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

CData Power BI Connectors provide self-service integration with Microsoft Power BI. The CData Power BI Connector for HCL Domino links your Power BI reports to real-time HCL Domino data. You can monitor HCL Domino data through dashboards and ensure that your analysis reflects HCL Domino 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 HCL Domino data in Microsoft Power BI Desktop.

If you are interested in publishing reports on HCL Domino 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 HCL Domino data in Power BI due to optimized data processing built into the connector. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power BI to HCL Domino, the connector pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to HCL Domino 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 HCL Domino data using native Power BI data types.

Connect to HCL Domino as a Power BI Data Source

Installing the Power BI Connector creates a DSN (data source name) called CData Power BI HCL Domino. 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.

Connecting to Domino

To connect to Domino data, set the following properties:

• URL: The host name or IP of the server hosting the Domino database. Include the port of the server hosting the Domino database. For example: http://sampleserver:1234/
• DatabaseScope: The name of a scope in the Domino Web UI. The driver exposes forms and views for the schema governed by the specified scope. In the Domino Admin UI, select the Scopes menu in the sidebar. Set this property to the name of an existing scope.

Authenticating with Domino

Domino supports authenticating via login credentials or an Azure Active Directory OAuth application:

Login Credentials

To authenticate with login credentials, set the following properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to "OAuthPassword"
• User: The username of the authenticating Domino user
• Password: The password associated with the authenticating Domino user

The driver uses the login credentials to automatically perform an OAuth token exchange.

AzureAD

This authentication method uses Azure Active Directory as an IdP to obtain a JWT token. You need to create a custom OAuth application in Azure Active Directory and configure it as an IdP. To do so, follow the instructions in the Help documentation. Then set the following properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to "AzureAD"
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
• OAuthClientId: The Client ID obtained when setting up the custom OAuth application.
• OAuthClientSecret: The Client secret obtained when setting up the custom OAuth application.
• CallbackURL: The redirect URI defined when you registered your app. For example: https://localhost:33333
• AzureTenant: The Microsoft Online tenant being used to access data. Supply either a value in the form companyname.microsoft.com or the tenant ID.

  The tenant ID is the same as the directory ID shown in the Azure Portal's Azure Active Directory > Properties page.

How to Query HCL Domino Tables

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

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Other -> CData Domino.
2. Select CData PowerBI HCL Domino 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 HCL Domino 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 HCL Domino 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 HCL Domino 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, Name.
3. Select a measure in the Fields pane: for example, Address.

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 HCL Domino data. Learn more about the CData Power BI Connectors for HCL Domino and download a free trial from the CData Power BI Connector for HCL Domino page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.