Connect POS system to Power BI

[salqthami]

Hi there,

I want to help my friend which has a new retail store by creating a dashboard for him to monitor his sales based on some KPIs and metrics. however, I am still new to power BI and I do not know how to connect POS systems real-time data to power BI. can you please help me to understand the steps one by one?

please note the database is SQL server.

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@salqthami,

Do you mean that the POS system data is stored in a SQL Server database?

If so, you can connect to the SQL Server dtaabase using DirectQuery mode in Power BI Desktop. Create report in Power BI Desktop and publish report to Power BI Service, and set schedule refresh for the dataset in Power BI Service. Please note that you would  need to add SQL Server data source within gateway following the guide in this article:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-enterprise-manage-sql.

Regards,
Lydia

[salqthami]

thank your Lydia for your reply. if i do so, can i get real-time streaming of the data?

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

@salqthami,

No. If you want to get real-time steaming data, you can use PowerShell to push data from SQL Server to Power BI streaming dataset. For more details, please review the following similar thread.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Developer/Stream-Dataset-for-local-SQL-Server-Database-Query/td-p/1...

Regards,
Lydia

[salqthami]

Thanks a lot, Lydia I will try it now. so the first solution when I want to get data from server but this data is fixed. the second solution for real-time streaming.