Preface

The first edition of Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013, written by Mark Polino, is an amazing tool for building dashboards in Excel. Since the release of this book, Excel has continued to increase its value to the GP Community. With GP having gone through two major updates and Excel having gone through one major update, Mark felt it was time to refresh his book. Luckily, Mark chose me to take the lead on the updating process.

Those of you who know Mark and me know that although we are close friends, we love to challenge each other and ourselves. We prove this year after year in an Excel Deathmatch we call The Excel Shootout. We invite another contestant for the audience, but it's really a duel between Mark and me. The same thing in our souls that force us to challenge ourselves made us think, what if we added some other Excel and dashboarding elements? The result: this second edition, including both the new free Jet Express for GP and Microsoft Power BI. More Excel, more dashboards, and more cow bell. Sorry for the cow bell joke, that was just for Mark.

Can you use this book if you do not have Dynamics GP? Of course! Although, the data samples come directly from GP, the Excel and Power BI sections are generic for any data. The Jet Express for GP section will work only for Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV.