Non-Conformances Dashboard

Overview

Bricklead’s Non-Conformances Dashboard for Business Central is a Power BI application designed to help quality teams monitor, analyze, and understand non-conformances recorded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

The dashboard complements the Bricklead Non-Conformance Management application by transforming operational records into interactive reports. It helps organizations identify recurring quality issues, evaluate their financial impact, analyze root causes, and monitor non-conformances associated with customers, vendors, transport activities, products, and lots.

The underlying Non-Conformance Management application supports the management of quality deviations associated with items, lots, serial numbers, customers, vendors, internal processes, and transport operations. It also supports severity tracking, corrective actions, and hierarchical reason analysis.

Important: When first installed from Microsoft AppSource, the Power BI application displays sample data. You must connect it to your Business Central environment before using the reports with your own data.

Prerequisites

Before installing and configuring the dashboard, make sure that:

  • Bricklead Non-Conformance Management is installed and configured in the target Business Central environment.
  • Non-conformance records are available in the target Business Central company.
  • You have access to the target Business Central environment and company.
  • You have permission to install applications from Microsoft AppSource.
  • You have the appropriate Power BI license and permissions to install the application, refresh its semantic model, and access its reports.

Microsoft indicates that a Power BI Pro license, or an appropriate Microsoft Fabric or Power BI Premium capacity, may be required depending on how the application is installed, refreshed, and shared.

The Microsoft account used to authenticate the connection must also have permission to access the relevant Business Central company and the data exposed to the dashboard.

Installing the Dashboard from AppSource

  1. Sign in to the Power BI service using your organizational Microsoft account.
  2. In the Power BI navigation pane, select Apps.
  3. Select Get apps.
  4. Search for Bricklead’s Non-Conformances Dashboard for Business Central.
  5. Select the application.
  6. Select Get it now and follow the installation instructions.
  7. When the installation is complete, open the application from the Apps page.

Power BI template applications installed from AppSource initially open with sample data. The application then prompts you to connect it to your own data source.

Connecting the Dashboard to Business Central

Start the Connection

When you open the dashboard for the first time, a notification indicates that you are viewing the application with sample data.

Select Connect your data.

Power BI opens the application configuration page and requests the parameters required to connect to Business Central.

Connection Parameters

Enter the following values.

Environment Name

Enter the exact name of the Business Central environment containing the non-conformance data.

Common examples include:

Production

or:

Sandbox

If your tenant contains several environments, verify the exact environment name in the Business Central administration center or in the Business Central URL.

The environment name must match the environment name used by Business Central.

Company Name

Enter the exact name of the Business Central company that you want to analyze.

For example:

CRONUS France S.A.

The value must correspond to the Business Central company name.

You can verify the company name by using the My Settings page or the Companies page in Business Central.

Recommendation: Copy the company name directly from Business Central to avoid spelling, spacing, or punctuation differences.

Critical Severity

Enter the Business Central Severity Code used to identify non-conformances considered critical by your organization.

For example:

CRITICAL

The value must exactly match the corresponding severity code configured in Bricklead Non-Conformance Management. Severity codes are organization-specific.

This parameter allows the dashboard to distinguish critical non-conformances from other severity levels and use them in criticality indicators and analyses.

Depending on your configuration, the critical severity code could be:

Only enter the code that represents the critical severity level in your Business Central setup.

Important: Enter the Severity Code, not its description.

Authenticate the Connection

After entering the connection parameters:

  1. Select Next or Sign in and connect.
  2. For the authentication method, select OAuth2.
  3. Set the privacy level to Organizational, if requested.
  4. Select Sign in.
  5. Authenticate using the Microsoft organizational account that has access to the selected Business Central environment and company.
  6. Accept the requested permissions if prompted.

Once authentication succeeds, Power BI begins loading data from Business Central.

The initial refresh may take several minutes depending on the volume of data.

Verify the Connection

After the refresh is complete:

  1. Return to the Power BI application.
  2. Open the dashboard.
  3. Confirm that the sample company name has been replaced by your Business Central company.
  4. Check the Last Update information displayed in the reports.
  5. Verify that known non-conformances appear in the relevant report pages.
  6. Confirm that records using the configured critical severity code are identified as critical.

If sample data is still displayed, refresh the browser and check the semantic model refresh history in the Power BI workspace.

Report Overview

The dashboard contains several complementary reports for analyzing non-conformances from different operational perspectives.

Non-Conformance Management

The Non-Conformance Management report provides a general overview of non-conformance activity.

Use it to:

  • monitor the overall number of non-conformances;
  • review trends over time;
  • analyze non-conformances by source;
  • monitor critical non-conformances;
  • identify the most common categories, subcategories, reasons, and subreasons;
  • apply filters to focus on a particular period, company, source, severity, or status.

This report is the recommended starting point for a global quality review.

Root Cause Analysis

The Root Cause Analysis report helps identify why non-conformances occur.

It provides analysis based on the hierarchical classification configured in Non-Conformance Management, including:

  • categories;
  • subcategories;
  • reasons;
  • subreasons.

Use this report to identify recurring issues, detect dominant root causes, perform Pareto-style analysis, prioritize corrective and preventive actions, and evaluate whether improvement actions are reducing recurrence.

Customer Analysis

The Customer Analysis report provides a customer-oriented view of non-conformances.

Use it to identify customers associated with the highest number of non-conformances, compare customer quality trends, analyze severity and reason distribution, investigate recurring complaints, and support customer quality reviews.

Customer Non-Conformances

The Customer Non-Conformances report focuses on individual non-conformances originating from or associated with customers.

It can be used for detailed operational analysis, including reviewing customer-related records and filtering by customer, date, severity, product, or reason.

Customer Non-Conformances Amount

The Customer Non-Conformances Amount report analyzes the financial impact of customer-related non-conformances.

Use it to review amounts associated with customer quality issues, identify customers generating the highest non-conformance costs, and prioritize quality improvements based on operational and financial impact.

Vendor Analysis

The Vendor Analysis report provides a supplier-oriented view of non-conformances.

Use it to compare quality performance across vendors, identify vendors associated with recurring issues, analyze non-conformances by severity, category, reason, item, or lot, and support vendor performance reviews.

Vendor Non-Conformances

The Vendor Non-Conformances report provides detailed analysis of non-conformances associated with vendors.

It supports operational investigation by allowing users to review and filter supplier-related quality records.

Vendor Non-Conformances Amount

The Vendor Non-Conformances Amount report focuses on the financial impact of vendor-related quality problems.

Use it to identify suppliers generating the greatest quality-related costs, compare incident volumes with their financial impact, and prioritize supplier corrective action plans.

Transport Non-Conformances

The Transport Non-Conformances report focuses on issues associated with transportation and logistics.

Use it to analyze transport-related quality incidents and recurring issues associated with logistics activities.

Product Analysis

The Product Analysis report provides an item- and lot-oriented view of quality performance.

Use it to:

  • identify items with the highest number of non-conformances;
  • analyze non-conformances over time;
  • compare issues by source type;
  • review categories, reasons, and subreasons for a selected product;
  • identify lots associated with quality problems;
  • investigate recurring product quality patterns.

Geofencing

The Geofencing report provides a geographical perspective on non-conformance data when the required location information is available.

Use it to visualize the geographical distribution of quality issues, identify regional patterns, and detect concentrations of non-conformances in specific areas.

The accuracy of this report depends on the completeness and quality of the geographical data available in Business Central.

Refreshing the Data

The dashboard does not retrieve new Business Central data continuously. Its semantic model must be refreshed to include newly created or updated non-conformances.

Manual Refresh

To refresh the data manually:

  1. Open the Power BI workspace created during installation.
  2. Locate the semantic model associated with Bricklead’s Non-Conformances Dashboard.
  3. Select Refresh now.
  4. Wait for the refresh to complete.
  5. Reopen or refresh the report.

Scheduled Refresh

To keep the dashboard current, configure a scheduled refresh in the Power BI service.

The available refresh frequency depends on your Power BI or Microsoft Fabric license and capacity.

Make sure the credentials stored for the semantic model remain valid. If account permissions or access policies change, Power BI may request that the connection be authenticated again.

Troubleshooting

The Application Still Displays Sample Data

  • Confirm that you selected Connect your data.
  • Check that the semantic model was configured successfully.
  • Review the refresh history for errors.
  • Refresh the application in your browser after the first successful data refresh.

Authentication Fails

  • Verify that OAuth2 is selected.
  • Use an organizational Microsoft account.
  • Confirm that the account can sign in to the target Business Central environment.
  • Confirm that the account can open the selected company.
  • Check whether multifactor authentication or Conditional Access requires an additional sign-in.

No Data Is Displayed

  • Verify the environment name.
  • Verify the exact company name.
  • Confirm that Bricklead Non-Conformance Management contains records in the selected company.
  • Confirm that the authenticated user has access to the required non-conformance data.
  • Review the semantic model refresh history.

Critical Non-Conformances Are Not Identified Correctly

  • Verify that Critical Severity contains the Business Central severity code, not its description.
  • Check for spelling differences or additional spaces.
  • Confirm that the expected non-conformances use that severity code in Business Central.
  • Update the parameter and refresh the semantic model.

Some Reports Are Empty

A report may be empty when the selected company contains no data for that analysis.

For example:

  • transport reports require transport-related non-conformances;
  • customer reports require customer-related records;
  • vendor reports require vendor-related records;
  • product and lot analyses require the corresponding item or lot information;
  • geographical reports require usable location data.

Data Access and Security

The data displayed in Power BI is retrieved using the credentials configured for the semantic model.

Access should therefore be managed at two levels:

  1. Business Central permissions, which control the data the connection account can retrieve.
  2. Power BI permissions, which control who can open the application, workspace, semantic model, and reports.

When sharing the dashboard, ensure that recipients are authorized to view the customer, vendor, product, financial, and quality information contained in the reports.

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Last updated on Jan 26, 2026