Reports and Dataset Tables from Power BI

Connect to the Power BI business intelligence tool to import your Power BI assets into Ataccama ONE. The imported assets appear on the Reports tab, and the tables of each dataset (called a semantic model in Power BI) are imported as separate catalog items. This article explains how to work with Power BI assets in ONE.

Limitations

The connection is unidirectional, which means you cannot build your reports in Power BI based on the catalog items from ONE, only store the preview of the reports created in Power BI.
We don’t recommend renaming your workspaces, projects, or datasets in Power BI after the import.

Once a workspace, project, or dataset is renamed, duplicates of all associated catalog items are created in ONE and the original catalog items stop receiving updates. Additionally, any custom information (such as terms, stewardship, and relationships) is not transferred to the duplicates.

However, if renaming a workspace, project, or dataset cannot be avoided, you should:
- Manually add any custom information from the original catalog items to the new duplicates.
- Delete the original catalog items. This can be done by deleting the old location associated with the workspace in ONE.
If you are using the incognito mode in your browser, you cannot see previews of your reports.
Profiling and data quality evaluation of dataset tables require a Power BI Premium, Premium Per User, or Fabric capacity. See Profile and monitor dataset tables.

Prerequisites

To work with reports from Power BI, you need to set up a connection between the tool and ONE.

To do this, follow the corresponding instructions depending on where your Power BI solution is deployed:

Power BI Connection - For cloud deployments.
Power BI Report Server Connection - For on-premise deployments.

Update reports

After the connection to Power BI is set up, you can also manually import reports from your BI tool instead of waiting for the scheduled update.

Go to Data Catalog > Catalog Items > Reports.
Select Add reports.
Select the Power BI connection from the list.
Select Continue and choose one or several reports to import to ONE.

The available reports depend on the structure of Power BI. This means you can import reports on several levels: the whole Workspace, a particular Dataset, a Dashboard, or a Report.

You can either select the whole workspace and proceed to the next step, or expand the list to select specific items. When you import a workspace, dataset, or dashboard, all the lower-layer items are imported as well. Importing a dataset also imports its tables as catalog items (see Power BI dataset tables).
Select Add reports.

The reports are now available on the Reports tab.
Optionally, you can now proceed with exploring the report or editing the report metadata. See Reports.

Alternatively, select the import icon next to the report to import its metadata or the eye icon to preview its content.

Power BI dataset tables

Importing a Power BI dataset also brings its tables into the catalog, where you can preview, profile, and monitor them. Dataset tables are imported only from Power BI (cloud), not from Power BI Report Server.

Find dataset table catalog items

Each dataset table is imported as a catalog item of type Power BI table. To find these catalog items:

Go to Data Catalog > Sources.
Open your Power BI source.
On the Overview tab, in Locations, select Workspaces.
In Locations, select the location with the same name as the dataset.

The location details open, with the tables listed in Data Catalog Items.

How dataset tables are imported

The columns and measures of each table become attributes of the corresponding catalog item.

How columns are imported

Each column’s Power BI data type is mapped to a ONE data type as follows:

String, and any type not listed here: STRING
Int64: LONG
Double and Decimal: FLOAT
Boolean: BOOLEAN
DateTime: DATETIME
Binary: BINARY

How measures are imported

Measures are calculations such as totals or averages, not stored data, so they are imported as attributes with the GENERIC data type. Measure attributes are listed in the catalog but they are not profiled or checked by data quality rules.

Profile and monitor dataset tables

You can profile dataset tables, evaluate data quality (DQ) rules on them, and add them to monitoring projects in the same way as database tables, except for measures (see How measures are imported).

Profiling and DQ evaluation require additional setup by your administrators. For the requirements, setup instructions, and sizing guidance, see Enable profiling and data quality for dataset tables. If profiling fails, see Troubleshooting.

Was this page useful?