A look at Dynamics 365 ERP and ERP Analytics MCP Servers

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MCP Servers Arrive in Preview for Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Recently, Microsoft has introduced MCP servers in preview for Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain, marking a significant leap in the ERP ecosystem. This new capability means that organizations using Dynamics 365 can now leverage MCP servers to supercharge their interactions and analytics—all while maintaining the compliance and security standards expected from a modern cloud service. What Is an MCP Server? An MCP server is a specialized, cloud-managed platform designed to handle advanced analytics workloads for enterprise applications. By offloading data processing and analytical computations from the core operational databases, MCP servers enable faster, scalable, and more secure reporting and analysis. These servers are optimized for handling large datasets, real-time queries, and complex analytics scenarios, providing organizations with the agility to adapt to dynamic business needs. You can learn more abo...
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Copilot in Power BI Desktop

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We have been hearing a lot about Artificial Intelligence recently, and Microsoft is investing very heavily in brining AI to many of the solutions we use on a regular basis.  In many solutions the AI solution is known at Copilot.  

Copilot in Power BI Desktop is currently available in preview for you to start testing.  After playing with it a little, I would have to say it is a nice tool, but I will caution you that you need to be careful.  It is simply going to give you some suggestions on creating new measures, but if you do not understand DAX, you may not select the correct version.

So how do you get started?  

1. First you need to be on a current release of Power BI Desktop (at least after May 2923)

2. The feature is still in Preview, so it is necessary to enable the preview feature.  File - Options and Settings - Options and enable Quick measure suggestions
















3.  To use Copilot, you select to add a Quick Measure (this can be selected on the Modeling ribbon or by right click when your cursor is in the data model area)

4. In the Quick Measure window, there is a new tab for Suggestion with Copilot











5. In the box simply type in a description of the measure you need to create.  What you type will depend on your data model.  Suggestions can include many different functions including math functions, text functions, optional filters and much more.  To get more detail on the options available check the documentation from Microsoft

Some items to keep in mind

Natural language needs to understand your data model.  For example, if the data for sales uses the word Amount instead of Sales, you need to make sure to use amount in your suggestion.

Be sure to review the DAX that is created.  Copilot will often return multiple suggestions, so you still need to understand DAX.  For example, I did a simple example of "total sales amount last year".  Copilot gave me two different suggestions.  They look very similar, but they use different date fields, so the results might be different.  It is critical that I understand the code that is being written.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that Copilot does not name your new measure.  It is simply named "Measure", so make sure you rename it when you add it to your data model.







Overall this is an exciting new feature, that will hopefully save a lot of time in creating different measures and typing the required code.  Of course, this is still in preview, so things might change, and I assume it will only get better.


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