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Baptiste_Med's avatar
Baptiste_Med
New Member
2 years ago
Solved

How to choose a Power BI connector

Good morning every one,

 

I'm in charge of the replacement of field service managent software we actually use. I will soon have to evaluate many solutions that often offers a Power BI connector to get data from their database.

 

We actually get data from this software because we use them for custom reporting.

This fonctionnality is not available in the FSM software.

 

I don't know if their connector are equivalent, like a standard sold by Microsoft, or if it a development of their own.

 

If some of you use or develop Power BI connector, would you please let me know what are the common tricks to avoid.

What parameter you check if you have to set a connector, what gave you headhache 😅 ?

 

I have some examples :

 

One of the supplier will allow me to connect to a Power BI workspace of is own.

I don't know if I will be allowed to managed all the queries, dataset, data flow and reports as I actually do on my own Power BI worskpace.

 

Data refresh frequency is also a big topic, actually we workd well with one daily refresh. Is there other parameter for data frequency to be aware of ?

 

Is there other situation you had experimented that gave you some troubles in your activity ?

 

If you have any litterature, video, article that explains this, I will be please to read it.  

 

Thanks a lot for your time.

Need Help
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    2 years ago

    Hi Baptiste_Med,

    #1, If you use web connector with rest api to get data, the report data will update when you refresh on the report.

    #2, I suppose the most general difficult parts are token expired and API paginated. The forum include lots of sample about handle API token expired and result paginations.

    For API token expired issue, you can add the getting token processing before the API usage, then power query will get the latest token for the following API usages every time you refresh on the query tables.

    For Api pagination, you can check at the official document if it helps:

    Handling paging for Power Query connectors - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

    #3, This should based on the api definition, normally they will has some difference on token usage, where the request parameter sent and authorization methods.

    For example: 

    The Datasource A API required users send the authorization key in the header with specific format : "XXX-Key=xxxx".
    Datasource B include a login method and it required users send the required information(user id, security id, security token) in the body with Json format and convert to base64 encode to getting the access token. (other API required the access token)

    Regards,

    Xiaoxin Sheng

4 Replies

    • Baptiste_Med's avatar
      Baptiste_Med
      New Member
      2 years ago

      Hi Anonymous ,

       

      thank you for you answer.

       

      Yes many of them allow an API, I have no clue for now of how REST API work.

       

      Does it just pull every information every day ? If you use API on some of your project, did you encounter any difficulties ?

       

      Is there different type of API ?

       

      Thank you.

      Regards,

      Baptiste

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        Not applicable
        2 years ago

        Hi Baptiste_Med,

        #1, If you use web connector with rest api to get data, the report data will update when you refresh on the report.

        #2, I suppose the most general difficult parts are token expired and API paginated. The forum include lots of sample about handle API token expired and result paginations.

        For API token expired issue, you can add the getting token processing before the API usage, then power query will get the latest token for the following API usages every time you refresh on the query tables.

        For Api pagination, you can check at the official document if it helps:

        Handling paging for Power Query connectors - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

        #3, This should based on the api definition, normally they will has some difference on token usage, where the request parameter sent and authorization methods.

        For example: 

        The Datasource A API required users send the authorization key in the header with specific format : "XXX-Key=xxxx".
        Datasource B include a login method and it required users send the required information(user id, security id, security token) in the body with Json format and convert to base64 encode to getting the access token. (other API required the access token)

        Regards,

        Xiaoxin Sheng