{"id":259,"date":"2017-02-07T10:45:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T18:45:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-06-11T08:15:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T15:15:51","slug":"cdsconnectortopowerbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/cdsconnectortopowerbi\/","title":{"rendered":"Create Power BI reports and dashboards with PowerApps Common Data Service"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today we are pleased to announce the availability of Power Apps Common Data Service<\/b> (CDS) connector to Power BI desktop<\/b> as a preview. You can now create rich reports with the data in CDS using Power BI desktop, the authoring tool for Power BI. Using the full power of Power BI, you can then go on to create and share stunning dashboards with users in your organization.<\/p>\n
We have worked very closely with Power BI team to develop this connector. If you have downloaded the February update of Power BI desktop, you already have access to the connector. Power BI is intimately aware of PowerApps and CDS. The PowerApps CDS connector enables you to leverage key features built into CDS and PowerApps in Power BI.<\/p>\n
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Important:<\/strong> This feature was available initially as preview to selected customers (or databases, more accurately) based in USA. The preview is now closed. Further details will be provided soon.<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s no need to schedule a refresh in Power BI. When the data is updated in CDS, changes are reflected in reports. Reports are interactive and responsive. You can interactively explore CDS data using the capabilities of Power BI.<\/p>\n When you secure CDS entities using policies for a set of users, the same permissions are applied to Power BI reports. As an author writing Power BI reports, you can only report against the entities to which you have been granted access in CDS. As an author, when you share reports with your peers in PowerBI.com, your peers can only see the data they are allowed to access in CDS. You do not need to secure data explicitly within Power BI.<\/p>\n CDS enables makers to define rich data types such as Address, Boolean, and Currency when you add fields to an entity. In addition to rich types, makers can also define a list of values, called picklists. These types are recognized by Power BI as first class data types. For an example, when you report using an address field, Power BI shows a map as a default visualization.<\/p>\n While CDS contains a rich set of entities representing many business areas, as a Report writer, you may be interested in creating reports by focusing on a business question or a subject area. To make it easier to report on a given business question or a subject area, we have organized entities into a set of ready-made subject areas called Perspectives. A perspective offers a \u201cview into data\u201d from a reporting point of view.<\/p>\n At the time of launch, we have categorized the entities in to 10 perspectives as follows.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\nReports reflect real time data<\/h2>\n
Power BI respects security policies defined in CDS<\/h2>\n
Power BI is aware of rich data types and relationships defined in CDS<\/h2>\n
Entities are presented by subject areas (perspectives)<\/h2>\n