Power BI
What is Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your data into immersive and interactive insights. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, discover what's important, and share that with anyone you want.
You can connect Power BI to Sage 200 to analyse your company data. We provide some example reports to get you started, but you can also build your own reports to share with other people inside your organisation.
Power BI consists of:
- The Power BI Desktop, which is a Microsoft Windows desktop application used to create reports and dashboards.
- The Power BI service, which is used to view reports and dashboards.
- Mobile Power BI apps that are available on Windows phones and tablets, and also on Apple iOS and Google Android devices.
Typically, most people who work with business intelligence will use Power BI Desktop to create reports and dashboards, and then use the Power BI service to share these reports with others. If you are only viewing the shared reports, you only need the Power BI service.
Note: There are some prerequisites, restrictions and limitations when using Power BI with Sage 200. See: Microsoft Power BI Limitations and Support Restrictions (opens in a new tab)
What Power BI licence do I need?
We recommend that you use Power BI Pro licence, which includes the ability to share content and collaborate with other Pro users using the Power BI service. Only Pro users can publish to and consume content from app workspaces, share dashboards, and subscribe to dashboards and reports.
You will need a Microsoft 365 subscription to purchase a Power BI Pro licence.
- Power BI service features by license type (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)
- Purchase and assign Power BI Pro licenses (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)
What Power BI reports are provided?
We provide an example Power BI report template to get you started.
The Customers report template contains pages that show information about:
- Customers.
- Sales.
- Aged Debt.
Download the report template and open it in Power BI Desktop to connect to your Sage 200 data. You can then publish your report to the Power BI Service, so that you can share it with your colleagues (this requires a Power BI Pro licence).
For more information, see:
Learn more about Power BI
Use the Microsoft Power BI documentation to learn more about editing and publishing your reports.
Questions
Using Sage 200 with Microsoft Power BI is a new way to connect and visualise your data.
Sage 200 BI is an older solution, which uses Microsoft Analysis Services.
| Power BI | Sage 200 BI |
|---|---|
| Works with Sage 200 Standard and Sage 200 Professional. | Works with Sage 200 Professional only. |
| Requires Microsoft 365 to connect to Sage 200. | Requires a separate server to run Analysis Services. |
| Provides an intuitive user interface. | |
| Supports many data sources. | |
| Supports web and mobile interfaces. |