Empty Columns (no data) of DataFlow of a Salesforce Table

[ishade]

Hi, I want to prepare a report of real-time data of ‘Event’ table of Salesforce, Alexis. I tried it as following procedure but unlikely other table of the salesforce (Alexis), it is not available for me to see any data of the table but columns.

I got information the table ‘Event’ contains data of largest volume among Alexis. Would the volume be reason of  this trouble (no data shown) ? Any advice or suggestion would be much appreciated.

I tried to get data of ‘Event’ table as following ;

1.  On new source menu, I selected Salesforce Object,

2. Entered URL of Alexis (Salesforce) and clicked next,

3. Seeing table list of the Salesforce (Alexis), scrolled down,

4. Found target table ‘Event’ (in Japanese ‘行動’), selected it but no preview of the table is available for about 10 minutes

resulting error message of ‘evaluation cancelled’.

5. So I click ‘transfer data on above waiting screen and got to query window

6. showed ‘through-put’ speed of 0.1~1.0 KB/sec,

7. but resulting time-out error after 10 minutes.

8. So I clicked ‘save and close’ button

9. getting Dataflow and tried update resulting in ‘time-out’ error after 10 minutes also.

10. With the Dataflow, I prepared test report on Power BI Desktop

11. Seeing empty COLUMNS of the table without data.

I tried to make report of table model. I can refer columns but no data is shown at all...How am I supposed to do to see the data?

Again, it is not available for me to see any data of the table but columns.

I got information the table ‘Event’ contains data of largest volume among Alexis. Would the volume be reason of this trouble (no data shown) ? Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestion.

[raja1992 · Accepted solution]

Yeah, the Salesforce Event object is notorious for this — you’ll often see only the schema (columns) but no data comes through. A few things to know:

1. Event is a “big object” in Salesforce.
   It stores massive volumes of activity data, and Salesforce limits how you can query it. Standard connectors in Power BI (or even SOQL queries in other tools) often time out when you try to pull it directly. So yes — the huge volume is usually the reason you’re only seeing empty columns.

2. Check permissions.
   Sometimes Event data is restricted by Salesforce security/permissions. If your user account doesn’t have access to read those rows, Power BI will just show structure but no data.

3. Workarounds:

   • Filter early in Power Query (date range, top N, etc.) so you’re not asking Salesforce to dump the entire Event history. Even just pulling the last 30 days can help.

   • Use Salesforce Reports instead of Objects. If you build a report in Salesforce (with filters you need), then connect Power BI to that report, it often loads much faster and avoids the timeout.

   • Export/Stage data: for really heavy objects like Event, many orgs export them to a data warehouse or use middleware (e.g., Dataflows, Azure Data Factory, MuleSoft, etc.) and then connect Power BI to that.

👉 In short: the empty columns issue isn’t a bug in Power BI — it’s either a volume problem or an access restriction from Salesforce. The quickest test is to build a small Salesforce report on the Event object (with a filter like “last 7 days”) and connect Power BI to that. If that works, then you know volume is the blocker.

[ishade]

Hi raja1992

I appreciate your reply in detail. 

Thanks to you, it is available for me to make new message for the syntax of TOPN as following.

Syntax for TOPN on Source Statement of Power Query - Microsoft Fabric Community

Again, thanks for your valuable, sincere reply. Have a nice day!!!