Prerequisites - Before you start

Analytics License

Acquiring Analytics Licenses Key

The requirement of a license key was introduced in version 2023.2 of Analytics for LS Central. Although Analytics for LS Central is a free product, you must have a valid license key to download the latest versions.

Each partner can get a license key for themselves to use for testing and demoing Analytics. Partner license key should not be used for customer Analytics setup. If a partner is installing Analytics for a customer, the partner should request an Analytics license key for that particular customer.

Each customer can also get their own license key for their setup by contacting LS Retail License department through email or put in an Additional order request through the support portal. Each license key should only be used for one customer. Customers can use the same license key for multiple installations and environments, if they choose.

When you have requested a license from the License department, you will receive an email with information about the customer license key and link to the form you need to fill out to download the Analytics Product package for this specific license key.

In the form you enter your name, email address ,and select whether you need a full installation or an update to your current setup. Then you enter the license key from the earlier email from the Licensing department in the correct field and submit the form. You should receive an email after a few minutes with a Product package download link and links to the setup scenarios in our online help.

Using the License Key

Once you have a license key, you can use it to get the current and future releases of Analytics. You simply resubmit the form that was included in the email from the Licensing department when the license was issued, and select whether you want to download a new installation package or an update package to update Analytics from the last release to the current one.

In case you forget your license key, you can contact the Licensing department, and they will resend the license key to you.

Updating Analytics

Each release of Analytics contains an installation package and an update package. The update package is a compilation of all changes made to Analytics since the last release. Update packages are not cumulative so if you skip one or more update packages, you will need to apply all previous packages in order to update to latest version.

You are only able to download the latest version of the Analytics package. If you require older versions of Analytics, contact LS Retail Support.

Here are the basic steps needed to update your Analytics environment.

Get the latest update package by submitting the download form and selecting Update existing installation. Remember that you can use the same license key and form as before.
Back up the Analytics database, and export the Azure data factory.
If you have any customizations in your setup, you should review the changes to make sure that your custom changes are not overwritten during the update process. There is a folder in the update package containing all database changes and a different folder with bicep templates for the Azure data factory changes.
Apply the update package using the update script. If you have the parameter file from your original setup, you can use it as input into the update script.
Verify that all pipelines run without error and that all reports are populated.

If, for some reason, you need to update your Analytics setup for multiple versions, we recommend that you install a new instance of Analytics instead of running multiple update package scripts. That way the old environment can continue running until the new version of Analytics is set up and everything is working smoothly.

LS Central

The customer must have LS Central version 8.4 or later on-premises or the latest version in SaaS.

Analytics has been developed to support specific versions of LS Nav and LS Central.
Analytics from version 2020.5 supports setup with LS Central SaaS.

The customer's LS Central setup must fulfill Microsoft Business Central requirements

Analytics makes the same system requirements to the LS Central database as are made for Business Central from Microsoft. These can include hardware, SQL server, and operation system requirements.

Access to virtual or physical server

Before starting the setup process, you should have access to a server (virtual or on-premises). The usage of this server differs between the different setup environments, so therefore we have named them differently, and it is best to review the server setup for the Analytics setup you will be using.

Here are links to server setup pages from the different onboarding processes:

External subscriptions

Customers must have or be willing to create a subscription for Power BI.

Customers must have a Power BI Pro account subscription to be able to publish and share the Power BI reports with their organization.

Customers must have or be willing to create a subscription for Azure.

Analytics is set up in Azure under the customers account. The cost of a typical Analytics system is around 100 USD a month, assuming that pipelines are run once every 24 hours to refresh the warehouse data.
We have gathered some information about the Azure cost estimate and given an example for a standard Analytics schedule.

More details about the subscription setup can be found in the onboarding process.