Integrate Visualisations In Custom Application

[maracles]

Hi,

We are looking to embed Power BI visualisation inside a custom CRM system that we use internally. I don't want to simply import visualisations that we have on our PowerBI.com dashboards but we want to program visualisations based on the data on our CRM pages.

Use Case:

In our CRM each customer has a profile page. We want to show a line chart illustrating the number of orders placed over the last 3 months. 

In this case we need to be able to tell the visualisation the unique customer ID for the page being viewed at that time.

Is this use-case already available via the API, if not is it comoing soon? 

As I understand it the newly launched Publish-to-web feature wouldn not work as that is only publishing visualisations form PowerBI.com dashbaords. 

[JasonDunbar]

There's something unclear in your question... Have you already modelled your CRM data in Power Query or do you expect that the data is surfaced from CRM and included in the report at the time of CRM page render?

The first option where you've already synchronise and modelled your data in Power BI, should be relatively easy to achieve. You can embed a report and provide a filter via the querystring, as detailed in this API Update post: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-api-updates-roundup-december-2015/

If on the other hand, you're wanting CRM data to load dynamically... That's another totally different kettle of fish. One that might be achievable, but not without challenges of authentication and latency.

J

[luisrh]

I don;t know that that will be something you could do.   If you are going to do something like that,  you might as well use d3.js and do the visualization on your app itself.    Power BI is a service and the visualizations and datasets reside on the service.   Unless of course, you are using direct connect and the data can reside on premises.  You still need to get an embed URL in case you are going to put on an IFrame.   If what I am understanding you want to do is strictly on your side, then it's simpler to just write the widget using d3 on your app.