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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/slack-cloud-powerbi-service.rst

⇱ Import Slack Data into the Power BI Service for Visualizations

Import Slack Data into the Power BI Service for Visualizations

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Slack Data and provide access to live Slack data for custom reports in the Power BI Service.

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 Slack data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Slack in CData Connect AI, publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI Service and then create reports on Slack data in the Power BI service.

Configure Slack Connectivity for Power BI Service

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Slack" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Slack. Slack uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties. See the Getting Started section of the help documentation for an authentication guide. 👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Slack Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

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

Publish a Dataset from Power BI Desktop

Once you connect to Slack in Connect AI, you can create a dataset in Power BI desktop and publish the dataset to the Power BI service.

  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 Slack data from Power BI
  6. Define any relationships between the selected entities on the Relationships tab.
  7. Click Publish (from the Home menu) and select a Workspace.

Build Reports and Dashboards on Slack 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:

  1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
  2. Click Workspaces and select a workspace.
  3. Click Create and select Report.
  4. Select the published dataset for the report. 👁 Select a dataset
  5. Choose fields and visualizations to add to your report. 👁 Visualizing Slack data in the Power BI service

Live Access to Slack Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Slack data from the Power BI service. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Slack 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.