Instructor: Temidayo Omoniyi (LinkedIn)

Introduction

Power BI embed gives you the option of publishing your Power BI reports, dashboards and tiles easily and securely on the web and any other platforms. This makes it easy to deliver compelling data experience to end users by enabling actions based on insights availability on diverse applications and platforms in the quest to increase and ease accessibility.

I will quickly touch base on the different power BI licensing as this is important to understand the nature of access and sharing of content.

There are three (3) main kinds of Power BI Licensing with the following unique characteristics which are highlighted below:

1. Power BI Free Version
   1. It gives access to content in only My workspace (user’s personal workspace)
   2. It allows for consuming content from others (all other license kinds)
2. Power BI Pro
   1. It allows users to publish content to other workspaces, share dashboards, subscribe to dashboards and reports, share with users who have a Pro license.
   2. It allows for the distribution of content to users who have free licenses
3. Power BI Premium Per User
   1. It allows users to publish content to other workspaces, share dashboards, subscribe to dashboards and reports, share with users who have a Premium Per User license
   2. It allows for the distribution of content to users who have Free and Pro licenses

Also, it is important to take a look at the different organizational benefits of using Power BI Embed features:

• It aids easy integration of a solution into an existing custom portal with advanced reporting tools, such as SharePoint, MS Teams, PowerPoint and other platforms.
• It helps to improve security by making use of row-level security which filters data based on user credentials.
• It enables those without Power BI license to view the report if published to the web as public.
• It provides real-time updates to the dashboard for quick decision making.

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The focus of this data digest will be geared towards these three (3) points:

1. How to create a workspace

Note: In Power BI there are two kinds of workspace which are:

• My Workspace - For personal usage

• Workspaces - For collaboration purposes

2. Publish app from Power BI Desktop

3. Create an embedded code report

How to Embed Power BI code

Let’s get the started by first looking into a comparison between the two (2) main mediums of embedding Power BI code report.:

1. Embedding to web (Publish to Web - Public)

• Report are usually for public use or consumption
• Logins are not required (Anyone with the link can view the report)
• It allows to easily embed interactive Power BI contents in blog posts, websites, emails, or social media.
• It allows for ease of edit, update, refresh or stop sharing of the published visuals
• In order to filter on the report - you will need to have the Power BI Pro License.

2. Embedding into a website or portal (Publish to Website)

• Reports are usually for private use
• Logins are required (Unauthorized personnel can’t be able to view the report)
• It allows for only users who has access to that workspace to see the report
• It allows users who is a member of the organization see a report from that workspace.

Note: When publishing to the web make sure you are not publishing sensitive data or report, such as sales, management or marketing information and reports.

Central to this data digest, we will be exploring the following Power BI embed capabilities:

• Embed Power BI to SharePoint Online
• Embed Power BI to your MS Teams
• Embed Power BI to PowerPoint
• Embed Power BI to Jupyter Notebook
• Embed Power BI to Notion

Let’s get started…

1. Creating a collaborative workspace.

• Start by creating an account on app.powerbi.com using a work email.
• After creating an account, you will get this view which automatically gives you a personal work space (My Workspace)

• You can create a collaborative workspace by clicking the workspace button on the left ribbon.

• Click on create a workspace and input the required details, such as workspace name, description, contact list (collaborators or anyone you want to give access), and save when done with this metadata inputs. The name of the workspace I have created is titled Presentation

• You can also edit your license mode , develop a template and set options for contributors.

• You will get a view like this after creating the work space.

2. Moving to Power BI Desktop to Publish to Web

Note: This data digest is not for creating a dashboard or report, so I have already created one for the purpose of this lesson. So, I assume that you can create dashboard/reports using Power BI. If you are new to Power BI, look at our previous data digest on Power BI

• This is the report I have created for the purpose of this tutorial, you can pick any existing report you have worked in order to follow through the rest of this lesson on embedded features. We will be publishing this to web.

• Publish this report to web, first go to the Home ribbon and then click on Publish

• Then I will be publishing to the workspace I have created titled Presentation

• This would prompt you to save the report and it will published directly on the created workspace

• Once the report has been publish, navigate back to the workspace created on the web browser. The dataset and report will be automatically updated in the workspace.

• This is what the final view of the report will look like after publishing on web.

• Incase this is your first time publishing a report you might encounter issue around visibility of your report, click the app icon on the top right corner and go to setting and then admin portal

• Then click on tenant setting and scroll down to publish to web and click enabled for this feature to be supported.

• Also, you can also go to the Embed Codes tab below and tick the required code you

3. Embed Power BI to SharePoint Online

• From the web, click on File and then Embed report to SharePoint Online as shown in the picture below

• Copy the link that will be displayed afterwards and move to office.com

• Click on the app launcher button at the top left corner and view all apps

• Scroll down and select SharePoint.

Note: The idea for using SharePoint is for collaboration. You need to create a site using the create site button at the top left corner. you can either create a team site or a communication site which are private and public respectively based on your need or organization need.

• I have created a site already for the purpose of this tutorial. This is shown in the picture below. Select New and create a page

• Select blank page and create the page

• Name the page, I named this SharePoint page Presentation and click the plus sign to add Power BI report

• Click on Power BI and this will bring an option to add the report via the report link which we copied previously.

• Paste the report link and allow it to load fully to get your interactive report on SharePoint.

You will have a final view in your SharePoint that looks like this.

4. Embed Power BI to your MS Teams

• Go to Microsoft Teams and click the three (3) dots at the left corner for more

• Then click on Power BI to get the same experience that is available on Power BI service

• Then navigate to presentation created in your workspace to view the report in MS Teams

• Click on the report created in your workspace

• The embedded view will then be displayed in MS teams

5. Embed Power BI to your PowerPoint

It is noteworthy that this feature was just launched recently and I will walk you through how to embed your Power BI report in a PowerPoint presentation using the following steps below:

• Open your PowerPoint, then click on insert and navigate to Get add-ins

• Search for Power BI and click on “Add” the Microsoft Power BI add-ins

Note: This is only supported on Microsoft Office 365 or Microsoft PowerPoint from 2020 and above

• After adding it, navigate to My Add-ins and click on Microsoft Power BI

• This pops up a view like this where you can now paste your copied Power BI report URL

• After inserting the link, the dynamic report will be embedded into PowerPoint

5. Embed Power BI to Jupyter Notebook

• To embed Power BI report into Jupyter Notebook, install the library called PowerBIclient.

Note: Install this library using your command prompt or Jupyter Notebook by using the code below

!pip install powerbiclient

• Then type out the body of code in your Jupyter Notebook

• Copy the Group_ID and Report_ID from the link that is displayed on your web browser and paste in the cell highlighted above in the body of code.

Group_ID Link:

Report_ID Link:

• After pasting both links above, run the code and copy the highlighted authentication code in Blue (DSABFQ2TN) and click on the link whichthe arrow is on.

• A prompt to sign-in on your Microsoft account is processed to ensure for Cross-platform Command Line Interface security. Then navigate back to the Jupyter Notebook.

• The interactive authentication is completed, then run the last cell of code to get you dashboard into Jupyter Notebook

• The Power BI report is then embedded successfully into Jupyter Notebook.

Note: Alternatively, you can also embed Power BI report into Jupyter Notebook by using the IFrame Library

5. Embed Power BI to Notion

• Go to Notion, then copy the link from the report embedded to public

• Paste the code copied into a Notion docs, and it allows you to create embed

• Click on Create embed and this will embed your dynamic Power BI report in Notion

Conclusion

Power BI offers powerful embedding capabilities that allow organizations to share interactive reports and dashboards seamlessly with their stakeholders. With Power BI's embedding, users can access data, insights, and visualizations on demand, enabling organizations to make data-driven decisions quickly and effectively. The platform's user-friendly interface and real-time data updates ensure that stakeholders always have access to the latest information.

Overall, Power BI's embedding capabilities make it a valuable tool for organizations looking to leverage data and insights to drive business growth and success. However, if you have not started learning Power BI or looking to improving your Power BI skills you can check out our Power BI Analyst Track