Power BI Connector and Quickbase

Note: Microsoft Power BI is a third-party tool. To use this connector, you must have a license or access to Power BI. For more details, review your Office 365 subscription.

Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform on which you can aggregate and analyze by creating visualizations which you can share. The Quickbase connector is available in the Power BI desktop, and enables you to access all of your Quickbase data directly from within the Power BI interface (table navigator) to quickly create powerful reports and visualizations. After you connect to your Quickbase data from Power BI, you can also merge it with data from other tables and sources to create even deeper insights.

Recommendation: The Quickbase Power BI connector can quickly process large data sets. However for the best application scale and performance, we recommend streamlining the report columns and records filters to ensure that you load only the necessary data into Power BI. You should use the List All reports option sparingly.

Quickbase Power BI connector features and functionality

The Quickbase Power BI connector provides the following functionality:

Authenticates with specified Quickbase applications by using user tokens
Connects exactly to the correct Quickbase data by using pre-built reports in the Quickbase app
Quickly refreshes both large and small data sets from Quickbase
Automatically updates both data and report columns. As you add columns to your reports in Quickbase, the native Power BI refresh feature updates the changes.

For example, you can use these features to add power to the following Quickbase use cases:

Create and share report and chart types that are not supported by native Quickbase

Merge data from multiple sources to analyze processes that span across multiple systems

Convert timestamps to dates and times that are easy to read

Use native Quickbase address fields to create map and geographic information system (GIS) reports

Note: For Quickbase reports that are being used by Power BI, we recommend caution when making changes to the reports' configuration because changes may inadvertently break the Power BI features dependent on those reports.

How to use the Quickbase Power BI connector

To use the Quickbase Power BI connector:

Using Power BI, select Get Data and provide an application URL and a user token to access the data within the app.
Power BI displays a list of tables within the app, and all of the table reports within those tables.
You can select one or more reports from the app's available tables.
You can now create your own visualization to analyze the data in Power BI.

How the Quickbase Power BI connector interprets your data

The connector supports reports containing report formulas. It also handles Quickbase data in the following ways:

Ask the user reports are omitted to prevent confusion
Record ID# fields are formatted as integers
Checkbox fields are formatted as Boolean and will display as TRUE/FALSE within Power BI
Durations are converted to days instead of the native API response of milliseconds

Quickbase Power BI connector limitations

The following limitations exist for the Quickbase Power BI connector:

User fields are returned as user IDs. To convert to an easily readable field, you must create a text formula for each user field.
Rich text and formula-rich text is rendered similarly to HTML markup. For details about how to convert text to HTML within the Power BI connector, click here.
These field types are not supported and are returned 'as is' through API responses: vcard, ical, report link, and file attachment.
Dates and date/times originate from the UTC time zone. To convert to your preferred time zone, use power query or DAX functions.
Tables containing duplicate column names generate an error. This typically occurs when you create a lookup/summary field that has the same name as an existing field in the table.

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