Power BI and Business Central
Power BI and Business Central covers how Power BI works with Business Central: built-in Power BI apps, reports and dashboards, KPI metrics and scorecards, and Power BI semantic models in Excel. It answers questions about viewing, refreshing, embedding and analyzing Business Central data in Power BI.
- 4Learn pages
- 2videos
- 2AL objects
Path: Analytics, business intelligence, and reporting > KPIs, dashboards, and financial reports > Power BI and Business Central · tier official · system reporting · narrative reviewed (checked by Opus)
Overview
This section describes how Business Central data is used in Power BI for dashboards, reports and KPI tracking. It starts with an introduction to the integration and the built-in Power BI apps, then goes into specific tasks.
The remaining pages cover working with Power BI reports inside Business Central (viewing, analyzing, sharing, and manual or scheduled refresh), tracking KPIs with Power BI metrics and scorecards, and using Power BI semantic models in Excel for ad-hoc reporting.
Start with the introduction for the overall picture. Then go to the reports page for daily use, the metrics page for KPI scorecards and alerts, or the Excel page for pivot-table analysis across functions.
Key points
- The introduction covers built-in Power BI apps, Power BI Desktop integration, report embedding and managing the integration across roles.
- Power BI reports in Business Central use Business Central data as a source and can be refreshed manually or on a schedule.
- Reports, dashboards, scorecards and Power BI apps can be viewed, analyzed and shared from Business Central.
- Power BI metrics track KPIs and objectives with scorecards, connected metrics, automated status rules and alerting.
- Metric alerts can be sent to Teams, and scorecards can be embedded in Business Central (2023 release wave 2).
- Power BI semantic models can be used in Excel to build Pivot Tables and Tables connected to Business Central Power BI apps.
- The Excel approach supports ad-hoc cross-functional reporting and relies on model relationships and the Power Pivot add-in.
Learn pages
- Introduction to Business Central and Power BI: Get an overview of using Power BI to get insights from your Business Central data.
- Track your business KPIs with Power BI metrics: Get an overview of using Power BI to get business intelligence and KPIs from your Business Central data.
- Use Power BI Semantic Models in Excel for Dynamics 365 Business Central Reporting: Describes how to utilize connections Power BI semantic models in Excel for Business Central reporting.
- Working with Power BI reports in Business Central: Get insight, business intelligence, and key performance indicators from your Business Central data with Power BI.
Videos and posts
Linked by a Haiku matcher with a grounding quote from the item’s summary (link/topics.ts); machine-generated.
- Which Power BI License Do You Need for Business Central? (community post): “Power BI Pro is required for any practical use of Power BI with Business Central”
- What’s New: Enhanced Power BI and Excel with Business Central (2026 release wave 1) (video): “Excel as Client for Power BI Semantic Models; Agentic Excel Capabilities”
- Episode 520: Reports, Dashboards, and Scorecards: A Complete Guide to Reporting in Business Central (video): “PowerBI integration and reporting; PowerBI Dashboards”
Business Central pages and reports
The pages, reports and queries this hub’s Learn pages name (ms.search.form, API reference), joined to the code by exact object id (data/index/docs-objects.json); a page shows the table it runs on.
- Page 6316 “Sustainability Report Power BI” · captioned “Sustainability Report (Power BI)”
- Page 6317 “To Net Zero Carbon Power BI” · captioned “Journey to Net Zero Carbon (Power BI)”
Source: Microsoft Learn (CC BY 4.0). Descriptions are Learn’s own.