Power BI with Dynamics NAV – Demo Install

Mar 24, 2016 | Posted by Warren Young | Business Intelligence, Dynamics NAV |

This post will cover how to integrate your Dynamics NAV installation (NAVDEMO instance will be used for examples) with Power BI, using the Power BI Gateway – Personal.

Power BI with Dynamics NAV Background

You can find some information on the background of Power BI with Dynamics NAV at this link: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-content-pack-microsoft-dynamics-nav/

This post is useful, but glosses over the process of making your OData URL accessible to Power BI. There are actually a few methods to do that:
1. On Premise: Power BI Gateway – Personal
2. On Premise: Configure an inbound-rule to your Firewall to expose the OData URL
3. Azure/Hosted: Configure an endpoint to expose the OData URL

I want to give proper credit to this blog post by Steven Renders: http://thinkaboutit.be/2015/12/connecting-the-power-bi-dynamics-nav-content-package-to-a-local-nav-2016-instance/ I found Steven’s post helpful in getting our tests up and running though we did find some differences or changes (possibly in the Power BI Gateway itself) that are worth clarification.

With all that in mind, our post will focus on the minimum requirements to connect Dynamics NAV to Power BI. We’ll specifically focus on using the Power BI Gateway – Personal method, and cover the quickest and lightest footprint to try out Power BI with Dynamics NAV.

Prerequisites for Power BI in NAV Demo Install

1. Office 365 Account
2. Dynamics NAV “NAVDEMO” installation or equivalent. These steps will generally apply to any NAV installation, but the details and examples are used against a NAVDEMO database. We are considering a separate post to cover the intricacies of a “Production” database.

Contents
– Setup OData for the Dynamics NAV Service Tier
– Verify OData for the Dynamics NAV Service Tier
– Download and Install Power BI Gateway – Personal
– Power BI Get Data – Connect to Microsoft Dynamics NAV
– Addendum: CRONUS USA, Inc. Data Setup

Setup OData for the Dynamics NAV Service Tier
1. Open Dynamics NAV Administration
2. On the left-hand pane, click on the Server Instance (DynamicsNAV90)
3. Expand the OData Services tab:
a. Click the “Edit” button
b. “Enable Odata Services” = Yes
c. “Save”
4. Restart the Server Instance (DynamicsNAV90)

Verify the OData URL is Accessible
1. Open a web browser and enter the following URL:
a. Syntax: http://[servername]:[ODataPort]/[serverinstance]/OData/
b. Example: http://localhost:7048/DynamicsNAV90/OData/
2. This is the “generic” OData URL that is not company-specific.

3. To verify the specific OData Company URL:
a. Syntax: http://[servername]:[ODataPort]/[serverinstance]/OData/Company(‘[companyname]’)/ Note that companyname is case-sensitive.
b. Example: http://localhost:7048/DynamicsNAV90/OData/Company(‘CRONUS USA, Inc.’)/

Note: Most versions of IE will give a message “Cannot display this feed.”

Using another browser such as Chrome will work to display/verify the feed:

Download and Install Power BI Gateway – Personal

1. Go to www.powerbi.com, sign-in with your Office 365 credentials.
2. Prior to grabbing the NAV package from Power BI, Go to Downloads > Power BI Gateways (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/gateway/)
3. Download and install the Power BI Gateway – Personal.
4. Walk through the installation Wizard:

1. Accept the license terms and click Next
2. Use the default installation location (can be changed if needed) and click Next
3. You’ll be informed when installation is complete:

1. Click Launch to run the Power BI Gateway – Personal
2. Sign-in to Power BI using your Office 365 credentials

After this sign-in, Power BI should ask to set up data sources.

Power BI Get Data – Connect to Microsoft Dynamics NAV

With your Dynamics NAV OData Service accessible and the Power BI Gateway – Personal installed and running, you are ready to connect Power BI to Microsoft Dynamics NAV:
1. Go to www.powerbi.com (sign-in with Office 365 credentials)
2. Get Data > Services

3. Search for Dynamics NAV, click on Microsoft Dynamics NAV and click Connect.

4. In the OData Feed URL, enter the URL you tested in the “Verify the OData URL is Accessible” step.

5. After clicking next this will ask for an Authentication Method. Choose “Windows” and click Next.

Once imported, your Dynamics NAV dashboard will be accessible on Power BI.

Enjoy!

Addendum: CRONUS USA, Inc. Data Setup
Note: We didn’t encounter this issue every time we connected a database to Power BI, but we have run into it multiple times.

Issue – Error When “Importing” to Power BI

Solution – Add Accounting Periods for 2014, 2013, and 2012

1. Open Dynamics NAV (RTC)
2. Open the Company you are connecting to Power BI (CRONUS USA, Inc.)
3. Use the “Search” bar to go to Accounting Periods
4. From Accounting Periods, click Create Year.
5. In the “Starting Date” field, enter 01/01/14 (leave No. of Periods and Period Length with their default values)
6. Click OK, then Yes when prompted to generate the year.
7. Repeat these steps for 2013 and 2012.

For the sake of consistent data, create for 2014 first, then 2013, then 2012.

After adding these Accounting Periods, the Import should run successfully.

About Warren Young

Warren Young served in the Microsoft partner channel in a variety of roles for more than 10 years, including program manager, architect, developer, managing consultant and director of Dynamics NAV. Warren is Microsoft certified in SureStep and Dynamics NAV Financials.

6 Comments

Leave your reply.

Jessie

September 13, 2016 at 10:09 AM

Power BI personal gateway does not available for download any more. The new On-premises Data gateway doesn’t work the way as you stated. And I wasn’t able to connect to Power BI online with Odata URL of NAV.
Brandon Carmichael

September 23, 2016 at 10:37 AM

Hi Jessie:

Power BI personal gateway does not available for download any more. The new On-premises Data gateway doesn’t work the way as you stated.
You are correct that the Power BI Gateway – Personal is not available as a standalone download. However, it is still available but is an option and bundled with the on-premise gateway.

If you follow these instructions, you’ll be able to download the Personal Gateway option. Once installed, the instructions for using the Personal Gateway are the sameas the original blog post. (I just verified this in a demo environment to be sure.)

• Go to https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/gateway/
• Download Gateway
• Run the installer
o (Simple Demo) Choose “Personal Gateway (Power BI only)”
o Next

• The Power BI Gateway – Personal update will download. When prompted, click Next
Note: At this point the instructions are the same as the original blog post…

1. Accept the license terms and click Next
2. Use the default installation location (can be changed if needed) and click Next
3. You’ll be informed when installation is complete:

One more thing…

I did notice that after logging into the Personal Gateway, that when presented with the “Connected: You’re good to go message” I was only able to select “Cancel” until I unchecked “Help improve Power BI Gateway – Personal by sending usage information to Microsoft” — that looks like a bug to me but one that can be gotten around.

And I wasn’t able to connect to Power BI online with Odata URL of NAV.
I suspect with the personal gateway installation this will resolve itself. To successfully install and configure the gateway must be connected to the internet.

If it doesn’t, I would suggest some additional troubleshooting:
1. Verify you are signing into the Gateway with a valid Office 365 login (You should ultimately see the “Connected: You’re good to go” message shown in the screenshot above.)
2. Verify your OData URL is published from NAV and accessible for the Gateway (See “Verify the OData URL is Accessible”)
3. Two things to remember about your OData URL
a. Your OData feed may be HTTP and not HTTPS
b. The syntax is http://[navserver][Port]/%5Binstance%5D/OData/Company(‘%5BCompanyName%5D’) and [CompanyName] is case-sensive.
Mark

July 6, 2017 at 9:20 AM

Hi,

Great post but I am still having issues connecting. I have confirmed the odata service is running and installed the online data gateway (personal mode) on my laptop and connected to Office 365 with it. I added an inbound rule to allow http://localhost:7048 through the firewall on my laptop and added port forwarding on my router to send port 7048 requests to my laptop. From Power BI online, I try connecting to Microsoft Dynamics NAV using the same URL I tested successfully using Google Chrome and WindowsWithoutImpersonation for the authentication mode, but it just hangs and never makes a connection. I have tried completely disabling the firewall but have the same results. Any thoughts on what the issue may be?

Thanks,
Mark
Brandon Carmichael

July 6, 2017 at 2:57 PM

Hello Mark,

This one is a bit tough not knowing how far you were actually able to successfully setup.

One point of clarity is that the Power BI Gateway bypasses the firewall altogether. You shouldn’t have to both setup the Power BI Gateway and disable the firewall. One or the other should suffice. For simplicity, I would ignore the firewall and ensure I can get to the “Success!” message/screenshot under the “Download and Install Power BI Gateway – Personal” section of the blog post.

If you are able to provide screenshots or anything of what you are currently see at the end of each section I might be able to offer more insight.

Thanks,
Brandon
nanyo

October 3, 2017 at 5:24 AM

Hi Brandon,

I have followed all the steps described in your post correctly but could not able to connect with the on premise instance of the NAV.
I then confirmed with the Power BI community and the response was that it only allows to connect the online instance of NAV and not on premises.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Integrations-with-Files-and/NAV-2016-NAV-Content-Pack-Won-t-Install/td-p/195712

Thanks,
Nanyo
Brandon Carmichael

October 3, 2017 at 9:10 AM

Hello Nanyo,

I’d have to do some testing, but my gut tells me that the information provided on the Power BI forum is misleading. The On Prem version of NAV can connect to Power BI online. Some of the confusion is probably that there are default dashboards for Dynamics 365 Business Edition, but there is also a dashboard specifically for Dynamics NAV. Most issues I have seen getting on-prem NAV connected are related to the personal gateway / firewall for actually having the web service accessible.

The suggestion of using Power BI Desktop (which in turn can be uploaded to Power BI online) is valid, and when building complex queries Power BI Desktop is a more-capable interface.

Something I would have to test: I do wonder if Microsoft has updated the Dynamics NAV dashboard in a way that breaks support with NAV 2016. It might be that only NAV 2017 works. – I don’t have any knowledge of that specifically, but it is possible.

Thanks,
Brandon