Getting an ODBC Connection Created

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone, 

I am just starting a project where I will be implementing Power BI for an organization which is a franchise & has many branches but need some help & advice on the first steps which involve creating an ODBC link to gain access to the live data. 

To give some important context, the software providers to the organization recently announced that they were also going to start implementing Power BI for their clients (even though they failed at trying to make their own BI tool), and are therefore a competitor to me. 

The problem with this is that they are heavily involved in providing me access to the credit union's data. 

So what do I need help & expertise with? 

I need to know what exactly is required on my end to ensure I can use the ODBC link & that it can be created asap, someone told me that I need to be added as a user to the software's database & also added as a user within the software tool itself but I can't find any clear answers. I think I may need the expertise of a DBA but again, not sure. 

my goal is to ensure I have everything done on my side so I can push everything on them if they try & slow down the project.

It has been 2 weeks since my original call with the software providers so I want to send them a detailed email. Someone also told me that ODBC Connections can be created within 15 minutes, is this true? 

I am willing to pay someone a very fair hourly rate for some advice & also to maybe jump on some calls with them.

[lbendlin]

To create an ODBC connection you need to have the ODBC driver for their data soure installed, and then you run the 

app on your PC. There you can select the desired driver and specify the name and details of the connection. Best to create a System DSN.

Then in Power BI all you need is to select ODBC as the conenction type, and "dsn=name"  as the data source.