Create Power BI report and publish in SharePoint

Introduction:
In this article, we will learn how to create a report in Power BI using SharePoint List as a data source, using DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) in Power BI, publish the Power BI report to SharePoint Online, and Schedule Data Refresh. We will also learn how to use Power BI desktop tool which is used for designing reports in Power BI.
Articles in SharePoint Business Intelligence (BI) series: 🔗

Power BI in SharePoint Online
Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI
Power View report in SharePoint
Display Power BI reports in SharePoint Online

Environment:
1. SharePoint Online - Office 365 (applicable to SP 2016/2013)
2. Power BI - needs Power BI Pro License
3. Power BI for desktop - for designing the report
Create report using Power BI Desktop from SharePoint List as Data Source:
1. Let's use the same data Finance Sample Workbook from Power BI site for this example as well
2. Load the data in SharePoint List
3. Open the Power BI for desktop tool and sign in using your O365 ID & password
4. Click File -> New -> It should open the blank report
5. Click Get Data option from Home menu -> More -> Online Services -> SharePoint Online List as shown below:

6. Enter the SharePoint URL - just the site collection but not till List

7. Once you enter, select Microsoft account option from Anonymous, Windows, Microsoft account options displayed for authentication as shown below:

8. Once authenticated & connected, it will display all lists and library in the site collection. Select the List (which we loaded the Finance Sample excel work book) and either click edit to edit the columns or click Load to load the data to the Power BI

9. Important point to note is that we have loaded the Finance Sample Excel Workbook in to SharePoint List and now the data is connected to Power BI. If you notice the loaded data (columns Gross Sales, Sales Price, COGS, Profit related to cost) in Power BI are loaded as text instead of $$$ value in this example

10. Using Power BI, we can change the data type (NOTE: 💡changing the data type will affect the data refresh so it is a good practice to change the data type in the source or load the data at source with appropriate data type). For this example, I have changed the data type in Power BI for desktop. 

Option is Data section -> Modeling tab in Ribbon -> Data Type & Format as shown below:

 11. Loaded data and updated with data type is shown below:

12. In the above data loaded, we see the month, year are in a separate column, let's use DAX expression to combine them and display as Year - Month in a separate column. 

I have added a new column "Date" as shown below:

13. Once the data is loaded, fields section shows the column that can be added to report, also the fields which can be displayed as aggregate/sum and also the measure which we created (Date field in above step):

14. Now, it's time to add the charts in the report section. I have used Card, KPI, Line & Clustered Column Chart, Pie Chart, Line Chart as shown below:

Publish the report to SharePoint Online (Power BI Pro)

15. Now, it's time to publish the report to SharePoint Online 😃 

First step is to publish the report to work space in Power BI site then to SP Online.

Log in to the Power BI site. In the above step, I have published the report to "My Workspace" section. Hence navigate to the My Workspace section in Power BI site -> Reports section (since this is published as report but not dashboard) -> click on the report ("Sales Report")

Now, click on the File -> click on select Embed in SharePoint Online preview as shown below. This will give the link to publish the Power BI report to SharePoint Online.

16. Now, time to integrate the report in SharePoint Online. In previous article, I have explained  about creating Communication Sites in SharePoint Online. In this site, create a page and add Power BI (preview) web part 

17. Now, name the page and publish the page. Below is the preview of the page and how the filter works in the chart according to the selection:

💡 Embed in SharePoint Online is only available with Power BI Pro. Each user that views the report mush have a Power BI Pro license. If they do not have a Pro license, they will be prompted to sign-up to view the report.

18. Next one final step is "Data Refresh". Navigate to the Power BI site again -> Workspaces -> My Workspace -> Datasets -> select your report (Sales Report) -> Schedule Refresh button in Actions section to schedule the data refresh as shown below:

Apple Power BI App preview of the report

Granting Access to reports:

Embedding a report in SharePoint Online does not automatically give users permission to view the report in SharePoint site. The permissions to view the report are set within Power BI service itself. 

There are two ways to provide access to the report within the Power BI service. 

1. If you are using Office 365 Group to build your SharePoint Online team site, you list the user as a member of the app work space within the Power BI service. This will make sure that users can view the contents of that group. For more information, see Create and distribute an app in Power BI. 🔗

2. Alternatively, you can grant users access to your report by doing the following.

Add a tile from the report to a dashboard.

Share the dashboard with the users that need access to the report. For more information, see Share a dashboard with colleagues and others. 🔗

Reference: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-embed-report-spo 🔗

Publish the report to SharePoint (without Power BI Pro option)

Suppose you don't have Power BI pro license but want to integrate the Power BI report in SharePoint 2013 or 2016 or in SharePoint Online, then Page Viewer is the option we have 😉

Navigate to the page where you want to display the Power BI report -> add a Page Viewer Web Part -> add the link copied from Power BI site (Report -> File -> Embed in SharePoint Online(Preview)-> copy the link)

 

Differences between publishing using Power BI pro & in Page Viewer web part

1. Show/Hide Navigation Page, Filter Pane options are available only in Power BI

2. Options to change the display size of the report is available only in Power BI pro  

3. Sorting the each section of report by it's main report parameter is available only in Power BI pro

4. Option to See Data of a particular report is available only in Power BI pro

5. All the above options are not available in normal publishing way

6. Share the report via Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Email, & information about report, flagging report option is available in normal publihing method (Page Viewe web part)

Export to PowerPoint (Preview)

There is another option available in reports in Power BI site which is Export to PowerPoint(Preview). Navigate to Power BI Site -> Select the report -> File -> Export to PowerPoint (Preview) as shown below:

The exported file is attached here to know how a exported Power BI report looks like. See Downloads section for the file.

Downloads: 🔗

Power BI Desktop
Power BI for Mobile - Windows, App Store, Google Play
Power BI report file
Sales report exported to PowerPoint
So, we have learnt how to create a Power BI report from SharePoint List as data source, created DAX expressions, added different chart types, published the report to Power BI and then to SharePoint Online, SharePoint Online with out Power BI Pro and also applicable to SharePoint 2013 & 2016.

Please free to comment. Always. your comments help me to write more.😃 Share this post to others if this helps you!😇

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Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI

Today, I published my second Tech Net article about creating reports in Power BI using OData feeds after winning gold winner for TechNet Guru August month :)
To learn about basics of Power BI, click this article: Power BI in SharePoint Online
Articles in SharePoint Business Intelligence (BI) series: 🔗

Power BI in SharePoint Online
Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI
Power View report in SharePoint
Display Power BI reports in SharePoint Online

Scenario:
In this article, let’s get the data from OData (Open Data Protocol) feeds and use the Power BI desktop software to design reports and publish it to Power BI site
To learn more about what OData is and how to integrate, read the following articles:

1. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/hh237663.aspx 
2. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Access-OData-Feeds-from-Power-Query-82BD48B9-6A2F-4F2A-83C9-6868BA1D30E2
3. http://www.odata.org/   

Read my article from the following TechNet link and share your valuable comments:

                 Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI

Power BI Dashboard screenshot reference:

Power BI Dashboard from mobile app reference:

                    

          

Update 26-Oct-2015
I am happy to share with you all that my second TechNet article is awarded for SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - September, 2015.
Gold Winner!!!!

Also, this post is highlighted in TechNet Wiki Magazine, 12th edition | Last Articles Spotlight and Guru Awards Edition. :)

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Power BI in SharePoint Online

I am very excited after Microsoft released Power BI GA (general availability) at the end of July. It comes with list of impressive new features which is explained in detail in this MSDN article.
I want my blog readers to know what is Power BI and how it can be used with SharePoint Online to leverage the BI capabilities of SharePoint. Let's learn the basics in this article.
Articles in SharePoint Business Intelligence (BI) Series:

Power BI in SharePoint Online
Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI
Power View report in SharePoint
Display Power BI reports in SharePoint Online

Microsoft came with a new tool for BI for the following reasons:

1. Use the known tool  - Excel
2. Discover More  - Power Query
3. Analyze More – Power Pivot
4. Visualize  - Power View / Power Map
5. Combine with Office 365 – share with any one
6. Power BI sites – collaborate and share the data sets with your team
7. Dive into Q & A – ask a question and get answers visually
8. Stay Connected – Mobile Apps
9. Schedule data refresh and create security settings easily

So what is Power BI?

1. Cloud based service works with excel to provide users a complete self-service BI solution
2. Available in SharePoint & Excel 2013 Online (available only in E3 / E4 subscription)
3. With Power BI, you can easily deploy a cloud based BI environment for users to share insights, collaborate and access reports from anywhere on any device
4. With Power BI for Office 365, you can easily setup an online gallery for users to share insights
5. Mobile apps available in Apple store, Windows store & Google play store

How does Power BI differ from SharePoint BI?
 

Feature	Power BI	SharePoint BI
Content Viewing	It displays all document libraries with a preview to reports / dashboards	It displays only pivot gallery document library
Natural Language	Q & A provides the end user to search for data with your questions and it displays the results in visualization	No such option available
Workbook as a data source	Power BI the data model and the reports (created with Excel pivot tables + charts, or Power View for Excel) everything must be contained within a single .xlsx file	In SharePoint, we can upload a Power Pivot model to the Power Pivot Gallery and other reports can connect to it using a URL-based connection string. This works for Power View for SharePoint, Reporting Services, PerformancePoint, and Excel
Data Refresh Option	It is simpler for end users to manage the data refresh	Lot of options available for data refresh and it’s controlled by Admin
Data Management Gateway	It is a hybrid environment (partially cloud based and partially on premises)	No data management gateway available
Data rendering option	HTML 5 (hence cross platform support)	Silverlight for data preview
Maximum workbook size	Max is 250MB	2 GB
Security	Sign in with Organization ID (O365 ID)	AD security mechanism
Enterprise Search for data	Search query is the important feature and it can search public and data within organization	N/A
Mobile Application	Available in Microsoft, Apple and Google Play store	N/A

            
Where can I download the Power BI and related products?

1. Sign up for Power BI
2. Power BI for desktop
3. Power BI Analysis Services Connector
4. Power BI Business Gateway
5. Power BI Apps for mobile (apps for Apple, Microsoft and Android mobile)
6. Power BI pricing

Hope this article, gives an idea of Power BI and how it differs from SharePoint BI. I will explain about connecting data from different data sources, creating dashboards, reports, etc. with Power BI in the coming articles.
Hope this helps you! Please share you comments since it helps me write more. Also, share this post to your friends via the networks below.  

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