7 times navision 2015 with Power BI

[BartKemp1981]

Hi Experts! I need your help 🙂

Currently I am working with 7 different navision 2015 systems, and I want to use Power BI for consoldiation of the data en the reporting of the data to the group.

Sounds like a plan, but my IT department is giving me a hard time. Could you please caliry the following to me?

FYI: We purchased 3 Power Bi Pro licenes.

1. Can we use PBI desktop to consolidate a good data set from the 7 different navision 2015 systems and the push this dataset to Power BI server for all 3 of us to use?

2. My IT department is especially concerned regarding the usage of our servers. in PBI desktop with navision can we also use a scheduled refresh instead of a "live" connection?  At start I need to upload the data only a few times per month.

Any help would be highly appeciated!

Jan

[WolfBiber · Accepted solution]

Hi Bartkemp,

first of all, if you want to have this Data (currently on Premise?) in PowerBi Service you need to install a Data Gateway. Otherwise the PowerBI service can't connect to your NAV Servers.

1.) You can create a Dataset in PBI Desktop with all NAV Systems using function "Append" to get just one DataModel.

But be aware about the DataConnections between facts and dimensions if you use the same naming convention in all NAV Systems. i.e. CostCenter Dimension in NAV or similar.

2.)With a Live Connection the Query is sent from PowerBI to your NAV Servers, but if you import your Data with a scheduled refresh for example in the night, no heavy load is produced on your NAV Server in officetime.

NAV 2015 isn't really easy to use "a is" for analytics. For example several values in general ledger are calculated "on the fly" by Navision. So maybe you need to know the exact formula for this specific values, otherwise you can have wrong measures in PBI.

Have a nice day.

Greetings, 

Wolf