Dynamics insights for SMB Partners · • Cross-selling potential of customer • ... • Think and...

Subtitle

Madrid 2017

Dynamics insights for SMB Partners

Subtitle

Do's and Don’ts in Power BI Projects: lessons learned from Power BI

implementations

Author

Björn Lüers, Robert Ipach, Julian Wissel

www.directionsemea.com

AgendaOur key-messages today

1

2

3

4

Definition of reporting requirements

Choosing the right visual and visualizing best practices

Knowing DAX and data modeling to master Power BI

Deployment and Development in Power BI

5 Knowing when to use which NAV-tables in Power BI

www.directionsemea.com

• Non-trivial task to identify goals and requirements

• Strive for big picture

• Gather reporting requirements – brainstorming!

• Breakdown of business goals

• Give inspiration

• Possible KPI-Hierarchy:

• We want every person in our country to use at least one of our products

• Become market leader

• New product A should reach x EUR sales in 2018

• Market share of product category y should become more than 25 %

Defining reporting requirements - approach

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• Find relevant business questions/decisions:

• Should we grant a high discount that is requested by a customer?

• How much marketing effort should we invest into a certain segment?

• Should we offer new or additional products toa customer?

• Find facts that could drive these decisions – e.g. about granting a high discount

• Profit margin of customer – change over time

• Customer‘s lifetime value

• Cross-selling potential of customer

• …

Defining reporting requirements – decisions & facts

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• Group facts, e.g. Profit-margin related

• Current profit margin

• Historic profit margin

• Profit margin of similar customers

• Average sales discount

• Identify measures and dimensions that are necessary for each group

• Facts

• Sales figures for current and last x years

• Sales

• Cost of sales

• Profit margin (if directly available)

• Granted sales discounts

• Dimensions

• Customer dimension

• Product dimension

• Salesperson dimension

Defining reporting requirements – cluster and focus

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• What we have: requirements, facts, measures and dimensions

• What we want to reach: implementation concept of report incl. measures and visuals

• Focus on one group of requirements

• Define report design

• Define data model and connections

• Define data source and transformation

• Think and plan from top to down, develop into theopposite direction!

From requirements to implementation concept

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AgendaOur key-messages today

1

2

3

4

Definition of reporting requirements

Choosing the right visual and visualizing best practices

Knowing DAX and data modeling to master Power BI

Deployment and Development in Power BI

5 Knowing when to use which NAV-tables in Power BI

www.directionsemea.com

• Visualizing data seems intuitive, BUT isn‘t

• Do not start thinking with empty PBI Desktop file, instead start from KPI-hierarchy

• Use visuals reference to choose the right visual

Tips & trick for creating good looking and insightful reports

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Tips & trick for creating good looking and insightful reports –visuals guide from SQLBI.com

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Tips & trick for creating good looking and insightful reports –best practices

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Bad example

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AgendaOur key-messages today

1

2

3

4

Definition of reporting requirements

Choosing the right visual and visualizing best practices

Knowing DAX and data modeling to master Power BI

Deployment and Development in Power BI

5 Knowing when to use which NAV-tables in Power BI

www.directionsemea.com

Data Modeling

• Power BI provides great flexibility to refine the data and add measures

• Measures are defined in DAX – knowledge is required to utilize the power of Power BI

A lot of things can happen between the source data and the report

NAVSource Data

Power BIData Model

Power BIReport

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How DAX expressions are evaluatedFilters „flow“ along relationships

Date Customer No Net Sales

01.01.2017 1 200

04.01.2017 2 500

15.01.2017 1 200

03.02.2017 1 300

11.02.2017 2 1000

Customer No Customer Name1 John2 Paul

Net Sales = SUM('Sales'[Net Sales (Source)])

Data modelReport

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How DAX expressions are evaluatedFilters „flow“ along relationships

Date Customer No Net Sales

01.01.2017 1 200

04.01.2017 2 500

15.01.2017 1 200

03.02.2017 1 300

11.02.2017 2 1000

Customer No Customer Name1 John2 Paul

Net Sales = SUM('Sales'[Net Sales (Source)])

ReportData model

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How DAX expressions are evaluatedFilters „flow“ along relationships

Date Customer No Net Sales

01.01.2017 1 200

04.01.2017 2 500

15.01.2017 1 200

03.02.2017 1 300

11.02.2017 2 1000

Customer No Customer Name1 John2 Paul

Net Sales = SUM('Sales'[Net Sales (Source)])

Report

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Changing filter contextManipulate the filters independent of user selection

[Net Sales] / [Net Sales (all customer)]

CALCULATE('Sales'[Net Sales]; ALL(Customer))

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Time intelligenceWide range of formulas to support time-based analysis

CALCULATE('Sales'[Net Sales]; DATEADD('Date'[Date]; -1; YEAR))

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Currency ConversionLooping over tables and flexible lookups

SUMX(Sales; Sales[Net Sales (Source)]

* LOOKUPVALUE('Conversion Rates'[Rate]; 'Conversion Rates'[Currency Code]; Sales[Currency Code]; 'Conversion Rates'[Month]; Year(Sales[Date])*100+Month(Sales[Date])

))

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Measure selection with slicerSwitch measures based on user selection

if(SELECTEDVALUE('Measure Selection'[Select Measure]) = "Quantity"; [Quantity]; [Net Sales])

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Do‘s and Don‘ts

• Use date tables• Use DAX-formatter

(www.daxformatter.com)• Use CALCULATE-function instead of SUMX

(performance)• Validate your data (maintain referential

integrity)

• Don't denormalize everything (Power BI isno excel pivot-table!)

• Don‘t build gigantic data models (focus on a certain business area)

• Don‘t use implicit measures• Don‘t solve with DAX if solution in data

model is possible (modeling first approach)

www.directionsemea.com

AgendaOur key-messages today

1

2

3

4

Definition of reporting requirements

Choosing the right visual and visualizing best practices

Knowing DAX and data modeling to master Power BI

Deployment and Development in Power BI

5 Knowing when to use which NAV-tables in Power BI

www.directionsemea.com

• Use Power BI Desktop for development

• Keep version history

• No integrated source control in Power BI

• Documentation

• Documentation of datasets and interfaces (ODATA) is essential

• Use SharePoint

Development Environment

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• Dataload

• Loading large tables time consuming

• Use small development database

• Pre-filter your ODATA Feeds

• Use local Excel and Power Query to buffer data locally

• Limit your data model size

• Large models slow the development process

• Create separate files for different domains (Sales, Purchasing, Logistics…)

• Prepare your source data

• Consider using ETL tools to prepare your source data

• Especially when sources are used in many reports (shared dimensions)

• Use dataset as source

• Reduce redundancies

• Improve multiuser development

Development Tips and Tricks

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• Restrict data access by rows

• Avoid duplication reports

Row Level Security

Role “Southern Germany”Role “Northern Germany”

• Branches

• Sales Areas

• …

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Sharing Dashboards

Collaboration in Power BICollaborating and providing content in Power BI

Power BI-AppsApp Workspaces

Organisational content packs

Subtitle

www.directionsemea.comOur presentation title

App WorkspacesCollaboration in Power BI

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• Used to collaborate in teams to create content

• Development teams

• Departments

• Content can not be copied between workspace

• Content in other workspaces can not be referenced

• Edit Rights

• Download PBIX files

• Analyze in Excel

• use dataset as source

• Row Level Security not working

• Read Only

• Limited options

• Row Level Security can be used

Collaboration - App Workspaces

• Use App Workspaces to separate Test and Live environment

• Use Prototyping workspaces to create a common Playground for business users

• Don’t use your personal workspace to store important work

• Don’t use App Workspaces to share content

Subtitle

www.directionsemea.comOur presentation title

Publishing ContentSharing Dashboards, Apps

and Content Packs

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• Use content packs to provide full flexibility for the users.

• Use naming convention for content pack objects.

• Use Apps as your standard method if the flexibility of content packs is not required.

• Use dashboard sharing only for basic reporting.

Publishing Content

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Sharing dashboards

Content packs

Apps

www.directionsemea.com

AgendaOur key-messages today

1

2

3

4

Definition of reporting requirements

Choosing the right visual and visualizing best practices

Knowing DAX and data modeling to master Power BI

Deployment and Development in Power BI

5 Knowing when to use which NAV-tables in Power BI

www.directionsemea.com

Handling NAV-data - fact tables and dimensions

• What NAV-tables to use? Does this help?

• Typical dimension tables from NAV

• Customer

• Vendor

• Salesperson

• Location

• Date (Posting Date, Order Date, Shipment Date etc.)

• Item

• G/L-Account

• Fixed Asset

• Normalize NAV-Tables into coherent dimension – e.g. product dimension instead of table of item, G/L-Account, Fixed Asset etc.

• Typical fact tables

• All entry tables

• Posted or unposted documents

• Different pro’s and con’s

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Handling NAV-data - fact tables pro‘s and con‘s

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Item Ledg. + Cust. Ledg. Entries

Customer Ledger Entries

Item Ledger Entries

Anti-Join

Same Doc. No. / Posting Date

Item Ledger Entries

Result ofAnti-Join

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• Join our workshop Today 16:30 – Room Potsdam + Baden

• powerbi@navida.eu

• www.navida.eu

Thank you! Questions?

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• Row level security driven by security filter in NAV

Use NAV to control PBI