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

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

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

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use the CData Power BI Connector and CData Connect AI to integrate live Smartsheet data into custom reports in Power BI.

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 use CData Connect to create a live connection to Smartsheet, connect to Smartsheet data from Power BI and then create reports on Smartsheet data in Power BI.

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

Connectivity to Smartsheet from Power BI is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Smartsheet data from Power BI, 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 Power BI.

Query Smartsheet Tables

Follow the steps below to build a query to pull Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet data from Power BI

Create Smartsheet 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.

👁 Visualizing data in Power BI (Salesforce data is shown)

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

Live Access to Smartsheet Data from Data Applications

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

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