Docebo and Power Bi Connection via APIs

While I can’t speak from experience about Power BI’s API, I have worked quite a bit with Docebo’s API using Python.

Could you provide further information about what you are trying to accomplish through said connection (feel free to send a private message if you prefer)?

Overall, establishing the connection should be relatively simple assuming the proper endpoints for your use case exist. For example, using the programming language of your choice, you could on a set frequency run a script that downloads data from Power BI (via their API), performs any necessary reformatting, then uploads said data to Docebo (via their API).

Thanks @alexalbeck.

We are looking to use open API for enhancing our reporting frequency and collation of analytics. We want to utilise the data fields for our users to generate a collective report. So are basic requirement is

• How to connect our user data to power BI?
• How to add API credentials to power BI?
• How to set frequency to data refresh to Power BI? Which may be later part but a crucial one

We can work on the power BI end but the data from Docebo -> power BI is what we are likely to use. 

Most likely, you, or someone in your company, will need to develop code for this (unless an integration tool between the two platforms already exists).

In your case, the workflow would just go in the opposite direction of what I mentioned in my first reply (it’d be (1) download from Docebo’s API, (2) reformat if necessary, and then (3) upload to Power BI’s API). An experienced programmer should be able to obtain all necessary API credentials and write the script on your behalf.

To set a frequency for refreshing the data, the script could be scheduled to run using Windows Task Scheduler or it could reside on a server which handles this.

I generally end up using reports for this more than the api’s due to api restrictions on usage. Having the files droppped to a server that powerbi is reading from so it is always refreshed. Only end up using the APIs when there is data I can’t get from one of the reports for this.

There isn’t a ‘connect to the docent data’ generally option, you need to define which type of data you are looking for to bring to powerbi and configure those api’s, another reason the reports are usually more straight forward.

@Bfarkas - thank you for your input. Reports are indeed straight forward and we are looking for the reports for defining our user analytics e.g. ILT session report and eLearning report for users can be obtained in single view. Session start and end date to be viewed in the course report etc.

Unfortunately there is no report where we can combine course type, session in a single report. Also there is no custom report enabling us to see the session start and end date in the course report itself. I can only do that in Users – ILT Sessions and then there is lot of manual work involved. 

The documentation connecting APIs and obtaining token doesn't seems to be straightforward or the documentation is a bit difficult to understand for a non developer person. 

So, from the sounds of it, you are going to have the same issues going the API route, you will need to be able to merge and combine a bunch of API’s to do what you are doing. The report route I was outlining was based on the idea of PowerBI, so figured the different reports would just be different data sources and then you could build your reports and merge data together using BI so that you don’t have to do it continuous manually. Not sure switching to API’s will be the magic bullet you are hoping for.

Shameless plug, but these articles have some intros to the API if you wantt o go down that route:

• Getting Started: Building Out Your Toolbox [Part 1 of 2] API & Webhooks

@Bfarkas - thank you so much and i will have look at the link you shared. TBH I have no clue what kind of data we can extract from the reporting API, even if it saves pooling bunch of similar reports and reducing manual work, that should also be helpful. I was under impression that it will give access to the database and we can pool the data from it and from your comment doesn't look like its the case. Thanks again. 

Yeah, as far as I know of, there’s not just direct database access available. There’s a few things in the API browser that will make it look like that, but they are not endpoints available to us, just internal Docebo crew unfortunately. There’s a few ideas kicking around to give us at least some access to them.

Thank you so much for your article its very helpful. 

Hi everyone. Would using the automation tool work? I think this screenshot tells me that I can get a CSV file sent to a folder of my choice. I welcome any advice/insight before I experiment with this.

Sara 

@Sara Tindall - I believe that this article may help you: 

I just got it in my feed today, but it says it’s a year old :)

Take a moment and learn from folks that worked this problem throughout the last year.

• PowerBI supports a build your own connector approach. A little bit of programming may go a long way with it.
• Docebo Connect (Workato) does support PowerBI - but you will find yourself down the rabbit hole of needing to work with a custom Azure app.
• As necessary, you push a file to a location via the Automation App if you have access to an SFTP/FTP Site. Then you can train PowerBI to do its thing by storing the connection detail within it IF you can get to a stable url (not all SFTP/FTP sites have web servers related to them). This will probably mean working out stuff with your IT folk.
• We found ourselves down another rabbit hole - trying to send a file to a Sharepoint site and have PowerBI read from there...you can use PowerBI’s connectors with no issue there. Doing that will probably mean setting up an Azure app to allow Sharepoint (and the right level of permissions) to do its thing. This also most probably means working stuff out with your IT folk.
• So many rabbits 🐰, so many touch points to make happy. In the end we gave up chasing them. Learning Insights is on its way making dashboarding a reality.

The other big solve here, but $, is to pick up the Learn Data product as part of your package. This is basically a clone of your database and is designed for people using tools like Tableau or Power BI to connect to it and do analysis. It is much simpler depending on how deep you want to do the analysis compared to some of the configurations you need to build and maintain going the other routes. Definitely worth a conversation with your CSM before doing any kind of setup here in case it is the better path.

Hi everyone, I'm trying to achieve exactly the same as @ckujawski . So am I right to say that the automating route won't work? 

I have managed to extract the data from Docebo and convert it to a CSV file using Postman and some Python coding. However, I need help figuring out how to run this on Power BI. 

Did anyone figure out more efficient reporting tools? For now, generating individual reports and combining CSV files requires a lot of labour. What tools do you use for your reporting? 

Thx 😊

@lhoma  on the end of the day we gave up connecting those two. It was taking too much time to figure out how to make them working. 

Even the platform has open API, Docebo wasn’t helpful, we got information that we can buy Docebo Learn or new Docebo Connector to make it working, or we have to figure out by ourselves how to connect PowerBi to the platform via open APIs. 

We decided to not go with any extra pay options and just simply download the report from Docebo an import it to Power BI (I have one person in the team who is pretty much advanced in Power BI and was able to create a combined report in it)

I’ve read this post with interest and was wondering if anyone is willing to share their power BI dashboard files so I can get started, and also what Reports in Docebo Learn you are using in terms of what you send to Power Bi?