Microsoft Power BI Integration
Power BI helps businesses create interactive data visualizations and turn raw data into business insight. ProntoForms comes with its own data visualization tools in the form of a real-time form submission dashboard and analytics. However, if you want to use your own analytics solutions such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Spitfire Analytics, Amazon, QuickSight, SAP BusinessObjects, etc., you can do so by using our comprehensive data export features, REST API, or through built-in data connectors.
The easiest way to connect ProntoForms data to your Power BI reports and dashboards is through a SharePoint List Data Destination. Here are a few benefits of this approach:
- It's very easy to set up the connections between ProntoForms > SharePoint > Power BI thanks to our deep integration with Microsoft's ecosystem.
- SharePoint List's tabular format and support for parent-child relations make it inherently suitable for presenting a form's question and answer data in Power BI.
- You gain a real-time update of your data and reports. Every time a form submission is made, the SharePoint List is automatically updated, and your Power BI reports and dashboards are refreshed at the same time.
- You avoid data duplication and reduce storage requirements.
- If you are already using Microsoft solutions, you have the benefit of staying inside Microsoft's environment for both your data storage and presentation needs. This ensures the continued security and privacy of your data.
Workflow example with Microsoft Power BI
Create a SharePoint List
First, the citizen developer creates a SharePoint List within their Office 365 user interface. This list contains columns and fields carefully matching the data types of the questions in the form.
When the form is later connected to the list, it will automatically be populated with details for the field ticket, such as ticket number, driver, mileage, region of delivery, etc.
Create a SharePoint List Data Destination
In ProntoForms, an admin creates a SharePoint List Data Destination and attaches it to the appropriate form.
They set the list path and then configure the form state and answer filtering rules.
They also need to map data to the appropriate list columns. The form can send any data or format it using ProntoForms' built-in DREL language.
Send Data from the Mobile App to the SharePoint List
In the field, the field worker opens the relevant form from ProntoForms' mobile app, completes their inspection, and submits the form.
ProntoForms will automatically connect to the SharePoint list and upload the data matching the questions to the list columns while applying any filtering rules.
Get Data into Power BI for Analytics & Reporting
A citizen developer can then open Power BI and use its 'Get Data > SharePoint Online List' feature to import the data. There are other ways to connect to the SharePoint List, e.g., by using Power Automate, the OData feed, etc. However, for this purpose, a SharePoint List is the easiest way to get the form data into Power BI.
Once the data is within Power BI, the citizen developer can create reports and dashboards, and conduct data analysis using Power BI's built-in tools. There are other possibilities too. For example, they could have a companion SharePoint Document Library to act as a repository for the form submissions and then link to these detailed reports directly from the Power BI dashboards.