Analytics using Power BI with Dynamics 365

As the usage grows exponentially in Dynamics 365, so does the requirement to analyze the treasure trove of data. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool that can be used by business users along with Microsoft Dynamics 365 to get insights on data, visualize trends and take actions.

This blog is part-1 of multi-series blog detailing Power BI analytics with Dynamics 365. This blog focuses on the integration of Power BI with Dynamics 365 online.

Power BI is a set of business analytics tools that enables users to connect, analyze, visualize and get insights from data. Power BI Service is used to connect to and integrate with Dynamics 365 online.

A customer service Power BI dashboard with the Dynamics 365 sample data is shown below – 

Customer Service dashboard - Power BI

     To set-up and integrate Power BI with Dynamics 365 - 

1.       Pre-requisite -  You will need Dynamics 365 online and Power BI subscription. For this blog I created a demo for Dynamics 365 online and also a trial for Power BI. I assigned the licenses for both the subscriptions to my users. 

Licenses for Power BI / Dynamics 365

Note – The subscriptions for both products are in the same tenant for this blog.

      2.  Set-up Power BI – Login to PowerBI.com and add the content packs. Microsoft has provided few Power BI content packs on Microsoft app source to use with Dynamics 365 – Customer Engagement. For example - 

•       Sales analytics for Dynamics 365
•       Customer Service analytics for Dynamics 365
•       Microsoft Dynamics 365 process analyzer

       3. To get the content pack into Power BI –

•       In Power BI, click on Get Data
• ·        Select Microsoft Appsource > Services
• ·        Search the content packs and click – get it now
•       Login to the Dynamics 365 online 

Now you should be able to see the content pack in Power BI

       Once the content packs are loaded in Power BI you can see the interactive dashboards                           and visualization of Dynamics 365 data in PowerBI.com.

Now we can connect to Power BI and get the tiles and dashboards to show in Dynamics 365.

       4. In Dynamics 365 Go to System Settings > Reporting Tab and allow Power BI embedding

5.  Now you can create a Personal dashboard, charts and views using Power BI tiles as below. 

Custom dashboard using Power BI tiles

Note - 

1. Power BI tiles cannot be used with System dashboards. You can share the personal dashboard created in Dynamics 365 with other users or teams

Hope the above helps you to get started with analytics with Power BI and Dynamics 365.

      Thanks for reading

     Mihir Shah

     Dynamics365WithoutCode