Accessing simPRO data using Power BI

[op2352]

Hello,

I’m trying to make use of simPRO's API functionality, but I’m struggling to get started. In particular, I’d like to know what the API endpoint URLs are.

In the Help text, the API FAQs page (https://helpguide.simprogroup.com/Conte ... I-FAQs.htm) states:
“The API documentation can be found at https://developer.simprogroup.com/apidoc/
It provides detailed information about endpoints, parameters, and response formats.”
But that page quoted above doesn't actually provide detailed information about endpoints. It's just an introductory page and it merely states:
“The documentation lists all available endpoints and details the input and output of each one.”

Apologies for the incompetence, but I’m unable to find the advertised list of available endpoints in the documentation (and the search functionality appears not to work for me). Could somebody send me the URL of the page that lists all available endpoints please?

And if anybody knows of a useful guide on accessing simPRO data using Power BI, I'd be hugely grateful to hear about it!

Thanks,
Gary

[SimproAPITeam]

Hi Gary,

You can view all the endpoints we have to offer from the API documentation by navigating from the Top tab (People, Projects, Materials, ...).

Example for our Customers endpoint here: https://developer.simprogroup.com/apido ... /Customers

Jobs: https://developer.simprogroup.com/apido ... 6#tag/Jobs

Catalogs: https://developer.simprogroup.com/apido ... g/Catalogs

For more help with how to use our API you can go through the Get Started tab to get more information on how to connect and examples on how to use the API.

If you need help with building the integration maybe reach out to our partners team they might be able to refer you to our partners that might have built something you need.

https://www.simprogroup.com/partners

I hope that helps.

[op2352]

Hi SimproAPITeam,

Many thanks for your reply. Apologies for the slow response. When I raised the question I ticked the checkbox labelled "Notify me when a reply is posted", so I was expecting an email to alert me if anybody replied (so that I didn't have to keep monitoring this website on the off chance that somebody might have replied). But I didn't get an email, so my first question is: Am I misunderstanding what that checkbox is for, or am I missing some configuration in my user profile to make the checkbox work?

Back to my original question ... I'm possibly putting too much faith into Copilot here, but due to my failure to find any comprehensible documentation on how to get Power BI to query simPRO tables, I asked Copilot how to do it and was advised that I need to go down the path Home > Get Data > Web in Power BI. This will bring up a window entitled "From Web" into which the URL of an API endpoint should be input, (following which an API key, which I have, should be input if authentification is required). Is Copilot correct there?

If so, then all I need is a URL. Could you please explain how that URL is formed? I am finding conflicting information in the simPRO documentation, in your response below and in Copilot. I tried a few formats of URL. For most of my attempts, I got a connection failure or a permission denied failure in Power BI. But when I try the two examples you have provided below (Jobs and Catalogs), I don't get an error message, which initially looks promising. But all I get for loading into Power BI are a number of tables (38 for Jobs, 39 for Catalogs) of what appears to be metadata of some sort. I certainly don't see the actual contents of our Jobs table or our Catalog table.

I assume some of the following data may be relevant to create the URL I require:
simPRO URL = https://electricity.simprocloud.com/
API Company = Guernsey Electricity
API Name = GEL_API
Grant Type = API Key

Any table will do for now. Jobs would be a great example. So, to clarify, I'd like to know the URL that allows me to query (or report on) our Jobs table in Power BI please.

Thanks,
Gary

[SimproAPITeam]

Hi Gary,
You are mentioning that you are querying Simpro tables so I am unsure of your approach. Our Simpro API offers the Simpro data structured in a Json format, where you can retrieve a list of objects, for example all jobs or customers in a Simpro build. Then using their unique ID's you can retrieve more comprehensive information or make updates through the API that will be reflected in our Simpro Premium UI.

All the data in our API can be retrieved using specific URL's as you mention. I'll break it down with an explanation.

You can also see more information in our documentatio here:
https://developer.simprogroup.com/apido ... e-requests

Code: Select all

https://electricity.simprosuite.com/api/v1.0/companies/0/jobs/

The first part is your unique Simpro build name that identifies your company so we return the right data.

The second part (api/v1.0/) directs you to our Rest API and the current verion is 1.0.

The third part (/companies/) will retrieve the companies in your Simpro build. /companies/0/ will get data from company ID 0, which is the default if you have single company configuration. If you have a multi company configuration you can enter the right ID to differentiate which company to retrieve data from.

Last you will add what type of data you are looking for. In this example we will list all the jobs available in the specified company.

If you are after information on a specific job you use it's unique ID to get more data.

Code: Select all

/api/v1.0/companies/{companyID}/jobs/

Depending on what you are after you can build on the url to get nested data such as sections, cost centers and items. Use the documentation to find the API data you need.


Please note that you can not retrieve complete data tables through the API.

Regards

[op2352]

Hello SimproAPITeam,

Many thanks for you reply.

Your answer to my question on how to construct endpoint URLs was great, thanks. But I'm not sure whether you answered my question about whether Copilot was correct to suggest that I could use endpoint URLs in Power BI to view simPRO data. Could you please clarify?

My aim is to be able to create Power BI reports on simPRO data because the out-of-the-box reports are limited in scope and the Metabase tool provided with simPRO is limited in functionality. Is that aim achievable?

Thanks,
Gary

[SimproAPITeam]

Hi,
I don't think Copilot knows the format of our API as all data is returned structured as objects returned in set endpoints. There is no API access directly to tables or raw data to aggregate your own reports.

Regards

[op2352]

Hi SimproAPITeam,
Thanks for the above reply. I think I'm out of my depth here, so I am going to put this topic to one side for a while and concentrate on simpler tasks where I hope I can achieve better progress with my limited intellect.
Kind regards,
Gary