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Showing posts from August, 2018

AP Automation in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain

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As a solution architect, prospects and clients often ask me for ways to improve their Accounts Payable process.  They receive hundreds of invoices every month, and it can take considerable amount of time to enter all of the detail as well as attaching the invoice for reference during the approval process.  This is an area where we have often needed to bring in an ISV solution, but that could cause other issues.  Microsoft has been doing considerable work around automation for AP and they recently released a public preview of their Invoice Capture solution. I have had the opportunity to set this up in one of my test environments so I could get an idea of what they have to offer.  As we would expect, the Invoice Capture solution is built on the Power Platform.  It uses a model driven Power App along with Power Automate Flows to integrate with Dynamics 365 Finance.  However, since it is a solution, they have done much of the work for you, including creating the standard flows to load the
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An easy way to create backgrounds for Power BI

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Trying to make your Power BI reports look nice can sometimes be a struggle.  Do you put a box around a visual?  What about shading in the background?  Maybe you want a header or some lines to break up the page.  Well you can certainly create boxes, lines and shading all within Power BI, but they become objects that people might click on and they are hard to line up and keep from moving, so there must be a better way. One feature in Power BI is the support for background images. When I first saw this option, I thought it was more for putting a watermark behind the report. However once I did some research and played with it, I discovered that I could really use it to create a great page layout. Now first thing to keep in mind, I am an accountant and not a graphic designer, so I need an easy way to create.the.backgrounds. That is where another Power product comes in. No not PowerApps, but PowerPoint. Wait, PowerPoint is for creating slide shows, not graphics. What you may
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USERELATIONSHIP in DAX

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A common problem many users face it the fact that there are multiple date fields in their tables, and when they want to use a date dimension, Power BI only allows for on active relationship between the two tables. For example, I have a dimension table from my leasing software that included information on each lease including the commencement date of the lease and the expiration date of the lease.   In Power BI when I use a separate date dimension (which I always recommend for many different reasons), I can only link the dimension table to date table with one active relationship.    See screen shot below. Since most of my visualizations will be based on the Commencement Date, I will make that the active relationship.   However, I would like to create a visualization showing my leases by expiration date.   In order to do this, I have a couple options. 1.        I could create a second date dimension table in my model.   This is fairly simple.   I would just copy t
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Join Your Power BI Peers at the 2018 Power BI World Tour

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The Power BI World Tour is back for 2018! I am excited to be participating again this year. Join your local SMEs, MVPs, and peers at these value packed two-day events in eight cities between August and November. Registration is open – secure your seat today! Whether you are local to the area, traveling from near or faraway, the Power BI World Tour will provide exclusive learning and networking opportunities. Don't miss the opportunity to get involved in one or more of these amazing event locations: Melbourne | Sydney | Charlotte | Copenhagen | Seattle | Dubai | Montreal | Dallas Boost your expertise and company operations for years to come. Each location will feature a General Session presentation by Microsoft and 24+ breakout sessions across 3 learning tracks designed for the Power BI Analyst, Developer/IT Administrator, and New Professional. One attendee last year raved, “the different speakers provided great and varied content. [I] loved the di
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