Analyze Data with Power BI

Accord has Business Intelligence capabilities thanks to its integration with Power BI allowing you to analyse your Accord data and help you make decisions about your business by:

Selecting what Accord data to send to Power BI through a synchronization process
Allowing you to view your Power BI tiles (graphs) to analyse this data.

Getting Started

Make sure you have a Power BI account. Otherwise create an account in Power BI. It is free!

Once you have a Power BI account you are ready to start using Business Intelligence in Accord choosing what data to analyse (what to synchronize) and how to analyze it (what graphs to create and view).

Synchronization

At the top navigation panel, click on Settings menu and select the option Business Intelligence under the Business section.
IMPORTANT: If it is the first time you are using Power BI from Accord you will be automatically redirected to Power BI authentication screen where you will have to enter your Power BI username and password to authorize Accord to access your account. You would then be redirected back to Accord
The following screen will be displayed

Depending on the type of Accord user you are, you will see a different list of Datasets to synchronize with Power BI.
Specify a filter to restrict the number of results and click on the Sync Now button. Please wait until the synchronization finishes and the column Status will inform you of the result.
See How to Create your First Graphs in Power BI

View tiles (graphs)

At the top navigation panel, click on Settings menu and select the option Business Intelligence under the Business section.
Your existing Power BI dashboards will be displayed. If you don't have any dashboard yet or you don't know how to create your first one, read How to Create your first graphs in Power BI
Click on any dashboard and select what graph you wish to view. The graph or chart will be displayed on screen. You can create as many dashboards and tiles as you want in Power BI and view them in Accord.
Additionally you can print the graph by clicking on the Print button.

How to create your first graphs in Power BI

If you are not familiar with Business Intelligence or the way Power BI works you can have a look here, however this quick guide should give enough information to have an overall understanding.

There are basically 3 concepts in Power BI:

Datasets - are groups of one or many tables. From Accord you can specify what datasets/tables to synchronize with Power Bi
Reports - one or more pages of visualizations (graphs) that can be created from scratch in Power BI
Dashboards - are composed of visualization tiles (graphs). From Accord you can view your existing dashboards and each one of your tiles.

Analyze Declarations

Accord allows the synchronization with Power BI of some declarations' details carried out by your business that you can analyze. Below you can find some useful example graphs (Power BI tiles) that you could create. But first:

Go to Power BI
Make sure you have synchronized the dataset Declarations as per the synchronization section. You should be able to see a Dataset called Declarations with one table inside also called Declarations as per below.
Power BI only allows to query a dataset when a report has been created, so click on the visualization of type Cardas per below.
On the right panel, under Declarations table, select the checkbox for Declared.
That should be enough to create a simple report, so save the changes by clicking on File menu and selecting Save this report. A window will pop up asking to name this report and you can save it with any name (i.e: "DeclarationsReport").
After saving the report, on the left panel you can view it by clicking on it.
You can now pin this graph in a new or existing dashboard. Click on the right top corner of the visual as per below image.
As there are no existing dashboards, select New dashboard and give it a name (i.e: "Declarations") and click on Pin button.
Now you finally have your first dashboard linked to your Declarations table, so you can query that information, pin new visuals (tiles) into the dashboard, etc. Below there are some examples of useful tiles you could pin into your Declarations dashboard.

EXAMPLE 1: Declarations per user by month

Make sure you have a dashboard in Power BI called Declarations or similar as described in previous section.

Click on the dashboard where you want to add the new tile (graph) to analyse the declarations per user
Type in the query the following: number of declarations by month this year per name. Select the desired visualization (i.e: the vertical bars called clustered column chart) and the graph will be displayed on screen
Click on the pin button on the top right corner of the graph to pin it to the current dashboard
The tile has now been saved and it's pinned onto your dashboard

EXAMPLE 2: Total number of declarations this year against target

Make sure you have a dashboard in Power BI called Declarations or similar as described in previous section.

Click on the dashboard where you want to add the new tile (graph) to analyse the declarations per user
Type in the query the following: total number of declarations this year. Select the desired visualization (i.e: the graph called gauge) and the graph will be displayed on screen
Every graph is configurable. If you have chosen the graph gaugeyou can configure a target number and a minimum and maximum value to seethe number of declarations against this target
Click on the pin button on the top right corner of the graph to pin it to the current dashboard
The tile has now been saved and it's pinned onto your dashboard