Create a Power BI report with an OData Query

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

With Power BI Desktop, you can easily start creating reports for your project in Azure DevOps.

If you don't have Power BI Desktop, you can download and install it for free.

Follow the steps to create a report in Power BI desktop that shows a daily trend of bugs.

• Create a Power BI query
• Create Power BI transforms
• Create an Open Bugs trend report

Prerequisites

To create a Power BI report, you must meet the following criteria:

• You must be a member of a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one. See Sign up for free.
• If you haven't been added as a project member, get added now. Anyone with access to the project, except Stakeholders, can view Analytics views.
• Have the View Analytics permission set to Allow. See Grant permissions to access Analytics.
• Boards must be enabled. To re-enable it, see Turn an Azure DevOps service on or off.
• Have installed Power BI Desktop October 2018 Update or later version. You can download this client application from the official Power BI Desktop download page.
• Have tracked work items for some period of time on which to generate a trend report.

Create a Power BI Query

Create a Power BI Query to pull the data into Power BI as follows:

1. Choose Get Data, and then Blank Query.

   

2. From the Power BI Query editor, choose Advanced Editor.

   

3. The Advanced Editor window opens.

   

4. Replace the contents with the following query.

   let
      Source = OData.Feed ("https://analytics.dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_odata/v4.0-preview/WorkItemSnapshot? "
         $apply=filter(
             WorkItemType eq 'Bug'  
         AND StateCategory ne 'Completed'  
         AND startswith(Area/AreaPath,'{areapath}')  
         AND DateValue ge {startdate} )/
         groupby((DateValue,State,WorkItemType,Area/AreaPath), aggregate($count as Count))  
         &$orderby=DateValue"
        ,null, [Implementation="2.0",OmitValues = ODataOmitValues.Nulls,ODataVersion = 4]) 
   in
       Source
   

   

5. Substitute your values within the sample query.

   The sample query has strings that you must replace with your values:

   • {organization} - Your organization name
   • {project} - Your team project name. Or omit /{project} entirely, for a cross-project query
   • {areapath} - Your Area Path. Format: Project\Level1\Level2
   • {startdate} - The date to start your trend report on. Format: YYYY-MM-DDZ. Example: 2022-09-01Z represents 2022-September-01. Don't enclose in quotes.

   

6. Choose Done to execute the query.

   If you've never connected to your account, Power BI may require you to authenticate. For more information, see Client authentication options.

Expand Area, Iteration, AssignedTo columns

The query returns several columns that you need to expand before you can use them in Power BI. Any entity pulled in using an $expand statement returns a record with potentially several fields. You need to expand the record to flatten the entity into its fields. Examples of such entities are: AssignedTo, Iteration, and Area.

After closing the Advanced Editor and while remaining in the Power Query Editor, select the expand button on the entities you need to flatten.

1. For example, choose the expand button for Area, select the properties you want to expand, and choose OK. Here, we choose AreaName and AreaPath to flatten. The AreaName property is similar to the Node Name field.

   

   Note

   The available properties to select depends on the properties requested to return in the query. If you don't specify any properties, then all properties are available. To learn more about these properties, see the following metadata references: Areas, Iterations, and Users.

2. The table now contains entity field(s).

   

3. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for all fields representing entities that need expanding. These appear with Record listed in the table column when unexpanded.

Rename fields and query, then Close & Apply

When finished, you may choose to rename columns.

1. Right-click a column header and select Rename...

   

2. You also may want to rename the query from the default Query1, to something more meaningful.

   

3. Once done, choose Close & Apply to save the query and return to Power BI.

   

Create the report

Power BI shows you the fields you can report on.

Note

The example below assumes that no one renamed any columns.

For a simple report, do the following steps:

1. Select Power BI Visualization Line chart.
2. Add the field "DateValue" to Axis
   • Right-click "DateValue" and select "DateValue", rather than Date Hierarchy
3. Add the field "State" to Legend
4. Add the field "Count" to Values
   • Right-click WorkItemId field and ensure Sum is selected

The example report:

Next steps

Create an Open bugs report

Related articles

• Overview of sample reports using OData queries
• Construct OData queries for Analytics
• Connect using Power BI and OData queries
• Metadata reference for Azure Boards Analytics
• Sample reports and quick reference index
• Add a Team slicer to an existing report