a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb;}tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6;}tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5;} Hello everyone, I’m looking to understand whether SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Policy compliance reports can be integrated with Microsoft Power BI for enhanced reporting and visualization. Specifically, I’d like to know: * Is it possible to extract NCM compliance data (rule pass/fail status, devices, timestamps, policy names, etc.) into Power BI? * Has anyone successfully connected Power BI using:* SolarWinds Orion SQL database * SolarWinds API / SWIS (SolarWinds Information Service) * Scheduled exports (CSV/Excel) as a data source * Are there any limitations or best practices to be aware of when querying NCM compliance data for external reporting? * How do you handle performance and data refresh (near‑real‑time vs scheduled)? * Any examples of Power BI dashboards built around NCM compliance would be extremely helpful. The goal is to create more flexible, executive‑level compliance dashboards and combine NCM compliance data with other operational or security metrics already available in Power BI. I’d really appreciate hearing real‑world experiences, recommended approaches, or official SolarWinds guidance on this.

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Can SolarWinds NCM Policy Compliance Reports Be Integrated with Power BI?

a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb;}tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6;}tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5;}

Hello everyone,

I’m looking to understand whether SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Policy compliance reports can be integrated with Microsoft Power BI for enhanced reporting and visualization.

Specifically, I’d like to know:

Is it possible to extract NCM compliance data (rule pass/fail status, devices, timestamps, policy names, etc.) into Power BI?
Has anyone successfully connected Power BI using:
- SolarWinds Orion SQL database
- SolarWinds API / SWIS (SolarWinds Information Service)
- Scheduled exports (CSV/Excel) as a data source
Are there any limitations or best practices to be aware of when querying NCM compliance data for external reporting?
How do you handle performance and data refresh (near‑real‑time vs scheduled)?
Any examples of Power BI dashboards built around NCM compliance would be extremely helpful.

The goal is to create more flexible, executive‑level compliance dashboards and combine NCM compliance data with other operational or security metrics already available in Power BI.

I’d really appreciate hearing real‑world experiences, recommended approaches, or official SolarWinds guidance on this.

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Accepted answers

cnorborg

That's a longer answer! And, it should be in your PowerBI documentation. I would assume it would consist of creating a username in your Solarwinds SQL database for it to use, and then setting up PowerBI to use it. But, beyond that…

All comments

cnorborg

The short answer is "yes". PowerBI is just a data visualization tool, Solarwinds is at its backend, a data gathering tool. The way to do it is to give PowerBI access to your SQL database, preferably read-only!

That's where the short answer ends. For PowerBI to get the data out of Solarwinds that you want, and in a useful way, will mean you will need to intimately learn the structure of the SQL databases. Most of us work with the API interface, where we use SWQL, which is a very much simplified way of accessing these SQL databases. You can probably learn a lot by playing with SWQL, but in the end PowerBI doesn't support this integration. So, you'd have to modify your SWQL queries to work with SQL. The good news is that SQL is more powerful. PowerBI also tries to make it easier to get the data out of SQL, but you will still need to learn the data, and the structure of the data to get what you want out of it.

That being said, modern dashboards are the way that Solarwinds is putting similar visuals into Solarwinds own Dashboards, without having to learn how to integrate with PowerBI. But, whether those will work for you highly depends on your audience and the format you want them in.

Pravin_sandanshiv

Yes, thank you for the reply. Do we have any set process to integrate PowerBI and Solarwinds DB

cnorborg

Pravin_sandanshiv

Thank you @cnorborg i will try this