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Preparing to run the Power BI Gov collector

Setting up pre-requisites for running the collector

Make sure that the machine from where you are running the collector meets the following hardware and software requirements.

Table 1.

Item

Requirement

Hardware

RAM

8 GB

CPU

2 Ghz processor

Software

Docker

Click here to get Docker.

Java Runtime Environment

OpenJDK 17 is supported and available here.

data.world specific objects

Dataset

You must have a ddw-catalogs (or other) dataset set up to hold your catalog files when you are done running the collector.



Setting up access for cataloging Power BI resources

The collector authenticates to Power BI Gov using Service principal. This section walks you through the process of setting up the authentication.

Important things to note:

The Collector currently uses Azure Active Directory to authenticate to the Power BI Cloud API. You will need to create an Application Registration in Azure AD, enable the Power BI API authentication for it, and create a client secret.

The collector harvests metadata for all Power BI apps and workspaces to which the supplied account has access.

STEP 1: Registering your application

To register a new application:

  1. Go to the Azure Portal.

  2. Select Azure Active Directory.

  3. Click the App Registrations option in the left sidebar.

  4. Click New Registration and enter the following information:

    1. Application Name: DataDotWorldPowerBIApplication

    2. Supported account types: Accounts in this organizational directory only

  5. Click Register to complete the registration.

STEP 2: Creating Client secret and getting the Client ID

To create a Client Secret:

  1. Go to the Azure Portal.

  2. On the application page, select Certificates and Secrets.

  3. Click on Secret and add a description.

  4. Set the expiration to Never.

  5. Click on Create, and copy the secret value.

To get the Client ID from the Azure portal:

  1. Go to the Azure Portal.

  2. Click on the Overview tab in the left sidebar of the application home page.

  3. Copy the Client ID from the Essentials section.

STEP 3: Setting up metadata scanning

Enable access to the detailed data source information (like tables and columns) provided by Power BI through the read-only admin APIs. For details about doing this task, please see this documentation.

STEP 4: Setting up REST API for service principals

Important

Perform this task only if you are using the service principal for authentication.

If you are using service principal as your authentication type, ensure that you enable service principals to use the Power BI APIs. For detailed instructions for doing this task, please see this documentation.

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