Integrating Zoho Desk with Microsoft PowerBI - Online Help | Zoho Desk

Integrating Zoho Desk with Microsoft PowerBI

Zoho Desk provides analytics for businesses to monitor and track key support metrics such as agent performance, SLA adherence, ticket lifecycle etc. efficiently. However, in addition to these default metrics, businesses often require advanced insights and parameters to track such as customer sentiment analysis, trend patterns in support requests over time, risk analysis based on support interactions, or automated anomaly detection in customer satisfaction scores. 

Power BI is a Microsoft business intelligence tool that helps in visualizing reports and sharing data insights for easy consumption. It helps in getting advanced insights by cross-platform integration, advanced data modeling, DAX Calculations, and predictive & AI-Driven insights by fetching and analyzing the data from different tools and bringing it in one place to give a holistic understanding.

Integrating MS PowerBI and Zoho Desk allows businesses to:
  1. Fetch data from Zoho Desk and use it to create reports and dashboards. 
  2. Create custom KPIs 

Availability

Permission required

Users with Support Administrator permission in both Zoho Desk and PowerBI can perform this integration.

Benefits of using PowerBI

Integrating Zoho Desk with PowerBI will help to achieve the following:
  1. Combine Data from Multiple Sources - If the user wants to combine data sources, users can integrate them together, fetch data, and provide visuals without any dependency issues. 
  2. Enhanced KPI usage - PowerBI builds dashboards and reports that support complex metrics and KPIs using DAX formulas.
  3. Interactive dashboard - Apart from the generic metrics, the users can add map, heat charts, etc for better visualization.
  4. Embed dashboards and reports into other portals, intranets, or apps, and into tools such as teams.
Integrating Desk with PowerBI
Using APIs, Desk data can be securely accessed and visualized in Power BI without manual data handling.
There are two ways to integrate Desk with Power BI:
  1. Using the Fabric API: Microsoft fabric API must be purchased and embedded for this integration to work. For more information, refer to the pricing page and Using the Microsoft Fabric REST APIs documents. A maximum of 5,00,000 records will be pushed per module per sync on selecting Fabric API. 
  2. Using the Power BI REST API: The PowerBI Rest API is a free API that supports a maximum of 10,00,000 records per sync across all modules. When data is pushed from Desk to PowerBI using PowerBI Rest API, lookup columns will be preselected as shown in the table below.
 
From Table (Source)
To Table (Reference)
Key Column(s)
Purpose
tickets
departments
departmentId → id
Categorize tickets by dept.
tickets
teams
teamId → id
Assign tickets to specific teams.
tickets
contacts
contactId → id
Identify the customer.
tickets
products
productId → id
Track issues by product line.
tickets
agents
assigneeId → id
Tracks the assigned support rep.
contacts
accounts
accountId → id
Group customers by company.
calls / tasks / events
tickets
ticketId → id
Logs activities related to a ticket.
timeEntry
tickets
requestId → id
Measure time spent on a ticket.

Integration involves the following steps: 
Setting the preferences - The admin must select a workspace from PowerBI to link with Zoho Desk. 

Defining the Sync settings - The admin can choose the modules and fields in Desk to sync with the PowerBI via the Sync Settings tab. For example, if you want to visualize only the ticket module and the priority, product name, and SLA fields, you can select them from Zoho Desk. 
Notes
Note:
  1. A maximum of 75 fields per module can be selected. 
  2. New data set will be created while shifting from one API to another. 
  3. Moving from Fabric API to PowerBI Rest API will reset the field selection. 
To install PowerBI
  1. Navigate to Setup > Marketplace and Integrations > Microsoft > Microsoft PowerBI.
  2. Click Install.
  3. Sign in to the Microsoft account using the credentials.
  4. Check Consent on behalf of your organization and click Accept.
  5. In the Preferences tab, select the Workspace.
    The authenticated user field will get auto-populated based on the Microsoft account that was authorized.
  6. Under Microsoft API Preference, select either Fabric API or PowerBI REST API. 

  7. In the Sync Settings tab, select the modules and fields available in Zoho Desk.
  8. Click Save.
Viewing Zoho Desk data in PowerBI
The modules and fields selected in the Zoho Desk will be displayed in a table format in the PowerBI workspace.

The data gets synced with PowerBI everyday at 6 am as per the admin's timezone.


Deleting the integration

Admins can delete the PowerBI integration at any point. Deleting the integration will stop the data from being pushed to PowerBI. But the users will be able to use the data that was pushed earlier. 

To delete the integration
  1. Navigate to Setup > Marketplace and Integrations > Microsoft > Microsoft PowerBI.
  2. Click the More icon (  ) in the top-right corner, then click Delete. 
  3. Click Delete to delete the extension.