With Microsoft Power BI Embedded, you can integrate dashboards, reports, and analytics directly into your application, complete with your personalized branding. By taking advantage of the Power BI API and the capabilities of Azure, you can offer the extensive functionality of the Power BI cloud service within your application. This approach greatly simplifies development, reducing time, cost, and complexity. In this article, we will look specifically at the Microsoft product, its advantages and disadvantages, the price of Power BI Embedded and some examples.
Power BI Embedded, an Azure service, allows you to integrate Power BI's embedded analytics into your applications. This means that companies can generate reports and analyze data sets directly within their apps, portals or web pages.
Power BI Embedded uses external APIs and, unlike Power BI Pro or Premium, does not offer an environment for accessing business reports. By taking advantage of Power BI Embedded, developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) can seamlessly integrate reporting functionality and Power BI functionality into their applications.
Therefore, if you need to incorporate dashboards and business intelligence capabilities into specific applications or programming environments, Power BI Embedded is an excellent choice. However, it has limitations when it comes to accessing and managing all of the organization's reports or dashboards, monitoring business performance, or applying data governance.
A significant advantage of Power BI Embedded, despite not having a dedicated environment for viewing reports, is its economic convenience compared to Power BI Pro.
Power BI Embedded operates on an hourly billing model and does not limit the number of users. This means that a single Power BI Embedded license can serve the entire organization, even if it has storage space limitations. As a result, the cost of a Power BI Embedded license depends on the hours of use and the required report upload capacity.
A base-level Power BI Embedded license, which offers the minimum space for reporting, costs around 660€ per month. However, many organizations adapt their usage to match standard working hours, typically 8 hours a day, thus reducing the monthly cost to around €200.
Therefore, for businesses, buying a Power BI Embedded license is cheaper than buying individual Power BI Pro licenses, especially when the number of Pro licenses exceeds 24.
However, it's important to note that Power BI Embedded and Power BI Pro serve different purposes and offer distinct functionality. In addition, while Power BI Embedded is more affordable, it lacks a dedicated space for viewing, accessing, or managing reports.
Power BI's embedded analytics offers greater advantages than secure embedding. It guarantees an integrated and complete experience with full API support and automatic authentication, allowing reports to be incorporated into both applications and websites.
Embedded analytics automates monitoring, management, and distribution processes, giving you full control over Power BI capabilities and intelligent analysis.
Essentially, Power BI Embedded offers functionality comparable to those found in Power BI Premium. Power BI's embedded analysis provides two options: incorporation for external customers and incorporation for internal use in the organization.
Let's look at them in detail.
The embedding solution for your customers allows you to develop an application that uses non-interactive authentication with Power BI.
This method is aimed at external users, allowing them to view embedded content without the need for Power BI login credentials. Independent software vendors (ISVs) frequently use this solution to develop applications for third-party users.
The embedding functionality for your organization allows you to create an application that requires login with Power BI credentials. After logging in, users can view only the embedded content they have access to within the Power BI service.
This solution is designed for large organizations that develop applications for their internal users.
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To publish Power BI Embedded content, Power BI embedded analytics requires a designated capacity, which can be one of the following SKUs: A, EM, P, or F.
A capacity consists of a dedicated set of resources allocated solely for use, allowing you to publish dashboards, reports, and semantic models to users without the need for individual user licenses. This configuration ensures reliable and consistent performance for your content.
For development testing, you can use free trial tokens for incorporation along with a Pro license. However, for incorporation into a production environment, a designated capacity is required.
Power BI's embedded analytics capabilities offer two main publishing options: Power BI Embedded and Premium. In addition, Microsoft Fabric has a third option. Each of these alternatives requires separate SKUs.
Power BI Embedded is designed for independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers who want to integrate visual elements into their applications.
Using Power BI Embedded, applications allow users to access content stored on a dedicated Power BI capacity. This offer is available with SKU A.
Power BI Premium is designed for large companies that are looking for a complete business intelligence solution that provides an integrated view of their organization, as well as of partners, customers and suppliers.
Power BI Premium works like a SaaS solution, allowing users to access content through mobile applications, custom apps, or the Power BI service portal. This versatility allows it to effectively support applications aimed at both internal teams and external customers.
Microsoft Fabric is an Azure-based solution that integrates various components of Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Azure Data Explorer into a consistent environment. By using F SKUs, Fabric makes it easy to incorporate Power BI elements.
Similar to other Azure services, Power BI Embedded resources are configured through Azure Resource Manager APIs. In this context, a collection of Power BI workspaces is created, which acts as the main container in Azure for resources and can contain one or more workspaces.
A workspace acts as a storage unit for Power BI items, including datasets and reports. When created, these workspaces start empty. Users can create their content using Power BI Desktop.
It is also possible to generate a dataset programmatically, allowing reports to be created directly within the application instead of relying on Power BI Desktop. In addition, you can modify existing reports or create new ones directly in the app, provided that a dataset is available in the workspace.
Power BI's embedded analysis offers various architectural options suitable for different scenarios. It's important to note that customers don't need previous experience with Power BI to use Power BI Embedded.
The Power BI Pro account works as the main account for your application, essentially acting as a proxy. This account allows the creation of embedding tokens, which allow access to Power BI dashboards and reports within your application.
Using an app-only token, the Service Principal makes it easy to integrate Power BI content into your application. It also allows the creation of embedding tokens that provide access to Power BI dashboards and reports in your application.
Instead of spending time creating visualizations and analysis, developers using Power BI Embedded can focus on optimizing the core functionality of their applications.
Developers can efficiently meet customer needs for dashboards and reports using well-documented APIs and SDKs for smooth integration. This allows ISVs to provide users with simple data exploration within their applications, facilitating quick and informed decisions on any device.
It's important to note that while the incorporation requires the Power BI service, your customers don't need a Power BI account to access the content embedded in your application.
Power BI Embedded offers several options for filtering data and limiting access to specific users. A key feature is Row Level Security (RLS), which allows you to regulate access to specific rows in a database table based on group membership.
When embedding elements, Row Level Security (RLS) can be implemented to restrict user access to specific rows of data. This allows multiple users to interact with the same items by viewing different data sets based on their access rights.
Depending on your configuration, you may need to follow a series of steps before generating an embedding token. It's important to note that assigning users to roles in the Power BI service does not affect Row Level Security (RLS).
While RLS settings don't affect administrators, members, or contributors, each identity provided with an embedding token will have its RLS permissions applied when accessing data.
The built-in capabilities of Power BI significantly benefit from the core capabilities of the Power BI platform. There are extensive data visualization options suitable for both internal and external applications. Security is robust, thanks to Azure infrastructure. In addition, Power BI can connect to a wide range of data sources, making it easy to integrate with your application and other business tools.
For simple use cases, such as embedding a dashboard on a static web page, the process is pretty straightforward. With the help of the JavaScript SDK, you can embed without the need for a Power BI Pro license.
If you have predefined dashboards for internal and external users, there are numerous options for exploring data. Users can drill down into the data, apply filters, and select specific data points and date ranges relevant to their needs.
While Power BI is an excellent tool, its built-in capabilities have some significant drawbacks. The most significant issue is probably the cost, which can increase rapidly.
Every internal user must have a Power BI license, and there are also costs associated with using the embedded Power BI service. This structure complicates the ability to forecast expenses on a monthly or daily basis.
Personalization is effective for data visualizations; however, when embedding Power BI content into a SaaS application, the reports or dashboards should integrate seamlessly with the application design.
Unfortunately, the tool is lacking in this area, requiring extensive design adjustments to obtain a look that is in line with your application.
Performance may be poor, with Power BI data in end user dashboards often taking a long time to load. While internal users who are used to Power BI Desktop can tolerate this delay, users of the application may not be as understanding.
The main idea of interactive reports is quick access, and users shouldn't have to wait long for data to load.
The actual self-service analysis is limited. Ideally, end users should be able to create their own dashboards and visualizations to explore data independently. However, this is primarily possible for Power BI developers, as the average user may find navigating the Power BI interface difficult.
After analyzing the aspects of Power BI Embedded, it's time to move on to practice and show some examples and use cases. The analysis embedded in Power BI can take place through different methods: publishing on the web, publishing on SharePoint Online, embedding the report securely in a portal or website, and embedding it on an application.
As for publishing on the Web, with Power BI Embedded, no authentication is required to view the report, but viewing the report is allowed to anyone on the Internet. No Power BI license is required.
A different discussion is to be started concerning publishing on SharePoint Online. Users need access to Power BI and a Power BI Pro or Premium license is required.
The incorporation of a report into a portal or site, on the other hand, requires access to Office 365 as a requirement in order to view the embedded analyses. As above, you must have Power BI Premium or Pro.
To embed a report on an application, you don't need to sign in to Office 365 because the application is authenticated. At least one Power BI Pro license is required for a master user. Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and a dedicated workspace are also required, and capacity is also required.
Below we show in detail some practical examples through the use of Power BI Embedded, cited by MSSQL Tips.
First, make sure that you have downloaded Power BI Desktop and that you have set up related databases.
Once the report has been saved, it must be published to the Power BI service. This platform is where you'll configure most of the embed options for internal and external sharing.
We're now ready to start sharing reports externally. If you want to make your Power BI reports accessible to a global audience, the Power BI service effectively simplifies this process.
Keep in mind that public sharing means that your report and data will be visible to anyone with Internet access. Microsoft clearly states the implications of this exposure during the trial. Therefore, this option should only be used for data intended for public consumption.
Before getting started, it's important to note that the 'Publish to the web' feature must be activated by the Power BI Enterprise administrator. This setting is located in the administration portal in the 'Manage tenant settings' section. Fortunately, the web publishing process is pretty straightforward.
To publish, open the report in your workspace; then, go to File and select 'Publish to the Web'. Microsoft includes two confirmation screens to make sure that you actually intend to make these Power BI visuals publicly accessible.
You may notice that Microsoft may decide to show the published report in its public galleries. Once the publishing process is complete, a screen will appear allowing you to copy the link for use in e-mail or extract the HTML code for embedding in another web page.
To stop publishing the report, go to Settings and select Manage embed codes. From there, click on the three dots and select Delete to revoke public access. While 'Publish to the Web' is a useful feature, it comes with several warnings and warnings to consider carefully.
Power BI administrators have the option of embedding reports securely and affordably. The recent update introduced a functionality similar to the already mentioned 'Publish on the web', making the process easier.
Unlike the 'Publish to the Web' method, this mode avoids associated warnings. Security is not tied to the embedding process itself; rather, it inherits the security and permissions established for the application, report, or dashboard involved.
Therefore, access must be configured in the Power BI report or application before users can view the embedded report. In addition, if Row Level Security (RLS) is implemented, it will be applied once the user logs in.
To begin internal embedding, first go to the Power BI service and locate the report that you want to share. Then, click on the File option and select Embed.
The following screen, similar to the “Publish to the web” options, provides a link and a set of HTML code that you can easily copy for use on a web page. In the past, embedding required more complex code and considerable programming expertise.
By copying and pasting the link details into our HTML page, we can finalize the embedding process. Now, the report is successfully embedded in our internal web page for viewing. If the user viewing the report is not authenticated, they may encounter a login screen inviting them to log in to Power BI before they can view the report.
You have the option to interact with the report in a similar way as you would on the Power BI Service platform. This includes changing filter settings, exploring specific data points, and navigating between different worksheet tabs.
In addition, you can embed filter values into the URL through your HTML code, allowing for a wide range of options such as applying filters and changing the size of the Iframe. For example, if you want to always display the “M” and “T” product lines in the visual above, you can do so by including the page name and filter parameters in the URL link.
Now, the report is filtered at the report level according to the URL filters for the product lines, all transparently embedded in another website. Note that you may need to sign in to Power BI if you're not already authenticated.
Integrating Power BI reports and dashboards is extremely useful, allowing you to embed a report into a website. This can be done safely for indoor use or less safe for outdoor use.
By taking advantage of the full functionality of Power BI in their software, companies can significantly reduce development time and costs while improving the user experience.
Power BI Embedded offers a flexible and cost-effective solution for incorporating advanced analytics into business applications, but, as with any technology, you must evaluate the advantages and limitations to ensure that the product meets the specific needs of your company.
Power BI Embedded is an Azure service that allows embedding of Power BI reports, dashboards, and analytics directly into applications, providing business intelligence within custom software.
Power BI Embedded operates on an hourly billing model, with costs starting around €660 per month, which can be reduced to approximately €200 per month by adjusting usage to standard working hours.
It offers embedded analytics with API support, automatic authentication, and options for embedding for both internal and external users.
Power BI Embedded allows for seamless integration, extensive data visualization, and strong security via Azure. It is particularly useful for developers and ISVs to integrate reporting functionalities within applications.
The main drawbacks include potentially high costs, performance issues with loading data, limited self-service analytics for end users, and challenges in achieving seamless design integration with existing applications.
It can be used to embed reports in websites, SharePoint Online, and applications, with various levels of authentication and access depending on the use case.
Common use cases include embedding Power BI reports on websites for public access, securely embedding reports in internal applications, and publishing to SharePoint Online.
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