Google ANalytics 4 Broken connector

[adetogni]

Hi

I'm trying since AGES to make the GA4 connector working in PowerBI. It's frankly disappointing that in December 2024 MS has NOT YET FIXED this broken connector. The issue is simple: the connector DOES NOT READ pagination correctly.
If you get a very low amount of data (...one page more or less) it does work, whenever it's just a little bit more, it fails to get pages.
Here's a sample error



Anyone had success? 

I know that does exist a "custom connector" (https://cooriedug.com/custom-ga4-power-bi-connector-setup/) but I refuse to rely on a third party for GA4, which is the analytics tool that likely 95% of the world is using...

[Anonymous]

Hi @adetogni ,

You mentioned that 'getting a very low amount of data succeeds, but larger queries fail.' Have you considered the approach of 'narrowing the query scope and performing multiple queries instead of a single large-scale query'? This might help reduce the complexity of individual queries and improve their success rate.

Maybe this link will help you a lot:

Power Query Google Analytics connector - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,

Bof

[adetox]

Thanks but this approach cannot work as it's not scalable. You would need to constantly maintain each piece of data and change the date filter,whenever new data is coming. Besides that, it's not properly documented how to add a date filter, so by default it takes all the data.

[adetogni]

Also the page you link does use the profiler which I tried but I can't find the API call. Besides that, I still believe that it's broken since even little amount of Data, far far below the GA limits which I know and I use on other tools, throws an error

[adetogni]

Hi, getting subsets of that can theoretically maybe work, but practically not. Sometimes even one day of data is giving an error, depending on the dimensions. It's just not sustainable. And I would be forced to constantly modify the code. 

[adetogni]

So you run the PowerQuery, you get the preview and then when you try to load data you get this

I'm just trying to get Sessions on ONE dimension which is SessiouSourceMedium and date, starting from 20th of November...basically 10 days of data...

[adetogni]

Btw I'm NOT a new member, with the previous account I was one of the Community Expert here, helping hundreds of people, I'm using PBI since almost the inception of the product, so I know what I'm talking about! 

[CoderZen08]

Hi @adetogni as a workaround, maybe you can try to test your connection with a 3rd party tool. I've tried windsor.ai, supemetrics and funnel.io. I stayed with windsor because it is much cheaper so just to let you know other options. In case you wonder, to make the connection first search for the GA4 connector in the data sources list:

After that, just grant access to your GA4 account using your credentials, then on preview and destination page you will see a preview of your GA4 fields:

There just select the fields you need. Finally, just select PBI as your data destination and finally just copy and paste the url on PBI --> Get Data --> Web --> Paste the url.

[adetox]

Thanks for the ad, and I'm perfectly aware that there are third party tools (datorama, funnel, adverity, integrator.io, windsor, supermetrics...). There is plenty of third party tools available. It's just incredible that PBI ships with basic connector that is SO broken.