Salesforce data pull into Power BI is very slow

Hi Anonymous

Since i can't reproduce such large data as yours and make a test to verify which way is better, i would like to provide a genaral suggestion which you may consider and have a try.

Ways to connect to Salesforce:

You could Connect to Salesforce with Power BI service,

Besides, Power BI Desktop provides 2 options for connecting directly to Salesforce:

1. Salesforce Object (Both Standard & Custom) – In Salesforce, objects are fields that are grouped together based on category or tab. Examples include products, opportunities, leads and each of these objects contains a number of related fields that can be brought into a data model for reporting within Power BI Desktop. 
2. Salesforce Reports – Within Salesforce, users can create various reports which can be connected to directly through Power BI Desktop. The benefit of connecting to a pre-built Salesforce report is that it should already contain the fields needed for your analysis which would eliminate the need for some data manipulation and mapping when modeling data.

Based on this idea, there is 2000 row limit from  Salesforce Report API but not from Power BI when connecting to Salesforce API with power bi desktop.
As a workaround for the above issue, you can use Salesforce Object connector in Power BI Desktop to pull all the rows from individual tables and recreate reports you’d like. The Object connector doesn’t have the 2000 row limit.

Best Regards

Maggie

Hi, were you able to find a solution? As a workaround, maybe you can try to test your connection with a 3rd party connector. I've tried windsor.ai, supermetrics and funnel.io. I stayed with windsor because it is much cheaper so just to let you know other options. In case you wonder, to make the connection first search for the Salesforce connector in the data sources list:

After that, just grant access to your Salesforce account using your credentials, then on preview and destination page you will see a preview of your Salesforce fields:

There just select the fields you need. It is also compatible with custom fields and custom objects, so you'll be able to export them through windsor.  Finally, just select PBI as your data destination and finally just copy and paste the url on PBI --> Get Data --> Web --> Paste the url. 

Start by selecting only the Salesforce fields you actually need. For large objects, Microsoft recommends using the Select Query option to explicitly define the required fields.

For a QVD-like reusable layer, stage Salesforce data in a Power BI dataflow or Fabric Dataflow Gen2, then build semantic models from those prepared tables. This is most useful when several models reuse the same Salesforce data, although the initial Salesforce extraction can still take time.

Power BI Connector for Salesforce by Metrica Software provides field selection, source-level filters, preview, and SOQL: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=31526f0e-abd8-4cb5-bd1a-3bd56b5c0577

Filtering the source before export can reduce the amount of Salesforce data transferred.