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Quickstart — from Zero to a Power BI Report

3 min read

Table of Contents

The fastest path from zero to a Power BI report fed by SAP data. Four steps, each with a link to the dedicated guide if you want the long-form version.

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This page assumes you already have a connector URL from your administrator and an SAP destination has been configured. If you don’t have either, jump to Sign in and find your way around first.

Step 1 — Get access #

Sign in to the connector at the URL provided by your administrator. The app authenticates against the SAP BTP identity provider of your tenant.

If you see You don’t have access, the IdP knows you but you have no role on the connector. Ask an administrator to assign you the user role in the BTP cockpit, under Role Collections.

You land on the Data Sources page. That’s your home base.

get started 01 app shell

Step 2 — Mint an access token #

Power BI authenticates to the connector with HTTP Basic auth: your user name plus a personal access token. Mint the token now — once you start in Power BI you won’t want to backtrack.

  1. In the side navigation, select Access Tokens.
  2. Select Create token, give it a label (for example, Power BI Desktop — laptop), and confirm.
  3. Copy the token value from the follow-up dialog. The connector never displays it again.
access token create 03 revealed

Long-form: Create an access token.

Step 3 — Create a data source #

A data source bundles one or more SAP OData services, a selection of entities and fields, and optional row filters into a single OData endpoint that Power BI can read.

  1. On Data Sources, select Create.
  2. Give the data source a name. The description and sharing list are optional — you can add them later.
  3. Select Add Service, search the SAP service catalog, and pick the service you want to read from.
  4. Expand the service, then the entity, and tick the fields you want Power BI to see. The eye icon previews a sample of rows so you can sanity-check.
  5. Select Save. You return to the Data Sources list with the new row at the top.
02 create empty form

Long-form: Create a data source.

Step 4 — Connect Power BI #

On the list, your new row has a unique OData URL in the URL column. The copy icon next to it copies the full URL to the clipboard.

connect pbi 01 list url row

  1. In Power BI Desktop, select Get data → OData feed.
  2. Paste the data source URL.
  3. When prompted for credentials, choose Basic. The user name is your connector account; the password is the access token you copied in step 2.
  4. Confirm. Power BI fetches the metadata, lists every entity from the data source, and lets you pick which ones to load into the model.

From here you build the report as you would with any other OData feed. Long-form: Connect Power BI Desktop.

What next #