RootsSchImp Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Hi Everyone, As I understand it, to get SIMS data into Power BI you have to schedule reports to output to CSV/Excel and then use a gateway/sharepoint to make them BI data sources. Is that right/the only way? Is there a way of setting that up that's compliant with GDPR? Ed
bobsmith Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 (edited) nope. command reporter dumps to csv and powerbi desktop can open them (in the most basic usage). Publishing to the web is the dodgy bit. The real trick is NOT to export identifiable pupil/staff level data into powerbi - then we're playing with summary information and all is well. GDPR is really no more complicated than good data security - if you don't need it then don't pull it. Edited March 11, 2019 by bobsmith
bobsmith Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 (edited) Why are you publishing to web?!? Personally I'm not sharing to the web - but if you want to share it don't you have to publish it to the web? (even if you do it through your own office365 tenanacy) Edited March 11, 2019 by bobsmith
bfelton Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Publishing to the web is a route that creates a public facing version of your report to the web. If you Publish from the power bi desktop it appears within a workspace of your choosing and is not public facing.
matt40k Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Nope. In PowerBI Desktop you publish - that goes to your PowerBI\Office365 tenant. All nicely encrypted etc. One you've done that, you can publish to web. Publish to web should be switched off on your tenant. If you do actually want to publish something to web - highly recommend creating a second tenant. Wonder if it's worth a EduGeek PowerBI \ session?
bfelton Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Nope. In PowerBI Desktop you publish - that goes to your PowerBI\Office365 tenant. All nicely encrypted etc. One you've done that, you can publish to web. Publish to web should be switched off on your tenant. If you do actually want to publish something to web - highly recommend creating a second tenant. Wonder if it's worth a EduGeek PowerBI \ session? It does worry me that some schools may have published to the web without realising the consequences..
Banjo Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 You can also link directly to the SIMS DB with Power BI and miss out the middle man (Excel). Are school publishing to the web by accident as they have not purchased the BI license to just publish internally?
bobsmith Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 You can also link directly to the SIMS DB with Power BI and miss out the middle man (Excel). Are school publishing to the web by accident as they have not purchased the BI license to just publish internally? Won't Capita crap themselves if we link straight to the DB?
matt40k Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Won't Capita crap themselves if we link straight to the DB? They'll prob point out you've just void you're support and made your school unGDPR compliant as SIMS security wasn't decided for you to hook directly into the db. So I'd think SLT \ governors would be the ones crapping themselves
Banjo Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Only if you were publishing to the web which is a really bad idea regardless of where you are grabbing the data from. If you are 'worried' about support then its a simple task to create a shadow SIMS_Reporting.mdb (DB) and automate the backup/restore routines from live and point Power BI to this warehouse.
matt40k Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 If you are 'worried' about support then its a simple task to create a shadow SIMS_Reporting.mdb (DB) and automate the backup/restore routines from live and point Power BI to this warehouse. MDB? As in Access DB??
djrscally Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 They'll prob point out you've just void you're support and made your school unGDPR compliant as SIMS security wasn't decided for you to hook directly into the db. So I'd think SLT \ governors would be the ones crapping themselves Was this really true? I was never sure if it was a myth. Pointing PowerBI directly at the DB and setting up an on-prem gateway for the workspaces to refresh from is absolutely the right way to do it.
matt40k Posted March 11, 2019 Posted March 11, 2019 Yes, Microsoft advise is to point the PowerBI gateway at a SQL server. 100% Agree. Except that's best practice. Back in the real world. You've just bypassed all the SIMS security. You can't go into SIMS, create a user account (which creates a SQL user), limit the access then use that account in the PBI gateway. For starters the password won't work, then you'll find once you figure how SIMS mess around with password you don't have any permissions to the data. So if you follow Microsoft Best Practice, you've then broken the lowest permissions Microsoft Best Practices. SIMS .net \ v7 wasn't designed for folks poking the backend. If it was, they would have created reporting views, used row-level security blah blah blah
Banjo Posted March 12, 2019 Posted March 12, 2019 MDB? As in Access DB?? Opps - .mdf > most definitely not Access 1
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