If you wish to setup and / or sign in with Xero's SSO, see this document for assistance.


 

Part One: Setting Up a Xero Tug in Tugger


This process presumes you have registered for Tugger and have signed in. (Sign Up Here). 



After the signup process, navigate to My Connectors, if you do not see the following; My Connectors will display all available options, until you have added those you require - failing that, select: Connectors. 

 


Select the Xero Connector > 'Add Connector'.

On the next screen, see image below:

  • You will need to enter information so Tugger knows what to call your Connector (1 in the image). 
    • (The name can be anything that makes sense to you.)
  • As well as how much data (2 in the image) which is the date you wish to Tug data from. 
    • (Note: the further back you go, the more data there will be stored in our data warehouse, and for the first Tug, the longer it will take.)
  • And how often it will be pulled/Tugged (indicated by the 3 in the image). 
    • (This can be changed later if required.)





Once you are happy with your details, click on Authorise Access to Xero (4 in the image).




You will then be redirected to Xero asking you to authorise Tugger's access.


If you're not logged in, you will be asked to.



Note: You shouldn't be presented with the following screen, which is similar to the screen you are more likely to be presented with.


If the account is already connected to Tugger, the screen below contains a number of slight changes to when the account is not.

1. Select another organisation, is displayed in the dropdown box.

3. Continue with 1 organisation, will connect this Tugger connector.


2. You can confirm (and remove) connections to apps by following this link.



Once logged in, however, you should be presented with the following:


(If you see the above, it may be worth investigating as someone within your organisation has already connected, either that or there is already a connector on your Tugger account. If this is so then you may wish to add an additional organisation.)



1. Click on the dropdown.

2. Select the organisation to connect to your Tugger connector

3. The link provides a means of viewing and removing already-connected apps.

4. Allow access when ready.



After completing the authorisation in Xero, you will be redirected to the Tenant Selection page.



1. Click on the dropdown to display available Tenants.

2. Select the required Tenant.

3. Confirm Selection, when ready.


Once completed you may be directed to the Summary page.


If, however, you are presented with the Report Setup page, navigate to the Summary page as indicated below.

 



If you navigate to the Summary page, you can see the progress of your connector. Depending on how soon you look, the first Tug may not have started, as shown below.


1. This is the name of your Connector.

2. Displays the status of the Tug.




... And after a few moments the page will update to advise that it's Tugging.


Also indicated is the progress, such as how long the current Tug has been running, and the date that any completed Tugs have pulled data to; this may or may not be displayed when you look.


Note: You should not install the reports until there has been an update to show data has come across, and small quantities of data may not give meaningful results.





Once a Tug has completed, the information displayed changes slightly, as the image below displays.



You will notice that the time to sync is only a few seconds; low times can be due to few if any changes detected or due to lower amounts of data overall. Your duration will be dependent   on what you selected earlier: date-wise, and the overall quantity of data within your account. 

You can also hover over parts of the table to see the row counts at particular times, as this is a new Tug, there is only the one.


Note: How long your data will take to come across will depend on how much data there is, which can take minutes, hours and perhaps longer.



If you wish to change how often the syncing occurs, select the Settings shown above.


To continue with importing a report template into Power BI Desktop, please read on.





Part Two: Import your Xero data into Power BI Desktop

 

Pre-requisites for this part of the process are:

   - Tugger: A ‘Tug’ created, and your data transferred. (At lease the first update of data progress has been reported on the Summary page.)

   - Power BI .pbit template(s): download from Tugger (see image below).

   - Signed in to your Microsoft Account within Power BI Desktop, which is required to publish to their Service.


The Report Credentials shown below, contain all you need to import your data from your Tugger connector into Power BI Desktop (or Tableau, Excel and others).



If you need to download the report templates for your connector, these are available via Report Setup (image below, 1; then select 2, Power BI, and in the following page you will see the section indicated by 3, which contains the template(s)).



If you wish to see the step by step guide for the Power BI process, follow the link here: 



Otherwise: An overview of Importing a report template

 

On opening Power BI desktop for the first time, the following splash screen is displayed; subsequent opening, may have additional information presented, related to saved reports.


You need to be signed in to publish the report to Power BI Service, and as you can see I am already; if this is your first time opening Power BI, you will need to sign in if you intend to publish any of the reports. You will also see (bottom right) that there is an update available; these may be handled automatically by your organisation.


The simplest way to load the template is to click on it from the browser once it has downloaded, or to navigate to wherever it downloads to and double click on it; if you chose to do that, scroll down this document to the: 'Enter URL, sub heading'.


How to import the template via Power BI is displayed in the following 3 images.




… Close the Splash Screen. 


Navigate to File > Import > Select: Power BI Template 





Locate the report template (.pbit extension) previously downloaded. 



... And Click Open.




Tugger’s Report Credentials Page (displayed again for clarity) 

  1. The OData URL.
  2. The User name.
  3. The Password.




Enter URL



Regardless of what method you used to import the template, you will be presented with the following screen, once it has loaded/imported.


From the Report Credentials page above, copy the OData URL (1 in the image above) into the Tugger URL in the image below.


Then click Load.






If this is the first time you have loaded a report, you will be asked to enter authentication details; see Setting Up Your Reports For The First Time in Power BI Desktop, which contains more detailed information, although it is shown briefly below. 


A Refresh pop-up dialogue appears:



This will update with values for the tables: bytes, Kbytes and Mbytes are usual, but will depend on the amount of data you have.


… After a few moments, an OData feed dialogue appears.




If this is the first time you are importing into Power BI Desktop (or if you have Regenerated the Credentials, the how-to is here, but is not needed for this installation and setup) the OData feed dialogue will pop up.


Once you have entered the Basic authentication details, you will not be asked again unless they are cleared from Power BI desktop - or refreshed in Tugger.



  1. Select Basic (1 in the image).
  2. Enter the User name and Password from your Tugger connector's Report Credentials page (displayed previously; items 2 and 3 in the previously displayed image - third image above the current).
  3. Match the link in the dropdown to the link displayed at the top of the dialogue; if the levels don't match, then issues can develop later.
  4. click on Connect when ready.


After a few seconds, the Refresh dialogue will re-appear and updates to the content will become apparent; this is to be expected, and once complete the dialogue will disappear and the report should open (see below).


Note: If an error occurs after clicking Connect, see, Report Refresh Error.




There will be several tabs available...

(It should be noted that the dummy-data is a very small sample size.)


 

… Highlighted at the bottom of the image is the open tab, and the tab-navigation buttons (forward and backward) for when there are tabs off-screen, which is the case here.

 

You may wish to just save the report at this stage, for example if you’re stopping now with a view to continuing later. It forms part of the Publishing Process, which follows this section, if you are continuing straight away, just give it a name that makes sense to you.


If you don't save now, you will be asked to when Publishing to Microsoft's Online Service.

 

 


File > Save As



… Save to a directory of your choice. 





Part Three: Publish your Xero Data to Power BI Service (online)


Pre-requisites for this part of the process are:

   - Power BI Service: setup (ideally, Workspaces and Access (permissions) added for Users as appropriate). 

   - Power BI Desktop report imported.

Please see the Power BI Online Workspaces and Users article for basic information relating to adding Workspaces and Users, including assigning the level of access users need.


We do recommend setting up Workspaces beforehand as although the report can be saved to a new Work Space later, it doesn’t copy all the components (no dataset - compare 1 and 2 below) when published, only the report. Not only this, but reports added to the default Workspaces level cannot be shared via assigning Access.




This may not be an issue, but those assigned to a Workspace without a Dataset cannot refresh it, and will have to rely on the automated refresh, unless they can get it manually refreshed by another user.



To publish:



Select Publish, 1 in the above image.





If you haven’t already saved, then 2, as per the image below, will appear (and can even appear after previously saving).




Click Save.



A Save dialogue appears.



… Save (3) to a directory of your choice.




If you have already saved, after clicking ‘Publish’, the Publish to Power BI dialogue should appear, otherwise it appears after saving.



The steps are:

  1. Publishing and Saving (detailed previously).
  2. Search for Workspace (optional).
  3. Select My Workspace if you haven't created your own (not recommended).
  4. Or, select the Workspace created.
  5. Then click on Select (highlighted).


Note: If the only Workspace is called My Workspace (which is the default and always available) you may wish to Cancel instead of clicking Select. You could then create a Workspace - perhaps configuring access for Users at the same time (Available here: Power BI Online Workspaces and Users.). After creating a Workspace: Publish again to the newly created Workspace.

 



Once the report has been published, the following should be displayed. (First it will update on the publishing progress, before showing a link to the published report once it has completed.)



Navigate to Power BI online to find your report or click on the link available in the dialogue, shown in the image above. 




Part Four: Navigating to a Published Document in Power BI Online



After logging into Power BI Online, to navigate to your previously published report: see image below.



In the example here: Workspaces > Xero, as the image displays; the optional search feature is also indicated.




The next image offers a brief explanation of what is offered:

  1. This is the report (previously viewed in Power BI desktop before publishing); there is an opportunity to share this report, by hovering and selecting as appropriate.
  2. The main use – at least initially – is setting up how often your data from our secure data warehouse is refreshed. Click on the refresh icon, where you may need to enter Login details, authorising Power BI to access said data. The mini-tutorial for this can be viewed in Setting up Automatic Refresh in Power BI Online.
  3. The Share option.
  4. Perform a manual Refresh. (In our case here, grabbing updates from Tugger.)
  5. Set up Schedule Refreshes (see link in point 2 above), although other options are available.
  6. The ellipse (3 dots) offers other options, including Delete, tailored to the either the Dataset or Report; deleting the report has no affect on the dataset, whereas deleting the dataset also deletes the report.




Note: this report contains dummy data.


After selecting the report, or if following the link from Power BI desktop, the report (example shown below) is displayed.


Note: 'Last Refreshed' in the desktop is not accurate due to both the fact that only manual refreshes are available and the way the desktop version works. You may see discrepancies in dates as shown below until a fresh has been performed within Microsoft's Service (online). See the previously mentioned: Setting up Automatic Refresh in Power BI Online to set it up.



 

The view for the reports are presented in a different manner to what Power BI Desktop displayed; instead of the multiple tabs, there are the pages for the reports; the selected page is indicated.


It should be noted that some pages shown in Power BI Desktop are not automatically visible in the Service; viewing them is done via various methods, but often a Drill-through.


A quick example.


  1. Hover over the required item, which displays further info. via a popup. (The 'Number of Invoices by Contact' bar in our example.)
  2. Right click on it.
  3. Select the required page from the Drill-through sub-menu; there should be at least one available.





You will be presented with an additional page, filtered depending on what was selected and where you drilled through from. Pages available in this manner are known as Hidden Pages, although they are visible (and need to be) in Power BI Desktop.


Pages may be in a format similar to a spreadsheet as below, or perhaps a collection of additional charts.



There can be further options, including Drill-throughs, but you won't know unless you look.


To return to the previous page, select the blue arrow in the circle on the top right of the page (indicated) or select one of the pages, also indicated.




This concludes the Xero Installation guide.