Catch Errors Early Using Power BI and D365 Business Central

As a nonprofit professional, you know how crucial it is to quickly identify and resolve errors that pop up during day-to-day operations. 

Even small inefficiencies can snowball into major delays that impact your ability to serve communities effectively.

That’s why a business central for nonprofit solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 is so valuable. 

Paired with Power BI data visualization tools, D365 gives you real-time insights into errors and exceptions so you can triage issues while they’re still easy to fix. 

Here’s how to configure your systems for proactive error management.

Set Up Automated Error Reporting in Business Central

Out of the box, Dynamics 365 Business Central tracks transaction errors and can notify you when they occur. 

But to leverage the full power of the platform, you’ll want to customize error tracking to best suit your nonprofit’s workflows.

Using built-in Business Central tools:

• Create error log entries for failed processes unique to your operations. Track details like error codes, users impacted, and relevant transaction records.
• Trigger automated emails to notify admins and department heads as soon as priority errors occur.
• Log details like error timestamps and source data to help reconstruct processes.

With customized logging, you can turn Business Central into a powerful observability tool for all your nonprofit’s processes – no code required.

Centralize Errors in a Power BI Dashboard

While Business Central handles error tracking, Power BI puts the data into actionable visualizations accessible throughout your nonprofit:

Table showing sample error log data

Error Code	Dept	Users Impacted	Failure Timestamp	Source Record
ERR-01A	Finance	3	1/12/2023 10:05PM	INV-11198
ERR-09Z	Ops	12	1/10/2023 11:11AM	WO-95112

With log data streaming into a centralized Power BI dashboard, your team can:

• Spot error patterns across workflows, departments, and user groups
• Identify critical failures to prioritize based on frequency and affected users
• Track resolution status to ensure issues are being addressed
• Extract insights to improve processes and prevent future errors

By combining Business Central observability with Power BI reporting, you can shift nonprofit operations into proactive error management.

Triage Errors in Real-Time

Once your error reporting solution is in place, put it into action by establishing error triage protocols leveraging the Power BI dashboard:

• Assign error resolution owners so teams know exactly which exceptions they are responsible for managing
• Communicate across departments to understand how errors impact other workflows
• Resolve and reprocess failed transactions before downstream effects snowball
• Escalate unresolved errors to managers if stuck or needing approval

With real-time visibility enabled by Power BI visualizations, your nonprofit can easily monitor, assess, and address errors in an organized fashion. 

This prevents small hiccups from interrupting operations and service delivery.

Implementing custom error logging, centralized dashboards, and efficient triage procedures allows nonprofits to manage exceptions before they become emergencies. Utilizing Business Central’s observability paired with Power BI’s analytical capabilities, your team can catch errors early and keep communities supported.