Join-up Power BI with Autodesk BIM360 through OAuth 2.0 authentication:
Register an App in Autodesk Forge:
Visit the Autodesk Developer Portal and log in or create an account.
Open the Forge Developer Dashboard, and click Create an App.
Enter the name, description, and redirect URL for your app. The redirect URL is the most critical information since it's used during the OAuth flow.
Once registered, write down the Client ID and Client Secret that you will use for 2. Before developing the application, Write down the Client ID and Client Secret that you will use for OAuth 2.0 authentication.
Configure OAuth 2.0 with Power BI:
Open Power BI Desktop and go to the Home tab. Choose Get Data.
Choose Web as the data source type.
Where I input the API endpoint you want to access from Autodesk BIM360 in the URL field, for example, you might use an endpoint like https://developer.api.autodesk.com/bim360/docs/v1.
Choose OAuth2 in the Authentication method.
Type your Client ID, Client Secret, and above all, the OAuth 2.0 Authorization URL (which usually is https://developer.api.autodesk.com/authentication/v1/authorize for Autodesk services).
Once you enter your details, Power BI will prompt you to log in to Autodesk Forge. To authenticate, use the login details you created when you signed up on the Forge Developer Portal.
Authorize and Get Access Token:
In initiating the OAuth flow, Autodesk will ask the user permission to access BIM360 data from the application. After giving consent, the Autodesk blanket will return an Access Token to Power BI.
A Power BI token will authenticate API requests and pull data out of BIM360.
Fetch Data Load into Power BI:
With Power Query in Power BI, you can extract, transform, and load Autodesk BIM360 data once the connection is established.
Use Power Query's Web. Contents function along with the proper API calls to get the data, remembering to pass the Access Token in the HTTP headers (e.g., Authorization: Bearer [Access Token]).
Handle Token Expiration:
Usually, the tokens in OAuth 2.0 expire after a selected time interval. It will require adding a refresh mechanism in Power BI. It could be done through configuring a refresh token flow to use your refresh token to get a new access token, which happens before the old one expires.
Following these steps, Autodesk BIM360 has been integrated into the Power BI system with OAuth 2.0 authentication, allowing users to securely pull data from BIM360 to enhance reports and dashboards in Power BI.
