Power BI Report Server Embed API alternative

LucasGA · ‎08-27-2020

I’m looking for method to enable users of our application to be able to view an embedded Power BI report without being prompted for a login.

The report has sensitive data so I can not simply make the report publicly available.

As users are authenticated via the application there is no need for a second Power BI authentication.

If I use the Power BI cloud service (i.e. https://app.powerbi.com/home) I am able to harness the power of the Power BI Embed API and with a generated accessToken I can display the report without the user having to login again.

However, our client would like to use Power BI Report Server, in order to host all the data on their own servers.

As I understand the Power BI Embed API feature is not available on Power BI Report Server.

Is there any alternate method I can use to give the user a seamless user experience and avoid the double login?

i.e. Log the user into Power BI in the background as they log into the application (assuming I have their Power BI credentials), then log them back out as they logout the application.

Any help would be appreaciated

Anonymous · ‎08-27-2020

Hellow @LucasGA,

>>Is there any alternate method I can use to give the user a seamless user experience and avoid the double login?

Maybe you can take a look at following blog guest embedded part and configure them ids based on their credentials if it works to skip the manually sign-in steps:

Tutorial: Embed Power BI content into an application for your organization#aadauthorityurl

>>As I understand the Power BI Embed API feature is not available on Power BI Report Server.

You can consider pushing your report to power bi as paginated reports, then you can use power bi embed with pargeter reports: (I can find the sample of the paginated report in power bi embedded playground)

Paginated reports in Power BI: FAQ

Publish a paginated report to the Power BI service

Power BI Embedded Playground

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng

LucasGA · ‎08-28-2020

Hi Xiaoxin,

Thanks for your reply, but the links and solutions you provided seem to all refer to Power BI Service (i.e. Power BI reports published and hosted in the cloud on https://app.powerbi.com/) . I am looking for a solution for Power BI Report Server (i.e. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/report-server/)

The Power BI API Embed option (i.e. https://microsoft.github.io/PowerBI-JavaScript/demo/v2-demo/index.html) is not available for Power BI Report Server as far as I am aware. Due to client restrictions we must have all data held on site, so publishing or migrating the report to Power BI Service (i.e. https://app.powerbi.com/) is not an option.

There is a Power BI Report Server REST API however (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/rest-api). But this looks to be able to actually query the server itself as oppose to aid in embedding the reports themselves.
That said however, in the swagger documentation of the REST API (https://app.swaggerhub.com/apis/microsoft-rs/PBIRS/2.0) there looks to be a session API call.
Perhaps there is a way to login in a user and return a session cookie, which will then auto login the user to the Power BI report (using MS Single Sign-On) which is being served within an iFrame?

I’d be very interested to hear any possible solutions. I would find it quite strange that there is no method to do achieve what we are trying to do with the Server edition of Power BI, especially when a method already exists for the standard Power BI service.

Regards,

Lucas