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 instant access to Salesforce data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to build and publish a dataset from Salesforce data in Power BI and then create reports on Salesforce data in the Power BI service.
CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL interface for Salesforce, allowing you to easily build reports from live Salesforce data in Power BI — with no need to replicate the data. As you build visualizations, Power BI generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Salesforce, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Salesforce data.
About Salesforce Data Integration
Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:
- Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
- Create atomic and batch update operations.
- Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
- Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
- See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
- Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.
Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:
- other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
- preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
- databases and data warehouses.
For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.
Getting Started
NOTE: You can also import Salesforce data into Power BI through Connect AI (instead of using the on-premise gateway). Read how in the related Knowledge Base article.
Configure Salesforce Connectivity for Power BI
Connectivity to Salesforce from Power BI is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Salesforce data from Power BI, we start by creating and configuring a Salesforce connection.
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Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection
- Select "Salesforce" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source
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Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Salesforce.
👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Connection page and update the User-based permissions.
👁 Updating permissions
Add a Personal Access Token
When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.
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Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
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On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
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Give the PAT a name and click Create.
👁 Creating a new PAT
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The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.
With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Salesforce data from Power BI.
Connecting to Connect AI from Power BI
To connect to and visualize live Salesforce data in the Power BI service, install the on-premise data gateway, add a data source to the gateway from the Power BI service, and publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the service.
Install the On-Premises Data Gateway
The Microsoft on-premise data gateway provides secure data transfer between connected data sources and various cloud-based Microsoft tools and platforms. You can read more about the gateway in the Microsoft documentation.
You can download and install the gateway from the Power BI service:
- Log in to PowerBI.com.
- Click the Download menu and click Data Gateway.
👁 Download the Data Gateway
- Follow the instructions for installation, making note of the name of the gateway.
Add Salesforce as a Data Source to the Power BI Service
Once you have installed the data gateway, you add Connect AI as a data source to the Power BI service:
- Log in to PowerBI.com.
- Click the Settings menu and click "Manage gateways."
👁 Settings -> Manage gateways
- Click "ADD DATA SOURCE" and configure the connection to Connect AI:
- Set Data Source Name to something like ConnectCloudSalesforce.
- Choose SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
- Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333.
- Set Database to the name of your Salesforce connection (e.g. Salesforce1).
- Set Authentication Method to Basic.
- Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
- Set Password to the PAT for the user above.
Publish a Dataset from Power BI Desktop
With the gateway installed and Connect AI added as a datasource to the Power BI service, you can publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the service.
- Open Power BI, click Get Data -> More, then select SQL Server database, and click Connect.
👁 Create a new connection in Power BI
- Set the connection properties and click OK.
- Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333.
- Set Database to the name of your Salesforce connection (e.g. Salesforce1).
- Set Data Connectivity mode to DirectQuery*.
👁 Connect to CData Connect AI instance
* DirectQuery enables live query processing and real-time visualizations of Salesforce data.
- In the authentication wizard, select Database, set the User name and Password properties, and click Connect.
👁 Authenticate the connection
- Select the table(s) to visualize in the Navigator dialog.
- In the Query Editor, you can customize your dataset by filtering, sorting, and summarizing Salesforce columns. Click Edit to open the query editor. Right-click a raw to filter the rows. Right-click a column header to perform options like the following:
- Change column data types
- Remove a column
- Group by columns
Power BI detects each column's data type from the Salesforce metadata reported by Connect AI.
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 Salesforce data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data Retrieval query.
Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.
- Define any relationships between the selected entities on the Relationships tab.
- Click Publish (from the Home menu) and select a Workspace.
Build Reports and Dashboards on Salesforce Data in the Power BI Service
Now that you have published a dataset to the Power BI service, you can create new reports and dashboards based on the published data:
- Log in to PowerBI.com.
- Click Workspaces and select a workspace.
- Click Create and select Report.
- Select the published dataset for the report.
👁 Select a dataset
- Choose fields and visualizations to add to your report.
👁 Visualizing Salesforce data in the Power BI service
Live Access to Salesforce Data from Cloud Applications
Now you have a direct connection to live Salesforce data from the Power BI service. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Salesforce data.
To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.
