Power BI

Elizabeth Riebeling

I JUST started to create projects (it is a huge project with 300 sheets with reports and all that jazz) with Smartsheet for my Team. Now our company is adapting Power BI and from what I hear, they want to use it for reporting and Dashboards.

Has anyone been able to successfully link Smartsheet to Power BI?

How was your experience? Pros, Cons, etc.

Chris Mondeau

@elizabeth.riebeling67146

IMO while PowerBI can be used for dashboards, it can get expensive quickly if everyone needs to have access to a private dashboard (I think it requires a licensed seat to access, otherwise you need to publish the URL).

I look at PBI as an analytics tool more than a dashboard tool, as being able to drill down in the reports to discover trends is where PBI shines.

Granted you will get more visual styles in PBI than in Smartsheet, but for our organization most team members are fine with just a static report or simple chart.

The connection is relatively simple. I recommend using reports that source workspaces alongside some clever filters. This will keep your connections dynamic so you're not constantly editing PBI queries every time you need to add a new sheet to the workspace.

Chris Mondeau

@elizabeth.riebeling67146

IMO while PowerBI can be used for dashboards, it can get expensive quickly if everyone needs to have access to a private dashboard (I think it requires a licensed seat to access, otherwise you need to publish the URL).

I look at PBI as an analytics tool more than a dashboard tool, as being able to drill down in the reports to discover trends is where PBI shines.

Granted you will get more visual styles in PBI than in Smartsheet, but for our organization most team members are fine with just a static report or simple chart.

The connection is relatively simple. I recommend using reports that source workspaces alongside some clever filters. This will keep your connections dynamic so you're not constantly editing PBI queries every time you need to add a new sheet to the workspace.

Elizabeth Riebeling

Thank you and I love your opinion :)

I created Workspaces, reports and a Dashboard that pulled from them in Smartsheet. I presented it (it looked great) but leadership wants Power BI for these dashboards :(

The whole company will be using Power BI so I have to learn how to make it work.

Chris Mondeau

@elizabeth.riebeling67146 sure thing! There may also be a virtual user group coming up that covers PowerBI.

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=29a069757add4cbfb74cfe26a18f5f34&utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=virtual-user-group-edu&mem=link&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRReU0yUTJObVEyWW1OaiIsInQiOiJET2RoOEd2M0MxSEdSSk9zOCtmVGF1OTRveGVCZ0gwNDFVRjdhTU0wZUJKUUk2Zms4TFVUeEZPK29xaDIyUmYrdFhaNWNHeGxhTFl2c094RlpMbGkrQW9PYXVMY2tXR2JEeVNReFwvbnN6cTlFNXY1VTlSNlNYTlplWGJXVjM1amkifQ%3D%3D

If not maybe @James Allen can point us in the right direction or give some insight. Thanks!

Sandra Fernandez

Hi elizabeth.rieveling 67146, I've expended several hours trying to figure out how to connect Power BI dashboards with Smartsheet, followed instructions but when i got to the point to embed the url and I'm getting the below message. do you have any steps that you can share with me. Any help with be greatly appreciated!