Running the Power BI collector in Cloud
Configuring the cloud collector for Power BI
To configure the cloud collector for Power BI:
On the Organization profile page, go to the Settings tab > Metadata collectors section.
Click the Add a collector button.
On the Choose metadata collector screen, select the correct metadata source. Click Next.
On the Choose where the collector will run screen, in the Cloud section, select data.world. Click Next.
On the Configure a cloud .Power BI Collector screen, set the following:
On the next screen, set the following properties and click Next.
Table 2.Field name
Description
Required?
Select from one of the following authentication options.
Yes
Option 1: Authenticate using Azure Username & Password
Azure Username
Azure Active Directory username for Power BI Cloud authentication.
Yes
Azure Password
Azure Active Directory password for Power BI Cloud authentication.
Yes
Azure Tenant ID
Set this if you want to specify the Azure tenant ID while using the user name and password authentication.
No
Option 2: Authenticate using Azure Service principal
Azure Tenant ID
Azure Active Directory application tenant ID for the Power BI app.
Yes
Client ID and Client secret
Azure Client ID
Azure Active Directory application client ID for Power BI app.
Yes
Azure Client Secret
Azure Active Directory application client secret for Power BI app.
Yes
On the next screen, set the following optional properties and click Next.
Table 3.Field name
Description
Required?
Skip harvesting lineage metadata
Skip harvesting lineage metadata from Power BI source expressions.
No
Catalog contents of user's My Workspace
Catalog contents of user's My Workspace in Power BI (Default is to skip the user's workspace).
No
PowerBI catalog all workspaces and apps
Catalog all workspaces and apps in a tenant, rather than only the workspaces and apps the credentials used have explicit access to. This option only works if the credentials used have admin privileges.
No
Include Power BI Workspaces
Specify the workspaces to be collected, using either a workspace name or a regular expression to match.
Note: If the workspace name includes special characters [. , + , * , ? , ^ , $ , ( , ) , [ , ] , { , } , | , \], use a backslash (\)before the special character to escape them. For instance, Workspace [Dev] should be changed to Workspace \[Dev\].
No
Exclude Power BI Workspaces
Specify the Power BI workspaces and contents to exclude from being cataloged, using either a workspace name or a regular expression to match.
If both include workspace and exclude workspace are used, include workspace takes precedence.
Note: If the workspace name includes special characters [. , + , * , ? , ^ , $ , ( , ) , [ , ] , { , } , | , \], use a backslash (\)before the special character to escape them. For instance, Workspace [Dev] should be changed to Workspace \[Dev\].
No
On the next screen, set the following Advanced properties and click Next.
Table 4.Field name
Description
Required?
Maximum Power BI Expression Length
Set the maximum number of characters in a Power BI expression that will be parsed for lineage metadata. Expressions longer than this will be skipped. Default is 32000.
No
Datasource name mapping file
If you have configured source details in the datasources.yml file, upload the file.
No
Catalog report preview images
Specify if the collector should catalog preview images. The default setting is false. Ensure that you have met all pre-requisites for using this feature.
No
Disable max requests wait
Disable waiting up to an hour for the Power BI API to reset throttling limits (error code 429 - too many requests). When not disabled, the collector retries every 5 minutes for up to an hour. If this option is disabled, the Max retries and Retry delay options will be used instead.
No
Max retries
Specify the number of times to retry an API call which has failed. The default value is 5.
No
Retry delay
Specify the amount of time in seconds to wait between retries of an API call which has failed. The default is to try with a delay of 2 seconds between each call.
No
On the next screen, provide the Collector configuration name and set the run schedule. You can also set the schedule at a later point.
Click Save and View to go the collector details page.
Scheduling collector runs
Important things to note:
Different collectors can be scheduled to run at the same time, but one collector can only run once a day.
It is recommended that you schedule the runs in off-peak hours.
The collector runs in the timezone in which the scheduler is located. For example, if the scheduler sets the collector runs from PST timezone, the collectors will follow the PST timezone.
Runs may start up to one hour after the scheduled time.
To schedule collector runs:
On the Configured collectors page, locate the collector you want to run on a schedule.
Click the Edit configurations button.
Go to the screen where you can set the schedule for the collector.
Enable the Scheduled runs option.
From the Frequency dropdown, select from Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
For Weekly and Monthly options, select the day when the collector should run.
Select the time for running the collector.
Click Save and view. The schedule and next run date and time are displayed on the collector details page.
To get notifications about the collector runs, simply setup web hooks at the Organization level from the Organization profile page > Settings tab. The Webhooks will automatically start capturing the Status events (Pending, Provisioning, Running, Completed, Error, Cancelled) for the collector runs.
Sample data captured by the webhook.
Running collectors manually
After setting up the collector configuration, it's advisable to manually execute it once to ensure correct configuration. Even collectors that are scheduled to run automatically can be manually initiated at anytime.
To run the collectors manually:
On the Configured collectors page, locate the collector you want to run.
On the collector configuration details page, click the Run now button. Alternatively, on the Configured collectors page, click the Three dot menu and click Run/Sync now button.
On both pages, the Status field shows the status as Running with information about time elapsed since the run was started.
The collector starts running in the background and you can navigate away from the page at any time. For a long running collector, if the collector run does not complete in a weeks time, the collector run automatically terminates after one week. The Status section and the Status field update to an Error state.
After the collector has completed the required pre-configuration steps and starts harvesting the metadata, you get an option to Cancel the harvesting process, if you want. The Status section and the Status field update to Cancelled.
After the collector run has completed, the Status section of the collector configuration details page updates to show the successful status. The Last run summary page also updates to show the total number of resource collected and total number of types of resources collected. The Resources collected by type gives granular level information about the number of resources collected for each type of resource.
Browse to the Collection and Dataset specified while running the collector to view the collector output.
To get notifications about the collector runs, simply setup web hooks at the Organization level from the Organization profile page > Settings tab. The Webhooks will automatically start capturing the Status events (Pending, Provisioning, Running, Completed, Error, Cancelled) for the collector runs.
Sample data captured by the webhook.
Canceling a collector run
After starting a collector run, you can cancel it if needed.
Important things to note:
Logs generate only after the collector starts up (about 5 minutes). No logs are available if the collector is canceled before this period.
After canceling a run, the collector produces the logs within 5 minutes
To stop a running collector:
Locate the running collector you want to stop. After the collector has completed the required pre-configuration steps and starts harvesting the metadata, you get an option to Cancel it.
On the collector configuration details page, click the Cancel run button. Alternatively, on the Configured collectors page, click the Three dot menu and click Cancel run button.
The collector stops running. On both pages, the Status field shows the status as Canceled with information about time elapsed since the run was cancelled.
The collector produces a log file in 5 minutes after stop running. To download a logs, click the View debugging info link. A pop-up window opens.
In the pop-up window, click Export logs to download the log file.
Copying collector configurations
After you have configured a collector for a source system, you can easily create a copy of the configuration to configure another collector for the same source system but for different parameters.
To copy collector configurations:
On the Configured collectors page, locate the collector configuration you want to copy.
From the Three dot menu, click Duplicate configuration.
In the Edit Collector window, provide a new name for the collector configuration. Optionally, set a schedule. Click Save and view.
You are taken to the copied collector configuration page. Click the Edit Configuration button to adjust the details of the configuration.
Deleting configurations
Important things to note:
Deleting the configuration will not affect the resources that were collected from previous runs.
Any scheduled future runs for the collector are suspended.
To delete a configuration:
On the Configured collectors page, locate the collector configuration you want to delete.
From the Three dot menu, click the Delete configuration button.
Confirm the deletion. The configuration is deleted and removed from the Configured collectors page.