Visualize Live Facebook Data in Power BI (via CData Connect AI)

Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get access to Facebook data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to use CData Connect to create a live connection to Facebook, connect to Facebook data from Power BI and then create reports on Facebook data in Power BI.

Configure Facebook Connectivity for Power BI

Connectivity to Facebook from Power BI is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Facebook data from Power BI, we start by creating and configuring a Facebook connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Facebook" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Facebook uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Facebook. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Facebook Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Facebook data from Power BI.

Query Facebook Tables

Follow the steps below to build a query to pull Facebook data into the report:

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Online Services -> CData Connect AI and click "Connect"
2. Click "Sign in" and authenticate with your CData Connect AI account 👁 Authenticating with Connect AI
   
3. After signing in, click "Connect" 👁 Connecting to Connect AI
   
4. Select tables in the Navigator dialog 👁 The available tables. (Salesforce tables are shown)
   
5. Click Load to establish the connection to your Facebook data from Power BI

Create Facebook Data Visualizations

After connecting to the data into Power BI, you can create data visualizations in the Report view by dragging fields from the Fields pane onto the canvas. Select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize along with the chart type.

Click Refresh to synchronize your report with any changes to the data.

Live Access to Facebook Data from Data Applications

With CData Connect AI you have a direct connection to Facebook data from Power BI. You can import more data, create new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Facebook data.

To get SQL data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources (including Facebook) directly from your on-premise BI, reporting, ETL and other data applications, visit the CData Connect AI page and start a free trial.