Everything you need to know about the Power BI integration

Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft enabling users to visualize and analyze data from various sources. This article contains everything you need to know when integrating Power BI with PLAYipp.

Table of contents:

• What is Power BI?
• Technical specifications needed for setup
• How to setup the PowerBI integration
• How to publish the PowerBI widget

What is PowerBI?

Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft. It allows users to visualize and analyze data from various sources, including databases, Excel files, web services, and cloud services. With Power BI, users can create interactive reports and dashboards to gain insights into their data and make data-driven decisions.

Key features: 

1. Data Connectivity: Connects to diverse data sources.
2. Data Preparation: Cleans and shapes data efficiently.
3. Data Modeling: Builds relationships and calculates measures.
4. Visualization: Creates interactive reports with various visualizations.
5. Sharing and Collaboration: Securely shares reports and collaborates in real-time.

Technical specifications needed for setup

License requirement:

• Active Microsoft Power BI Pro or higher license
• Access to the dashboards/reports intended for display

Scopes:

We use a Oauth 2.0 authorization code flow to access PowerBI with below scopes

• User.Read
• Dashboard.Read.All
• Dataset.Read.All
• Report.Read.All
• Workspace.Read.All

Which means that when your user is authenticating in the setup of the PowerBI integration it will authenticate with the authication servers in PowerBI.

Data Flow:

• You authenticate your Power BI account in PLAYipp.
• PLAYipp accesses the specified dashboard or report.
• For embedded (live) views, the player launches a web session to show the live report.
• For static image snapshots, PLAYipp pulls an image of the selected view at regular intervals and displays it on screen.

How to setup the PowerBI integration

Before we are able to publish our reports or dashboards we need to create the integration between Playipp and PowerBI, follow the steps below and you are on your way.

1. Click "Integrations"
   
   
   
2. Click "PowerBI Cloud"
   
   
   
3. Click "Add to PLAYipp"
   
   
   
4. Click "Authenticate Power Bi Cloud account"
   
   
   If you are not logged in, you will be forced to log in with your Microsoft account.
   Note! The integration will now search for all reports it finds. These will be collected under "Available sources".
   
   
   
5. Click "Add source"
   
   
   

   If "Use Embed" is active, the integration will provide a link and attempt to open the report directly in the screen’s browser. This allows updates to the report to appear in real time.
   Note: This feature is not supported on all screens.

   If "Use Embed" is not active, the integration will take a screenshot of the report and send it to the screen. This method is supported by all screens, and the screenshot will update every 5 minutes.

   
   
   
   

How to publish the PowerBI widget

Tip: for best results, the size of the canvas should be the same as the area to which you publish in PLAYipp. You can check here to see how to find out the size of your area: What is the resolution of the area I am publishing to?

1. Click "Signage"
   
   
   
2. Click on "Publish"
   
   
   
3. Click on the location or group you want to display the report on
   
   
   
4. Click on the area you want o display the report on.
   
   
   
5. Click "Add new"
   
   
   
6. Click on "Automated content"
   
   
   
7. Click on Add business intelligence 
   
   
   
8. Click on the source you want to show 
   
   
   
9. Click on Add to playlist
   
   
   
10. Here you can change the name of the widget. 
    
    
    
11. Click select folder
    
    
    
12. Choose the folder you want to save the widget to
    
    
    
13. Click Select folder
    
    
    
14. Click save
    
    
    
15. Congratulations! You have now configured your first PLAYipp PowerBI widget.