# Accessing images on PowerBI

**URL:** <https://forum.getodk.org/t/accessing-images-on-powerbi/27788>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [June 28, 2020, 1:41pm UTC](https://forum.getodk.org/t/accessing-images-on-powerbi/27788 "2020-06-28T13:41:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![LN](https://getodk.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.getodk.org/ln/32/1605_2.png) [@LN](https://forum.getodk.org/u/LN)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2020, 7:34pm UTC](https://forum.getodk.org/t/accessing-images-on-powerbi/27788/4 "2020-12-07T19:34:32Z")

</div>

Sadly I recently learned that PowerBI does not send authentication credentials when fetching images so this is currently not possible directly from Central ([docs](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/service-dashboard-add-widget#add-an-image): "make sure security credentials aren't required to access the image file").

I think adding anonymous access to images in Central is probably our best bet for this. There's a feature thread at [Can we hotlink ODK Central media files?](https://forum.getodk.org/t/can-we-hotlink-odk-central-media-files/24253).

In the mean time, I worked with a project that needed to do this and we ended up mirroring all media files on a public server using the attachments API and a periodic task.

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.getodk.org/t/accessing-images-on-powerbi/27788)._