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Bromcom Vision comes with free Power BI analytic packs which contains dashboards and reports to enhance your reporting and analysis capabilities. This is a live feed that you can choose to update as frequently as you wish.

You can use these ‘out the box’ Bromcom BI analytic dashboards and reports or you can use oData to create your own custom reports.

Prerequisites;

• A Bromcom Vision system, with login credentials;
• Administration rights for Vision; and
• A Power BI Pro Account.

In this guide, we will cover the following aspects of Installing and using Power BI with Vision;

• How to install the Vision analytics pack
• How to Refresh the Analytics Pack Dataset
• How to upgrade the Vision analytics pack
• How to use Power BI to create custom reports from Vision, using Odata feed

See also: How to share Power BI Reports in Vision and How to use oData with Bromcom.

How to install the Vision analytics pack

Most of the time, the pack will already be installed for you when your Vision system is handed over.

You can check this by following the instructions further down on How to upgrade the Vision analytics pack.

If you’ve already installed the App, please skip to How to upgrade the Vision analytics pack.

Having Vision oData is a pre requisite for the Vision Analytics Pack.

You will need to sign up for Vision to have access to the oData feed and to be able to analyse data for your Schools.

To install oData and Power BI, you will need to go to Office 365 Apps, use the Waffle highlighted below to expand the Apps menu and select Power BI.

Within Power BI, you now want to scroll down to Apps.

In the top right corner, press Get apps.

Type in Bromcom and you will see the Vision App shown below.

Click on it to view the App details.

Next, click on Get It Now to begin the installation process.

You will need to enter your details into the fields shown below;

Once your details are entered, you can press Install.

Installation is usually quick but it may take a while so please allow it to fully finish.

The App is now installed and ready to be used.

The App will open but displaying sample data.

You will need to press Connect your data in order for your data to be displayed.

Connect your data is located at the top of the screen.

After pressing Connect your data, press Next.

The URL is pre populated.

The Username you need is your Vision Customer Code.

The Password you need is your is the API Key.

Enter the same credentials again when prompted and press Connect.

The App will begin refreshing.

Once complete, you will see that it is now displaying your data and allows you to select from all of your available Schools.

How to Refresh the Analytics Pack Dataset

If you have made changes to the data in the MIS and would like this to be reflected in the Power BI viewer on Vision, you can refresh the Analytics Pack Dataset to pull through the new information.

First you’ll need to check that you are logged in to the same account in both Vision and Power BI, as refreshing the dataset will not work otherwise.

To do this, within Vision, go to Admin > Power BI Configuration

Make a note of the account listed on this page

Then, within Power BI, click the Profile icon in the top right hand corner and ensure the account listed here is the same account as is listed in Power BI Configurations within Vision.

If the account is not the same, you will need to sign out of Power BI and sign back in using the correct account.

Next, within Power BI, in the menu on the left hand side, select Workspaces

Select the Bromcom MAT Vision Analytics Pack

In the list, find the MAT Vision Analytics Semantic Model option.

Hover your mouse over the MAT Vision Analytics option, this will cause the Refresh button to appear, click the Refresh button.

This will refresh the Analytics Pack Dataset. To check if this has been successful, within Vision, select BI > Power BI viewer from the left hand menu.

Select any of the Dashboards, in this example we’ll use Attendance.

In the top right hand corner of the Dashboard you will see the date and time that the Analytics Pack Dataset was last Refreshed.

How to upgrade the Vision Analytics Pack

Once you have the App installed, the following path can be taken if it needs to be updated to ensure you have the latest version.

Open Office 365 and go down to Power BI.

Click on Power BI and then scroll down to Apps.

The Bromcom App was previously installed so should be visible straight away.

Click on it to view the App details.

On the top right of the next screen, you will see an Update App button.

Leave the details as they are unless you wish to change anything, and press Update App at the bottom.

How to use Power BI to create custom reports from Vision using oData feed

In order to use this functionality, the Power BI Desktop application must be installed and a Power BI Pro account is required.

The first step after downloading and installing Power BI Desktop is to get the data.

Click the Get Data Dropdown on the Home tab and select OData Feed.

You will be prompted to provide the following 3 items:

• The URL you need is https://vision.bromcom.com/odata
• The Username you need is your Vision Customer Code and;
• The Password you need is your API Key.

Filter and Transform the Data Before Loading

Please note the images below are for illustration only and may differ from your view.

You will see a preview of the Vision data tables in the Navigator pop up. Select the tables you want to import by selecting these from the list on the left hand.

Important: you must select only a handful of tables to load into BI at any one time. If you select too many tables, the volume of data will be too large and it is likely the import will fail.

When you are ready to load the tables, select Load.

Tip: With larger datasets, e.g. Attendance, use the Transform Data button to format the data at this point via the Query Editor, to ensure the volume of data is small enough to load.

From the Query Editor you can apply various filters, eg filtering to the current academic year.

The data might take a few moments to load. Once its finished your query will now be stored in the BI dashboard ready to manipulate and start creating visualisations.

See also: How to use oData with Bromcom.