Getting insights into your Dynamics NAV data is easy with Power BI and the Dynamics NAV content packs. Power BI retrieves your data and then builds an out-of-the-box dashboard and reports based on that data.

Microsoft has published the following content packs:

App Description
Microsoft Dynamics NAV Provides a dashboard with key financial data over time, such as earnings versus expenses, operating margin, and cash cycle.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales Provides a dashboard with key data about sales opportunities and contacts.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales Provides a dashboard with key data about sales and inventory.

Using the Dashboards

Each content pack provides reports that you can drill into:

  • Choose any visual on the dashboard to bring up one of the underlying reports.
  • Filter the report or add fields that you want to monitor.
  • Pin this customized view to the dashboard to continue tracking.
    You can refresh data manually, and you can set up a refresh schedule. For more information, see Configuring scheduled refresh.

The content packs are preconfigured to work with data from the demonstration company that you get when you sign up for Dynamics NAV. When you install the apps in Power BI, and you connect to your own data, some reports may not work because they rely on data that your company does not have. In those cases, you can simply remove that report from your dashboard.

Note

You can also build your own reports and dashboards in Power BI based on your Dynamics NAV data. For more information, see Connecting Your Business Data to Power BI.

Accessing Dynamics NAV in Power BI

To see your Dynamics NAV data in Power BI, you must have the following:

  • Access to Dynamics NAV. For more information, see Dynamics NAV.
  • Access to Power BI. For more information, see Power BI.

On the Power BI site, you can find additional information about connecting to services with content packs for Power BI.

To access your Dynamics NAV data in Power BI, on the connection page, you must specify the following information:

Field Description
OData Feed URL The OData URL so Power BI can access data from your company, such as https://mybusiness.financials.dynamics.com:7048/MS/ODataV4/Company('My%2Business>').
Authentication method Choose Basic.
User name Your name as it displays for your account in Dynamics NAV, such as John Smith.
Password This is the web service access key for your user account in Dynamics NAV.

This means that you must get 2 pieces of information from Dynamics NAV: The OData URL and the web service access key for your user account.

Getting the URL

When you add Dynamics NAV to Power BI, you must specify a URL so Power BI can access data from your company. On the connection page, the URL is referred to as the OData Feed URL, and it must have the following format:

https://mybusiness.financials.dynamics.com:7048/MS/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS%20US')

In this example, mybusiness is the name of your Dynamics NAV service, and CRONUS US is the name of the demonstration company with %20 representing the space in the name.
To get the URL, in Dynamics NAV, search for and open the Web Services window. This window lists the web services that are currently available, and you can copy the link from the OData URL field for one of the default OData web services.

Getting the user name and the web service access key

In order to use data from Dynamics NAV in Power BI, in the Connect to Dynamics NAV window, you must specify a user name and a password. The user name is your name as it displays for your account in Dynamics NAV so that Power BI can log in to Dynamics NAV. The password is the web service access key that is set up for your user account in Dynamics NAV.

To find this information, in Dynamics NAV, search for the Users window, and then open the card for your user account. On the General FastTab, copy the content of the User Name field, and on the Web Service Access FastTab, copy the contents of the Web Service Access Key field. If the Web Service Access Key field is blank, in the ribbon, choose Change Web Service Access Key, choose the Key Never Expires field, and then choose the OK button. You can then copy the key.

Getting Data from Dynamics NAV

The Dynamics NAV dashboard shows the most typical reports that you will want to use to track your business. The data is extracted from your Dynamics NAV company using web services to read live data. In Dynamics NAV, the Web Services window lists the web services that have been set up for you.

Note

If you change the name of any of these web services, the data will not show up in Power BI.
If you want to add use other data in Power BI, you must find the tables in Dynamics NAV, expose them as web services, and then add them to the content pack. This is an advanced scenario, and we recommend that you start with the data that is already available in Power BI.

Troubleshooting

The Power BI dashboard relies on the published web services that are listed above, and it will show data from the demonstration company or your own company if you import data from your current finance solution. However, if something goes wrong, this section provides a workaround for the most typical issues.

"Parameter validation failed, please make sure all parameters are valid"
If you see this error after you enter your Dynamics NAV URL, make sure the following requirements are satisfied:

  • The URL follows exactly this pattern:

    https://mybusiness.financials.dynamics.com:7048/MS/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS%20US')

  • Delete any text after the company name in parenthesis

  • Make sure there are no trailing forward slash at the end of the URL.

  • Make sure that it is a secure connection as indicated by the URL starting with https.

"Login failed"
If you get a "login failed" error when you log in to the dashboard, using your Dynamics NAV credentials, then this can be caused by one of the following issues:

  • The account you are using does not have permissions to read the Dynamics NAV data from your account.

    Verify your user account in Dynamics NAV, and make sure that you have used the right web service access key as the password, and then try again.

  • The Dynamics NAV instance that you are trying to connect to does not have a valid SSL certificate. In this case you'll see a more detailed error message ("unable to establish trusted SSL relationship").

    Note

    Self-signed certificates are not supported.

"Oops"
If you see an "Oops" error dialog after you pass the authentication dialog, this is most frequently caused by a problem connecting to the data for the content pack.

  • Verify that the URL follows the pattern that was specified earlier:

    https://mybusiness.financials.dynamics.com:7048/MS/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS%20US')

  • A common mistake is to specify the full URL for a specific web service:

    https://mybusiness.financials.dynamics.com:7048/MS/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS%20US')/powerbifinance

  • Or you might have forgotten to specify the company name:

    https://mybusiness.financials.dynamics.com:7048/MS/ODataV4/

See Also

Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Intelligence
Welcome to Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Migrate Business Data from Other Finance Systems
Using Microsoft Dynamics NAV as a Power BI Data Source