Microsoft’s Power BI is a technology-driven Business Intelligence tool for analyzing and visualizing raw data to present actionable data. It brings together Business Analytics, Data Visualization, and best practices to assist organizations in making data-driven decisions. Because of the capabilities of the Power BI platform, Gartner named Microsoft the Leader in the “2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platform” in February 2019.
A Power BI report provides a very detailed overview of any dataset or data stream of interest in the form of different visualizations, filters, and parameters. It can vary depending upon one’s job role i.e. whether it is managing level or executive level. After you’ve created Power BI reports on the Power BI desktop, sharing the Power BI reports with other business users helps in the analysis. All BI reports, dashboards, and data in the organization can be shared with other colleagues and business users.
This article describes the various methods of sharing Power BI reports and dashboards. It also provides information about Power BI reports and dashboards.
Table of Contents
What is Power BI?
Power BI is a proprietary Business Intelligence tool designed for seamless Data Analytics and Data Visualization. It is a part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Power BI is one of the common tools used by organizations for analyzing their business data construct reports and also sharing Power BI reports.
It comes with a collection of various in-built software services, apps, and connectors that deeply integrates with data sources to deliver immersive visuals, interactive reports, and generate insights. Power BI uses its advanced charts, graphs, and other visuals included with Machine Learning to easily extract valuable information out of data.
Power BI can also read data from XML files, CSV files, JSON format files, and even web pages, then convert raw data into interactive insights. It is available for Desktop, mobile, and on-premise servers. Users can create and share their reports with other Power BI users within the organization or partner companies.
Key Features of Power BI
Some of the main features of Power BI are listed below:
- Supports API Integrations: Power BI allows developers to easily integrate with other applications and embed dashboards into other software using sample codes and APIs.
- Custom Visualization: Power BI offers custom visualization libraries support that allows users to visualize complex data with ease.
- AI Support: Users can easily perform Data Analytics using Artificial Intelligence. With the built-in AI support, users can prepare data, build Machine Learning models, and gain insights.
- Modeling View: With the help of Modeling View, Power BI users can slice and divide the complex data into simpler ones that help in better understanding the data, separate diagrams, and multi-select objects.
- Easy Sharing: Power BI makes it easier for users to easily share their reports within teams, or organizations ensuring full data protection.
- Hybrid Development: Power BI easily integrates with many third-party connectors, applications, and services widely used by organizations that allow users to connect to various data sources.
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What are Power BI Reports?
Data is the key to winning the world in today’s digital world. People are also familiar with the concepts of Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Visualization. Every day, new and more interactive BI tools emerge to provide business organizations with efficient, data-driven services. According to this hypothesis, Power BI is an appealing BI tool for modern businesses all over the world.
Data in its raw state is intimidating, necessitating the use of a platform to transform it into visually appealing reports. And Power BI is the right tool for the job. Power BI reports give you a detailed look at any data stream, complete with graphical visualizations. Sharing Power BI reports in an organization helps create better analysis and gives a better understanding of data. As a result, businesses are increasingly turning to Power BI to create interactive, real-time reports for data-driven decision-making.
Both technical and non-technical business people can use Power BI reporting services to visualize and analyze their data. Furthermore, Microsoft’s Power BI offering includes a variety of reports to meet the needs of various industries and businesses.
A Power BI report is a multi-perspective view of a data model, with visualizations representing various findings and insights from that data model. A single visualization or a page full of visualizations can be included in a report. You may read and investigate reports or create them for others, depending on your position. Sharing Power BI reports and dashboards is a major feature of Power BI reporting services.
Different report types are available in Power BI. We can divide Power BI reports into six major categories based on the job roles they serve.
- Digital Marketing Reports: Power BI’s digital marketing reports provide a clear picture of the KPIs associated with digital marketing campaigns. It assists marketing managers in optimizing marketing budgets and increasing the advertising revenue potential of their companies.
- Web Analytics Reports: The Power BI website analytics reports assist an enterprise’s SEO team in measuring website analytics. It allows them to learn a lot about how well their website is performing.
- Customer Profitability Reports: The customer profitability report allows business unit managers to see key business metrics like products, gross margins, and so on.
- Sales Analysis Reports: Sales analysis reports are provided by Power BI to make the sales team’s job easier. In Power BI, there are several pre-existing samples of this report.
- HR Analytics Reports: HR professionals can benefit from the HR analytics report in Power BI by learning more about HR KPIs. They can make strategic decisions as a result of it.
- Financial Analysis Reports: The financial analysis report in Power BI helps a company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) plan more effectively.
Sharing Power BI reports is based on who you grant permission to and it is based entirely on the organization. With the version of Power BI Desktop optimized for the report server, you can create Power BI reports (.pbix), and sharing Power BI reports helps the users. After that, you publish and view them in your own environment’s web portal.
What is Power BI Dashboard?
A Power BI Dashboard is a single page, also known as a canvas, on which visualizations tell a story. A well-designed dashboard contains only the highlights of the story because it is limited to one page. For more information, readers can consult related reports.
Power BI Service is the only Power BI component that offers dashboards, unlike Power BI Desktop. Dashboards cannot be created on mobile devices, but they can be viewed and shared.
Dashboards are a great way to keep track of your business and see all of your key metrics in one place. The visualizations on a dashboard can come from a single or multiple underlying datasets, as well as single or multiple underlying reports. A dashboard brings on-premises and cloud data together to provide a consolidated view regardless of where the data is stored. Sharing Power BI reports and dashboards help create a more interactive experience for the user.
A dashboard is more than just a pretty image. The tiles update as the underlying data changes, making it a highly interactive experience. It also helps in sharing Power BI reports and dashboards which are very informative.
Methods and Ways for Sharing Power BI Reports and Dashboard
There are different ways and methods for sharing Power BI reports and dashboards. Some of the methods that enable organizations in sharing Power BI reports and dashboards are:
Collaborate in a Workspace
When working together, teams require access to the same documents to collaborate effectively. Dashboards, reports, datasets, and workbooks are shared and managed in Power BI workspaces. Users of Power BI create workspaces for specific projects or organize them based on organizational structures. Sharing Power BI reports and dashboards are based on the organizational goals and needs. Various workspaces are used by other organizations to store different versions of reports or dashboards. Sharing Power BI reports and dashboards help the employees get all the information about a project.
Workspaces assign roles to your coworkers, which determine their permissions. Determine who has access to manage the workspace, edit or distribute content, or simply view content using those roles.
Workspaces are more collaborative than My Workspace because they allow for content co-ownership. You and your entire team can easily make changes and grant access to others. Individuals should use My Workspace for one-time or personal content.
The best method for granting them access to the report depends on several factors:
- Add colleagues as Members or Contributors to the workspace if they need to keep the report up to date or have access to all of the workspace’s content.
- Add colleagues as Viewers if they only need to look at the content in the workspace.
- If your colleagues only need to see that report and not the rest of the workspace’s content, you can send them a link to it or give them Direct Access.
- If the report is best consumed in conjunction with other reports or dashboards that you need to distribute to a large number of people, Creating an App is likely the best option.
Collaborate in Microsoft Teams
By embedding Power BI reports and Power BI paginated reports in Microsoft Teams, you can improve data-driven collaboration in your organization. For reports, the Power BI service has a Chat in Teams button. You can create separate Power BI tabs for each report and name each one with the report’s name or any other name.
When you add a Power BI report tab to Microsoft Teams, a tab conversation for the report is automatically created. The report is visible to everyone in that Microsoft Teams channel, and they can discuss it in the conversation. This method is one of the easiest ways for sharing Power BI reports.
Share Reports or Dashboards
This is the most widely used method of distributing Power BI content. It is not, however, always the most effective method of sharing Power BI reports. Basic Sharing Power BI reports is a simple method. For sharing Power BI reports or a dashboard or report with other users, simply click the Share button in the dashboard or report.
- You want to facilitate sharing Power BI reports or dashboards in Power BI Desktop with others. Sharing Power BI reports is possible through the Power BI service is one option for getting it to them. You can allow sharing Power BI reports with your My Workspace or another workspace. Create a dashboard to go along with it, and you’re good to go.
- For sharing Power BI reports, you’ll need a Power BI Pro license. Alternatively, the content must be in a Premium workspace with the people you’re sharing Power BI reports with. Recipients can view and interact with a dashboard or report that you’ve shared. They can edit it, copy it, and share it if permission for sharing Power BI reports is granted. They have access to the same data as you do in the dashboard or report. Unless Row-Level Security (RLS) is used, they have access to all of the data in the underlying dataset.
- Sharing Power BI Reports can be enabled via links that grant access to:
- You can also allow sharing Power BI reports with others by granting direct access to users:
- You can also permit sharing Power BI reports or dashboards by giving users direct access rather than sharing links:
People outside your organization can view and interact with a dashboard you’ve shared with them, but sharing Power BI reports or dashboards will not be possible for them.
Share from the Power BI Mobile Apps
- You can annotate a tile, report, or visual in the Power BI mobile apps for iOS and Android devices before emailing or sharing Power BI reports or dashboards with anyone.
- You’re sending a screenshot of the tile, report, or visual to someone else. It appears to your recipients exactly as it did when you mailed it. A link to the dashboard or report is also included in the email. They can open the content if they have a Power BI Pro license or the content is in a Premium capacity, and you’ve already shared it with them. Tile snapshots can be sent to anyone, not just coworkers with the same email address.
- You can also share a screenshot of a tile from the Power BI app for Windows 10 devices, but you won’t be able to annotate it.
Distribute Insights in an App
- If you want to enable sharing Power BI reports or dashboards with a large group of people in your company, You and your coworkers created a workspace, which you then used to create and refine dashboards, reports, and datasets. You now choose which dashboards and reports to publish as an app, either to a group or to your entire company.
- The Power BI Service makes it simple to find and install apps. You can send a direct link to the app to your business users, or they can search for it in AppSource. You can install an app in your coworkers’ Power BI accounts automatically if your Power BI administrator permits you. They can view the app in their browser or on their mobile device after installing it.
- Your users will need a Power BI Pro license to view your app, or the app will need to be stored in a Power BI Premium capacity.
- You can also make apps available to people who are not affiliated with your company. They have access to the app’s content and can interact with it, but they cannot share it with others. You can now create and distribute template apps to any Power BI customer. With this option sharing Power, BI reports can be made easy and accessible whilst maintaining security.
Embed Reports in Secure Portals or Public Websites
Embed in Secure Portals
Power BI reports can be embedded in portals or websites which is sharing Power BI report where your users can see them.
You can securely embed reports for your internal users using the Embed option in SharePoint Online and the Embed option in the Power BI service. Power BI enforces all permissions and data security before users see content, regardless of which option you choose. The person who is viewing the report must have the required license.
- Embed in SharePoint Online is compatible with SharePoint Online’s Power BI web part. It allows for a single sign-on experience as well as control over the report’s embedding. This option helps in securely sharing Power BI reports.
- Embed is compatible with any portal or website that allows you to embed content via a URL or an iFrame.
Publish to Public Websites
By embedding visualizations in blog posts, websites, social media, and other online communications, you can publish Power BI reports to the entire Internet. By publishing reports you are necessarily sharing Power BI reports with everyone on the internet. Your reports are viewable by anyone on the Internet, and you have no control over who sees them. They aren’t required to have a Power BI license. Only reports that you can edit are available for publishing on the web. If you share reports with others or if they’re in an app, you can’t publish them on the web.
Print or Save as PDF or Another Static File
Any of the following items can be printed, saved as PDF, or saved as another static file format from the Power BI service:
- An entire dashboard.
- A dashboard tile.
- A report page.
- A paginated report.
- A visualization from the Power BI service.
Power BI reports can only be printed in single-page mode. Printing the report and sharing the Power BI reports with other people helps in creating other reports or in analyzing the report. The report cannot be printed in its entirety. Paginated reports, on the other hand, are written to be printed.
Create and Deploy Template Apps
Template apps are made to be shared with the public and are frequently found in Microsoft AppSource. You create an app, and you can deploy it to any Power BI customer with little or no coding. Customers access their data and create their accounts. They can access the data, reports, and dashboard and it also helps in sharing Power BI reports and dashboard.
Share a Dataset
You can save a report with a data model that everyone should use for the Power BI service and permit the appropriate people to use it. Giving such permissions enables and is useful in sharing Power BI reports. They can then use your dataset to create their reports. That way, everyone’s reports are based on the same data, and everyone sees the same “version of the truth.”
Create Dataflows
Dataflows are a self-service tool for bringing together data from various sources and preparing it for modeling. To ingest, transform, integrate, and enrich big data, analysts create dataflows. They can create and manage dataflows in Power BI workspaces. Creating Dataflows is very helpful in sharing Power BI reports.
Conclusion
This article talks about the different methods and ways that one can use to share Power BI reports and dashboards. In addition to that, it also gives a brief introduction to Power BI reports and dashboards.
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