Microsoft Power BI (Azure) connection

To access your data in Power BI Pro or Premium, create a connection asset for it.

Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics solution that includes products and services for business intelligence (BI) reporting and data visualization. The qualifier Azure describes the extraction mode that is used to extract business intelligence report definitions. Automatic extraction connects to Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium through the Azure Active Directory.

Prerequisite

Create an application in the Microsoft Azure portal.

Create a connection to Microsoft Power BI (Azure)

To create the connection asset, you need the following connection details:

Directory ID: Azure Active Directory tenant ID
Application ID: Azure application ID
Client secret: Azure client secret
Username and Password for Azure

For Credentials, you can use secrets if a vault is configured for the platform and the service supports vaults. For information, see Using secrets from vaults in connections.

Choose the method for creating a connection based on where you are in the platform

In a project
Click Assets > New asset > Connect to a data source. See Adding a connection to a project.

In the Platform assets catalog
Click New connection. For more information, see Adding platform connections.

Next step: Add assets from the connection

Run metadata import to add assets and lineage information to a catalog.

Where you can use this connection

You can use the Microsoft Power BI (Azure) connection in the following workspaces and tools:

Catalogs

Platform assets catalog

Data lineage

Metadata import (lineage) (IBM Knowledge Catalog and Manta Data Lineage)

Restrictions

Connection testing when you create or update the connection doesn't work for this connection. A connection is validated when you set up a metadata import that uses the connection.

Configuring lineage metadata import for Microsoft Power BI (Azure)

When you create a metadata import for the Microsoft Power BI (Azure) connection, you can set options specific to this data source, and define the scope of data for which lineage is generated. For details about metadata import, see Designing metadata imports.

Scope of lineage metadata import

Include and exclude lists: You can include or exclude assets up to the report level. Provide workspaces and reports in the format workspace/report. Each part is evaluated as a regular expression. Assets which are added later in the data source will also be included or excluded if they match the conditions specified in the lists.
Example values:

myWorkspace/: all reports in myWorkspace workspace.
myWorkspace2/.*: all reports in myWorkspace2 workspace.
myWorkspace3/myReport1: myReport1 report from myWorkspace3 workspace.
myWorkspace4/myReport[1-5]: any report in my myWorkspace4 with a name that starts with myReport and ends with a digit between 1 and 5.

If a report matches both include and exclude pattern, the exclude pattern has higher priority and the report is excluded from extraction.

External inputs

You can provide PowerBI Reports, Dataflows, and PowerQuery scripts as external inputs in a ZIP file. The folder must have the following structure:

workspace_name - A folder with the workspace name.
[report_name].pbix - A PowerBI report.
[dataflow_ID].dataflow - A PowerBI dataflow.
[report_name].txt - Manually extracted PowerQuery scripts for a specific report.
[report_name].rdl - A paginated report.
metadata.json - A file with metadata. If this file is provided, it overrides metadata that is extracted automatically for the specified workspace.

Learn more

Importing metadata

Related connection: Microsoft Power BI Desktop connection

Parent topic: Supported connections