Generate a pbix file with data for a given user

[alexk-spicey]

Hey all!

I have an existing cloud application and need to integrate powerbi into it a little more cleanly.

Currently, a user of this application can download all of their data and import it into a pbix file that I maintain. However, this has a bunch of steps for the user to go through, and I would bet there's a way to do this better 🙂

I've investigated building a pbix file dynamically each time, but it appears this feature isn't in the works yet, according to https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Power-Query/Create-a-PBIX-file-via-API/td-p/290917

Is there a better way I can give the user a very pretty report of their data?

[Greg_Deckler]

Yes, use RLS.

[alexk-spicey]

Hey Greg 🙂

Thanks for the fast response! I looked into RLS yesterday, at your recommendation, and it definitely seems really useful!

However, I don't yet see how this fixes the problem I mentioned. I think I'm missing a few dots before I can connect them haha

Could you go into a little more detail about how RLS makes it easier for a user to report on their data? Specifically comparing it to the currently implemented method, as I'm far from a power bi expert. Also for reference, users download their data as an xlsx that they can import into the pbix file, so there's currently no data connectors involved.

[Greg_Deckler]

@alexk-spicey I guess the route I was going down was why not create a Power BI dataset that pulls all of the data from the web application. Implement RLS so users can only see their own data. Then they can build reports off of the data right in the Service or still export it to Excel if they want. Might save some steps.

Something else, if you want to display Power BI visuals or reports in you web application, you could look at some of the various embedding features that Power BI has.

However, I am not 100% clear on what you are trying to achieve, so just throwing out ideas that seem to be along the lines of what you are describing.

[alexk-spicey]

@Greg_Deckler The current solution is just a quick and easy way to let users report on their own data. I went with this, since it leverages the abilities of Power BI custom reporting, without investing into Azure or any other kind of subscription (keeping the price low) until I knew people liked it. I've had to create a reporting system previously and it was not pleasant lol.

If I made a Power BI dataset like that, would users of my application have to provide their own license? And would this allow a user to pull their full data as often as they want? (both of those being bad haha)

I'm definitely open to the idea of embedding Power BI in the application, do you know the difficulty of embedding it into a rails application? And would I be able to restrict this to the data already exported to the xlsx I mentioned previously? Maintaining the same data restriction logic in as few places as possible is highly desirable 🙂

Sorry, I know it's lots of questions. Thanks so much for your time 🙂

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

No worries @alexk-spicey .

So, one the first couple questions. If you went down the path of Power BI Service and a shared dataset, you could schedule auto-refresh so that the data only updates when you want it to. You could prevent users from updating the data on their own by just giving them Read access. Now, they could download the data as often as they like, but it would not have "new" data until a refresh happened. Let me know if that is not clear. In this scenario you would either need Power BI Premium or everybody would need a Pro license.

Scenario 2. This would work as above in terms of the data load, etc. You would run this in an embedded capacity so your users would not need their own licenses like Premium but way less expensive than Premium generally. I have no idea about rails but I am pretty sure that all the embedding is done in javascript so it should work with any web based application.