Automating Exporting PDFs with slicers

[TimWilliam]

Hi,

I will try and explain as best what I am trying to see is even possible. I have read about power automate and different ways of exporting pdf's. But I am confused as to the solution and even if it's possible. 

What really I am after is a way of pulling pdf exports from a specific report page on power bi but on mass. It doesnt need to be scheduled as they data is fairly fixed for a period. However what it has on this report particular page is multiple slicers. I need it to go through a list of subjects ( on one slicer) and a list of classes ( on another slicer) exporting a pdf file for each class. E.g You might have Maths,English,Science subjects (on one slicer) then exporting classes set1,set2,set3,set4,set5 (on the other slicer) for each subject. So in my example pulling out 15 different pdf exports. It would be also good if it could label the pdf export based on the slicer. Eg Maths Set1.

In practice I have around 200 classes (200 pdf exports) as I have 10 different subjects and maybe 20 classes for each.

I don't know if it could even do this. 

Thanks

T

[powerbi00]

Hello!

I'm encountering a very similar problem. I'm wondering how you solved it in the end.

Thank you!

[KiranHosakote]

Hi @TimWilliam 

If you are still looking for an automated solution to export your Power BI report to PDF with filters and slicers, see https://medium.com/p/bfebd39d4c84 for details. Filter and slicer values are selected dynamically at report runtime, and you can set up your report job in minutes. 

You need one Power BI Pro license, and this solution doesn't need Power Automate. 

[KiranHosakote]

Hi @TimWilliam 

Yes you can do this with a single Power BI Pro license - PDF export with multiple filters and slicers applied. See https://medium.com/bi-helper/automated-distribution-of-power-bi-reports-and-dashboards-25fde6c68af0.

For dynamic selection of slicers and filters at runtime, take a look at this option (with Power Automate). 

https://medium.com/bi-helper/burst-your-power-bi-reports-838ab593f7bc

[TimWilliam]

Hi,

Thanks. Seems like you need a premium capacity licence to do the second bit. Which will stump me due to the cost. Even looked at this PBRS software but they want £5000 odd for that.

Thanks,

[BM4291]

Ah, that is a pain... Might be worth checking if anything has changed on that front, the article is from Jan 21 so may have changed some of the licensing.

Not sure the minimum licensing for the REST APIs but you could in theory build something around those; a fair amount of legwork required however.

Good luck!

[BM4291]

@TimWilliam I don't think this level of granularity is supported out of the box; however should be quite straightforward to acheive using PowerAutomate, do you have licenses for this?

At a very high-level, you could create a lookup table/list with your parameter combinations and then loop through this over the specified page(s) in your report and apply the filters via URL parameters.

The output could be named however you want to define it using values from your table/list.

Without PowerAutomate, I'm not too sure, there may be a 3rd party PowerBI tool out there that does the trick.

[garamond]

Hi @TimWilliam. Your question inspired us at Slideform to implement this capability. Slideform is a report automation platform that can fill in and generate your reports from Power BI automatically on demand or on a schedule. We are happy to announce that we can generate a catch of reports based on different Power BI slicer values. Check it out if this is still a problem you need to solve. https://slideform.co/blog/automate-reports-with-power-bi-slicers

[TimWilliam]

Hi,

Happy to use power automate. Havent got a bought licence of power automate but I can purchase if I know it will work, I have a pro bi licence do I need a pro automate licence? I dont know if you or someone can point me to the steps to get it working on automate as I did mess about before and wasnt succesful.

Or do i need to go on an automate forum?

thanks,

T

[BM4291]

The principle will undoubtedly work but a lot will depend on your specific organisational context i.e. if you're using SharePoint or Office 365, that can be the source of your 'list' whereas SQL/Oracle would carry additional costs that aren't strictly necessary (though this is what I tend to use).

The basic actions are here: Export and email a report with Power Automate - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

The additional work you'd need to do is to test passing the values as parameters in the URL and then re-creating the equivalent in the PowerAutomate action.

This post here looks to cover it broadly: Filter & Email Power BI Report pages using Power Automate & Excel – Wise Data Decisions