JourneyTEAM hosted the August Q3 Tech Insider Update to preview the latest Microsoft releases, updates and changes, including those to Power BI. Enhancements to merged data, dynamic reporting and visualizations help equip your organization with the intelligence to drive more informed business decisions.
Power BI provides flexible reporting that enables organizations to drill down to explore more information, and merge data from Business Central. The latest updates to Power BI include a new Business Central Template app, Refresh and Change Detection features in Pro and Premium versions, and additional features including updates to Azure Maps and Insights, and new Excel functions in DAX.
Business Central Template App for Power BI
· Financial and Visual Reports
· Data Pulled Dynamically into Reports
· Balance by Dimension
Microsoft will soon introduce a Business Central template plug-and-play analytics app for Power BI from which organizations can view financial reports dynamically including Trial Balance, Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Balance by Dimension.
From the app, organizations can also view Visual Reports for Executive, Inventory Manager, and Sales Manager. Different companies can enter your data and credentials and have your data pulled into reports dynamically.
Reports like Trial Balance in Business Central have dynamic fields in Power BI to drill down into specific details:
• Which entries in general ledger make up the account for inventory • Ability to click on a document number and then view the document in Business Central, (such as viewing an invoice)
Also new is Balance by Dimension, which allows your organization to view and compare account values across dimensions.
“Dimensions are attributes and values that categorize entries so you can track and analyze them. For example, dimensions can indicate the project or department an entry came from.” – Microsoft
The reports will include data from the dimensions chosen for analysis, pulled dynamically from the organization’s Business Central account.
New dashboards include the Executive Report with visualization of the health of the organization’s business processes based on high-level measures and clickable dynamic fields that provide additional details. The organization can compare revenue by budget, see net income accounts receivable, revenue by customer, and options to filter dynamically to see which pieces make up those values.
Inventory Manager allows organizations to evaluate the flow of inventory from a high-level view, identify the highest-moving products, assess inventory on hand, and analyze KPIs and purchase trends.
Like the Executive Report and Inventory Manager, the Sales Manager report provides a visual overview, in this case of sales by product, customer, and salesperson. Details include daily sales by person, analysis of which customers contribute the most to revenue, and where those purchases are made.
All the visualizations described above are in Power BI based on the organization’s Business Central data.
Power BI Page Refresh and Change Detection
· Automatic Page Refresh for Direct Query (Pro and Premium)
· Change Detection for Direct Query (Premium Only)
· Visual Reporting Updates/Features
No more worrying about when or how often data is refreshed. Your organization can access its data in real-time based on changes made in your data center, thanks to two new features in Power BI: Automatic Page Refresh for Direct Query and Change Detection for Direct Query.
Automatic Page Refresh for Direct Query, previously in preview mode in Pro and Premium, provides settings to refresh every 30 minutes for Pro users, or as quickly as every second for Premium users (five minutes is the default). Premium users can also take advantage of Change Detection, which runs a lightweight query in the background to update the page as changes occur in data sets.
A few new updates to Power BI reporting: the first is a drill-through button action that with one click navigates to a new page with additional details. New mobile layout authoring features make it easier to drag and drop new elements, and it now supports stacking and layering. An exciting, time-saving new feature for filtering, the “Apply all Changes” filter button allows the selection and application of multiple filters at once instead of one at a time. Note that this feature is currently in preview mode and can be changed under File --> Options.
Lastly, some UX visual feature updates include buttons that support fill images in different states. This allows a user to change the image on a button or the default hover or click states. Drop shadows are also supported for more complex visuals.
Azure Maps, Insights, and Excel Functions
· Azure Maps | AI Insights
· New Excel Functions Added to Data Analysis Expressions (“DAX”)
A powerful new visualization feature in preview is Azure Maps, which provides a highly customized view of data on the map including options for reference, custom tile layer, and real-time traffic overlay. The tile layer shows additional features such as roads, weather, and traffic.
Now available in GA for Premium and Pro users is AI Insights. For Premium and Pro, this includes custom Azure ML Models, as well as text and vision insights for Premium users only.
An exciting update for those organizations that love to use Excel extensively, there are now 49 Excel financial functions added to DAX, perfect for financial analysis. Functions include future value, present value, payment, interest payments over time, and much more. These options allow for greater analysis of financial data in the same format as Excel, using Power BI to take the analysis a step further.
Get Started with JourneyTEAM
As an award-winning Microsoft partner, JourneyTEAM has a proven track record with successful Microsoft technology implementations. Our experts are here to answer your questions about the latest Power BI updates and help improve technology solutions at your organization. Contact JourneyTEAM today.
For any additional questions, please contact Journeyteam at (801) 565-9199.
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