Recommendation to report on Salesforce historical data

[Lucy_Lim]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction here. I need to build a report on Power BI with historical data coming from Salesforce. 

The Objective: Create a Power BI report using data from Salesforce where data needs to be "appended" every month to the dataset

What I've tried:

1. Connect to Salesforce with Power BI and retrieve my Salesforce data, however, as the Salesforce Reports API has a restriction that only supports up to 2,000 rows of data that's not a solution for me.
2. Using CSV plus append in Power BI- I exported data from Salesforce to a CSV file (3YearData), that contains data for the past 3 years and built the report in Power BI using that CSV. Then every month I would connect to Salesforce and append the data (MONTH1) for that given month in Power BI report. The problem is that the following month (MONTH2), as the CSV file (3YEARDATA) does not hold MONTH1, I have a gap for that month.

 For option 2. is there a way that I can write the MONTH1 data into the CSV file?

Possible Alternative:

Another option that I could try is using data from SQL. The data I need has been run and saved into a SQL database up until now, however the code is outdated and it would required some work. But if using a SQL connection is easier, I could try doing that.

Any suggestion please:

Could someone please advise if you have experience with something similar to this? 

Thank you so much in advance!

[QueryWhiz]

Hi @Lucy_Lim I know this reply is very late, but were you able to find a solution? I've used the Salesforce connector but I had some issues updating my data too. As a workaround, maybe you can try to test your connection with a 3rd party connector. I've tried windsor.ai, supermetrics and funnel.io. I stayed with windsor because it is much cheaper so just to let you know other options. In case you wonder, to make the connection first search for the Salesforce connector in the data sources list:

After that, just grant access to your Salesforce account using your credentials, then on preview and destination page you will see a preview of your Salesforce fields:

There just select the fields you need. It is also compatible with custom fields and custom objects, so you'll be able to export them through windsor.  Finally, just select PBI as your data destination and finally just copy and paste the url on PBI --> Get Data --> Web --> Paste the url.