Azure Power BI Scanner OCF Connector: Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

You can use the Azure Power BI Scanner OCF connector to catalog Power BI as a BI source in Alation. The connector catalogs Power BI objects such as workspaces, apps, dashboards, tiles, dataflows, datasets, and reports. It enables end users to search and find Power BI objects from the Alation user interface.

This connector only supports Power BI Cloud and does not support on-premise instances of Power BI.

Note

Newer versions of the Power BI Scanner OCF connector may require newer Alation versions. See Azure Power BI Scanner OCF Connector Release Notes for information on version compatibility.

The connector is available as a Zip file that can be uploaded and installed in the Alation application. The latest connector package can be downloaded from the Alation Customer Portal. Ask an Alation admin with access to Customer Portal to download the connector from the Connectors section (Customer Portal > Connectors).

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. The connector supports both Pro and Premium instances of Power BI.

Yes

Workspaces

Catalog workspaces in Power BI.

Yes

Classical workspaces

Catalog classical 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

Large Size Power BI Reports

Catalog reports which are in large size.

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.

Cross-data-source lineage is supported for:

  • MySQL

  • SQL Server

  • Oracle

  • PostgreSQL

  • Azure Databricks

  • Snowflake

  • Amazon Redshift

  • Azure Synapse (from connector version 2.1.0)

  • Azure SQL DB (from connector version 2.1.0)

  • Azure Databricks Unity Catalog (from connector version 2.1.0)

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

Power BI dataflows

Catalog dataflows 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

Dataflow fields

Catalog fields of Dataflows

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

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

Filter reports

Ability to include or exclude certain reports

No

Filter applications

Ability to include or exclude certain applications

No***

Source Description

Extraction of the description from dataset fields

Yes****

* Lineage for datasets that are created through Power BI dataflows is available from Alation version 2023.3.3. In older versions, lineage for datasets is only available if a dataset is created directly from the underlying data source.

** Lineage for dataflows is supported starting with Alation version 2023.3.3.

*** Apps cannot be directly selected and filtered. Filtering of apps is done based on the workspaces selected for extraction. Only the apps that belong to extracted workspaces will be cataloged in Alation.

**** Extraction of source descriptions is supported from connector version 1.4.3.

Power BI Objects Hierarchy

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

../../../_images/powerb1.png

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 base URIs for Azure Power BI:

  • https://api.powerbi.com

  • https://api.powerbigov.us - For Azure Government Cloud