Automatic updates in PowerBI Pro from files linked to KOBO

Dear,

I am developping a few dashboards on my PowerBI Pro that import data from KOBO toolbox and Excel (Onedrive). As my teams on the ground send in regularly new data I would like the dashboards to update at least every day once, for now I do it manually but I want to automatize it.

I found a few links on the web that guide me how to do it but it didnt work out and honestly it seems quiet complicated for a non IT person. I didnt found any topic on this community so decided to ask here.
Any guidance, links ect would help greatly,
Thanks a lot! Have a great day!

Sven

Welcome back to the community, @Sven1! Maybe these reference documents should help you solve your issue:

and this one too …

Thank you for your swift guidance,

I actually tried to link up using the Power BI Gateway - Personal.
I think I did everything right, yet it gives me this error message:

  • Processing errorThe ‘Authorization’ header is only supported when connecting anonymously. These headers can be used with all authentication types: Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Encoding, Accept-Language, Cache-Control, Content-Type, If-Modified-Since, Prefer, Range, Referer
  • Cluster URIWABI-SOUTH-AFRICA-NORTH-A-PRIMARY-redirect.analysis.windows.net
  • Activity ID07c8e68a-ed62-4722-9c7e-cbd523da9b40
  • Request IDe41cf055-3df3-2535-308d-968e0681ac46
  • Time2021-07-08 05:30:57Z

So I changed my data source credentials and tried to connect anonymously - but it doesn`t work.

Can you give me already further guidance with this info?

Sven

OK, so my first question for you would be, were you able to connect your KoBoToolbox data with Power BI?

Yes, I can also do the manual refresh.
I did that in Desktop Pro, then I published it on PowerBI service. It all works.

I tried to go through Onedrive instead. So would be KOBO>ExcelOnedrive>PowerBI. Given that PowerBI updates with Onedrive every hour or so I thought it would work. It does when I keep my Excel open, as soon as I close it, it doesn`t do it.

Reading about this issue brings me back to PowerBi Gateway,
Any more guidance thus still appreciated.

I have arround 20 questionnaires in Kobo that are used throughout the year, All questionnaire have arround 100 to 200 rows, a few have arround 1000 rows.

My aim is to make monitoring dashboards on PowerBI service/web and publish to web reports that update automatically for the teams that are monitoring the surveys.

Thanks

Got it myself…sharing here for other non IT persons :joy:
It`s all working on my PowerBI Pro, I schedule my refresh of PowerBI datasets once every 24h.
It updates also my publish to web reports as well. Awesome!

No need for Gateway as KOBO and Excel on Onedrive are in the cloud.
It`s all about connecting using Get Data in PowerBI with right KOBO link, following this method
For Excel you use Get Data in PowerBI like this:

Besides that make sure your data credentials are all good in the PowerBI web
in case of KOBO U use your make sure your KOBO account login and password are there
in case of Excel U use your Business Onedrive account using the OAuth2

You can schedule refreshes as you want under PowerBI web/dataset/settings

Hope this helps!
If there is any other way of doing better - don`t hesitate pls

Sven

2 Likes

Thank you for sharing this with the entire community, @Sven1! It’s really helpful and should benefit a lot of our community members. Expecting the same in upcoming days too, to make the community a learning and sharing platform.

if you can create a clip in youtube is best. I still can not config powerbi server to refresh data from Kobo
thanks

Dear Win123vn,

I already made a video about this topic, you can find it below, If you have more question just let me know