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

⇱ Import Smartsheet Data into the Power BI Service for Visualizations

Import Smartsheet Data into the Power BI Service for Visualizations

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Smartsheet Data and provide access to live Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Smartsheet in CData Connect AI, publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI Service and then create reports on Smartsheet data in the Power BI service.

About Smartsheet Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Smartsheet. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Read and write attachments, columns, comments and discussions.
  • View the data in individuals cells, report on cell history, and more.
  • Perform Smartsheet-specific actions like deleting or downloading attachments, creating, copying, deleting, or moving sheets, and moving or copying rows to another sheet.

Users frequently integrate Smartsheet with analytics tools such as Tableau, Crystal Reports, and Excel. Others leverage our tools to replicate Smartsheet data to databases or data warehouses.


Getting Started


Configure Smartsheet Connectivity for Power BI Service

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Smartsheet" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Smartsheet.

    Smartsheet uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, register an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

    However, for testing purposes you can instead use the Personal Access Token you get when you create an application; set this to the OAuthAccessToken connection property.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Smartsheet Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

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

Publish a Dataset from Power BI Desktop

Once you connect to Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet data in the Power BI service

Live Access to Smartsheet Data from Cloud Applications

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