Troubleshoot unexpected behaviors in the Power BI Connector

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With the Autodesk Data Connector for Power BI, you may on occasion experience unexpected behaviors.

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Most of these issues can be resolved by confirming the presence of the required files and the appropriate visualization data fields.

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If you cannot see the Autodesk Data Connector after installation, open your Windows Explorer and navigate to Documents \ Power BI Desktop.

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Open the Custom Connectors folder and ensure that you have the Autodesk Data Connector for Power BI.pqx file,

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as it is required to import any data from an Autodesk Data Exchange.

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Returning to the Power BI Desktop folder,

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open the Custom Visuals folder to confirm that you have the file Autodesk Data Connector for Power BI.pbiviz.

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This file is required to create the viewer visual in the Power BI desktop application.

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If either of these files is missing, try reinstalling the Autodesk Data Connector.

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If the Autodesk Data Connector viewer is not displaying any data,

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you may see an information icon indicating that there are active filters or slices.

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Navigate to any slices and turn them off.

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Then, select the viewer, and from the Filters pane, remove any filters applied to the visual.

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The viewer now updates as expected.

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Also verify that an appropriate .viewer property is added to the Model File field in the Visualizations pane.

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If object highlighting does not work as expected—for instance,

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selecting objects in other visuals does not highlight corresponding elements in the viewer—first, select the viewer on the dashboard.

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Then, in the Visualizations pane, confirm that the viewer has the ExternalElementID added to the Model ID, ID, and Value fields.

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This also affects colors, which will not be applied if the ExternalElementID property is missing from any of these three fields.

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To add the ExternalElementID, expand the Data Exchange in the Data pane, then drag and drop ExternalElementId into the visualization fields.

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Coloring and highlighting should now work as expected.

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For further troubleshooting, you may need to enable logging.

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From the ribbon, open the File tab.

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Select Options and settings, then select Options.

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In the Options dialog, from the selection panel, select Diagnostics.

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Then, in the Diagnostic Options group, select Enable tracing.

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To access the log files, under Crash Dump Collection, select Open crash dump/traces folder.

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This opens your Windows Explorer to the Traces folder, where you can access the log file.

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With a log file, you can review issues or send it to the Autodesk support team for further troubleshooting.

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To review current limitations for the connector, visit the Autodesk Data Exchange Help website.

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From the navigation panel, expand Power BI Data Connector and select Known Limitations.

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For further support, visit the Data Exchange Help website or the user and public forums for Data Exchange, or contact Autodesk support.