In the world of BC Reporting, it all starts with your data. When utilizing Power BI for Business Central Reports getting started can seem overwhelming. In this post I wanted to quickly cover the process of how you can expand your sandbox of data and expose more Web Services than what is available out of the box.

Typically, I prefer to expose additional Web Services even if the needed service is available out of the box. I prefer to do this because it allows you to add a prefix to your Service Name (more on this later), which will in turn cluster all of your Web Service Options together in Power BI (better user experience for you, the BI Developer).

How To:

When considering how to extract your data, as a beginner or someone who is just beginning your BC/BI journey I recommend Web Services. I recommend Web Serivces because they are very forgiving and allow citizen developers to get started without AL knowledge. Note that Web Services may not always be the best solution for your business. If you have mass amounts of data and notice poor or slow performance when utilizing Web Services, you may want to consider a Data Lake, Data Warehouse, or creating a Custom API for Business Cental (all of these options are not as user friendly).

In order to expose Web Services from Business Central you will follow these steps:

1. Open Business Central in your Browser
2. Click on the search bar in the upper right-hand corner.
3. Search for “Web Services”

4. Select “New”

5. You will then we presented with a new line on the table. From here, you will select “Page” from the drop-down menu under Object Type. Then, Under Object ID you will enter the Page number. If you do not know the page number, you can select the down arrow under Object ID and select “Select from full list”. This will allow you to search for the page you want to report against.

6. Once you have your Object ID/Page Selected Business Central will automatically populate the Object Name Column for you with the page name that Business Central Utilizes.

7. Next you will give your Web Service a “Service Name”. This is the name that Power BI will “see” so it is important to give your Web Service a meaningful and constructive naming convention. Business Central does not like spaces in your Service Name. See my example below. In my example I did not add my usual prefix but typically I would use TMGBI_Name. I use this prefix because I know, and my clients know that TMG (my employer) has exposed this Web Service, and it is being used for Power BI.

8. The last thing you will need to do is publish your Web Service. You can do this by selecting the second box to the right of the Service Name. Once you click off this link you will then notice an OData Link was generated and your Web Service was successfully published. If you are feeling froggy, you can hit the “Reload” button on the Web Services Page.

9. Next time you open Power BI Desktop and go to “Get Data” and use the “Business Central” Connector you should now see the Web Service you exposed in the list of available entities.

And that is it! You now have successfully exposed your first Web Service. If you want to take it to the next level, in my next post I will be exploring how you can create a custom API in Visual Studio Code which can lead to better performance by reducing “fluff” on pages (aka fields you will not use for your report 🙂 )