Wednesday 7 November 2018

Embedding Power BI report and dashboards in Dynamics 365 for Portals

07:07 Posted by Benitez Here , , , , No comments
All you die hard fans of displaying beautiful data through the art of Power BI can now rejoice as it's never been more easier to embed Power BI visualizations into Dynamics 365 for Portals. This is another new October 2018 release feature. Get excited cause it's super easy to configure.

What you need

  1. Dynamics 365
  2. Dynamics 365 for Portals
  3. Power BI

How to enable Power BI Integration

Enable Power BI integration through Portal Details. Head over to the Dynamics 365 Admin Centre and in the Application tab, select your Portals instance to open up Portal Details.

In here you'll see a new option called "Set Up Power BI Integration." 


Click on this and Power BI integration will be enabled. Super easy.

Understanding what can be surfaced

You have three options to choose from
  1. Power BI Report
  2. Power BI Dashboard
  3. Power BI Dashboard tile
In my vlog I demonstrated the first two. 

Method to use for embedding Power BI visualizations

You'll need to use Liquid tags with a couple of parameters which can be done through a web page or a web template. These parameters are 
  • Authentication type
  • Path

Authentication type

If using a secure Power BI report or dashboard where only Azure Active Directory authenticated users can view the Power BI, you need to use the tag of "AAD" Make sure the report or dashboard is shared to the required users.

If you want to use a Power BI report or dashboard that will be visible to anyone, you'll need to publish it to the web and use the tag of "anonymous." If you don't know how to do this, check out this article.

For more details on liquid tags for Power BI, refer to this https://docs.microsoft.com article.

Path

This is the URL of your report or dashboard.

Combining the two parameters

As referenced in the docs.microsoft.com article, your tag would be something like the following
{% powerbi authentication_type:"AAD" path:"https://app.powerbi.com/groups/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/reports/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001/ReportSectionc01" %}

OK, ready to apply tag

You can either insert your Power BI liquid tag in a web page or web template. In my vlog I used a web page that I had created.

Insert the tag in the Copy field of the Localized Content record and you're good to go. Super easy.

Power BI visualization in action

Once the web page is saved, browse to your Portals instance and view the web page. Ta da! Awesome sauce.


What I do like about using a Power BI report is that users can interact with the report still. As mentioned in my vlog I was expecting it to be static and not interactive. Bonus in my opinion that you can interact the report as how you normally would.

Summary

The configuration steps are pretty simple and it doesn't take that long to hit the ground running with embedding Power BI visualizations in Dynamics 365 for Portals. I thought this was pretty cool when I had play with it last month.

I am not a Power BI guru but the person I recommend you check out and follow is none other than MVP CRM Chart Guy,
Cool, have fun configuring!

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