Re: Reuse Data from a 3rd Party App - Struggling

AshapiroBB75 · ‎05-27-2021

- If this is posted twice, sorry, I thought I posted this before but according to my profile I have no posted anything yet -

I'm a noob to Power BI and I'm quite stymied. I'm at a point now with it where I think I would be better offer using SQL Server as it, in my opinion, is much easier and straightforward... Hopefully I'll turn the corner on the learning curve and change my mind.

I have a 3rd party app installed - Accelo - Not to get into too much detail but their data model is lacking and I would like to create my own tables that join their tables. Only I can't. This app is locked down and all the transformation options are greyed out in the desktop version of this software. From what I understand, part of the whole reason for using Power BI is so that you can join all your data sources into a single unified dataset so that you can get a wholistic view of your data. So... How do you do that if you can't re-use data from these 3rd party apps? Say I want to merge our Accelo Data with our Salesforce Data? Is the 3rd party app just pretty much useless for that? Can I only use the data the way they provide it or is there another way for me to manage this data so I can do my own transforms and create my own unions (joins) on tables? What would be the strategy I should take with this data set? I can't even do a project manager report where I can see all the projects a pm is managing. The canned reports Accelo provides are about sales yet we're using Salesforce for that.

So the question I have: How do I re-use data from a locked down 3rd party app? Do I just need to pull the raw data into SQL server or something else and then use that instead of the crApp the vendor provides? If this is the case than it's the final nail in the coffin for us using Accelo. I was hoping I would be able to use Power BI to supplement the crappy reporting in their own platform that they charge an additional $12 / person for. Plus with Power BI I can have subscriptions to reports and have them delivered.

I've spent about 2 weeks now trying to figure this out. I have a Power BI Premium license. I just need to know what I need to do to really USE this data. Sorry, I'm just so frustrated.

SushainKoul · ‎05-27-2021

Hi @AshapiroBB75

Please check if these methods or tools work for you:

https://radacad.com/power-bi-helper

https://sqlitybi.com/auto-schedule-data-export-from-power-bi/

https://www.powerbi-pro.com/en/export-powerbi-usage-metrics-to-csv-using-vba/

AshapiroBB75 · ‎05-27-2021

I will look into the first and last link but I can't export anything. All of those functions are greyed out when I'm working with this dataset. See the attached images.