Automating Data Exports in BI

[Anonymous]

Hey All,

I have been looking to automate reporting from the social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter) but I have run into some issues with their API.

My 2nd thought was to create individual folders per platform with data exports in it. I would be doing this weekly. Any Idea of how I would go about this or any other ways that might be better?

Thanks!

Phil 

[vanessafvg]

@Anonymous 

1) what are the current issues you are expericing?

2) which api are you referring to?

3) if you dumped the data one onedrive or sharepoint, i think it would automatically update in the cloud

4) where are you displaying your data in powerbi.com?

5) have you consider microsoft flow?

6) do you have a data gateway set up if you using the cloud?

[Anonymous]

@vanessafvg

Thanks for the quick response! Answers below

1) what are the current issues you are expericing/Which API? I am reffering to the social API. Facebooks Graph API does not allow for someone to download organic post metrics anymore (post message with impressions, video views etc), you have to use their platform. Twitter I can't seem to crack their API either. YouTube, I have been able to work with since Google generally is easy to work with. Instagram, Their api seems pretty closed ATM. 

3) if you dumped the data one onedrive or sharepoint, i think it would automatically update in the cloud. Let's say I renamed columns in Power BI from the data I put in, if I continued to dump that data on sharepoint or onedrive would Power BI be able to read it?

4) where are you displaying your data in powerbi.com? I am creating a dashboard on Desktop, publishing it to my online account, then publishing it to a link.

5) have you consider microsoft flow? I have not actually.

6) do you have a data gateway set up if you using the cloud? I have an on premise gateway setup

[vanessafvg]

@Anonymous  how do you propose to get the data from those systems without the API's

instgram i think you have to pay for.

check out flow, to start with to see if it meets your requirements because the other routes you are proposing sounds like a bit of set up and i am not sure  how you would do that outside of the API

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/

[Anonymous]

@vanessafvg Checking out Microsoft Flow now.

The way I was thinking was going to each platform, and downloading the data into CVS form and dumping the weekly data into a folder that BI would pull from.  What I couldnt wrap my head around was getting power BI to pull from seperate folders (ex: facebook folder w/ facebook data, twitter folder with twitter data so on and so on

[Anonymous]

@vanessafvg 

I was afraid of that -_-.... Microsoft flow looks awesome, but the issue I am seeing is that it uses more public data (i.e twitter pulls from search terms) I am looking for my brands tweets and how they preformed. 

[vanessafvg]

@Anonymous well i dont think it would be an issue to pull from different sources you would just need to set it all up and add all of those sources to the gateway to allow it to pull from there.  Sounds like a bit of manual escapade.   check flow out first because thats all in the cloud you wouldn't have as much set up and maintenance, however i haven't used it for a while so not sure if it meets your requirements.