Power BI: Printing using Bookmarks Workaround

Hi Anonymous, as  per me, your current approach using bookmarks to store filtered views of the dashboard and triggering Power Automate for PDF export is efficient for a small number of projects, but scaling it to 400 projects would be impractical. Managing such a large number of bookmarks would increase the complexity, affect performance, and make automation execution inefficient.

Alternative Solutions:

1. Use Power Automate with Power BI Export API (Recommended)

Instead of creating 400 bookmarks, dynamically filter the report for each project and export it using Power Automate's "Export Power BI Report to PDF" action.

• Steps:

  1. Remove the bookmarks for individual projects.
  2. In Power Automate, use the "Export Report" action.
  3. Pass the Project Name or ID dynamically as a filter in the API request.
  4. Loop through the project list and generate PDFs dynamically.

• Advantages:
  ✅ No need to manually create bookmarks.
  ✅ More scalable and efficient for 400+ projects.
  ✅ Reduces dashboard load and complexity.

2. Use Paginated Reports (If Available)

If your report is based on a Premium Capacity, you can use Paginated Reports in Power BI, which support dynamic filtering and exporting in bulk.

• Steps:

  1. Create a paginated report with a parameter for Project Name/ID.
  2. Use Power Automate to loop through the projects and export PDFs dynamically.

• Advantages:
  ✅ Designed for large-scale reporting.
  ✅ Supports high-quality PDF exports without bookmarks.

3. Power BI Service Scheduled Subscriptions (For Small-Scale Use)

If only a few key projects need to be exported, consider Power BI Email Subscriptions to automatically email filtered reports in PDF format.

• Limitations:
  ❌ Doesn't scale well for 400 projects.
  ❌ Requires manual setup for each project.

Best Approach for You:

Since you're dealing with 400+ projects, the best approach is Power Automate with the Power BI Export API, where you dynamically filter and export reports without bookmarks. This will significantly improve performance and automation reliability while eliminating manual effort.