Forum Discussion
Using Active Directory domains and forests as a data source
Yes, the overall process would be the same. You have Active Directory connector in Power Query (at least for Excel 2013). And you would still do the append query process. The reports and sharing would be a bit different, you would create Power View tabs in Excel for your reports, put the Excel file on One Drive and then connect to it, pin your visualizations to dashboards, etc. Alternatively, you could just import the Excel file into a dataset and then use Power BI Service to create reports and then pin visualizations to dashboards.
I don't see a real advantage to use one or the Excel or Desktop. If you are talking about the approach of using Append queries, I am recommending that approach because I don't know of any other way to do it in Power Query/Power BI. The AD connector only allows you to connect to a single domain as far as I am aware so you would have to do each one individually and then either deal with 60 different tables or append/merge them together.
Haha, that was a fun read.
Now if I used Power Query in Excel how would this be any easier? And why would you recommend that approach?
Yes, the overall process would be the same. You have Active Directory connector in Power Query (at least for Excel 2013). And you would still do the append query process. The reports and sharing would be a bit different, you would create Power View tabs in Excel for your reports, put the Excel file on One Drive and then connect to it, pin your visualizations to dashboards, etc. Alternatively, you could just import the Excel file into a dataset and then use Power BI Service to create reports and then pin visualizations to dashboards.
I don't see a real advantage to use one or the Excel or Desktop. If you are talking about the approach of using Append queries, I am recommending that approach because I don't know of any other way to do it in Power Query/Power BI. The AD connector only allows you to connect to a single domain as far as I am aware so you would have to do each one individually and then either deal with 60 different tables or append/merge them together.