You're reading from Mastering Microsoft Power BI – Second Edition - Second Edition

Product typeBook

Published inJun 2022

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781801811484

Edition2nd Edition

Concepts

Business Intelligence

Authors (2):

Gregory Deckler

Brett Powell

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Deploying Paginated Reports

Paginated reports are eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based report definitions that were first introduced in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Unlike Power BI reports, which deliver highly interactive visualization experiences on a single page, paginated reports provide richly formatted multi-page documents optimized for printing, exporting, and automated delivery.

As a Power BI Premium feature, paginated reports provide organizations with a mature and robust option for migrating existing SSRS and other similar operational reports to Power BI without the need to manage report server infrastructure. Additionally, for organizations that require an on-premises solution, the Power BI Report Server (PBRS) continues to be enhanced and also supports both paginated and Power BI reports.

This chapter reviews the primary considerations in migrating paginated reports to Power BI as well as planning and deploying the PBRS. This includes feature compatibility...

Paginated reports in the Power BI service

So far, this book has primarily focused on the Power BI reports created in Power BI Desktop. While these reports are increasingly the de facto standard, given their ability to quickly generate insights and the speed with which these reports can be developed, paginated reports uniquely address several important use cases such as the need to email, print, or export report data that spans multiple pages.

As explained in the Paginated reports section of Chapter 7, Creating and Formatting Visualizations, paginated reports are optimized for printing and PDF generation. These reports have a long and storied history at Microsoft, having first appeared in SSRS in 2004.

In contrast to Power BI reports, which are highly interactive, paginated reports have limited user interactivity via the use of parameters, which filter the entire report page. However, unlike Power BI reports, which can only present a single report page at a time, paginated...

Migrating reports to the Power BI service

Given their long and successful history in the competitive enterprise reporting platform market, many organizations continue to support hundreds and even thousands of paginated or SSRS reports. Additionally, existing reports built with other common BI tools such as Cognos, MicroStrategy, and Crystal Reports are usually more easily re-produced in paginated reports than Power BI reports.

A key question to answer is whether the existing or legacy reports should be maintained going forward or if they can be replaced (or perhaps supplemented) with a more modern and interactive experience offered by Power BI reports. In somes cases, users would prefer a well developed Power BI report and the existing reports merely reflect the functionality that was available years ago in SSRS or another similar tool. This section covers the steps and considerations organizations should bear in mind when migrating existing RDL reports to paginated reports for...

Planning the Power BI Report Server (PBRS)

PBRS is a modern enterprise-reporting platform that allows organizations to deploy, manage, and view Power BI reports, in addition to other report types, internally. PBRS renders Power BI reports (.PBIX files) for data visualization and exploration, just like the Power BI web service.

PBRS allows large numbers of users to view and interact with the same reports created in Power BI Desktop in a modern web portal and via the same Power BI mobile applications used with the Power BI cloud service. PBRS addresses a current and sometimes long-term need to maintain a fully on-premises BI solution that includes both data sources and reports. Additionally, PBRS can be used in combination with the Power BI service to support scenarios in which only certain reports need to remain on-premises.

PBRS is built on top of SSRS; therefore, organizations can continue to utilize existing paginated SSRS reports and familiar management skills to easily...

Installing and upgrading PBRS

Once capacity (cores) to deploy PBRS have been obtained, teams can prepare to install and configure the environment by downloading the report server software and the version of Power BI Desktop optimized for PBRS.

Both the report server installation software and the report server version of Power BI Desktop can be downloaded from Microsoft at the following link: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/report-server/. Clicking the Advanced download options link on that page transports the user to the most current release of PBRS available in the Microsoft Download Center.

Clicking the large Download button presents the option to download three different files, as shown in Figure 12.16:

Figure 12.16: Downloading PBRSes

Referring to Figure 12.16, the PowerBIReportServer.exe file is the file for installing PBRS, while the PBIDesktopRS.msi and PBIDesktopRS_x64.msi files are for downloading the Power BI Desktop application optimized for...

PBRS client applications

As mentioned in the previous section, a version of the Power BI Desktop application optimized for PBRS is made available with each release of PBRS.

As shown in the Installing and upgrading PBRS section earlier, a PowerBIDesktopRS_x64.msi file is also available for download when downloading PBRS. This is the application used to create the Power BI reports to be published to that specific version of PBRS.

When running the report server optimized version of Power BI Desktop, the version is displayed in the title bar in parentheses, such as (January 2022). In addition, the Save as menu displays an option for PBRS, as shown in Figure 12.20:

Figure 12.20: Power BI Desktop optimized for PBRS

As suggested by the Save as menu in the preceding screenshot, a report created via the PBRS optimized application can be saved directly to the report server. In other words, a .PBIX file doesn’t necessarily have to be saved to a user’s machine...

Summary

This chapter introduced paginated reports for Power BI both within the Power BI service and on-premises only via the PBRS. While the support of paginated reports in the Power BI service has greatly reduced the need for PBRS in many organizations, there are still use cases where a fully on-premises solution for reporting is required.

Key topics covered in this chapter were migrating Report Description Language (RDL) files to the Power BI service, the feature differences between PBRS and the Power BI service, and the overall planning, scaling, and upgrading of PBRS.

In the next chapter, we focus on the distribution of published content to end users. This includes the delivery and management of packages of related Power BI content to large groups of users via Power BI Apps as well as other content delivery capabilities of the Power BI service such as data-driven alerts and scheduled email subscriptions.

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Authors (2)

Gregory Deckler

Greg Deckler is Vice President of the Microsoft Practice at Fusion Alliance and has been a professional technology systems consultant for over 25 years. Internationally recognized as an expert in Power BI, Greg Deckler is a Microsoft MVP for Data Platform and a superuser within the Power BI community with over 100,000 messages read, more than 11,000 replies, over 2,300 answers, and more than 75 entries in the Quick Measures Gallery. Greg founded the Columbus Azure ML and Power BI User Group (CAMLPUG) and presents at numerous conferences and events, including SQL Saturday, DogFood, and the Dynamic Communities User Group/Power Platform Summit.
Read more about Gregory Deckler

Brett Powell

Brett Powell is the owner of and business intelligence consultant at Frontline Analytics LLC, a data and analytics research and consulting firm and Microsoft Power BI partner. He has worked with Power BI technologies since they were first introduced as the PowerPivot add-in for Excel 2010 and has been a Power BI architect and lead BI consultant for organizations across the retail, manufacturing, and financial services industries. Additionally, Brett has led Boston's Power BI User Group, delivered presentations at technology events such as Power BI World Tour, and maintains the popular Insight Quest Microsoft BI blog.
Read more about Brett Powell

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