Overview

By leveraging the Cosmos API, users can connect the Power BI Desktop to Cosmos to start building Power BI reports from the Cosmos Data Model. This article covers the steps to connect the Power BI Desktop to the Cosmos API.

It is important to note that only Cosmos users that have been given the API User role are able to leverage the Cosmos API to extract data from Cosmos into other tools such as Power BI.

Details

To connect the Power BI Desktop directly to your Cosmos data, you must first install the Power BI Desktop from the Windows Store. You can then launch the Power BI Desktop application.

Cosmos includes an easy way to get a Power BI connection file (which is a *.pbids file) by navigating directly to Reporting -> Power BI and then clicking the New Dashboard button in the upper-right corner.

This will download a "cosmos_datasource.pbids" file and you can open in Power BI that will have the connection to your Cosmos tenant automatically embedded in it. 

If you are prompted to sign in the first time that you do this you will select "Organizational Account" in Power BI and then log in with your organization's Microsoft credentials.