BigQuery not an option as data source in web app

[shakermaker]

I'm tryng to add a connection to our BQ data warehouse. I followed the instructions here.

I navigate to data hub > add data > Don't see the source you're looking for? try these options > databases > then I only have thee. options :

if I search for big query I get no results...

can anyone help?

[ibarrau]

Hi there. You are showing a picture of PowerBi Service. That's the web portal used for sharing and viewing the developments. You can build some things there but it's quite limited.

The doc you have sent starts like: "In Power BI Desktop". The tool for building reports it's a windows desktop app. You can download Power Bi Desktop for free with microsoft store or here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494

I hope that helps,

[shakermaker]

Hi thanks for the reply. further down the webpage I shared, it explains how to add BQ it via the web app....

sadly my org all runs on mac and I'm here to assess powerBI for company usage. 

from what you say the web version is very limited?

[ibarrau · Accepted solution]

I don't see that. If you are talking about this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/connectors/googlebigquery

Then that's about the connector. The "Relationship" with the Service is with Dataflows. That's a way to run PowerQuery on the cloud, but later you will need again PowerBi Desktop in order to connect the data.

The ONLY way to skip Power Bi Desktop would be having a Premium Per User or Premium Capacity and create a PowerBi Datamart. That one would handle the source and then you can connect to the dataset generated connected to the datamart (you can even promote the dataset over the datahub).

I would recommend that at least the people involved in creating the data model should have Power Bi Desktop. They can run it on a VM. Once the data model is loaded in Desktop from BigQuery they can publish to Service, configure schedule refresh. That will generate a Power Bi Dataset on the service. If the options on your tenant are available then you can promote the dataset to let users just use service to build dashboards. They will be able to go at datahub and find it.

I hope that helps,