ODK Central OData refused connection to PowerBI and Excel

There won't be any different server, but separate users under separate projects. Under each project you can have users and forms limited to those projects. Thus you can separate different schools. If you want help in implementation, you may mail me directly at debjit.biswas at gmail dot com

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Thank you for that @Debjit_Biswas1. I am going to first explore and learn more about this a little. I will reach out to you for sure when it comes to it. :slight_smile:

Regards

@Prasanna_Sundaram https://docs.opendatakit.org/central-intro/ has a lot of information about ODK Central so start there!

@Debjit_Biswas Thanks for your offer to help! If you can, help in public (as opposed to private email) so others can benefit.

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Thanks a lot @yanokwa . Always very helpful of you.

@yanokwa Thank you for the guidance. Will surely do that in the future

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Hello. My name is David. I am trying to connect to an OData feed. My ODK Central is hosted on a DigitalOcean server. For some reason, I get the error message: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden. I tried to whitelist my IP address through DigitalOcean (firewall), but this will not work either. Is there something that I am missing? Please let me know if you have some ideas.

Hi @dlederer!

How are you connecting to the OData feed? Are you using PowerBI or Excel, or another tool?

You will need to enter your ODK Central username and password in order to access the OData feed. Were you prompted for a username and password?

If you're using PowerBI or Excel and were prompted for a username and password, then you may need to reset your stored credentials in PowerBI/Excel: see @issa's comment above.

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Hi. Thank you for the quick reply. I am connecting to the OData feed using Excel. I entered in my ODK Central username and password, but it still will not work. I reset my permissions as Issa suggested, but I still receive a 403 error. A bit confused as to how to proceed from here...

I am currently located in Ivory Coast and Ghana (maybe this impacts things?), I am using Microsoft Excel 2016, DigitalOcean, hosted website on GoDaddy.

@dlederer, what version of ODK Central are you using? Can you tell us more about how you installed and configured Central?

Are you able to access Central in your browser? That is, are you only having trouble with the OData feed?

Hi. I installed and configured ODK Central on DigitalOcean using the instructions found here: https://docs.opendatakit.org/central-install/#installing-on-digitalocean... I just followed the instructions step-by-step.

Yes, I am able to access Central in my browser...no issues at all.

When I try to access the Odata feed in Excel, I copy and paste the OData feed from the browser version of ODK Central and enter my logon credentials, it gives me a 403 error...

Any ideas or areas to further investigate? Thank you for helping me troubleshoot this so far.

What version of ODK Central are you using? If you don't know, you can find out by appending /version.txt to your base URL. For example, for the Central sandbox, it is https://sandbox.central.opendatakit.org/version.txt.

Did you copy the URL for the OData feed from the box that opens when you click "Analyze via OData"? An example OData URL from the sandbox is https://sandbox.central.opendatakit.org/v1/projects/1/forms/Birds.svc. Does your OData URL look similar?

Do you have access to the Central sandbox? Are you able to successfully access an OData feed from one of the forms in the sandbox?

Hi.
Great. I am using versions:
75f11f18b6d697a73b025b46a9d0e7f6e2e5f0c0
a45a941b108803a7930ae98c1bf581fc1b5ac4fa client (v0.6.1-beta.0)
268ec9e380d3e16b1c52e59599dadef5c0784d36 server (v0.6.0-beta.0).

Yes, I copied and pasted the OData URL correctly.

I do have access to Central sandbox, however I am unable to download an OData feed from one of the forms in the sandbox as well...

I know you reset your stored credentials before, but did you also reset them before accessing the OData feed from the sandbox? Did Excel prompt you for your email address and password for the sandbox? I just want to be sure that you're not able to access an OData feed from the sandbox.

I also wanted to ask about the role that your user has within Central. Your sandbox user is a sitewide administrator, right? In your own installation, is the user whose credentials you're entering in Excel also a sitewide administrator? Does the user definitely have access to the project and form whose OData feed you're attempting to access? (Is the same user able to view the form in the browser?)

Also, are you using a proxy of any kind?

I reset my stored credentials before accessing OData feed from the sandbox. Excel did prompt me for my username and password.

My role in my own installation is sitewide administrator. In the sandbox, my role is the same (I believe). I am using Internet Explorer (although I do not think this should matter as I am trying to pull an OData feed). I definitely have access in my own installation as well.

Finally. I am not using any proxy.

Could this be an OData problem? Or my own error?

I'm not sure what the issue could be. Out of curiosity, are you able to access the OData feed in PowerBI? (I think there is a free version available if you don't have PowerBI already.) Excel and PowerBI both use Power Query under the hood, but it'd be useful to see whether there are any differences in terms of your ability to access the OData feed.

Hi Matthew - I figured out the problem. It was a user error on my end. Thank you for troubleshooting with me.

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My pleasure! If you're able to, it'd be very useful if you could tell us more about the user error, in case other users run into the same error. Is there a way that the Central documentation could be improved to help users avoid the error?

Hi @dlederer,

I am facing an exactly similar problem as yours (Getting 403 error when trying to connect in Excel). My server is residing in Amazon cloud (AWS). Authentication credentials are also correct. I assume firewalls are also open and allowing (else it would have given connection timeout instead of 403 error). Can you help in explaining how you fixed the thing?

Many thanks!
Saad

I finally got my hands on a Windows machine (eww) with Power BI installed (yay) and needed to delete my cached credentials. Could this be worth a mention in the OData modal?

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i've added a note to the user documentation, but the odata modal might be a good place too. i'll make a note to talk to the team about that. thanks!

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