Use a dot-walking mechanism to export Reference type data

From Power BI Connector version 1.3.0, the possibility to export expanded Reference fields was added. It is possible to get not only the direct parent-field, but go deeply into tables dependencies and select the child-fields, that you need.

1. Navigate to Data Source page (or create new one). Add table, and if it contains Reference type fields, the “+“ will be shown near it.

Open

2. Click on “+” for field which child-fields need to be added. Dialog for the current field will be open.

Open

The inside dialog contains a header, as the name of parent-field and list of child-fields from the referenced table.

Child-fields can also be a Reference type(highlighted by green color) and contain their child -fields. Which table is used as a reference can be checked on the backend side.

3. Select the necessary field, by clicking on it once. If need to go deeply into tables, click on “+” icon near the field. Selected fields will be added in Selected column.

After the field is added, check its path and change Display value setting if needed.

4. Click the button OK to close the dialog.

5. Save Data source, copy OData URL and export it in Power BI desktop.

New child-fields can be found as additional columns in a selected table. Data will be shown according to Display settings for each table.

NOTE: Dependent on user permissions for tables, there are different lists of fields that will be able to select on the data source page.