Forum Discussion

martinrowe's avatar
martinrowe
Advocate I
8 years ago

Sharepoint list Managed Metadata

Hello

 

I have searched around this for many days now and cannot find a satisfactory answer to my problem.

 

I am trying to connect to a sharepoint list (2013) via power bi. I am able to connect to the list fine and I can see all columns in the data model Except managed metadata ones! neither of the below articles offer a solution to my current problem the columns just flat out arent there!

 

Power BI and filtering on Taxonomy/Managed Metadata terms
No Managed Metadata Columns in Power Query SharePoint list queries 

 

I am however able to export the list from Sharepoint into Excel and refresh from Excel with the data connection created as part of that export which can be exported from Excel as a .odc file. This contains the managed metadata fields that I am interested in but unable to retrieve directly when connecting to the sharepoint list

 

So my question/problem is two fold;

 

1. Is there something that the SharePoint developers are not doing properly that prevents this list from being returned with associated managed metadata? maybe not a question for this forum, but someone may have experience of a similar problem

 

2. Is it possible to use the .odc file with PowerBi or reverse engineer this in some way to connect to the list in the same that that is established between the Excel file exported directly from the list?

 

Any other suggestions are welcome. Im currently exploring using Excel and using the power bi service analyse in Exel option to see if this can work also.

Need Help

2 Replies

  • martinrowe's avatar
    martinrowe
    Advocate I
    8 years ago

    After a bit of a lightbulb moment I have solved my problem, but by way of fudge more than anything.

     

    I have created a list view in sharepoint of the data I am interested containing only a "unique reference" field along with all the metadata items that i need that I am unable to pull back via the sharepoint list connector. I have set this view to have no pagination and no group by options selected.

     

    I am then able to parse this table into Power Bi using the web connector and add this to the data model accordingly.

     

    Whilst this does give me a work around and a way forward it still seems to show that there are still issues with SharePoint and how PowerBi connects to it. I would appreciate further inputs if anyone feels they can offer a solution that does this "natively" with SharePoint lists or some other method.

  • v-yulgu-msft's avatar
    v-yulgu-msft
    Microsoft Employee
    8 years ago

    Hi martinrowe,

     

    In my test, I could fetch the Managed Metadata column in Power BI desktop(my desktop version: 2.48.4792.481 64-bit  July 2017). Did you use the 'SharePoint online list' connector provided by Power BI desktop to get data from SharePoint list?

     

    Besides, for your second question, someone has submitted a similar idea here, you can click to vote it up.

     

    Best regards,
    Yuliana Gu