How to Create Power BI Visual Reports with Real-Time PingOne Data

CData Power BI Connectors provide self-service integration with Microsoft Power BI. The CData Power BI Connector for PingOne links your Power BI reports to real-time PingOne data. You can monitor PingOne data through dashboards and ensure that your analysis reflects PingOne data in real time by scheduling refreshes or refreshing on demand. This article details how to use the Power BI Connector to create real-time visualizations of PingOne data in Microsoft Power BI Desktop.

If you are interested in publishing reports on PingOne data to PowerBI.com, refer to our other Knowledge Base article.

Collaborative Query Processing

The CData Power BI Connectors offer unmatched performance for interacting with live PingOne data in Power BI due to optimized data processing built into the connector. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power BI to PingOne, the connector pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to PingOne and utilizes the embedded SQL Engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze PingOne data using native Power BI data types.

Connect to PingOne as a Power BI Data Source

Installing the Power BI Connector creates a DSN (data source name) called CData Power BI PingOne. This the name of the DSN that Power BI uses to request a connection to the data source. Configure the DSN by filling in the required connection properties.

You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure the DSN: From the Start menu, enter "ODBC Data Sources" and select the CData PowerBI REST DSN. Ensure that you run the version of the ODBC Administrator that corresponds to the bitness of your Power BI Desktop installation (32-bit or 64-bit). You can also use run the ConfigureODBC.exe tool located in the installation folder for the connector.

To connect to PingOne, configure these properties:

• : The region where the data for your PingOne organization is being hosted.
• : The type of authentication to use when connecting to PingOne.
• Either (required when using the default PingOne domain) or , configured as described below.

Configuring WorkerAppEnvironmentId

is the ID of the PingOne environment in which your Worker application resides. This parameter is used only when the environment is using the default PingOne domain (auth.pingone). It is configured after you have created the custom OAuth application you will use to authenticate to PingOne, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth Application in the Help documentation.

First, find the value for this property:

1. From the home page of your PingOne organization, move to the navigation sidebar and click Environments.
2. Find the environment in which you have created your custom OAuth/Worker application (usually Administrators), and click Manage Environment. The environment's home page displays.
3. In the environment's home page navigation sidebar, click Applications.
4. Find your OAuth or Worker application details in the list.
5. Copy the value in the Environment ID field. It should look similar to:
   

   WorkerAppEnvironmentId='11e96fc7-aa4d-4a60-8196-9acf91424eca'

Now set to the value of the Environment ID field.

Configuring AuthorizationServerURL

is the base URL of the PingOne authorization server for the environment where your application is located. This property is only used when you have set up a custom domain for the environment, as described in the PingOne platform API documentation. See Custom Domains.

Authenticating to PingOne with OAuth

PingOne supports both OAuth and OAuthClient authentication. In addition to performing the configuration steps described above, there are two more steps to complete to support OAuth or OAuthCliet authentication:

• Create and configure a custom OAuth application, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth Application in the Help documentation.
• To ensure that the driver can access the entities in Data Model, confirm that you have configured the correct roles for the admin user/worker application you will be using, as described in Administrator Roles in the Help documentation.
• Set the appropriate properties for the authscheme and authflow of your choice, as described in the following subsections.

OAuth (Authorization Code grant)

Set to OAuth.

Desktop Applications

Get and Refresh the OAuth Access Token

After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

• : GETANDREFRESH. To avoid the need to repeat the OAuth exchange and manually setting the each time you connect, use .
• : The Client ID you obtained when you created your custom OAuth application.
• : The Client Secret you obtained when you created your custom OAuth application.
• : The redirect URI you defined when you registered your custom OAuth application. For example: https://localhost:3333

When you connect, the driver opens PingOne's OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. The driver then completes the OAuth process:

1. The driver obtains an access token from PingOne and uses it to request data.
2. The OAuth values are saved in the location specified in , to be persisted across connections.

The driver refreshes the access token automatically when it expires.

For other OAuth methods, including Web Applications, Headless Machines, or Client Credentials Grant, refer to the Help documentation.

How to Query PingOne Tables

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

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Other -> CData PingOne.
2. Select CData PowerBI PingOne in the Data Source Name menu and select a data connectivity mode:
   Select Import if you want to import a copy of the data into your project. You can refresh this data on demand.
   Select DirectQuery if you want to work with the remote data.
3. Select tables in the Navigator dialog. 👁 The available tables. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

4. In the Query Editor, you can customize your dataset by filtering, sorting, and summarizing PingOne columns. Click Edit to open the query editor. Right-click a row to filter the rows. Right-click a column header to perform actions like the following:

   • Change column data types
   • Remove a column
   • Group by columns

   Power BI detects each column's data type from the PingOne metadata retrieved by the connector.

   Power BI records your modifications to the query in the Applied Steps section, adjusting the underlying data retrieval query that is executed to the remote PingOne data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data retrieval query.

   Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.

How to Create Data Visualizations in Power BI

After pulling the data into Power BI, you can create data visualizations in the Report view by dragging fields from the Fields pane onto the canvas. Follow the steps below to create a pie chart:

1. Select the pie chart icon in the Visualizations pane.
2. Select a dimension in the Fields pane: for example, Id.
3. Select a measure in the Fields pane: for example, Username.

👁 A pie chart showing Account Names and Annual Revenue from Salesforce.

You can change sort options by clicking the ellipsis (...) button for the chart. Options to select the sort column and change the sort order are displayed.

You can use both highlighting and filtering to focus on data. Filtering removes unfocused data from visualizations; highlighting dims unfocused data. You can highlight fields by clicking them:

👁 A highlighted account in a pie chart. (Salesforce is shown.)

You can apply filters at the page level, at the report level, or to a single visualization by dragging fields onto the Filters pane. To filter on the field's value, select one of the values that are displayed in the Filters pane.

👁 Accounts and Annual Revenue filtered by Industry. (Salesforce is shown.)

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

At this point, you will have a Power BI report built on top of live PingOne data. Learn more about the CData Power BI Connectors for PingOne and download a free trial from the CData Power BI Connector for PingOne page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.