How to Create Power BI Visual Reports with Real-Time Bitbucket Data

CData Power BI Connectors provide self-service integration with Microsoft Power BI. The CData Power BI Connector for Bitbucket links your Power BI reports to real-time Bitbucket data. You can monitor Bitbucket data through dashboards and ensure that your analysis reflects Bitbucket data in real time by scheduling refreshes or refreshing on demand. This article details how to use the Power BI Connector to create real-time visualizations of Bitbucket data in Microsoft Power BI Desktop.

If you are interested in publishing reports on Bitbucket data to PowerBI.com, refer to our other Knowledge Base article.

Collaborative Query Processing

The CData Power BI Connectors offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Bitbucket data in Power BI due to optimized data processing built into the connector. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power BI to Bitbucket, the connector pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Bitbucket and utilizes the embedded SQL Engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze Bitbucket data using native Power BI data types.

Connect to Bitbucket as a Power BI Data Source

Installing the Power BI Connector creates a DSN (data source name) called CData Power BI Bitbucket. This the name of the DSN that Power BI uses to request a connection to the data source. Configure the DSN by filling in the required connection properties.

You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure the DSN: From the Start menu, enter "ODBC Data Sources" and select the CData PowerBI REST DSN. Ensure that you run the version of the ODBC Administrator that corresponds to the bitness of your Power BI Desktop installation (32-bit or 64-bit). You can also use run the ConfigureODBC.exe tool located in the installation folder for the connector.

For most queries, you must set the Workspace. The only exception to this is the Workspaces table, which does not require this property to be set, as querying it provides a list of workspace slugs that can be used to set Workspace. To query this table, you must set Schema to 'Information' and execute the query SELECT * FROM Workspaces>.

Setting Schema to 'Information' displays general information. To connect to Bitbucket, set these parameters:

• Schema: To show general information about a workspace, such as its users, repositories, and projects, set this to Information. Otherwise, set this to the schema of the repository or project you are querying. To get a full set of available schemas, query the sys_schemas table.
• Workspace: Required if you are not querying the Workspaces table. This property is not required for querying the Workspaces table, as that query only returns a list of workspace slugs that can be used to set Workspace.

Authenticating to Bitbucket

Bitbucket supports OAuth authentication only. To enable this authentication from all OAuth flows, you must create a custom OAuth application, and set AuthScheme to OAuth.

Be sure to review the Help documentation for the required connection properties for you specific authentication needs (desktop applications, web applications, and headless machines).

Creating a custom OAuth application

From your Bitbucket account:

1. Go to Settings (the gear icon) and select Workspace Settings.
2. In the Apps and Features section, select OAuth Consumers.
3. Click Add Consumer.
4. Enter a name and description for your custom application.
5. Set the callback URL:
   • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the CallbackURL property.
   • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
6. If you plan to use client credentials to authenticate, you must select This is a private consumer. In the driver, you must set AuthScheme to client.
7. Select which permissions to give your OAuth application. These determine what data you can read and write with it.
8. To save the new custom application, click Save.
9. After the application has been saved, you can select it to view its settings. The application's Key and Secret are displayed. Record these for future use. You will use the Key to set the OAuthClientId and the Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.

How to Query Bitbucket Tables

Follow the steps below to build a query to pull Bitbucket data into the report:

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Other -> CData Bitbucket.
2. Select CData PowerBI Bitbucket in the Data Source Name menu and select a data connectivity mode:
   Select Import if you want to import a copy of the data into your project. You can refresh this data on demand.
   Select DirectQuery if you want to work with the remote data.
3. Select tables in the Navigator dialog.

4. In the Query Editor, you can customize your dataset by filtering, sorting, and summarizing Bitbucket columns. Click Edit to open the query editor. Right-click a row to filter the rows. Right-click a column header to perform actions like the following:

   • Change column data types
   • Remove a column
   • Group by columns

   Power BI detects each column's data type from the Bitbucket metadata retrieved by the connector.

   Power BI records your modifications to the query in the Applied Steps section, adjusting the underlying data retrieval query that is executed to the remote Bitbucket data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data retrieval query.

   Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.

How to Create Data Visualizations in Power BI

After pulling the data into Power BI, you can create data visualizations in the Report view by dragging fields from the Fields pane onto the canvas. Follow the steps below to create a pie chart:

1. Select the pie chart icon in the Visualizations pane.
2. Select a dimension in the Fields pane: for example, Title.
3. Select a measure in the Fields pane: for example, ContentRaw.

You can change sort options by clicking the ellipsis (...) button for the chart. Options to select the sort column and change the sort order are displayed.

You can use both highlighting and filtering to focus on data. Filtering removes unfocused data from visualizations; highlighting dims unfocused data. You can highlight fields by clicking them:

You can apply filters at the page level, at the report level, or to a single visualization by dragging fields onto the Filters pane. To filter on the field's value, select one of the values that are displayed in the Filters pane.

Click Refresh to synchronize your report with any changes to the data.

At this point, you will have a Power BI report built on top of live Bitbucket data. Learn more about the CData Power BI Connectors for Bitbucket and download a free trial from the CData Power BI Connector for Bitbucket page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.