How do you feed your data into Power BI or Google Sheets?

Build a datagrid with exactly the columns you want, then use the API URL it generates as a live data source in Power BI, Google Sheets or Excel. The external report refreshes from the platform instead of from a file someone re-exported.

Video: Connecting mWater with PowerBI and Google Sheets on YouTube

Why this matters

Plenty of organisations have to report through a corporate BI tool, and the usual bridge is a monthly CSV that is out of date the moment it is sent. A live connection removes that staleness and, more importantly, removes the person whose job was to remember. It also keeps one definition of the figures: the datagrid defines what the columns mean, so the BI report and the platform agree.

How to do it

  1. Create a datagrid containing the columns and filters your external report needs.
  2. Copy the API URL the datagrid generates.
  3. In Power BI use Get Data from Web, or in Google Sheets and Excel use the equivalent web query, and paste the URL.
  4. Set the refresh schedule in the external tool.
  5. Keep the datagrid as the contract: change columns there rather than reshaping data downstream.
  6. Check what the connection exposes and to whom, since the URL is what grants access.

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