Forum Discussion
R Visuals
Hello All,
Does anyone know if you use an R Visualization in a content pack if the subsequent users need to R installed on their computers to access the image? (In other words, are they similar to custom visualizations, which the user needs to have installed?)
Thank you!
C.
5 Replies
Content packs live entirely in the cloud, and so do not depend on anything being installed on the machine of a consumer.
That being said, I do not believe R visuals are supported in Power BI Service yet, only as a preview feature in Power BI Desktop.
The issue you see with custom visuals in content packs is that the custom visual definition is not included. Consumers need to add the custom visual to the reports in the browser, but there is no local installation in this process. This is not at all good behavior, but it's important to know where the gaps are and where data is actually living.
The R visuals preview feature documentation says that R visuals can be uploaded to Power BI service, but they are static images that do not interact with the service. However, rendering the images requires the R script (as Power BI desktop uses the R application from the computer that's generating it), thus I was wondering if R visuals uploaded to reports in Power BI service require R to be on the computer that's accessing them? (The content pack example was just meant to demonstrate a potentially similar requirement -- i.e., custom visualizations require users to have those downloaded/ or defined as you say - R visualizations may require the program to be installed on the users computer...)
Power BI Service has no interaction with a consumer's local environment beyond the browser.
