Best Practice when connecting to Business Central SaaS data

[Hede]

Hello everyone!

I am trying to figure out what is the best way for me to connect Business Central SaaS data to my Power BI.

As far as i can tell there are two ways to go about it.
I can either use the connector from Power BI which uses the API's set up in Business Central. They work great since they get their data from a shadow database, and therefore has no impact on the Business Central when collecting data. The bad thing about them is if you want a new API or just add a field to an existing one, you need to be a developer and code it.

The other way is to use the web services (which may become deprecated according to Microsoft). They are great becuase you can create them yourselves from the web services page in Business Central. But they have limits and if you try to get all the Value Entries for example it can lock Business Central down for all users, since it uses the standard database and Business Central ressources.

So either you need to be a developer, or you need to simplify your Power BI data so much, that it's hardly useful.
Is there a magic third way that allows simple users to create the queries to the shadow database or something similar.

Even if you don't have the magic solution, i'd still love to hear how you handled this. 🙂

[Idrissshatila]

Hello @Hede ,

true as you said, in your case if you're not a developer to get the only columns you need or make a customization, then you could link it directly to BC and do the transformation through Power Query interms what tables you want, what columns to include, even you could build custom columns in Power query and get yourself on going.

If I answered your question, please mark my post as solution, Appreciate your Kudos 👍

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