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According to this: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/unleashing-insights-from-data-in-documentdb-with-power-bi/ DocumentDB connector is available for both Power Bi online and Power Bi Desktop.

But when I go to Get Data -> Databases in Power Bi online, I do not see any way to connect to Document DB. I can see the connector only in Power Bi Desktop.

Is Document DB supported as data source in Power Bi online? if no, is there any workaround to make it work? I have a requirement to feed schema-less data (located in Azure) to Power Bi online, I'm searching for any way to do it, whether this is Document DB or some other NoSQL database

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2 Answers

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First of all, I'd like to apologize for my initial answer as I completely missed your key issue about utilizing Power BI Online. Allow me to try to make amends by attempting a more complete and proper answer.

In the case of Power BI Online, because the Power BI-to-DocumentDB connector is currently in beta, it is not available as a data source within Power BI Online under the Get Data section as you noted. Saying this, you can create a connection to DocumentDB using the Power BI desktop, publish it to Power BI Online, and then refresh it within Power BI Online. Following the "Power BI tutorial for DocumentDB: Visualize data using the Power BI connector" tutorial, here is a screenshot of running the data refresh on PowerBI.com using the credentials to your DocumentDB database. enter image description here

Note, there are is already a request on the Power BI Ideas forum to have DocumentDB available directly within Power BI Online - you can read more and vote for it (if appropriate) at: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/7160908-documentdb.

Some additional references that may be helpful:

  • Data Refresh in Power BI: Here is some additional information about how Data Refresh works in Power BI.
  • Power BI Content Packs: For more information on connectors between Power BI and other data sources, please reference Content Packs.
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please allow me to clarify that connectivity to a DocumentDB account via PowerBI.com is actually there. Currently, the "Get Data" in PowerBI.com only offers data sources with DirectQuery capability. Please see this article on DirectQuery. We are working to support DirectQuery in future. For now, there are two ways to push DocumentDB data to PowerBI.com. The first method is what Denny has suggested: build the report via PowerBI Desktop and publish the report to PowerBI.com. The second method is to leverage PowerBI API to connect and push data from a DocumentDB account to PowerBI.com.