If you're storing your KPIs like in-store sales, employee retention, sales from different regions, completion percentage of a goal, project man-hours spent, and so on in Power BI, you can get those values to be automatically updated in Cascade with this integration. Every time the value changes in the BI goal, Cascade automatically updates those for you. This integration not only simplifies processes but also leverages the advanced modelling capabilities of Power BI.
You can integrate any of these from your Power BI data with Cascade:
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Power BI Reports - The interactive portion of Power BI that end users make use of.
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Power BI Datasets - The data that powers your Power BI reports.
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Power BI Metrics (Previously known as Goals) - A feature added to the Power BI web app (app.powerbi.com) that makes monitoring specific data points much easier.
If you’re after the simplest method to integrate Power BI data with Cascade, we strongly recommend making use of Power BI’s Metrics functionality.
Connect Power BI Metrics to Cascade:
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Within the Power BI website (app.powerbi.com), click Metrics from the left navigation pane.
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Create a new scorecard to group together the metrics that you wish to sync.
To know more on the metrics functionality offered by Microsoft, please refer this article.
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With Power BI's API capabilities, extract the metrics added to the Scorecard and import those into Cascade.
If you are on our Enterprise+ Plan, we can support you in importing the data into your Metrics library or individual measures and actions. Get in touch and we can take you through it.
If you're not on an Enterprise+ plan, you can still leverage this functionality using Power Automate to update specific measures and actions using your Power BI data. Refer this article for steps.
Connect Power BI Dashboards and Datasets:
Integrating with a Power BI dashboard and a dataset are fundamentally the same. It involves three main steps:
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Connecting to the Power BI Dataset/Model: Collaboration with your IT or Business Analyst team may be necessary.
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Extracting DAX Queries: Use Power BI Desktop to access your report, then utilize the 'Performance Analyzer' under the Optimize tab to capture the DAX queries.
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Querying with DAX Expressions: These expressions can be integrated into Power Automate’s Run a query against a dataset action, with the output linked to Cascade.
If you do not need to apply any DAX to your dataset (perhaps it’s already formatted appropriately), you can use Excel’s own support for Power BI to import a dataset and then connect it to Cascade using our native Excel integration.
Connecting to and querying the dataset can be done via Power Automate, however extracting the DAX expressions from a report can be more challenging. The easiest method if you can access your report using Power BI Desktop (e.g. the Windows app, not in your browser) is:
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Open the report you wish to integrate with.
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Click Optimize from the top menu in Power BI.
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Click Performance analyzer - Note it opens a new side bar on the right hand side.
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Click Start Recording.
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Click Refresh Visuals.
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Locate the visual in the list that you wish to obtain the DAX for and click the + icon.
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Click Copy Query.
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Paste this query into the Power Automate's Run a query against a dataset.
The output is then passed onto Cascade's actions within Power Automate.
There are other ways to extract DAX from a report that are beyond the scope of this article. If you are on an Enterprise+ plan, we can support you with extracting DAX in bulk and utilizing it in a more dynamic way. Get in touch with us and we can take you through your options.