salesforce credentials in Power Bi

[HarmVanG]

Hi there,

I'm currently running a pilot for my company using Power Bi as a reporting tool for Salesforce. I'm pretty new to this and I've got a few questions:

Is there a way to get Salesforce credentials linked to my Power Bi reports/data? I know that Rule Level Security (RLS) is an option, but I'd rather not use it, due to the fact that I'd be setting up security rules in two different applications which makes it not easy to manage security options.

At first I'll be setting up some initial reports for the business, however in the future we're intending to make Power Bi Self Service. I've got full access to all the data in Salesforce but what I'm wondering is when for example a regional manager logs connects to Salesforce via Power Bi, will he only be able to import his own data, or will he be able to import the entire dataset of the objects that he has access to? I'm guessing it's the first but I'd like to know for sure.

If someone could answer these questions, It would help me out a lot!

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @HarmVanG,

If each user retrieves data by connecting to Salesforce content pack using his/her own Salesforce.com account, the user will pull in the data to which he has access as smoupre's post.

However, if you set up Salesforce reports using your own Salesforce.com credential in Power BI, and share the reports to other users, you will need to use Row Level Security(RLS) to restrict data access for these users.


Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

[HarmVanG]

Hi @v-yuezhe-msft and @Greg_Deckler,

Thanks for your quick reactions to my questions, they've given me the answers I was looking for.

[Karen_Payne]

Hi @HarmVanG

Just curious, were you able to accomplish your goal of embedding your Power BI reports into Salesforce with user security?  If yes, would you mind sharing the details of your setup?  We are piloting the same type of environment you described in your post, and would very much appreciate any guidence you could provide.  

Thank you!

Karen

[HarmVanG]

Hi Karen,

Thanks for asking the question but currently embedding Power BI into Salesforce isn't in the scope of the pilot. When we started the pilot embedding Power BI into Salesforce wasn't supported yet. What I can tell you is how we've set up our reporting process.

Currently our IT/support team creates data models based on Salesforce objects because our Key Users don't have the modeling skills required. These data models are saved as Power BI templates (.Pbit) and then distributed among our Sales Regions via a sharepoint like solution.

Our Business/Key Users at that point can use the .Pbit files to retrieve the data model. At that point they are required to enter their Salesforce credentials to fill the data model with the data they have access to. At that point they can freely create reports and publish them to the Power BI Service workgroups.

There are some remarks to be made about our solution though:

- If an object has over 10 million rows, Power BI cannot handle it.

- Bi Directional (both) Cross Filtering does not work when there are loops in relationships and (our) Salesforce database has several loops. Since this feature is required to have a filter flow from "many to one" you need to carefully plan your data model. There's a white paper that explains how you can deal with this: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bidirectional-cross-filtering-whitepaper-2/

- Depending on the diversity of the requested reports this method may be a potential maintenance nightmare in time as it can quickly lead to a larger amount of data models that need to be maintained.

Currently we're still looking for ourselves what the best setup is so embedding Power BI into Salesforce is not something that is on our radar any time soon.

With Kind Regards,

Harm

[Greg_Deckler]

If your regional manager pulls data from Salesforce using his credentials, he will only pull in the information to which he has access.