Open Forum

Hello -
We are starting to look at using Power BI with GP for dashboards. I would love to hear about your experience. Thank you.
Owen

#BIandReporting
#Finance
​​

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Owen Cook
Senior Financial Analyst
Empath Health Inc.
Clearwater FL
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While dashboard is cool initially, you should get the detailed requirements from your audience so meaningful reports/dashboards could be built.  Top 10 this and worst 10 that will be forgotten after few months. To me, power Bi is Excel on steroid.

Try to automate as much as you could, your source of data, using SQL instead of pulling data and refresh from Excel. BI also accepts sources from different databases, flat files and join them as needed.

i haven't followed closely lately but last I checked, a year or two ago, BI could quickly tell you which project is in trouble (if you use projects obviously) when having hundreds of projects. Of course, you need to have your data model in place. Some fancier solution actually reads out to you why your margin is low and do prediction as well.

I built a bunch of them back then. But, my audience only uses two dashboards on more frequent basis: one is for collection and the other is for vendors forecast.

I found the credit cards usage is also helpful as you could easily spot who made many trips to the bbq joints ;-)

I have couple good Power BI books that you could get if interested.



Original Message:
Sent: Feb 12, 2021 09:36 AM
From: Owen Cook
Subject: Power BI

Hello -
We are starting to look at using Power BI with GP for dashboards. I would love to hear about your experience. Thank you.
Owen

#BIandReporting
#Finance
​​

------------------------------
Owen Cook
Senior Financial Analyst
Empath Health Inc.
Clearwater FL
------------------------------

Hi @Owen Cook

I'm in agreement with Silver that PowerBI is a LOT like Excel AND SQL in that the data originates in table format and PowerBI is just a great front-end for visualizations of tables and pivots.  I happen to love the tool.

But, as Silver says, the MOST important part of building great dashboard reporting whether you want it in Excel or PowerBI is understanding what the audience of the report wants to see, and HOW they want to see it.

You can really get lost building reports and dashboards if you are not sure of that.

As far as GP explicitly with PowerBI, GP data is on-premise data and so you must configure PowerBI a bit uniquely for on-prem, but after that it is driven by whatever query you use to build the report.  TIP:  I would look to using GP's out-of-the-box views as much as possible, because they present less problems with data-types and conversions than just querying the data in the tables directly.  If you don't use one of THOSE views, I suggest you build your own.

PowerBI is less about research and more about business management so not super-great for accountants who need to research things, but awesome for the C-Suite and field managers.   I have also seen AMAZING dashboards used by GP Administrators at companies to monitor the health of GP, who's logged in, what they are doing, any type of batch issue- alerting, etc.

I LOVE that you can deploy these reports out to users who are not on your network (like on cell phones) but do pay attention to security, etc.

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Jo deRuiter
🌟 GPUG AllStar 2019
💫Granite Award Winner 2018,2019
Atlanta Chapter Leader
Credential Council Co-Chair
Aisling Dynamics Consulting, LLC
ERP Practice Manager
jo.deruiter@aislingdynamics.com
9518674366
Alpharetta, GA
aislingdynamics.com
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Original Message:
Sent: Feb 12, 2021 09:36 AM
From: Owen Cook
Subject: Power BI

Hello -
We are starting to look at using Power BI with GP for dashboards. I would love to hear about your experience. Thank you.
Owen

#BIandReporting
#Finance
​​

------------------------------
Owen Cook
Senior Financial Analyst
Empath Health Inc.
Clearwater FL
------------------------------