Asana and Power BI in 2026: How to Set Up the Official Connector, Build a Project Dashboard and Fix Common Errors

June 29, 2026 6 Min Read

Asana’s built-in dashboards are good enough for most teams. You need Power BI when Asana data has to sit next to numbers from somewhere else: budget from your finance system, pipeline from your CRM, headcount from HR. That is what the official Asana connector for Power BI is for.

This guide covers who can use it, what it costs, the setup steps, a starter dashboard, and the problems people hit most often. Plan details come from Asana’s Power BI app page and Asana’s pricing page, checked October 1, 2026.

Table of Contents

Who can use the Asana Power BI connector

You need three things:

An eligible Asana plan. The connector is available on Asana Advanced ($24.99 per user per month, billed yearly), Enterprise and Enterprise+, plus the legacy Business and Enterprise tiers. Starter and Personal do not include it.
Power BI Desktop, which is free but runs on Windows only. You use it to connect to Asana, model the data and build reports.
A Power BI license to share. Asana notes that you need a Power BI license to view all reports. In practice, anyone publishing to or viewing shared reports in the Power BI service needs Power BI Pro ($14 per user per month, billed yearly) or Premium Per User ($24), unless your organization has Fabric capacity.

So for a 10-person team where 3 people consume reports, the integration adds roughly $42 a month in Power BI Pro licenses on top of Asana Advanced. If you are still on Asana Starter, compare that with simply using Asana’s own reporting first.

Step-by-step setup

The connector is a custom connector file (.mez), not a built-in Power BI source, which is why the setup has a few extra steps.

Six-step graphic showing how to connect Asana to Power BI Desktop, from checking plans to publishing the report — The whole setup takes about 15 minutes the first time. Graphic: WorkManagementHub, from Asana's Power BI instructions.

Download the connector. Go to asana.com/apps/powerbi and click Install Power BI for Asana. This downloads the .mez file.
Move the file into the Custom Connectors folder. Put it in [Documents]\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\Custom Connectors. If the folder does not exist, create it.
Allow custom connectors. In Power BI Desktop, go to File > Options and settings > Options > Security. Under Data Extensions, select Allow any extension to load without validation or warning, then click OK.
Restart Power BI Desktop.
Connect. Click Get Data, search for Asana V2, sign in to Asana when prompted, and paste the URL of the Asana project, portfolio or team you want to bring in.
Choose tables and load. Select the tables you need (tasks are the usual starting point), then Load or Transform Data if you want to clean columns first.

Two plan rules to know: syncing a whole team requires Asana Enterprise or Enterprise+, and the connector respects Asana permissions, so you only get data you can already see in Asana.

Build a starter project dashboard

A useful first report answers four questions: how much is open, what is late, who is overloaded, and is the trend improving. The column names the connector returns depend on your Asana setup and custom fields, so check them in the Data pane and adjust the examples below. In these examples, the task table is called Tasks and has a completed flag, a due date, an assignee and a completed date.

Measures to create (Modeling > New measure)

Open tasks: Open Tasks = CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(Tasks), Tasks[Completed] = FALSE())
Overdue tasks: Overdue Tasks = CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(Tasks), Tasks[Completed] = FALSE(), Tasks[Due On] < TODAY())
On-time rate: On-time % = DIVIDE(CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(Tasks), Tasks[Completed At] <= Tasks[Due On]), CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(Tasks), Tasks[Completed] = TRUE()))

If the on-time formula errors because it compares two columns in a filter, wrap the condition in FILTER(Tasks, Tasks[Completed At] <= Tasks[Due On]).

Visuals to add

Cards for Open Tasks, Overdue Tasks and On-time %.
A stacked bar of open tasks by assignee, split by section or status custom field, to spot overload.
A line chart of tasks completed per week, using the completed date on the axis.
A table of overdue tasks with name, assignee, due date and project, sorted by due date.

Custom fields are where the integration earns its keep. If you track effort, cost or priority in Asana custom fields, they come through as columns you can sum, filter and join to other data. Our Asana custom fields guide explains how to set them up so they report cleanly.

Analyst holding a tablet in a corridor lined with server racks — Blend Asana with finance or CRM data in one model; that is where Power BI beats Asana's own dashboards. Photo: WOCinTech Chat, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Publishing and refresh

When the report works in Desktop, click Publish to send it to a workspace in the Power BI service, where colleagues with the right licenses can view it.

Refresh is the part that catches people out. Because the Asana connector is a custom connector, scheduled refresh in the Power BI service generally needs an on-premises data gateway with the custom connector installed on the gateway machine. Microsoft explains this in its documentation on using custom connectors with the gateway. Without a gateway, you refresh manually in Desktop and republish. Plan for this before you promise a sponsor a live dashboard.

Troubleshooting

“Asana V2” does not appear in Get Data

Confirm the .mez file is in the right folder. If your Documents folder syncs to OneDrive, Power BI looks in the OneDrive copy, for example OneDrive\Documents\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\Custom Connectors. Users on the Asana forum fixed exactly this problem by moving the file there.
Check the Data Extensions security setting, then fully close and reopen Power BI Desktop.
Update Power BI Desktop. Old versions may not load newer connectors.

Sign-in works but no data comes back

Check that the URL points to a project, portfolio or team you can open in Asana.
Check your Asana plan. On Starter, the connector is not available.
For team URLs, confirm your organization is on Enterprise or Enterprise+.

The report shows stale numbers

See the refresh section above. Without a gateway, the data only updates when someone refreshes in Desktop and republishes.

Custom fields are missing

Make sure the fields are added to the project you connected. Fields that exist only in another project will not come through.

Is Power BI worth it, or are Asana dashboards enough?

Asana’s own reporting, on Starter and above, gives you project dashboards, charts and universal reporting across projects, with no extra licenses. If your questions are all about Asana work (what is late, who is busy, how fast tasks close), start there with our Asana reporting dashboards guide.

Choose Power BI when:

You need to combine Asana data with other systems.
Leadership already lives in Power BI and wants project data in the same place.
You need calculations Asana charts cannot do, such as cost per task using rates from another table.

If you only need Asana data in a spreadsheet, the Asana Google Sheets integration is a lighter option. For plan details, see our Asana pricing guide.

Frequently asked questions

Which Asana plan includes Power BI?

Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise+, plus the legacy Business and Enterprise tiers. Starter and Personal do not include the connector.

Is the Asana Power BI connector free?

There is no extra charge from Asana beyond an eligible plan. Power BI Desktop is free, but sharing reports through the Power BI service needs Power BI Pro ($14 per user per month) or Premium Per User for each viewer, unless your organization has capacity licensing.

Does the connector work on a Mac?

Not directly. Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows. Mac users typically use a Windows virtual machine or have a colleague on Windows build the report.

Can I refresh Asana data automatically in Power BI?

Yes, but because the Asana connector is a custom connector, scheduled refresh in the Power BI service generally requires an on-premises data gateway with the connector installed. Otherwise, refresh manually in Desktop and republish.

What Asana data can I bring into Power BI?

Asana’s integration is designed for projects, portfolios and their tasks, including custom fields, so you can build dashboards on progress, workload and custom metrics. You only see data your Asana account can access.