Athlete Report Management System using Power BI

[big_ozzie]

Hello, I am very new to Power BI, and I'm helping my university's athletic departments create a central report system using Power BI. Each athletic program uses various technological devices (Catapult, Strive, NordBord, etc.) to capture human performance data from their athletes. Some of these devices have APIs, but I am concerned with the devices that require coaches to manually export data. For these devices, coaches will need to export data files from their tech device and import the data files to some data management system that can be integrated with Power BI. This process of exporting and importing data needs to be as streamlined and easy as possible. Most of their devices export data as a CSV file. Any suggestions for a cloud based data management system that could accomplish this that can also be integrated with Power BI? Am I even using the correct language?

[Rohit1974]

Hi @big_ozzie 

We are working on a platform for just this scenario which is to GA in April 2021. Currently we are woring with a few Pro Teams as early adopters. Would love to connect to understand your scenario and show you what we have to see if it fits yoru needs. From what you have described here. Amog other things it automatically ingests all CSV files, co relates them and makes them available to you in the BI tooling of your choice. So trainners and coaches just need ot drop daily CSV files in a folder and the reports automatically refresh and the data is available for you to build new reports across the different CSV files without having to do any mannual merging of the data. 

Our current customers get the Catapult, firstbeat, polar  and statsport data after every trainning and game and use our platform to automatically ingest and corelate it. At the other end on our platform their BI reports are automatically refreshed with the latest training data and they can create new reports in the BI tools of thier choice. 

You can reach me at rohit@cloud-hangar.com

Cheers!

Rohit

[v-lionel-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @big_ozzie ,

For the data exported by different devices, I suggest that sports coaches merge them into a .csv file and upload it to OneDrive for Business, and then you only need to import this .csv file into Power BI Desktop.

This is the easiest way to import and export.

Of course, a more ideal solution is for the coach to import the collected data into the cloud database, but this will increase the difficulty of the coach's work.

Best regards,
Lionel Chen

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[big_ozzie]

Bear with me, I have the most basic understanding of this. So right, one goal is to create something which burdens coaches the least. I feel that the least burdensome solution would be one that only requires coaches to export their device's data, import it somewhere, and be done. Anything else is handled and reports are populated in Power BI. Coaches could do this at any frequency, updating the storage file with Power BI following suit. For example, OneDrive file storage was actually initially considered as a simple solution. A coach uploads their data to a file stored on OneDrive that is tied to Power BI. I guess this would be considered "loosely structured data storage." 

I looked at Power BI Dataflows. What do you think is the best way to create a new dataflow for this purpose?

[lbendlin]

Assuming that all of these devices use different formats for their CSV you will want to look at some loosely structured data storage (ironically Power BI Dataflows actually fall into that category as well) rather than a database storage solution.  Think of it from the perspective of the coaches, and create a solution that is the least burdensome for them (plus, you MUST find a value add for the coaches else they will not be interested in collecting the data reliably)

Power BI itself has no problem to ingest these files and combine them in a meaningful way. Make sure the file names (or the file contents) contain enough information to identify the department, device, and date.