Power BI
This page covers the initial connection and configuration of the the Luware Power BI Template, allowing you to retrieve Nimbus call data (via OData interface) from your data cluster. If you already connected your template before and want to learn more about the individual parts of the template itself, head to the Power BI Template Usage section
Reporting Checklist - Before you start
Nimbus uses Power BI to connect to your tenant and retrieve the necessary KPI facts and dimensions according to the Nimbus Reporting Model. Since the BI Report File is stored locally on your PC, no Power BI Pro account is needed to use this feature.
To get started please take note of the the following points:
- The Power BI Desktop App, Version 2.87.x or better is required to use all Nimbus features. We always recommend keeping your Power BI Desktop version up to date.
- Only users with specific Role Access Concept (Service Admin, Supervisors) have access to the BI OData Interface .
- Reporting queries work with any service administrator role. More advanced Nimbus Features such as User States reporting require an additional Contact Center Service / User Supervisor role for your user. Without that role, sections of your report may remain blank.
- Please ensure to hold the according O365 credentials ready when connecting via Power BI desktop. The steps are explained below.
- Note that querying, displaying large call session volumes in BI Desktop requires substantial amounts of Memory and Hard Drive space, leading to errors if either is insufficient on your PC. Even on high-speed internet connections a query with millions of entries can take several minutes. Refer to our FAQ section when you encounter issues.
- We recommend to always use our latest BI template files, downloaded to the PC in which you inspect Nimbus retrieved data.
Luware provides the following Power BI Files. Contact Luware Support or your Customer Success Specialist to get the latest version.| Description | Filenames | |||||||||||||||
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| Power BI Template / Report | Nimbus.pbit / Nimbus.pbix
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| Paginated Reports |
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| Legacy Template | Nimbus_AppendLegacy.pbix Learn more...
Legacy Template Use cases 
Legacy support is available for LUCS/TM versions 3.5+ DB versions:
You may need this template in 3 scenarios:
Example BI Template with both Nimbus and legacy data combined
Report parameters The legacy template contains a set of additional parameters for connecting to the LUCS or Team Manager SQL Server database.
Please note in regards to the 3 scenarios above:
Parameter settings in Power BI
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Power BI - performance and query errors
KNOWN ISSUE Query Errors: Particularly on high data volume queries, we currently get issues reported that relate to the BI Data Privacy firewall. We continue to investigate this case to make further improvements to our query and templates as needed.
Current workaround → If you encounter problems with your version of Power BI, please follow these steps.
Do not load the template file or data yet. Close any report files, but leave Power BI open.
Head to Power BI Options and Settings > Options > Global > Privacy
- Ensure "Always ignore Privacy Level settings" is selected
Next, head to Power BI Options and Settings > Options > Global > Security
- Select "Allow any extention to load without validation or warning"
Finally, open your Nimbus Report file and provide the connection details, starting with a small time-range test query.
If everything works as required, continue to expand your query sizes. However, consider the known BI Performance Issues warning below in mind.
If there still are issues: Head to Power BI Options and Settings > Options > Global > Security
- Verify that "Ignore the Privacy Levels and potentially improve performance" is selected. If it is not, check the previous steps first, then and follow the linked Microsoft documentation for more details.
KNOWN ISSUE Performance Issues: On recent BI Versions – running on Windows 11 in particular – we have noticed considerable CPU and RAM usage spikes both during BI queries. The high frequency data access can lead to query errors (e.g. out of memory, connection forcibly closed) as your computer hits CPU and RAM boundaries.
The Report parameters Unified Sessions and User States greatly increase the data load on Power BI and thus can increase the occurrence of query errors and connection aborts.
- Even on a powerful PC with good internet connection you must still expect overall query and calculation times of ~10-15 minutes. → We recommend using a workstation equipped with Core i7 CPU or newer and at least 16 GB RAM to keep processing speeds acceptable.
- Our BI template has been tested with up to 2 million call sessions. → With additional data parameters (Unified Sessions, User States) enabled we recommend querying your date range in smaller ranges and increments. This is especially applicable when you are running services with high call volumes >1 million monthly sessions.
Recommended workarounds
→ If you got a Nimbus .pbit template file successfully connected and used for queries, save it as a .pbix report file for continued work. We have noticed considerably lower resource usage on pbix file extensions.
→ Consider decreasing your reporting range and/or deactivate unneeded parameters to strike a balance between query times and data reported.
Configure Connection
- Open Power BI Desktop.
- Open the Nimbus report file (Nimbus.pbit). You may immediately abort any update process as it will fail without proper connection details. When opening the Template for the first time you will be requested to parameters → See next step.
As the report connects you will be requested to enter the connection details and other parameters.
Determine the URL below, depending on your Tenant data cluster location, as specified during Nimbus Installation.
In most cases this region is selected by your tenant administrator when provisioning the first Nimbus service.
I'm not an admin. How can I find out my data cluster location?
When you log into https://portal.luware.cloud, keep track of the URL shown in your browser. Depending on the Cluster you are on the URL will change:Example: The UK data cluster uses a "UK" subdomain while Germany uses a "DE" prefix.
If the base subdomain does not change as you remain in Switzerland.
Depending on your cluster, copy the URL from the list below:
Power BI data cluster connector URLs:
Paste the Connection URL into the "ConnectionLink" field.
Adjust template parameters as needed.
Note that the "DaysLimit" and "From/To Date" directly affects how much data is being downloaded when you refresh the report. This value has a great impact on Power BI's processing.
Not seeing this dialogue? It might have been closed on accident. Please re-open the report file, as this dialogue opens as default when the parameters are missing. 
After this dialogue was confirmed, values can be changed again later. → See "Customize Template Parameters" chapter below.
Provide your Connection Details
Your Nimbus team owner credentials must be held ready for this. Nimbus uses impersonation permissions to connect to the data source.
- On the OData Feed Login Window, switch to the tab: "Organizational Account"
Sign in by providing your team owner O365 credentials (the same you would use within Nimbus)
→ You will be asked for permissions to impersonate your user to access Nimbus data on your Tenant.
Learn more... Connecting to your reporting data via the Nimbus API will request delegated user impersonation permissions from a user with tenant administrator privileges. The permission will be requested by either the Power BI Desktop application or by Power BI Online when trying to access your Tenant data for the first timeRequested Permission:
user_impersonation for the Luware Nimbus application
Application
Uses Enterprise App
Application ID
Power BI Desktop
Microsoft Power Query for Excel
a672d62c-fc7b-4e81-a576-e60dc46e951d
Power BI Online
Power BI Data Refresh
b52893c8-bc2e-47fc-918b-77022b299bbc
Power BI Application Information TENANT ADMIN This permission can be requested by individual users, or granted by a Global Administrator on-behalf of the whole organization (recommended).
Managing permissions for the "Power BI Data Refresh" Application- Read and confirm the necessary permissions requested by this app.
→ You will be brought back to the OData feed dialogue with your used shown as "Signed in ". Click on "Connect" and allow for up to 1 minute to establish a connection.
Note: Depending on your parameter and call volume on your Nimbus Tenant the data retrieval process can take >10 min, as Power BI also needs to build the Reporting Model around your data. → As long as no error is shown you can leave the "Refresh" running, even if it appears stagnant for a while.
Once the refresh is done, inspect the BI Report
→ your O365 Tenant Nimbus Session Data should now be loaded into the template.
At this point you can go over to Power BI Template Usage or carry on with the steps below to adjust parameters further. Note that nearly each parameter change requires a data query refresh within the entire template.
Customize Template Parameters
About Parameters
- Certain parameters in the BI Template can be adjusted to your liking. To do so, make sure the BI Template is opened, then go to Home Ribbon > Transform Data > Edit Parameters.
- On paramter changes we recommend to update via " Apply changes" (Yellow bar) instead of pressing the "Refresh" button from the ribbon bar. This saves time as "Apply changes" only queries the actually needed data instead of the whole set.
| Parameter | Notes | ||||||
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| Connection URL | Connects your template to the data repository. This parameter usually doesn't need changing once you've configured it for your Template at first startup. However if you're having problems connecting – or need to connect to a different source – you can check and adjust the parameter at any time. → Also refer to the "Configure Connection" step above. Here are the connector links again for reference: Power BI data cluster connector URLs:
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| Last X Days (Lookback) | Changes the number of days, always referring back from the current date (today). Useful when you want to your report consistently look back at a certain amount of days. | ||||||
| From Date and To Date (Range) | Allows to specific a specific date range for the query. This is useful when you have a very large monthly call volume that would slow down the report query significantly, or in case you want to ignore certain periods of data. | ||||||
| Generate Unified Sessions | Unified Sessions consolidate Caller (Customer) data like PSTN or Name, the Caller Path (Transfers, Customer Journey, Services Called) and indivdual call Session Times with a Final Session Outcome as a new lookup table.
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| Load User States |
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| Timezone | All "datetime" values in the data source are in UTC encoded. In order to switch from UTC to your local time zone you can use the " Timezone " parameter as offset.
The Nimbus report currently supports 3 available values which corresponds to the time zones used in Europe.
The Daylight Saving Time (DST) period in Europe runs from 01:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on the last Sunday of March to 01:00 UTC on the last Sunday of October every year. Examples per Timezone
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| Calendar Language | To configure the language in Power BI Desktop:
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Known Issues and Solutions
Connection Problems? Try these steps:
- Ensure that your connecting user has the permissions needed → See Role Access Concept → "Access to Historical OData Interface" column and ensure you connect with a user with that role.
- If for any reason the connection window does not appear or errors occur, go to File > Options and Settings > Data Source Settings and revoke any user permissions / login data specified in your Nimbus reports. The next time you open the Nimbus BI report or trigger a data refresh you should be asked for new credentials again. In case of a wrong OData URL you can also change the template parameters.
- Also ensure that the "ConnectionLink" parameter in your template was set to the right location. Your user credentials will not work on a different data cluster URL. Power BI data cluster connector URLs:
Query abort issues or errors? Try the following:
- Sometimes BI is not building the tables properly or conflicted with data from a previous query. Try another data refresh, as it can sometimes resolve the issue.
- Ensure to save, close and re-open your template prior to a refresh to ensure no other queries are hanging.
- Depending on your session data amount, queries can take up several minutes. If timeout-errors are returned from the OData API, try decreasing your date range and/or remove taxing session / user state parameters to improve loading speed.
- Power BI Desktop can struggle as report files reach several gigabytes in size. Ensure your PC has sufficient hard drive space and RAM to manage large amounts of data.
Still having Issues?
- On particularly large feature or parameter changes we recommend starting on a fresh template (Nimbus.pbit / .pbix).
- When encountering frequent errors, ensure you run the latest template version provided by your Luware Support or Customer Success Specialist to exclude any errors caused by leftover data structures or deprecated features.