Forum Discussion

jhampson's avatar
jhampson
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago

Connect Odata resource from Power BI Services

Is there an app that will allow me to connect to an oData resource via Power BI services?  I know I can do it via the Power Bi Desktop, but what about Power Bi online services?   thanks   Jeff
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jhampson's avatar
jhampson
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago

I want to connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM online.

I've seen one of the content packs - it creates an SQL server in Azure, a kind of datawarehouse. Thing is.. there are apps for Dynamics in get data, only those apps don't seem to pull any custom data.

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
9 years ago

Hi jhampson,

Except the Microsoft Dynamics CRM content pack, there is no method to connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM from Power BI Service. Why not use Power BI Desktop?

Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

  • jhampson's avatar
    jhampson
    Frequent Visitor
    9 years ago

    If all I use is Power BI desktop I have to keep it on in order to refresh the data. The point is that I want the data to up date on its own in the cloud and not require any onpremise connection to refresh it. I want a SaaS solution.

     

    Now I did discover that when I upload a report created in Desktop to Online my Odata connection to that data source goes with it, and I can schedule a data refresh that way. Only today, however I discovered that my refresh didnt automatically run on its own, due to my personal gateway being offline... ok now need to figure out what that is....

    Is my personal gateway my power Bi desktop?

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      9 years ago

      An OData connection to CRM online shouldn't require a gateway at all. I have a dataset connected to our dynamics 365 that updates on a schedule every day and has no gateway involved. Does your dataset include other sources aside from your CRM odata?

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      9 years ago

      Hi jhampson,

      Power BI personal gateway is used  to refresh dataset, it is different from your Power BI Desktop. You can check more details about Power BI gateway from this article:https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-gateway-onprem/.

      As other post, if your dataset contains on-premises data sources, Power BI gateway is required when you refresh dataset.

      Please check if Power BI personal gateway is running properly on your computer, you can check if data management gateway service is on as shown in the following screenshot.

       


      Besides, you can use on-premises gateway to refresh your dataset. Just install on-premises gateway and configure it, then add all data sources of your dataset under the registered gateway.



      Thanks,
      Lydia Zhang

      • jhampson's avatar
        jhampson
        Frequent Visitor
        9 years ago

        I gotcha...


        So this is what I did. Because I couldnt get the data labels for the Option Sets I was using from Dynamics, and when you "Enter Data" natively in Power Bi, you can't add more rows later, I created external Excel files to hold the value and label data for each of my Option Sets. That must of been why Power Bi told me I had to use a gateway.

        Even the personal gateway would not refresh my data when I was using external Excel files, I had to use the native Power Bi "Enter Data" tool to make it work.

         

        I do find that not being able to natively get the Option Set data from Dynamics is increadibly annoying. I am moving our organization from Salesforce to Dynamics.. and I could do that very very easily in Salesforce. Working with Dynamics has been painful in comparision, which seems counter-intuitive being that Dynamics is a Microsoft product.