Creating calculations in Power BI with insightly data

[rcallahan]

Hi, I'm brand new to Power BI and am still learning what I can do. I've connected to insightly, mailchimp and Google Analytics and have the premade dashboards, which is great. But, now, I'd like to create my own reports. I can filter data in the Power BI app but am I able to create calculations in there? For example, I'd like to know the difference between two fields: Date_Created and Forecast_Close_Date (both from insightly) so I have a better understanding of how long it takes my sales team to close an Opportunity. I can't do it in Desktop because insightly isn't available there yet - how would I do it in the app?

[QueryWhiz]

@rcallahan You can connect insightly data directly to PBI desktop using an external connector because no native connector is available and I think it won't be available soon. I use windsor.ai to connect my insightly data and it works fine as a direct option

[v-ljerr-msft]

Hi @rcallahan,

It is not possible to do it in Power BI Service currently. You can vote a similar idea on Power BI Ideas here to improve Power BI.

Regards

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@rcallahanunfortunately, you cannot. The gap here is that only the Desktop supports those actions, and only supports a handful of the external Content Packs. So, if you want to customize things, you would need to see if there are alternative ways to connect to the data source and import it into the Desktop.

The external Content Packs are awesome for quick wins, but not so great if you want to extend the model.

[rcallahan]

So, the only type of custom reporting I can do with the Content Packs is to create new reports with the existing data and throw some filters on it?

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@rcallahan In short "yes", Content Packs in the Service are for quick wins, and won't allow you to customize anything.

If the Content Pack is a data source in the PBI Desktop, then you could extend the model there.

If there is another way to access the data source (ODATA or ODBC for example) then you could connet that way.

But in both those cases, you lose the "Model" that has been built for the Service Content Pack.

[rcallahan]

Thank you!