I Built My First Finance Agent in a Couple of Weeks

-
Image
The first article in my Finance Agent series Over the last couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with Microsoft Copilot Studio, Dynamics 365 ERP MCP, and Power Automate to see what was really possible inside Dynamics 365 Finance. What started as a demo scenario quickly turned into something much more interesting. The original goal was simple. I wanted to help credit and collections teams respond to credit holds more efficiently. As I continued building and testing, I started discovering that agents could fundamentally change how people interact with ERP systems. And honestly, I don't think we're anywhere close to seeing the full potential yet. Quick Video  The Problem I Wanted to Solve If you've spent time working with Credit & Collections in Dynamics 365 Finance, you've probably seen this scenario before. A sales order gets placed on credit hold. The sales team starts asking questions. The credit team may not even know the hold exists until someone ...
Post a Comment

Copilot in Power BI Desktop

-

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.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Showing the last 12 months based on a date slicer

-
Image
When working with financial and sales data, clients often ask for charts showing the last 12 months of data.  This is actually very simple using relative date filtering. In addition, they might ask to compare to the same month last year.  With a simple DAX calculation (SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR) it is possible to add this measure. Here is the formula: Same Month Last Year = CALCULATE(Sum(Sales[SalesAmount]),SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR('Date'[Datekey])) For many users this is all they need.  The chart will update each month and they will always be able to see the last 12 months.   However, this chart will not work with date slicers.   If the client adds a date slicer to the page and selects just one month, the chart will be limited to one month. The reason the chart is limited to one month is because the date dimension relates to the sales fact table and it filters the data for the selected month. Howe...
Read more

Adding a new entity to Dual-write in Dynamics 365 Finance

-
Image
As Microsoft continues to grow, expand and improve Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply, one of the most powerful features released has been Dual-write.  Dual-write is an out-of-box infrastructure the provides near-real-time interaction between customer engagement apps and Finance and Supply Chain apps.  In summary, it is a tightly coupled, bidirectional integration between Finance and Supply Chain applications and Dataverse (formally known as Common Data Service).  Dual-write makes integration with Dynamics 365 Sales and other CE application very straight forward.  It also opens up the opportunities to use PowerApps, Power Portal and Power Virtual Agent with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain apps by connecting through the Dataverse. There is already documentation from Microsoft as well as many blogs already available on setting up Dataverse.   Here are a few links:  Microsoft Documentation  Dynagile Consulting Sandeep Chaudhury ERP Coder Blog Instead...
Read more

A look at Dynamics 365 ERP and ERP Analytics MCP Servers

-
Image
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...
Read more