Quickbase has released a native connector to the Power BI Platform that allows for an easy to set up data transfer. If you are using Quickbase and Office 365, this is for you.
As always, we are here to help if needed. Read on to learn more.
Click here to see how we can help connect Quickbase and Power BI!
What is the Power BI Connector?
The Quickbase Power BI Connector enables Power BI users to pull Quickbase data into their models, using the friendly, native Power BI table navigator experience! The connector was developed with the Quickbase no code/low code community in mind; allowing users to design reports in Quickbase. These reports can then be consumed directly in Power BI without having to write queries and do manual data transformations, like some of you have been doing with the web connector.
You can learn more about Power BI here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
How Does it work and what can it do?
Step 1: Within the connector, users supply an application URL
Step 2: Then the users are asked to supply a user token for that application*
*If you will be using the same token to load multiple applications into Power BI, choose the first option to apply the token to all applications supplied within your Quickbase realm. If you will be loading apps that require different user tokens, then choose the third option from above.
Step 3: Users will be presented with a list of all tables within the application + all table reports within those tables*
- Users may pick 1 to many reports across the application’s tables. Their underlying query/clist will be used to query the data from Quickbase
- You can even search for reports by name, and preview your data within the table navigator
Other Great Features
- Scheduled Refresh! Refreshes of data can be scheduled directly within Power BI Service.
- Automatic query pagination for large data sets – the connector can load tables typically too large to report on in native Quickbase!
- Conversion of timestamps to human readable dates, date/times (in UTC)
- Supporting native address fields for map/GIS reports
- Auto-refresh on report columns – users may add/remove* columns from their reports in Quickbase, and the native Power BI refresh feature will honor this change
*Removing columns is NOT recommended as this could break reports, visuals, etc.*
Limitations
- User fields will be returned as userIDs – users must create a text formula for each user field to obtain a human readable name
- Rich text, Formula-Rich Text will be pulled as is with HTML markup. Users may convert to HTML within PBI, like so.
- The following field types are not supported (i.e. returned ‘as is’ via API responses): vcard, ical, report link, file attachment
- Dates, Date/Times will show time in UTC, users will have to use PQ/DAX functions to convert to their preferred time zone
- Reports with custom columns will be filtered from the table navigator — users must make custom columns into native formulas within that table
- Tables with duplicate column names (known Quickbase bug) will generate an error. This situation generally occurs when a user creates a lookup/summary field with the same name as an existing field in a table.
Click here to see how we can help connect Quickbase and Power BI!