Deploying and Distributing Power BI Content

Thus far, much of this book has focused on the individual BI professional working with Power BI to create data models, reports, dashboards, and other BI and system assets. However, BI is all about providing insights and information to the business. Thus, for any BI project to be successful, the data and insights created must be shared and distributed throughout the organization.

This chapter contains detailed examples and considerations for deploying and distributing Power BI content via the Power BI service and Power BI mobile application. This includes the creation and configuration of app workspaces and apps, procuring and assigning Power BI premium capacities, configuring data sources and refresh schedules, and deriving greater value from the Power BI mobile application. Additionally, topics such as staging deployments across development and production environments, as well as multi-node premium capacity deployments, are covered...

Technical Requirements

The following are required to complete the recipes in this chapter:

• Power BI Desktop.
• SQL Server with the AdventureWorksDW2019 database installed. This database and instructions for installing it are available here: http://bit.ly/2OVQfG7.
• Files for this chapter and can be downloaded from the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Microsoft-Power-BI-Cookbook-Second-Edition

Preparing for Content Creation and Collaboration

Power BI collaboration environments can take many forms, ranging from a small group of Power BI Pro users creating and sharing content with each other in a single app workspace to large-scale corporate BI scenarios characterized by many read-only users accessing Power BI premium capacity resources via Power BI apps. Given the cost advantages of the capacity-based pricing model Power BI Premium provides, as well as the enhanced performance and scalability features it delivers, it is important to properly provision and manage these resources.

This recipe provides two processes fundamental to the overall purpose of this chapter: deploying and distributing Power BI content. The first process highlights several critical questions and issues in planning and managing a Power BI deployment. The second process details the provisioning of Power BI Premium dedicated capacity resources and the allocation of those resources to specific deployment...

Managing Content between Environments

Corporate BI and IT teams familiar with project lifecycles, source control systems, and managing development, testing, and production environments should look to apply these processes to Power BI deployments as well. Power BI Desktop does not natively interface with standard source control systems such as Azure DevOps. However, Power BI files can be stored in SharePoint Online Team site and OneDrive for Business to provide visibility to version history, synchronization between local device and the cloud service, restore capabilities, and more. In the Power BI service, separate development, test, and production workspaces and their corresponding apps can be created to support a staged deployment. Utilizing these tools and features enables Power BI teams to efficiently manage their workflows and to deliver consistent, quality content to users.

This recipe contains a recipe for deploying content using Power BI Deployment Pipelines, which is...

Sharing Content with Colleagues

Power BI apps are the recommended content distribution method for large corporate BI deployments, but for small teams and informal collaboration scenarios, sharing dashboards and reports provides a simple alternative. By sharing a dashboard, the recipient obtains read access to the dashboard, the reports supporting the dashboards tiles, and immediate visibility of any changes in the dashboard. Additionally, dashboards and reports can be shared with Power BI Pro users external to an organization via security groups and distribution lists, and Power BI Pro users can leverage Analyze in Excel as well as the Power BI mobile apps to access the shared data. Moreover, Power BI Free users can consume dashboards and reports shared with them from Power BI Premium capacity.

In this recipe, a Power BI dashboard is shared with a colleague as well as a contact in an external organization. Guidance on configuring and managing shared dashboards and additional considerations...

Configuring Workspaces

Workspaces (formerly App workspaces) are shared areas in the Power BI service for Power BI Pro users to develop content. The datasets, reports, and dashboards contained within workspaces can be published as a Power BI app for distribution to groups of users. Additionally, workspaces can be assigned to Power BI Premium capacities of dedicated hardware to enable all users, regardless of license, to consume the published app and to provide consistent performance and greater scalability. Furthermore, workspaces retain a one-to-one mapping to published apps, enabling members and administrators of workspaces to stage and test iterations prior to publishing updates to apps.

Understanding the history of workspaces is beneficial when reading various historical documentation on the subject. When Power BI was first released, the service included the concept of workspaces. However, these workspaces were tied to Office 365 groups and had various limitations. Microsoft...

Configuring On-Premises Gateway Data Connections

The promise of leveraging the Power BI service and mobile application to provide access to a rich set of integrated dashboards and reports across all devices requires thoughtful configuration of both the data sources and the datasets which use those sources. For many organizations, the primary business intelligence data sources are hosted on-premises, and thus, unless Power BI reports are exclusively deployed to on-premises Power BI Report Server, the on-premises data gateway is needed to securely facilitate the transfer of queries and data between the Power BI service and on-premises systems. Additionally, the datasets which typically support many reports and dashboards must be configured to utilize an on-premises data gateway for either a scheduled refresh to import data into Power BI or to support DirectQuery and Live Connection queries generated from Power BI.

This recipe contains two examples of configuring data sources and...

Publishing Apps

Apps in Power BI are collections of related dashboards and reports from a single workspace focused on a given subject area. Apps are the recommended distribution method for larger solutions involving several distinct reporting artifacts and targeting groups of end users who only need read access.

In this recipe, we demonstrate how to create and publish an app in the Power BI service.

Getting ready

To prepare for this recipe, complete the first recipe Building a Dashboard in Chapter 5, Working in the Service.

How to do it…

To implement this recipe, use the following steps:

1. In the Power BI service, select a workspace, such as the workspace containing the North American Sales dashboard created in Chapter 5, Working in the Service, Building a Dashboard.
2. Toggle datasets to No and all other items to Yes in the Include in app column.

   

   Figure 12.29: Workspace contents

3. Click the Create app button.
4. On the...

Publishing Reports to the Public Internet

The Publish to web feature in the Power BI service allows Power BI reports to be shared with the general public by embedding the report within websites, blog posts, and sharing URL links. If the publish to web tenant setting is enabled and if a user has edit rights to a report, an embed code can be generated containing both the HTML code for embedding the report and a URL to the report. All pages of the report, including any supported custom visuals and standard interactive functionalities such as filtering and cross highlighting, are available to consumers of the report. Additionally, the report is automatically updated to reflect refreshes of its source dataset and embed codes can be managed and optionally deleted if necessary, to eliminate access to the report via the embed code and URL.

This recipe walks through the fundamental steps and considerations in utilizing the publish to web feature.

Getting ready

To prepare for this...

Enabling the Mobile Experience

Power BI mobile apps have been designed to align closely with the user experience and feature set available in the Power BI service. This provides a simple, familiar navigation experience for users and allows BI and IT teams to leverage existing Power BI assets and knowledge to enhance the mobile experience in their organization.

This recipe contains two processes to take advantage of Power BI's mobile capabilities. The first process helps identify "quick win" opportunities that require limited BI/IT investment to better utilize basic Power BI mobile features. The second process identifies somewhat less common yet powerful and emerging use cases for Power BI mobile applications.

Getting ready

To prepare for this recipe, follow these steps:

1. Identify the most highly used dashboards and reports by opening the Power BI admin portal (gear icon: Admin portal) and select the Usage metrics menu item.
2. Decide which dashboards...

Distributing Content with Teams

Microsoft Teams is a unified platform for collaboration and communication, combining video meetings, phone calls, file storage, persistent workplace chat, and application integration into a unified interface. Teams is a part of the Microsoft 365 office productivity suite, integrating natively with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and SharePoint Online. In addition, feature extensions provide support for integrating with third-party applications.

Microsoft Teams has seen explosive growth in recent years, particularly during the pandemic in 2020. In fact, between March and June 2020, Microsoft Teams had nearly 900% growth. For over half a million organizations, Microsoft Teams has become an essential tool used daily to drive communication and collaboration. It is no surprise then that Microsoft has recently released integration between Power BI and Teams that enables Teams to act as a distribution channel for dashboards, reports, and other content.

This...

Conclusion

This chapter contained detailed examples and considerations for deploying and distributing Power BI content via the Power BI service and Power BI mobile applications. This included the creation and configuration of app workspaces and apps, procuring and assigning Power BI Premium capacities, configuring data sources and refresh schedules, and deriving greater value from Power BI mobile applications. Additionally, processes and sample architectures were shared, describing staged deployments across development and production environments and multi-node premium capacity deployments.

In the next chapter, we will explore integrating Power BI with other applications, including SQL Server Reporting Services, Excel, PowerPoint, Azure Analysis Services, Dataverse, Dynamics 365, and more!