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Connecting PowerBI to the Brightidea API

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Overview

The Power BI Connector is a licensed, paid feature that allows you to connect Microsoft Power BI Desktop to the Brightidea API. Once connected, you can pull your Brightidea data directly into Power BI to build custom reports and dashboards.

⚠ Important: Before proceeding, confirm that the Power BI Connector is enabled for your organization. Contact your Brightidea Customer Success Manager if you are unsure.

There are two main steps to get connected:

  1. Register a new app in the Brightidea Developer Portal to get your authentication credentials.
  2. Download the Power BI Connector bundle, configure it with your credentials, and install it in Power BI Desktop.

Prerequisites

  • A licensed Brightidea account with the Power BI Connector feature enabled.
  • Microsoft Power BI Desktop installed on a Windows machine.
  • A Brightidea Developer account (free to register at developer.brightidea.com).
  • Access to your Brightidea site URL (e.g., https://yourcompany.brightidea.com).

Step 1: Register a New Application in the Brightidea Developer Portal

1a. Create a Developer Account

If you do not already have a Brightidea developer account, go to developer.brightidea.com and register for a free account before proceeding.

1b. Create a New Brightidea App

Once logged into the Developer Portal, create a new application:

  1. In the Developer Portal, navigate to the Applications section and click Create New App.
  2. Fill in the following fields:
    • App Name: Enter a descriptive name (e.g., "Power BI Connector - [Your Company Name]").
    • Website: Enter your Brightidea site URL (e.g., https://yourcompany.brightidea.com).
    • Redirect URI: Enter the following exact URL:

https://oauth.powerbi.com/views/oauthredirect.html

  1. Click Create.
  1. On the resulting Edit App page, locate and copy your Client ID and Client Secret. You will need both values in Step 2.

Note: Keep your Client Secret private. Anyone with your Client ID and Client Secret can authenticate to your Brightidea data.

 

Step 2: Download and Configure the Power BI Connector (V4)

2a. Download the Connector Bundle

The current version of the connector is V4. Download it directly from the Brightidea Developer Portal:

https://developer.brightidea.com/PowerBIConnector

⚠ Access Note: The Developer Portal download page is restricted to the 'Power BI Controller' group. If your organization does not yet have access, contact your Brightidea Customer Success Manager to be added. The connector ZIP is no longer distributed by email, as the installer script it contains is frequently flagged by corporate security filters.

The download page provides two files: BrightideaConnector-v4.zip (the connector bundle) and a User Guide PDF. Download both.

Extract the ZIP file to a folder on your Desktop (e.g., C:\Users\<user>\Desktop\BrightideaConnector).

2b. Run the installer

V4 ships with a Windows installer that handles configuration and packaging for you. There are no files to edit by hand and no archives to repackage.

  1. Inside the extracted folder, locate the file named install.bat and double-click it. A small setup window will appear.
  1. Fill in the four fields:
  2. Client ID — Paste the Client ID from Step 1.
  3. Client Secret — Paste the Client Secret from Step 1. Characters are masked as you type or paste; this is normal.
  4. Brightidea URL — Enter your Brightidea site URL (e.g., https://yourcompany.brightidea.com).
  5. Records per page — Leave at the default value of 100.
  6. Click Install. The installer writes the configuration, packages the connector as a .mez file, and copies it to the Power BI custom connectors folder on your machine. A confirmation dialog displays the final installation path. Click OK to close it.

 

Note: If you ever need to update credentials or rotate a Client Secret, simply re-run install.bat. The setup window pre-fills the values from your existing configuration so you only need to change what is different.

 

⚠ SmartScreen / PowerShell Note: Windows may display a SmartScreen warning (“Windows protected your PC”) the first time the installer runs. Click More info, then Run anyway. If your organization’s IT policy blocks PowerShell scripts entirely, see the Manual Installation section in the User Guide PDF for an alternative path that does not require PowerShell.

Install location: The installer places the .mez file at the standard Power BI custom connectors path: C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Power BI Desktop\Custom Connectors

 

The installer creates the Power BI Desktop and Custom Connectors folders automatically if they do not exist, and detects redirected Documents folders (e.g., OneDrive) so the file lands in the correct location.

 

Step 3: Enable Custom Connectors in Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop requires a security setting to be adjusted before it will load custom connectors:

  1. Open Power BI Desktop.
  2. Go to File > Options and Settings > Options.
  3. In the left panel, under Global, select Security.
  4. Under Data Extensions, select the option: Allow any extension to load without validation or warning.
  5. Click OK and restart Power BI Desktop.

⚠ Security Note: Only load custom connectors from sources you trust. This setting reduces Power BI's built-in protection for unverified extensions.

 

Step 4: Connect Power BI to Brightidea

  1. In Power BI Desktop, click Get Data (on the Home ribbon).
  2. In the search box, type "Brightidea" or scroll to the Other category.
  3. Select Brightidea (Beta) from the list and click Connect.
  1. If this is your first time connecting, you will be prompted to sign in. Click Sign In.
  1. A Brightidea login screen will appear in your browser. Log in with your Brightidea credentials.
  1. If your account is associated with multiple Brightidea organizations, you will be prompted to select an affiliate from a dropdown. Choose the appropriate organization and click Log In.
  1. On the authorization screen, review the permissions being requested. If everything looks correct, click Accept.
  1. Back in Power BI Desktop, click Connect.

Power BI Desktop will connect to the Brightidea API and return a Navigator table showing the available data tables from your Brightidea site.

 

Step 5: Load Your Data

Once connected and the Navigator table appears, you have two options:

  • Load – Imports the data directly into your Power BI data model. Use this when you are ready to start building reports.
  • Transform Data – Opens the Power Query Editor so you can filter, reshape, or clean your data before loading it. Use this for more advanced data preparation.

Select the tables you need, then click Load or Transform Data to proceed.

⚡ Recommended starting point: The connector ZIP also includes a starter template, BrightideaStarter.pbit, with three pre-built dashboard pages (Overview, Idea Explorer, Campaign Performance). Double-click the .pbit in the extracted folder to open it after completing Step 3 — it loads your data and gives you working dashboards in your first session, no visuals to build.

 

Troubleshooting

In the majority of connector issues, re-doing the installation from scratch — verifying each step carefully — resolves the problem. Always start there before escalating.

Brightidea (Beta) does not appear in the Get Data list

  • Confirm the Security setting to allow custom connectors is enabled (Step 3) and that Power BI Desktop has been fully closed and reopened.
  • Re-run install.bat. The installer will rebuild the .mez and place it in the correct Custom Connectors folder, including handling the case where your Documents folder is redirected to OneDrive.
  • Confirm BrightideaConnector.mez exists in C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Power BI Desktop\Custom Connectors

Login screen does not appear or shows an error

  • Confirm the ClientID, ClientSecret, and BrightideaUrl values entered in install.bat match exactly what is in your Developer Portal app. Re-run install.bat to verify and re-save.
  • Confirm that the Redirect URI in the Developer Portal is set to exactly: https://oauth.powerbi.com/views/oauthredirect.html (no trailing slash, no extra characters).
  • In Power BI Desktop, go to File > Options and settings > Data source settings, find the Brightidea entry, click Edit Permissions > Clear Permissions, then retry. Stale cached credentials are a common cause.

“Brightidea rate limit exceeded” error (or HTTP 400 during refresh)

  • The Brightidea API allows 300 requests per hour per user. Large tenants — especially those loading the BusinessImpact table — can hit this limit. Wait approximately one hour before retrying.
  • When you do retry, untick BusinessImpact in the Navigator unless you specifically need line-item detail; it is by far the most expensive table to load.
  • Use Transform Data to filter Ideas by recent date or single campaign so you load less data per refresh.
  • Note: HTTP 400 during refresh typically indicates rate-limiting; the V4 connector detects this and surfaces a “Brightidea rate limit exceeded” error rather than a raw 400.

500 Internal Server Error or “Out of Memory” error when loading data

  • This typically occurs when the API response for a given page is too large — often caused by ideas with a very high number of associated Action Items or Comments.
  • Re-run install.bat and reduce the Records per page value from the default 100 to 50 or lower. Smaller pages mean more API calls but smaller individual responses.
  • If the issue persists, contact Brightidea Support with the specific error and the affected idea(s) so engineering can investigate.

Authentication error or “Invalid credentials” message

  • Re-run install.bat and re-enter the Client ID and Client Secret. Copy and paste the values directly from the Developer Portal to avoid typos.
  • If the Client Secret has been changed in the Developer Portal (note: the portal does not allow regenerating a secret on an existing app — a rotation requires creating a new app), re-run install.bat with the new values.
  • Confirm the authenticating user is a Brightidea admin.

“DataFormat.Error” when loading the Ideas table

  • This usually means an idea has a date field in an unrecognized format. The V4 connector handles most date formats automatically, but truly ambiguous dates (e.g., 01-02-03) return null by design.
  • Send Brightidea Support the specific idea code from the error message so the format can be added to the connector’s date parser.

The connector loads but returns no data or blank tables

  • Confirm the Brightidea URL entered in install.bat is correct and matches your active Brightidea site URL.
  • Confirm that the account you logged in with has access to the data you are trying to pull (admin or report-builder permissions on the relevant affiliate).
  • Contact Brightidea Support if data is expected but not appearing.

“Formula.Firewall” errors after publishing to Power BI Service

  • In Power BI Service, on the dataset’s data source settings, set both auth.brightidea.com and your Brightidea site URL to the Organizational privacy level.

Using Power BI on a Mac

  • Power BI Desktop is a Windows-only application and cannot be natively installed on macOS.
  • Mac users can view reports that someone has already published to Power BI Service via https://app.powerbi.com in any modern browser. Building reports, transforming data, or running custom connectors requires Windows.
  • Mac users who need to build or transform data models should use Parallels Desktop to run Windows 11 alongside macOS. This requires a Windows license and a Parallels subscription.

 

Additional Information

  • The Power BI Connector uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. Your credentials are not stored in the connector — authentication is handled securely through Brightidea’s authorization server.
  • The connector is labeled “Beta” in Power BI Desktop. This is a standard label for custom connectors that have not gone through Microsoft’s official certification process. It does not indicate instability.
  • The current connector version is V4, released April 2026. V4 exposes seven tables in the Navigator (Campaigns, Ideas, Members, Statuses, Categories, Tags, and BusinessImpact), adds flattened ID/name columns to the Ideas table for easier reporting and relationships, and includes a starter dashboard template (BrightideaStarter.pbit) bundled in the connector ZIP.
  • Scheduled refresh in Power BI Service. Custom connectors do not run directly in Power BI Service — this is a Microsoft platform limitation, not a Brightidea one. To enable scheduled refresh, your IT team must install a Power BI On-Premises Data Gateway on a Windows machine, place the Brightidea .mez on that machine, and enable the same Data Extensions security setting from Step 3. Once configured, the dataset can be bound to the gateway in Service and scheduled like any other data source. Contact your Customer Success representative to connect IT with the right resources.
  • For API developer documentation, visit developer.brightidea.com/_documentation.
  • For questions about enabling this feature for your organization, contact your Brightidea Customer Success Manager.
  • For issues with the connection or data access, submit a support ticket via the Brightidea Support Portal or contact support@brightidea.com.
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