Need help with azure workbook and function app

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Need help with azure workbook and function app

Ashwin Venkatesha 230

Hi, I am trying to use a function app to make an api call to our product. I am not doing this operation from the workbook itself because I end up doing multiple api calls and lots of heavy lifting is done in workbook, instead I want the function app to do parsing, transformations/aggregations and store this data "somewhere".
Once stored, I want the workbook to access this location and visualize the data.

I am thinking, storage browser's table storage.

I have about 8 widgets that work with same api response data, so its 8 aggregations/views of same response.

How do you suggest handling this? Am i thinking this right?

Store in table storage and leverage the same in azure workbook? If yes, how to leverage that in azure workbook.

Another requirement is, I want this function app to be running every 5mins, so the data that is fetched for each run has to update what is in the table, not create additional rows.

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Answer 1

@Ashwin Venkatesha, thank you for posting this question here on Microsoft Q&A.

I have broken down my response below to cover all the scenarios mentioned in the question:

Trigger Function App on schedule (use timer trigger Azure Functions) and store data. I would not suggest using the Azure Storage Account, as it is not natively mentioned as one of the data sources for "the "Azure MonitorWorkbook". For set of data sources available for Azure Monitor Workbook, please refer to this link - Azure Workbooks data sources Instead, storing the returned information in a LA workspace would be a better choice where KQL can be used to query for required aggregations/insights. The Azure function can have the code in it to send the response received from APIs to LA workspace using the Logs Ingestion API in Azure Monitor. This method would allow for flexible queries directly from the Workbook to present visualization.
The rows in LA workspace table cannot be updated/overwritten. The queries could be written to scan only the latest data received (or that has been received in the last 5 minutes as Azure Function runs every 5 minutes). If you are concerned about the cost, you could keep the retention to a minimum so that the logs do not grow much.

If the answer did not help, please add more context/follow-up question for it. Else, if the answer helped, please click Accept answer so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

Ashwin Venkatesha 230 Reputation points

2024-05-30T05:59:31.3933333+00:00

@AnuragSingh-MSFT
Hi thanks for your response.

So the context is, whenever customer wants to access the workbook that leverages our product api, I want the widgets to reflect data from api response.

Earlier I tried to have a http trigger function app do the same job but I am facing some connection timeouts, hence choosing the timer trigger function app where it runs often and stores the response in a table. The idea with http trigger was, this function app will call the product api and in turn, this is invoked from the workbook. So the flow looks something like this, workbook -> custom endpoint of function app -> product api -> formatted response back to workbook for rendering. So with 8-10 widgets, there are 8-10 api calls if each widget is configured to use custom endpoint, not a very good solution.

Going back to timer trigger, I could selectively add a row into LA by checking if latest data in table is any different from what is returned from api response to avoid unnecessary inserts. This helps to store history as well.
AnuragSingh-MSFT 21,546 Reputation points Moderator

2024-05-31T06:11:30.68+00:00

Ashwin Venkatesha, thank you for the reply.

This looks like a good approach.

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Need help with azure workbook and function app

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