Connect Power BI

This guide is for an admin or IT contact connecting Power BI Desktop to your MaxTrax data — it’s not a screen inside the MaxTrax app itself.

Note

If your project has an older .pbit Power BI template on file, it connects to the legacy MaxTrax API and has been superseded by the approach below. Use the steps here for the current platform.

Before you start

• Power BI Desktop, and an Entra (Azure AD) account your organization has authorized against the reporting views.
• Your project’s Azure SQL server name and database name — get these from your admin/IT contact.

Connect

1. In Power BI Desktop, connect to Azure SQL Database using your server and database names.
2. Sign in with your Entra account (OAuth2) — there’s no SQL username/password for this.
3. In the navigator, use only tables under the reporting schema (reporting.vw_*). These are purpose-built reporting views — a separate powerbi_reader role can read only this schema, not your raw operational tables.
4. Set the storage mode to Import, not DirectQuery. The database can pause when idle to save cost, and DirectQuery would defeat that.

No on-premises data gateway is needed for the default setup. Your IT contact will tell you if your organization instead requires a private network connection.

Set a refresh schedule

Schedule a small number of refreshes per day — two to four is typical — rather than continuous refresh. Refreshing much more often works against the database’s ability to pause when idle, which is where the cost savings come from.

What’s in the reporting views

The reporting schema includes per-entity views (welds, ISOs, test packages, inspections, film intervals, welders, welder lots, procedures, projects, documents, the audit log) plus a set of pre-aggregated views for common reporting cuts. All of them exclude internal sync bookkeeping columns and already-deleted records.

Note

Some views carry information your organization may want to review before wider access — for example, welder names and stencils, or operator identity on the audit log (the audit log excludes the raw event payload). Check with your admin before granting broad Power BI access.

Measure definitions

Every figure MaxTrax reports — diameter inch, earned diameter inch, weld effort — has one written definition. To read it, open Reports → BI integrations in the app:

• The Measures table lists each registered measure with its plain-language formula, the weld types it counts (for example BW, SW, FSOF), the date its current definition took effect, whether it agrees with the Diameter report, and which units your projects are set to. It is shown to Corporate Administrators with access to all projects.
• Definition › opens the measure’s definition card: the formula, the ruling behind it, and the history of how the definition changed.
• Definition changes, under Feed health, announces each change — for example, diameter inch now means Σ NPS, and the older wall-weighted figure is reported separately as weld effort. Check it before comparing a Power BI figure with an older export.

Definitions are read-only here: they change only by a dated ruling.

Related

• Import weld data from Excel
• Generate reports & printable labels