Some basics needed on Trello's Rest API

Question

Hey everyone

I am very new to working with APIs but have used Trello for a long time. At my workplace, I have got my team using Trello to manage our tasks. I'm responsible for producing a weekly report on the progress of said tasks. Currently I do that using a connection with Bridge24, a filter within Bridge24 to export to Excel. Then I use Get&Transform to query the export to produce what I want. This is a fairly complicated way of doing it, but now it's set up, isn't too time consuming.

What I really want to do is use Trello's API and plug that into Microsoft Power BI and have the data from Trello refresh instantly.

I have been experimenting and can get certain information into PowerBI as a query from data source type "web".

When I'm researching and looking for answers, I see a lot of posts that say something along the lines of: "you need to call this and then call this". Is this done in one long URL, or do I need to make multiple URLs and string them together somehow (in PowerBI, blank query and use PHP or something?

I have many questions but I'll start with this one first!

Thanks for reading.

marc -Collabello--Phase Locked- · Answer

@Dean RowntreeUsually, when you use the Trello API, you can get some information in a single call (i.e. using a single URL).  However for more advanced reporting, you'd need multiple calls like:  Get all cards on a board.  Then for each card, get some information.

This would require some programming from your end.

Dean Rowntree · Answer

Thanks @Iain Dooley, I have previously seen the Little Blue Monkey post you linked but that seemed too vague, or assumed I need to know a lot more, for me to know where to start.

I am interested in your post and will look at setting that up with my personal account first and see what I can achieve.

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Dean Rowntree You might like to try this framework I wrote for automating Trello with Google Apps Script:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-articles/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

It dramatically simplifies the task of creating complex automations, including reporting. It's loosely based on the work from this guy:

http://www.littlebluemonkey.com/blog/automated-trello-reporting-using-google-spreadsheets