Forum Discussion
Special program in Excel
You mention some automation to export a report - what formats are available? .csv by any chance?
Your limitation is how you can get the data out of this application, so excel (or powerbi) can read it.
If this is an in-house application, you may even be able to query the database directly. You could also use a webquery if the application has a friendly web front-end.
wsantos I can only send the file .xls or plain text seperated by commas, and my only methods would be via FTP server or email. It is not a in-house application, we pay for the service as they source their data from 3rd party advertising websites, which would cost us a fortune to get.
jimrup04 If you can attach the file to an email, you could use power automate to extract it to a folder somewhere. Using .xls or .csv as a data source for a query is trivial. Your excel spreadsheet can use it and refresh results automatically when you open it (powerbi may still be a better solution). There are other options, like setting up an ftp server if you have that capability - check with your IT/hosting company . A consultant should be able to build you something for a lot less than $10K, depending on what your report requirements are - the devil is in the details, as always, and until someone can review your actual final report(s), it's all speculation.