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Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

Vote (220)

sreinman on 11 Dec 2015 01:10:56

At this point, only Excel workbooks with a power pivot data model can work in Power BI. It would be great to have the ability to upload Excel workbooks that are connected to our on-prem analysis services to be refreshable as well. The same way that the analysis services connector works for PowerBI reports, perhaps that connector can be extended to uploaded Excel workbooks as well.

Comments (28)

Comments (28)

Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:01:49

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

'+1 absolut missing feature... "Analyse in Excel" is only the half story if you are not able to publish the excel file back to 0365 without "breaking" the refresh-ability

Jonathan Åkerblom on 05 Jul 2020 23:00:51

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

The business case I have for my organisation is to upgrade our Report Server with the PowerBI Report Server version, and to use this as a platform for all our reports. Be it SSRS reports, KPIs, PowerBI reports or Excel reports. I would be able to view all of these in one portal. As of today you have implemented this viewing functionality for PowerBI reports, but you still lack a simple way to view Excel reports. Our end users have to download the excel reports as static files from our report server, which only leads to excel hell. ->> If I could publish the excel reports (that all have SSAS connections) to PowerBI.com and then be able to interact with these excel workbook reports through the Report Server, the same way that I interact with regular PowerBI reports --- Then! I'd have a strong business case. But since this SSAS live connection thing doesn't work, I have zero use for the integration between SSRS, PowerBI and Excel.

Kristoffer Absalonsen on 05 Jul 2020 22:57:10

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

This should also include Excel workbooks connected to datasets in Power BI Service.

Tyler Becker on 05 Jul 2020 22:52:27

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

Any update, a number of organizations have investments in Excel reports which are tied back to SSAS, would be great if Power BI would support these instead of having to port them over to Power BI (which is not as good as Excel for viewing big tables of data)