Personal Power BI

In the previous step, we explored reports. Now, let’s learn about the Power BI.

Power BI is a powerful self-service analytics tool.

Since Power Platform data is exposed via a standardised OData Web API, we are able to seamlessly integrate Power Platform data within a Power BI dashboard or tile, and then expose it on a personal dashboard within your Power Platform or Dynamics 365 app. This allows users to see a combination of items in a single dashboard view.

With Power BI, you can:

• Transform data into stunning visuals and share them with colleagues on any device.

• Visually explore and analyse data on-premises and in the cloud all in one view.

• Collaborate on and share customised dashboards and interactive reports.

• Scale across your organisation with built-in governance and security.

Enabling Power BI in your Environment

To add Power BI visualisations to a personal dashboard, you must:

• Enable Power BI visualisations via the Power Platform admin portal by first going to the Environment, then Settings> Features. Once there, enable the Power BI visualisation embedding feature.

• Alternatively, enable Power BI visualisations for your organisation in the legacy web client in Settings > Administration > System Settings > Reporting tab > Allow Power BI visualisation embedding.

• Have a Power BI account and have access to at least one Power BI dashboard.

Creating Power BI Dashboards and Tiles

Power BI can be exposed as a complete dashboard, or as a tile within an existing Personal Dashboard. To add a Power BI dashboard to your environment, by selecting New > Power BI Dashboard from the Dashboards screen. From there you may select an existing dashboard from your Power BI workspace such as the one below:

You can also add tiles to your personal dashboards by clicking the Power BI Icon within a Personal Dashboard tile. Upon clicking you can select a tile from any existing Power BI dashboard to surface in your personal dashboard, such as the one below:

Example of a Power BI tile:

Interacting with Power BI Tiles

Interactive features available in a Power BI embedded tile are displayed by hovering over the upper-right of the tile.

The Refresh button is used to refresh the tile’s underlying report data.

The Open in Power BI button is used to open the Power BI dashboard that contains the visualisation in a new browser tab.

The Enlarge button is used to expand the visualisation and increase the viewing area for the visualisation, like the Sales Pipeline tile displayed here.

Next up is a summary for Building Model-Driven Applications.