Power BI Scanner Connector: Overview

The Power BI Scanner connector should be used to catalog Power BI as a BI source in Alation. The connector catalogs Power BI objects such as workspaces, apps, dashboards, tiles, datasets, and reports. It enables end users to search and find Power BI objects from the Alation user interface. Create a ticket with Alation Support about receiving the Power BI Scanner OCF Connector package.

Team

The following administrators are required to install this connector:

• Alation Server Admin:

  • Installs the connector

  • Creates a Power BI source

  • Provisions Alation API tokens

• Azure administrator:

  • Creates an application in Azure Cloud

  • Provisions application ID, Tenant ID, and Secret Key

  • Provisions a security group and adds the created application to the group

• Power BI administrator:

  • Grants consent to access Power BI Admin APIs under the Power BI tenant settings

Scope

The table below shows what features are covered by the connector.

Feature	Scope	Availability
Power BI Instance	Catalog a Power BI instance that exists in an Azure Cloud environment	Yes
Workspaces	Catalog workspaces in Power BI	Yes
Classical workspaces	Catalog classical workspaces	Yes
Premium workspaces	Catalog premium workspaces	Yes
Workspace description	Extract the description of a workspace	No
Filter workspaces	Ability to include or exclude specific workspaces	Yes
Power BI reports	Catalog reports in a workspace	Yes
Power BI paginated reports	Catalog paginated reports in a workspace	Yes
Power BI reports from different workspace datasets	Catalog reports that are created from datasets under different workspace	Yes
Power BI report object data sources	Catalog datasets used by report objects	Yes
Paginated report object data sources	Catalog data source used by a paginated report	No
Report object lineage	Catalog the lineage of a report object	Yes*
Power BI dashboards	Catalog dashboards in a workspace	Yes
Power BI dashboard tiles	Catalog tiles of the dashboard	Yes
Power BI apps	Catalog Apps from Power BI	Yes
Power BI datasets	Catalog datasets from Power BI	Yes
Datasets without reports	Catalog datasets which does not have reports	Yes
Datasets with XMLA	Catalog datasets that are managed by XMLA endpoints	Yes
Datasets with incremental refresh	Catalog datasets with incremental refresh	Yes
Dataset fields	Catalog fields of dataset and DAX expressions of the fields	Yes
Report pages and visuals	Catalog pages and visuals of a report	No
Report object dimensions, measures and expressions	Catalog dimensions, measures and measure expressions of a report object	No
Report owner	Owners or authors who created a report	No
Dashboard object measures and dimensions	Catalog dimensions and measure of a dashboard object	No
Power BI dataflows	Catalog Power BI dataflows	No
Image preview	Ability to show a thumbnail image of reports and dashboards	No
Popularity	Popularity of dashboards and reports	No
Security replication	Replicate access control to reports and dashboards	No
Workspace description	Description of a workspace	No
Filter reports	Ability to include or exclude certain reports	No
Filter applications	Ability to include or exclude certain applications	No**

* - Report object lineage from Power BI dataset to the underlying datasource is available only if the dataset is created directly from the underlying datasource. Lineage does not work if the dataset is created from Power BI dataflows. Lineage is supported for MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, Azure Databricks, Snowflake, Redshift, Azure Synapse, Azure SQL DB, Teradata, and Google BigQuery.

** - Apps cannot be directly selected and filtered. Filtering of apps is done based on the workspaces selected in selective extraction. The apps that belong to the workspaces selected during selective extraction will only be cataloged in Alation.

*** - There are no set file size limitations for reports.

Power BI Objects Hierarchy

The following diagram shows the hierarchy of Power BI objects and how they are cataloged in Alation:

Power BI APIs

The following table lists the Power BI APIs used by this connector to extract metadata from Power BI:

Type	Category	API Endpoint	Description
Authentication	Authentication	https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/token	Gets the access token for authentication
Workspace	Admin	https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/groups	Gets workspaces
Apps	Admin	{BaseURL}/v1.0/myorg/admin/apps	Gets Apps using Admin API
Modified Workspaces	Scanner	{BaseURL}/v1.0/myorg/admin/workspaces/modified	Gets the list of modified Workspace IDs
Scan Request	Scanner	{BaseURL}/v1.0/myorg/admin/workspaces/getinfo ?lineage=True&datasourceDetails=true &datasetSchema=true&datasetExpressions=true	Gets the “scan id” required to get “scan status”
Scan Status	Scanner	{BaseURL}/v1.0/myorg/admin/workspaces/scanStatus/{scan_id}	Gets scan status for posted workspace IDs
Scan Result	Scanner	{BaseURL}/v1.0/myorg/admin/workspaces/scanResult/{scan_id}	If Scan status is “Success”, returns all the Power BI artifacts

The following are the {BaseURL} for Power BI Scanner:

• https://api.powerbi.com

• https://api.powerbigov.us - For Gov Cloud