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Anonymous
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5 years ago

Using Logic Apps and Power BI for ETL

I currently use Power Automate to get daily logs from a third party service using the HTTP connector. The Power Automate flow returns around 20 separate json files per day. When combined the files provide the complete log for the day. The files have to be separated out to keep the GET request within the limit of the third party service. The files are saved in SharePoint and then combined in Power BI via a Dataflow that only combines the latest 15-days of data.

 

This approach has worked well for the use case but I have other similar use cases and I know they will put a strain on my Power Automate account and SharePoint. From time to time the writing (by Power Automate) or subsequent reading of the files (by the Dataflow) is impacted by SharePoint throttling. I feel I need to industrialise the approach and move away from using SharePoint as the repository.

 

I've looked through the Microsoft documentation for Power BI and Data Factory and I cannot pick a clear path. It is not clear to me that Data Factory will be able to get the data from the third party service. My current thinking is that I:

 

  • Convert my existing Power Automate flow to an Azure Logic App
  • Write the data to Azure Blob storage
  • Modify the combining Power BI dataflow to access the Blob Storage.

 

I could create a new Logic App for each additional use case.

 

The alternative seems to be to use Data Factory and then Power BI but then I am not clear whether I need to use a Logic App to stage the files first for Data Factory to consume. 

 

I do not need extra items like Synapse Analytics. Power BI is more than adequate. It is important that I save the daily snapshots as the third party service only holds data for 7-days.

 

What does the community advise?

 

 

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