eesyapi.powerbi

Custom connectors for connecting to the Explore Education Statistics service from PowerBI

Using EES connectors

Enabling custom connectors in Power BI

🚧 Warning

If you've never used custom connectors in Power BI Desktop before, then you'll need to follow these steps before any of the instructions that follow below.

• Create the folder Custom connectors/ in Documents/Power BI Desktop/ (which itself may exist already, but depending on the system you're on and how it's set up, it may be within your OneDrive area or you might need to make your own).
• In Power BI Desktop go to Settings > Global > Security > Data extensions and Allow any extension to load without validation or warning.

Demo EES CSV endpoint connector

We provide a demo connector to one of the EES API data sets, which downloads the entire data set (16 rows).

Using this connector in Power BI

• Complete the steps in Enabling custom connectors in Power BI if this is your first time using a custom connector in Power BI Desktop.

• Copy the demo connector power query, eesyapiDemoConnector.pq, from this repository to your PowerBI custom connectors folder, Documents/Power BI Desktop/Custom connectors/.

• From the Power BI Desktop home panel, select Get data from other sources.

• Enter eesyapi in the search box and then select eesyapiDemoConnector.Contents (Beta) (Custom).

• Click continue to accept this third part service.

• You should now see a preview of the data and have the choice to either load the data set or transform it.

Contributing

These connectors are being developed in VS Code with the Power Query SDK extension installed.

If making changes to any power query script, it's worth running Evaluate current file on the corresponding [script_name].query.pq script in the POWER QUERY SDK panel under the file explorer pane in VS Code. This compiles the relevant MEZ binary files for running and debugging.

🚧 Warning

If you run Evaluate current file on the base [script_name].pq script (as opposed to the [script_name].query.pq script), then Power Query SDK will likely double compile the script and give an error along the lines of The export [script_name].Contents was exported multiple times.

Useful reference materials

The following are useful to read / look through if starting out on contributing.

• DataConnectors GitHub repository with sample connectors