BI – ARKSD Consultancy Private Limited

Business Central, Dynamics 365, Information, PowerBI.com, Wave 2

Dynamics 365 2019 release wave 2

August 1, 2019August 1, 2019 Ashwini Tripathi

Dynamics 365 Business Central: 2019 release wave 2 plan

The first Insider Builds for the Business Central 2019 release wave 2 just became available.

Features that are planned to release from October 2019 through March 2020.

For more information about the above-mentioned features, see the 2019 release wave 2 plan here.

This is also the very first Insider Build that does not include the Windows client (Dynamics NAV client connected to Business Central) as announced earlier.

More features will be unlocked soon along with more information for each one of them.

Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a complete business application solution designed and optimized for SMB organizations. Since its launch in April 2018, Dynamics 365 Business Central has seen increasing adoption by organizations looking to digitally transform their businesses. In the October ’18 update, we updated Business Central to include on-premises deployments as well. The latest version, the April ’19 update, brought an update to Business Central that improves the productivity of users.

The independent software vendor (ISV) ecosystem is important for customers who want vertical or horizontal solutions for Business Central. We will accelerate this ISV ecosystem to begin moving new and existing customers to Business Central online. To achieve that goal, the following development pillars define the 2019 release wave 2 update:

Service fundamentals: Laser focus on performance, reliability, supportability, and security is essential to ensure that service quality remains ahead of the growth in service usage. Accessibility, already in a strong position, must be preserved.

Modern client: With the 2019 release wave 2, users access Business Central in the browser, Windows 10 desktop app, mobile apps on Android and iOS, or in Outlook. We accelerate our investment in speed and productivity features for the modern browser experience, achieving a major milestone in its transformation into a world-class desktop experience for new and expert users alike. 2019 release wave 2 is the first version that does not include the Dynamics NAV Client connected to Business Central (also known as the Windows client). The modern clients now support so many productivity features that the Windows client is discontinued for Business Central going forward. The legacy Dynamics NAV client remains supported in the April ’19 update and earlier versions in alignment with the support lifecycle.

Modern developer tools: the 2019 release wave 2 is the first version that does not include the classic development environment (also known as C/SIDE). The modern developer experience based on Visual Studio Code with Azure DevOps, and an AL language that supports an extension-based approach to customization now supports developing large apps such as the base application from Microsoft, and so C/SIDE is discontinued for Business Central going forward. The classic development environment remains supported in the April ’19 update and earlier versions in alignment with the support lifecycle.

Empower ISV acceleration: The 2019 release wave 2 update delivers a set of features designed to simplify ISV development for new solutions and, specifically, for streamlining the migration from the source code customization model of Dynamics NAV to Business Central. The Dynamics NAV business has been driven by strong vertical ISV solutions, surrounded by add-on solutions. For the 2019 release wave 2 update, our focus will be streamlining the path for ISVs to bring their solutions—and in turn their customers—to Business Central online.

Customer migration tools: After enabling Dynamics NAV ISVs to bring their solutions to Business Central online, the next step is to simplify the journey for existing Dynamics SMB customers coming from Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP, or Dynamics SL to migrate from their current on-premises solutions to Business Central online. A set of tools already exists; these will be enhanced with the 2019 release wave 2.

Limited extension to the Business Central online localizations is planned for the 2019 release wave 2 in order to prioritize the service fundamentals work ahead of expanding the service footprint. Additional partner-developed localizations will be added following the 2019 release wave 2.

Download the 2019 release wave 2 PDF

New for wave 2: The Power Platform (PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI) features coming in the 2019 release wave 2 have been summarized in a separate release plan.

Dynamics 365: 2019 release wave 2 plan

The 2019 release wave 2 enhances artificial intelligence capabilities to help organizations accelerate their transformation of customer service, sales, and marketing functions:

Sales Insights empowers teams with more foresight, to enhance productivity and better anticipate outcomes across the sales lifecycle.

Customer Service Insights provides an actionable view into critical performance metrics, operational data, and emerging trends using industry-leading artificial intelligence.

Virtual Agent for Customer Service enables organizations to create AI-powered bots that chat with customers and provides new opportunities for organizations to improve customer service through digital transformation.

Customer Insights enables every organization to unify and understand their customer data to harness it for intelligent insights and actions.

Market Insights enables business users to gather actionable insights based on what consumers say, seek, and feel about their brands and products.

Fraud Protection enables the e-commerce merchants to drive down fraud loss, increase bank acceptance rates to yield higher revenue, and improve the online shopping experience.

The 2019 release wave 2 continues to add a whole new set of experiences to enhance employee productivity using mixed reality:

Remote Assist empowers technicians to solve problems faster the first time.

Layout provides a new way for space planners to bring designs from concept to completion with confidence and speed.

Product Visualize empowers salespeople to convey the true potential of their products to their customers by harnessing the power of augmented reality on their mobile devices.

Guides is a mixed-reality application for Microsoft HoloLens that enables employees to learn in the flow of work by providing holographic instructions when and where they need them.

Power Platform: 2019 release wave 2 plan

The Microsoft Power Platform enables users and organizations to analyze, act, and automate on the data to digitally transform their businesses. The Power Platform today is comprised of three products – Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow.

For PowerApps, this release wave includes major improvements to enable app makers to build higher-quality apps more easily while still supporting more advanced enterprise and administrator requirements. Improvements in PowerApps focus not only on introducing capabilities but also on simplifying existing concepts to improve maker and end-user productivity in PowerApps and Dynamics 365 apps built upon the Unified Interface.

PowerApps makers can now create a powerful new type of experience called PowerApps Portals, which are web portals that surface data stored in Common Data Service to employees or users outside their organizations.

Microsoft Flow is introducing smarter and more powerful experiences in three key areas. Flow makers get smarter and more powerful experiences. End users of flows can leverage world-class business process capabilities, including working with business processes offline. Finally, there is now much richer tooling for administrators, such as PowerShell cmdlets and the new Power Platform Admin center.

AI Builder (preview) is a brand-new Power Platform capability for teams with the business expertise to easily automate processes and predict outcomes to improve business performance. AI Builder is a turnkey solution that brings the power of Microsoft AI through a point-and-click experience and is directly integrated into PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.

Power BI simplifies how organizations derive insights from transactional and observational data. It helps organizations create a data culture where employees can make decisions based on facts, not opinions. For the upcoming release, Power BI is investing in four key areas that drive a data culture: intuitive experiences, a unified BI platform, big data analytics, and pervasive artificial intelligence (AI).

Data integration provides built-in connectivity to the Power Platform and more, with data across hundreds of business systems, enabling rich and intelligent experiences. The Common Data Model provides semantic consistency for canonical business entities across Dynamics 365 and Common Data Service, increasing value and saving time for application developers, ISV partners, and integrators.

This release plan describes functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).

Here are the key dates for the 2019 release wave 2.

Milestone	Date	Description
Release plans available	June 10, 2019	Learn about the new capabilities coming in the 2019 release wave 2 (October 2019 – March 2020) across Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
Release plans available in additional 11 languages	July 8, 2019	The Dynamics 365 and Power Platform release plans are published in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Swedish.
Early access available	August 2, 2019	Try and validate the new features and capabilities that will be a part of the 2019 release wave 2, October update, before they get enabled automatically for your end-users.
General availability	October 1, 2019	Production deployment for the 2019 release wave 2 begins. Specific deployment dates for each country or region or instance will be communicated in advance.

Data, Development Tips, How To, Information, PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

App for Power BI REST APIs for Streaming Data

August 11, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

In this post we will see how to create app to use the Power BI REST APIs for Streaming Data.

Full documentation: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/documentation/powerbi-service-real-time-streaming/

To run this app follow the steps discussed in my previous post: [Real-Time Dashboard Tile & Streaming Dataset– in Power BI]

Summary as below:

Go to app.powerbi.com
Go to streaming data management page by via new dashboard > Add tile > Custom Streaming Data > manage data
Click “Add streaming dataset”
Select API, then Next, and give your streaming dataset a name
Add a field with name “Customer ID”, type Number
Add a field with name “Customer Name”, type Text
Add a field with name “Sales Value”, type Number
Click “Create”
Copy the “push URL” and paste it as the value of “realTimePushURL” in below app

We will start with new project in Visual Studio.

RealTimeSync-12

Create a new Visual C# Console Application.

Open the Program.cs File and write a code as shown below.

This app Uses the WebRequest sample code as documented here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/debx8sh9(v=vs.110).aspx

RealTimeSync-13

For your easy here is the code of Program.cs below:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using System.Net;

using System.IO;

namespace RealTimeStreaming

{

class Program

{

// Paste your own push URL below as obtained from while creating Streaming Dataset and saved in step 9 above

private static string realTimePushURL = “https://api.powerbi.com/beta/4e7ca966-123e-4ce7-9833-3e858854b98f/datasets/7d154cd7-11e0-4d5e-9569-12fa3f82f224/rows?key=mD1nkJOf426PjPPaEQsW9xEg%2FN1EENQ2hRZvXIpHr%2BTXNk3XQpKsR2Jbe5CATiMoLmxjlzSp%2FIMlbe9HL8G4xQ%3D%3D”;

static void Main(string[] args)

{

while (true) { //Set Infinite Loop

try

{

// Declare values that we will be sending

Random r = new Random();

int currentValue = r.Next(0, 100);

String Name = “Dummy Name”;

// Send POST request to the push URL

WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(realTimePushURL);

request.Method = “POST”;

//Here you will retrieve the data from the source and format as per the request.

//In this example we are sending Random Value generated by above code for testing purpose.

string postData = String.Format(“[{{ \”Customer ID\”: {0}, \”Sales Value\”:{1} }}]”, currentValue,currentValue);

Console.WriteLine(String.Format(“Making POST request with data: {0}”, postData));

// Prepare request for sending

byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);

request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;

// Get the request stream.

Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();

// Write the data to the request stream.

dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);

// Close the Stream object.

dataStream.Close();

// Get the response.

WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();

// Display the status.

Console.WriteLine(String.Format(“Service response: {0}”, ((HttpWebResponse)response).StatusCode));

// Get the stream containing content returned by the server.

dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();

// Open the stream using a StreamReader for easy access.

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);

// Read the content.

string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();

// Display the content.

Console.WriteLine(responseFromServer);

// Clean up the streams.

reader.Close();

dataStream.Close();

response.Close();

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

Console.WriteLine(ex);

}

// Wait 5 second before sending

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000);

} //Infinite Loop ends here.

}

}

}

Compile and Run the Program.

RealTimeSync-14

Leave the Program Running and switch to Power BI dashboard. You will see your newly created Tile in previous post will be displaying the Random Value generated by this program updating every 5 seconds.

That’s all with little tweaking to this program you can fetch your data and send the updated data to your Real Time Streaming Dataset.

That’s end to this post.

I will come up with more details in my upcoming posts.

Till then keep Exploring and learning.

Alert, Development Tips, How To, Information, PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

Working with Alerts in Power BI

July 30, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

Knowing about changes to important metrics quickly some time can help you taking quick decisions or help you keep eyes on things you care most.

With data driven alerts in Power BI, you can now get notifications when a metric you care about on your dashboard exceeds a set threshold.

Alert notifications will be sent to you as an email, and appear in your notification center on the web and in mobile apps.

You can set alerts for your numeric tiles featuring cards and gauges only. You have control over how often you want to be notified about your data, and whether you want to receive an email when your data goes beyond the limits you set.

Only you can see the alerts you set, even if you share your dashboard.

Alerts only work on data that is refreshed. When data refreshes, Power BI looks to see if an alert is set for that data. If the data has reached an alert threshold, an alert is triggered.

Alerts only work with numeric data types.

Alerts only work on data that is refreshed. They do not work on static data.

Today we will see how to work with Alert feature in Power BI.

Switch to your Dashboard.

I have one ready to use dashboard from my previous post to show Alert feature I am using the same.

As discussed above it works only for Numeric & Gauges Tiles only, for others you will not get even the Alert option.

Luckily I have one on my Dashboard, if want to learn how to create Numeric Tiles or more details on working with Power BI you can refer to any of my previous posts on Power BI. However you can find here one direct Link to the topic in question.

You see I have selected my Numeric Tile in below screen shot.

DataAlert-1

How to Set Data Alerts:

From a dashboard tile, select the ellipses.

Select the bell icon to add one or more alerts.

DataAlert-2

Click on Add Alert Rule.

To start, ensure the Active slider is set to ON, and give your alert a title.

DataAlert-3

Set your Condition, Threshold, and Notification Frequency also don’t forget to tick on send me mail too.

Click on Save to save your Alert.

Receiving alerts:

When the data being tracked reaches one of the thresholds you’ve set, several things will happen.

Power BI checks to see if time have lapsed or more than depending on the option you selected since the last alert was sent.

As long as the data is past the threshold, you’ll get an alert every hour or every 24 hours depending on option you selected.

If you’ve set the alert to send you an email, you’ll find something like as shown in below screen, this in your Inbox.

DataAlert-4

Power BI will add a message to your Notification center and adds a new alert icon to the applicable tile as shown in below screen.

DataAlert-5

Access to your Notification.

DataAlert-6

Manage alerts:

There are three ways to manage your alerts:

From the dashboard tile

From the Power BI Settings menu

On an individual tile in the Mobile App

DataAlert-7

As we have seen above how to create Alerts follow same steps to access Alert Window.

At the Left click on Expand make Necessary Modifications and save.

At the right select the trashcan to delete the Alert.

Select cancel to return to previous window.

DataAlert-8

From here you can turn alerts on and off, open the Manage alerts window to make changes, or delete the alert.

That’s all for today.

I will come up with more details in my upcoming posts.

Till then keep exploring and learning.

Development Tips, Functional Tips, How To, Information, Jet Reports, Tip & Tricks

Gaining the Competitive Advantage with BI

June 30, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

See how a robust business intelligence solution can help you leverage technology in order to gain new visibility on your business that will enable profitable, data-driven decisions on a daily basis.

Video-1

Video-2

Information, PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

Now Power BI Added to Microsoft Trust Center

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

The Microsoft Trust Center provides a single point of reference for cloud trust resources, including documentation of our adherence to international and regional compliance certifications and attestations, privacy and data protection policies and processes, data transfer and location policies, and security features and functionality.

When you entrust your data to the Microsoft Cloud, you will have questions. Where is it? Who can access it? What is Microsoft doing to protect it? How can you verify that Microsoft is doing what it says?

For more information see this Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/trustcenter

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-added-to-microsoft-trust-center/

The Power BI service is built on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and leverages Azure’s robust set of security technologies and practices. These help ensure that Power BI is resistant to attack, safeguards user access, and helps secure your data through encrypted communications.

As a Power BI customer, you know, through clearly stated policies and procedures, where your customer data is stored and how we help secure it, as well as who can access it and under what circumstances.

How To, PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

How to add Video Tile on Power BI Dashboard

April 18, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

Previously, a Video Tile released by BI supports YouTube videos. Video tiles allow you to customize your dashboard and add a bit of personal look.

Now the video tile supports Vimeo videos too.

Add a video tile by selecting Add widget from the top right of the dashboard.

PBI Video - 1

Select Video from Add Tile window.

PBI Video - 2

Press Next Button.

PBI Video - 3

Provide your Title and Subtitle for the Video Tile.

Provide your YouTube or Vimeo video URL.

If required provide custom Link and other properties.

Select Apply to complete your action.

Vimeo URLs come in several different formats this supports most, but not all of these formats. In case your URL doesn’t works try for next format.

I have posted several posts related to Power BI, you can find them using below Links.

Microsoft Power BI – Part – I

Introduction to Power BI and Creating Report from Excel Data, Local Files.

Microsoft Power BI – Part – II

Introduction to few Features of Power BI

Microsoft Power BI – Part – III

Power BI Desktop, Creating Dataset & Reports from In Premise Database installation

Microsoft Power BI – Part – IV

Power BI Gateway usage

Microsoft Power BI – Part – V

Scheduling Refresh of Dataset & Report created using In Premise Database

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VI

Power BI Content Pack

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VII

Power BI Mobile App

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VIII

Power BI Content Pack

Microsoft Power BI – Part – IX

Power BI Publisher for Excel

Microsoft Power BI – Part – X

Analyse in Excel (preview)

PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

Power BI – Overview and Learning

April 4, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

Microsoft Power BI is a collection of online services and features that enables you to find and visualize data, share discoveries, and collaborate in intuitive new ways. There are two experiences now available for Power BI: the new experience, generally referred to as Power BI, and the previous experience which is referred to as Power BI for Office 365.

Please check this link:- Overview and Learning

PowerBI-2

PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

Microsoft Power BI – Part IX

March 30, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

Continuing from my previous post. Today we will see usage of Power BI Publisher for Excel.

In case you have missed my previous posts here I present the link to all previous posts below.

Microsoft Power BI – Part – I

Introduction to Power BI and Creating Report from Excel Data, Local Files.

Microsoft Power BI – Part – II

Introduction to few Features of Power BI

Microsoft Power BI – Part – III

Power BI Desktop, Creating Dataset & Reports from In Premise Database installation

Microsoft Power BI – Part – IV

Power BI Gateway usage

Microsoft Power BI – Part – V

Scheduling Refresh of Dataset & Report created using In Premise Database

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VI

Power BI Content Pack

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VII

Power BI Mobile App

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VIII

Power BI Content Pack

Sharing key Excel insights just got easier. Save snapshots of important PivotTables, Charts, cell ranges, and more from across all of your spreadsheets to a single location quickly with the Power BI publisher for Excel. Simply highlight the elements you want to save, then click the “Pin to” button: now you’ve got a powerful web dashboard that you can share with everyone in your organization.

Let us see how we can use this feature.

PowerBI-95

From Download Menu Section choose Power BI Publisher for Excel.

Or visit Link: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-dashboard-publisher/

PowerBI-96

Select your desired Excel Version 32 or 64 bit as installed on your PC and download the Package.

Close your Excel and Install the Package and follow on screen guide.

After Installation when you open your Excel First time after Installing the Package. You will get similar to below screen.

PowerBI-97

PowerBI-98

PowerBI-99

PowerBI-100

I have created a Pivot in excel as below which I want to share on my Desktop.

PowerBI-101

Select the Region/Range that you wish to publish from Power BI choose Pin, as shown below.

PowerBI-102

In my case I have already pined so confirmation Dialog Box is taken else it will Pin the Selected Range as a snapshot on selected Workspace.

PowerBI-103

Make sure you select right Workspace before you Pin.

PowerBI-104

After Publishing you will get confirmation as below.

PowerBI-105

Using the Link, Login with your credentials to the Power BI and switch to the Dashboard on which you published.

PowerBI-106

This way you can Pin Snapshot of PivotTables, Charts, cell ranges, and more. You can update existing with new one and manage all your Pins.

PowerBI-107

Save your Excel and Exit.

PowerBI-108

Try useful feature.

I will come up with more details in my future posts.

Till then keep practicing and learning using online Blogs, help and documents.

Jet Reports, Tip & Tricks

Leveraging Business Intelligence for Ad Hoc Analysis

March 30, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

Leveraging Business Intelligence for Ad Hoc Analysis

Video-1

Video-2

PowerBI.com, Tip & Tricks

Microsoft Power BI – Part VIII

March 29, 2016 Ashwini Tripathi

Continuing from my previous post. Today we will see usage of Power Content Pack to Refresh in Premise Navision Installation using Personnel Gateway.

Please see my previous post it will help you in continuing with this Walkthrough.

In case you have missed here I present the link to all previous posts here below.

Microsoft Power BI – Part – I

Introduction to Power BI and Creating Report from Excel Data, Local Files.

Microsoft Power BI – Part – II

Introduction to few Features of Power BI

Microsoft Power BI – Part – III

Power BI Desktop, Creating Dataset & Reports from In Premise Database installation

Microsoft Power BI – Part – IV

Power BI Gateway usage

Microsoft Power BI – Part – V

Scheduling Refresh of Dataset & Report created using In Premise Database

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VI

Power BI Content Pack

Microsoft Power BI – Part – VII

Power BI Mobile App

Step -1

Check your Service is up & running, here we are not going to use SLL in fact Personnel Gateway.

Step -2

Make sure you Imported your Query Objects required for Power BI Dynamics Nav Content Pack. If you are not using NAV-2016, in my case I am using NAV-2015 for this Walkthrough.