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.

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Table of contents:

What is Power BI?
Technical specifications needed for setup
Lesser known features of PowerBI
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:

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

There are two destinct features of PowerBI that you are able to display in Playipp.

Dashboards

A Power BI dashboard is a single-page canvas that provides a high-level, at-a-glance overview of key metrics and performance indicators (KPIs). Think of it as a personalized executive summary.

Single Page: Dashboards are limited to one page. This forces a concise and focused view of the most critical information.
High-Level Overview: They are designed for quick monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs) and provide a snapshot of business performance.
Aggregates from Multiple Reports/Datasets: A dashboard can pull visuals (called "tiles") from various reports and even different datasets, bringing together information from disparate sources into a single view.
Real-time Updates: Dashboards can display real-time data with live tiles, making them ideal for monitoring constantly changing metrics.
Dashboards are static in Playipp based on how the user built them in Power BI and will not adapt to the size of the display area.

Reports

A Power BI report is a multi-page, interactive canvas that offers in-depth analysis and exploration of data.

Multi-Page Layout: Reports can have multiple pages, each focusing on different aspects of the data or providing different perspectives.
Detailed Analysis: They are designed for detailed data exploration, allowing users to dive deep into the data, identify trends, and answer complex business questions.
Based on a Single Data Model: Each report is built upon a single data model (also known as a semantic model), which can combine data from various sources but is unified within that single model.
Purpose: Ideal for data analysts, business users who need to conduct detailed analysis, or anyone who requires a comprehensive understanding of specific datasets
Reports are responsive in Playipp and will adapt to the size of the display area.

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.

Lesser known features of PowerBI

Power BI is designed to connect to a vast array of data sources, allowing you to create interactive dashboards and reports from virtually any data. The services you can connect to and visualize data from fall into several categories:

Databases:
Power BI has strong connectivity to a wide range of relational and NoSQL databases. Read more on how to connect databases in PowerBI here.
- Microsoft SQL Server: A cornerstone for many businesses, offering robust integration.
- Azure SQL Database: For cloud-based SQL databases in Microsoft Azure.
- SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS): Connects to existing tabular or multidimensional models, often used for enterprise-level BI solutions.
- Oracle Database: Connects to Oracle's popular relational database.
- MySQL Database: A widely used open-source relational database.
- PostgreSQL Database: Another popular open-source relational database.
- IBM Db2, IBM Informix, IBM Netezza: For IBM database systems.
- SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse: For connecting to SAP's powerful enterprise data platforms.
- Amazon Redshift: Amazon's cloud data warehouse service.
- Google BigQuery: Google's serverless, highly scalable cloud data warehouse.
- Snowflake: A cloud data warehouse solution.
- Teradata, Sybase, Vertica, Essbase, Impala: Various other specialized and general-purpose databases.
- Microsoft Access Database: For smaller, desktop-based databases.
- ODBC/OLE DB: Generic connectors that allow Power BI to connect to almost any data source that supports these standards, even if there isn't a specific built-in connector.
Online Services (SaaS Applications & Web):
You can directly connect to many popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and generic web endpoints. Read more on how to connect here.
- SharePoint Online List: For data stored in SharePoint lists.
- Microsoft Exchange Online: Access email and calendar data.
- Dynamics 365 (online): Connect to Microsoft's CRM and ERP suite.
- Google Analytics: For website analytics and user behavior data.
- Salesforce Objects/Reports: Access CRM data from Salesforce.
- Adobe Analytics: For marketing analytics.
- QuickBooks Online: For accounting and financial data.
- Smartsheet: For project management and collaboration data.
- GitHub: For source code repository data (often in Beta).
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: For sales insights (often in Beta).
- Marketo: For marketing automation data (often in Beta).
- Zendesk: For customer support data (often in Beta).
- Web (from URL): Extract data directly from web pages (tables, lists, etc.).
- OData Feed: Connects to data sources that expose data via the Open Data Protocol (OData)
- Qliksense: Self-service tool for creating interactive dashboards and reports.

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.

Click "Integrations"
Click "PowerBI Cloud"
Click "Add to PLAYipp"
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".
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?