Create Dynamics 365 Business Central Dashboards in Bold BI

Bold BI allows you to create, share, and collaborate on interactive BI dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Dynamics 365 Business Central and build reports from Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Bold BI.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Dynamics 365 Business Central, allowing you to easily build reports from live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Bold BI — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Bold BI generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Server pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Login to Connect Server and click Connections.
2. Select "Dynamics 365 Business Central" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

   To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must provide the User and AccessKey properties.

   To obtain the User and AccessKey values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the User and AccessKey connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

   To connect to data, specify OrganizationUrl. If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the Company to indicate which company you would like to connect to. Company does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions.

With the virtual database created, you are ready to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Bold BI.

Visualize Live Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in Bold BI

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Bold BI to create a new Dynamics 365 Business Central data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into your Bold BI instance, click the data sources tab, create a new data source, and choose the SQL Server connector.
2. Choose the basic configuration and set the connection properties:
   • Name: Name your connection
   • Server name: Your Connect Server instance (CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Username: Your Connect Server username
   • Password: Your Connect Server password
   • Mode: Choose Live to query Dynamics 365 Business Central on-demand or choose Extract to load the data into Bold BI
   • Database: Choose the database you created from the drop-down menu (d365businesscentraldb)
3. Click Connect
4. Select the table to visualize and drag it onto the workspace.
5. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
6. Click the gear icon for the visualization to configure the visualization properties and assign columns to the visualization.

SQL Access to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data from Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Dynamics 365 Business Central data from your Bold BI workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

To get SQL data access to 200+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your applications, see the CData Connect page.